analog_kidd

The wife and I have our phone locations shared with each other. To be honest, I had forgotten that we did it, and I have never used it to snoop on her whereabouts, and I'm sure she never has either. BUT, if she is extra late coming home, and not responding to a text or call, I would not hesitate to look her up, and she would do the same. Our kids are grown and living in remote parts of the country, and we don't share location. But if they were still living at home and 20-something, I think i would ask them to share their location and respect their answer. Or ask them to at least share on special occasions, like going out on a date with a new person or something like that.

Well, I know punctuation is important... Just ask the Panda that eats, shoots and leaves

Saturday Night Live actually being funny

Collecting bottles along the road and bringing them to the 7-11 to trade in for the deposit, and then buying a Slurpee

I'd be fine with a text message alert that I an see in the morning when I get up, but linking in to the Amber Alert system is too much. First off, everyone knows what an Amber alert is. But you get woken up at 5:30 am to a "Blue Alert" and sleepy me says "WTF is a Blue Alert?" And what am I going to be able to do about it? 99.999% of the people that alert went to, rolled back over and went back to sleep. If it were something like "Take cover - Zombies attacking" then, YES wake me up. THAT I need to know ASAP and will do something about. And, don't get me wrong, I'm a supporter of Law enforcement, and this cop getting killed is a horrible thing, but I'm not getting alerts when my stand-up neighbor gets shot by the most dangerous bad guy in the state. Is the point of these alerts to let you know someone really dangerous is out there running around, or to just point out that a cop was shot? Sorry, I'm a little grumpy. Oak Ridge got a new alert system I signed up for and it went of at 5am this morning with a phone call to tell me a road was closed. I'm just annoyed with alerts this week.

Did any of you guys have one of these? It came with a bunch of little wires, and the little pegs on the board were these little springs. You could bend the spring, insert the wire and create all kinds of circuits. I spent hours making all kinds of stuff. One of the things you could make was an AM radio, which was the coolest thing to an 8 year old.

These were short lived, and intended to replace floppies. 100mb seemed massive at the time. Now you can get 1000's of times that capacity on a tiny thumb drive

I think you have to sign up. You need to log in thru the app that installs to your streamer. I rarely get any emails from them.

The free channels on Plex includes a couple from the History channel. I see "History and Warfare" and "Military Heroes". Look at their site, uncheck the "Show Local Channels" and browse the channels they have to offer. These are all free, with ads. https://www.plex.tv/live-tv-channels/

We cut Comcast TV a few years ago, but kept their Internet. I need fast internet for work, and they are really the only option where I live. We tried both Hulu with Live TV, and You Tube TV, and decided we liked YTTV better. I hated the Hulu interface, especially the guide which at the time could not be sorted. The DVR was not as good, and you couldn't fast forward thru commercials. Hulu had better content than YTTV, but we never really watched any of that. We mostly used it for recording stuff on ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox, and for watching news. We mostly kept it around to watch Fox news <ugh>. We have since detached ourselves from watching cable news and are way more happier for it. We have since cut out YTTV. I like Tech stuff and roll my own now. This might be a little too nerdy for some, but I use Plex. You can sign up for free and load the Plex app on your streaming device and get 100's of free live channels, just like Comcast gives. Granted, it's 90% crap you probably don't want to watch, but for totally free you can find something. There is also a large library of movies you can stream for free, but there are a lot of commercials. Here's the nerdy part... I built a Plex server. Cost like $150 for a small desktop on EBay, plus another $100 for a big hard drive. Then I got an antenna for $50, and a device called an HDHomerun tuner. I got the better one, but the cheapest one would have done fine for what I use it for. I think it was like $150 for what I got, adn the cheaper one is maybe $80-ish. I also have a Plex Pass I paid for. It's like $30 annually, or you buy a lifetime for $100 on sale. I bought mine several years ago, so that didn't count toward my recent cost. So, for about $450, I was able to put all this together. The HDHomerun is a tuner that you connect to the antenna, and then streams video out across your home network. The Plex server sees it, and can connect to it. There is a lot Plex can do for free without the paid for pass, but connecting to this, the pass is required. Once it sees the HDHomerun, you get this really cool TV guide of all your channels, and can schedule recordings. Works just like the Comcast Guide and DVR. You can watch live TV, pause rewind, all that. Plex even has a cool commercial skip button for any shows you record. Any streaming device in my house can watch the live TV or the recordings. I can even watch on my phone / laptop when I'm away. You can also make a library of your own movies or TV shows for any video file you can gather. If you have a collection of DVDs, you can easily rip them to a video file and watch them any time on Plex. And that library can be shared with friends and family. The TV recordings too. I would record UT games for my out of state son, where he may not have gotten the game in his area, but he could watch on my Plex server. One other feature I just started using, is Plex can also stream your music. I copied my MP3 Files over to the server, and installed the Plex Music app on my phone and computer, and now I can stream all my music commercial free. And its all songs I like. You don't get to sample new stuff tho, so that is one bummer. Truth be told, this thing has become sort of a hobby of its own.

I found the miniseries Fall of the House of Usher to be really good. It takes a lot of Edgar Allen Poe elements from his various works and weaves them into the plot / dialog. Skim thru the titles of his works, and read a few of his poems / stories, and you'll pick up on them in the show. Some of it will be obvious, like names and titles (Pit and Pendulum for one).

I probably don't want to know the answer to this, but... Is there really a market out there for Transgender Prostitutes? If I'm a guy looking for a good time and I discover I just paid for a dude, I'd be really upset. They don't really have the parts for it anyway. Are there people out there that get of on that thing?

The story of Murderous Mary the elephant, who met her demise in Erwin is an interesting read: https://blueridgecountry.com/archive/favorites/mary-the-elephant/

I've kinda gotten out of it for a while, but I used to go all the time. here's me on Bald River Falls over by the Tellico

Yeah, we got TSA Pre-Check because my son moved his Family out to Vegas, and with cheap Knox flights out there, we figured we'd be doing a lot of flying. TSA-Precheck is great everywhere EXCEPT Vegas. Every time we have flown out of Vegas coming home, the Precheck line is closed. They scrutinize us at the scanners like we are Precheck, so we don't have to do the body scan/shoe removal and what-not, but we do have to schlepp our way thru the long line, like a couple of commoners

I'm with you in the fact that I wouldn't want to carry the passport around, and so would never use it domestically. However, they do make a wallet, driver's license-sized card that you can use as a passport. Its not valid for International air travel, but is fine for domestic, and land / sea ports of entry. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/card.html I would have gotten one when I renewed my passport a few years ago, but it costs EXTRA, and I'm cheap. I also noticed on that link above that they are modernizing the passport, which I was not aware of. They started in 2021. Won't require a replacement until you have to renew.

I must not be doing it right... I have a fence line in the back 40 that I fight with every year. It's always overgrown with these hellish thorn bush things and thorny blackberry bushes. They get me every time I mow past them. I want that fence line to be a wasteland, a foot on either side. After reading here about diesel being effective, and also reading more about it on Google, I was willing to give it a try. I got a couple gallons, put it in a sprayer and doused every living thing along that fence. Covered all the leaves, and gave a spritz to the ground as well. Several days later I could still see diesel residue on the leaves, but the weeds looked even healthier. So I gave them all another treatment. A week later and they are still going strong. AND to make matters worse, my entire back yard smells like a truck stop disaster. So, what is the correct method for applying diesel, and why won't these weeds die?

If there is not wailing and gnashing of teeth from the media and usual suspects by now, then I'm betting the shooter does not fit the normal stereotypes, and they just want this story to go away.

The Rock Band RUSH is one of my favorites, and they have a song called The Analog Kid. I'm an IT Engineer, working with computers every day. On that same album is a song named Digital Man, and you would think with my profession I would identify more with that song. However, even tho I work on Nerdy stuff, I'm definitely not a Nerd. I don't like video games, and once work is done, I turn of the tech. I'm into outdoor stuff, and am more happy when there is no electricity nearby. So, Analog Kid fits better

Yep, been to each of those places too, and you are right, they are amazing hikes. Other one in BSF that is fantastic is the Honey Creek loop. Back at Cumberland Gap, the 3 day backpacking trip along the entire ridge is on my bucket list.

I'm convinced the massive number of pumps at Buccee's is to allow you to pull up to a pump, get gas and then just stay parked there while you go in and leisurely shop. At a place like Love's, you feel rushed to move away from the pump to let the line behind you pull in for gas. A buddy and I stopped in the Crossville one a few weeks ago after a weekend backpacking trip to Virgin Falls. Virgin Falls is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. It's absolutely spectacular, but Buccee's was one of the highlights of the weekend for my friend.

And for some people, taking the meds is what makes them easy going, "regular" people, who are perfectly capable of owning and possessing a gun. In some cases, someone might just not take the meds anymore so they can own guns, which could result in their becoming unstable and doing something rash. Thereby, this law would cause the exact thing they think it will prevent.

It's been decades since I had a reason to know what a bag costs. I somehow stumbled upon an article the other day listing the average cost of an ounce (seriously, I wasn't looking). I was surprised to learn that where it is legal, they are selling it for $300-ish an ounce. Seems like that was what the going rate was back in the early 90's. It may be the only thing not affected by inflation.

And this happened today: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/four-children-killed-pre-school-attack-southern-brazil-2023-04-05/ Guy with an axe jumps the fence and kills 4 kids at school. Crazy people will always do crazy. It's just that for the U.S version of crazy, a gun is the most convenient tool. If crazy doesn't have that tool, they will find another. You know what did stop this crazy guy? A good guy with a gun