analog_kidd

Several years ago we went to Nicaragua on a mission trip. Everyone there kept driving home the fact that the water was really bad and do not drink it - EVER. One morning the bus came early and I had not finished my morning routine. I thought to myself, to save time I'll brush my teeth using tap water, but I'll take extra care not to swallow any. So I proceeded to brush my teeth, and was astounded at how really bad that water tasted. Furthermore, the water was so bad that it left the toothpaste flat and didn't foam up. It wasn't until I put my stuff away that I realized I had grabbed the Prep-H instead of the toothpaste.

He refuses to stand to so as not to show support for a country that oppresses Blacks? This country does not oppress blacks. There may be people in the country that do, but the country does not. Hell, we have a black president, Attourney General, SCOTUS member, and many Congress persons. Do you really think these people would allow America to oppress blacks? Do you think the majority of Americans would now allow the oppression of Blacks? A hundred years ago, I would have said that was true, what with having their own water fountains, or having to sit on the back of the bus. When Blacks couldn't vote, that was American oppression. Those were horrible times for Blacks, and the leaders back then were absolutely wrong, but the fact of the matter is, today's Blacks benefit from the sacrifices and suffering that their ancestors paid. Those folks took a real stand and made a difference that today's Black generation enjoy. What has CK done to help with his perceived oppression of Blacks? As far as I know, the only thing I've heard him do is literally "Sit on his ass". Here is a guy with the financial means and public's attention that he could really be a vehicle to bring legitimate Black issues to the public conversation. But what does he choose to do? He pisses off the majority of red blooded Americans. Sure, he'll have a few people who praise him, but these are the people that are already burning flags, and setting police cars on fire. All he really did was make things worse. I hope his career is over. I hope he gets booed every single time he takes the field. I hope he get's laid out by the defense every play. I hope his line doesn't protect him. You want to see what oppression feels like? How about we oppress football stars that hate America?

For some reason, I've been on an antique lighter kick lately. Specifically, I've been looking for something called a trench lighter. These things have a bit of history, and got their start from soldiers making them from spent bullets. They would put a little shield on them to hide the flame so an enemy would not see the flame at night. Companies took the idea and started making them in production for sale. You can see that as you slide up the outer sleeve, the cap folds over. This one is in pretty good condition and looks pretty new. I'm going to keep looking for more, and hope to find one with an older looking brass patina. There are several manufacturers. This one is a Bowers, made in Kalamazoo, Michagan

I'm in the same boat. I'm in my 50's, and have been a registered voter since I turned 18, voted in every election, had a drivers license since 16, owned lots of different properties, but I have never been called. My dad has been called at least a dozen times, my wife a couple. Even my 20 something son has been called.

We just did exactly what you are proposing: Dumped DirecTV and moved to Comcast. We already had Comcast for Internet. Since AT&T / DirecTV couldn't get fast enough Internet to the new house we bought, they let us out of that part of the contract. Our contract finally expired, and we discovered we could save about $85 by going all Comcast. I had considered getting an antenna for local channels, Prime for movies and using USTVNow to pick up ESPN and FoxNews, but I figured I would only be saving $10 or so a month compared to the Comcast bundle. The convenience factor of having only one remote, and not having to switch input settings on the TV all the time was worth the $10 to me. My wife got the whole thing set up in a chat session started from their web site. It was pretty easy. If you hesitate on pulling the trigger, they keep sweetening the deal. My wife would say "Let me think about it" or "let me talk to my husband" and they would come back with "We'll throw in a $80 rebate to cover installation" or, "We'll throw in a free DVR for a year". I had heard that part of the X-Finity rebranding, they were trying to rebuild their customer service reputation. I felt the whole process went very well. They were respectful and helpful. I do think Comcast equipment and their TV offerings are far superior to DirecTV. I really like the DVR interface. You can talk into the remote to search for shows. Seems like everything I have searched for so far shows up in On-Demand. Comcast seems to group their channels a bit better, AND they don't put a damned info-mercial channel on every other channel. I swear DirecTV had hundreds of those things, which irritated me to no end. The installer came and spent several hours here. I wanted to move my router to downstairs. The previous owner had ran 4 cable lines to the bedroom, and I wanted to clean up some cables. They did all that for me. You will want to look up on Google how to hack the remote to add a 30 second skip ahead / 10 second skip back. It makes zipping through commercials on recorded shows so much better. It was very easy to do, just a few keypress sequences on the remote to modify the setting.

I got a Samsung S6 Edge last year, and I would not get it again if I could do it over. The phone itself is great, and I would definitely get the standard S6/S7, I just don't like the Edge. The main problem I have with it is when I try to do things on the phone with just one hand, my thumb touches the edge and inadvertently clicks stuff. The features that the edge display provides are minimal, and to be honest, I never use them. The only exception is a feature to turn on a dim clock on the edge display that stays on in the evening. That is useful in the evening to be able to just glance over at the phone to see the time. Of course I have several other clocks in the house and a watch on my wrist, so not having that feature would be no big deal to me. The good things about the phone, and that would transfer over to the standard version, are: it has a great screen. I like the size and clarity. It has just about every feature I could want on a cell phone. It acts as a WiFi hot-spot pretty well. Battery life is pretty good. I think I have an app for work that drains it. I get a full days use no matter what, but when I'm at work, it drains quicker. It quick charges with the supplied charger in just a couple of hours. If I'm going out for the evening, I'll sometimes put it on the charger for 15 minutes or so, and it'll jump up 20%. The camera is fantastic. We went to the Grand Canyon this year, and the phone was the only camera I brought. Takes as good of pictures as my 10 yr old DSLR. It came with several of the crappy apps that providers like to install. And, while you can't uninstall them, you can disable them, without rooting the phone.

Help them get a Google voice account. You can port their land line to GV, and then point the old number to their cell phones. This will allow the old number to stay active but it will ring their cell phones. And then they can cancel the land line, and GV is free. You can set the number to ring one or both cells at the same time, and the call will route to whoever answers first. Annoying numbers can be easily blocked. A message can be set up before transferring the call. For instance the message could say "make note of our cell number". I think you can't directly transfer a land line to GV, only cell numbers, but you can transfer one to a cheap prepaid, and then transfer that to GV.

One crazy idea I had was that it could turn out that it was none of our heroes, and that Negan would turn the bat on one of his own. Just to prove how unpredictable he was. Show the group some mercy and try to win them over. Of course Rick's group will see right through that and not join. I doubt that will happen, but it could be a way the writers kill off someone and it not be anyone's favorite.

I was surprised to see that the (S)BLM movement is over seas too. I thought it was just a US thing. I read an article where a (S)BLM group did a protest where they laid down in the street blocking traffic to Heathrow Airport in England.

Your kid is ... FREAKING AWESOME!

I used to get a lot of telemarketer calls, and I used to have a lot of fun with them. One of my favorites was to get all apprehensive sounding when they would say my name. Then I would interrupt them and tell them that I was in the witness protection program, and that was my old name. I'd ask how they got my old name with my new number, get all freaked out sounding, and finish it off by saying that "if you found me then so can they". I had one lady seriously get concerned and call her supervisor over. If callers ever asked for my wife, I would say "My wife is not allowed to use the phone right now, and her phone privileges won't be restored for a while." They never knew how to respond to that.

For the Joe Bonamassa fans. Guitar Shorty has a similar style.

I really like this idea, and was thinking about that myself just the other day. I paid for the Lifetime Benefactor because of the value TGO brings to me. I know there are a lot of benefactors here that feel the same way. I also know the non-benefactors are getting one helluva bargain. I would like to see a donate a $1.00 (or whatever) option in the store, and then have a drive on TGO to get every single person to contribute.

This is the perfect counterpoint to those that rally to take away our gun rights after any kind of terrorist attack. I've been saying all along, just wait until the bad guys get tired of picking people one by one off with a gun. It took the Orlando terrorist three hours and he killed 50 people. This guy in France kills almost double that in less than a minute. And it could have been even worse if he had been able to carry his plan out to the end. A person with evil in their heart will find a way to kill people. Taking away the gun from good people is ridiculous. Are we going to see politicians rallying to enact any kind of legislation restricting Semi Truck ownership? Of course not. But why not? Turns out the Semi is way more deadly than an AR-15. And, in the end, it was good guys with guns that eventually end every one of these conflicts.

I was definitely not impressed. It really felt like a yard sale of their old junk. I searched page after page and never really found anything that caught my interest. I had filled up my wishlist over the last week, and nothing in it showed up on sale. I did end up picking up one of their Fire TV Sticks. It was more on impulse buy than anything else, as a coworker recommended it. They had good deals on their Fire Tablets. I already have a couple I bought from their last sale, so I didn't need any more. For $35 they are a good deal if you don't mind ignoring their overbearing advertising that is mixed in. For $35 it is an outstanding deal if you know how to root them and reload the OS and get rid of the advertising. The ones I have rooted are as nice as the tablet I bought my wife for $300.

And that makes it really easy on TN law enforcement. They don't have to memorize, or look up which states permits are OK in TN. You got a valid permit from another state, you are good to go in TN. Just like drivers licenses. That's the way it should be.

For those of you that are Amazon Prime members, July 12th is Prime Day. It's like Amazon's Black Friday sales in July. I picked up several good deals last year. The only bad thing, as I recall, is the deals come all day long, so you kind of have to be near a computer all day long.

One time I heard someone say "Ride like everyone else is drunk, and you are invisible." Every time I get on the bike I think about that. The one time I had a close call, it was because I wasn't paying attention. You have to be vigilant. Constantly scan the road and look at every car and ask yourself "what will I do if they do X,Y or Z, " Then move to the next car. Find a buddy that rides, and do some long day trips with them. You'll pick up tips as you ride with someone else. Most of all enjoy it.

Funny how the whole Fast and Furious scandal just faded away. Maybe this will bring it back and give it new life.

I'm profoundly frustrated that the government had ample opportunity to prevent the Orlando shooter from getting guns, and failed. I'm profoundly frustrated that the police, the protectors of the people, took three hours to come to the rescue of the citizens. I'm profoundly frustrated that the Liberals in our government are ignoring the Radical Muslin Terrorist / mental health aspect of this event, and shifting the blame to guns & gun owners. Sounds to me like instead of gun law reform, we need government reform.

Or you can boat up to many places. I think it would be cool to use a motorboat to carry your stuff to the site. If you have ever been to the "Marina" in Oak Ridge, where they do the rowing, if you look right across the river from there you will see what looks kind of like an island. There is actually a small strip of land that connects it to the land on the other side of the river. All of that is TVA property, and good to go for hunting / camping. A month or so ago, I walked all around out there just to explore. There is a lot of brush along the river bank of the island, but if you could find an ingress point from the water, it would be a great place to camp. I had always heard that TVA was seriously anti-gun. I heard the dire warnings of do not keep a loaded gun in your boat while using the boat ramps, or the TVA police will carry you away and you'll never be seen again. But reading the rules, it sounds to me like, if you have a permit, you are allowed to carry at the ramp. And with being able to use the unimproved areas for hunting, and possibly plinking, they may not be as bad as I was led to believe.

I know you can hunt / camp on ANY undeveloped TVA land. Not sure how they feel about setting up targets. I'm sure they would not like you leaving any trash, so I would pick up everything. I recently discovered that there is a tract of land just up the road from me that is great for camping. I see folks parked at the gate all the time during hunting season. I assumed you had to get permission. I called and they said the undeveloped land is available for use to the public without any additional permission for recreation including hunting and camping. Here are the rules. You determine if they apply to target shooting. I think at the very least, I would call them: https://tva.gov/Environment/Environmental-Stewardship/Land-Management/Rules-for-Use-of-TVA-Public-Lands You can find the maps of the land here: https://tva.gov/Environment/Recreation/Undeveloped-Recreation-Areas

I quoted and replied to a message earlier today and when I clicked submit I got an error about an "invalid character or emoji". There was a smiley face in the quoted text, once I erased that, the post was able to be submitted. I couldn't tell if that was a standard emoji from the board, or if it was something else. The post I quoted is the top most one on this page (page6):

The contrast in the darker theme is much better, but I think I still like reading the post's text against a white background.

First concert I ever went to was a Cheap Trick show. My best friend's mom took us. I loved Nielson's guitar, and how he used to do that jump move. And the drummer, who always looked like he just got off work at the office. Here is one of my favorite CT songs, that never got any airplay: