[–] 4 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

I've been with this group for 7 years, will be 8 in January.

This is only the second time I've DM'D. Not because I don't want to, we have a person dedicated to the role and he's pretty good. I'm doing this to give him a break and give the other players, who are all much younger, a look at what old school AD&D was like while playing modern rules.

Also, I've never considered myself a very good DM.

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  • [–] 18 points 6 hours ago (7 children)

    First time in a month my Friday night D & D group is playing. I'm DM'ing a homebrew campaign I created on various adventures I've played over the last 48 years.

    Had to go through my notes today and adjust a few things.

    Why the hiatus? We're all adults with lives of our own.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago

    Somewhat known fact:

    In Return of the Jedi, Han throws a bag and knocks an Imperial Officer off the gangway falling to his death.

    That officer was none other than Ben Burtt himself who was the sound designer for the Star Wars series and responsible for popularizing the Wilhelm Scream in modern cinema.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago

    For chocolate chip cookies, go with Alton Brown's newest version on YouTube.

    That recipe is light years ahead of any other recipe I've tried. Just make sure to rest the dough in the fridge for a minimum of 6 hours. It really does make a difference. Also get them in the oven when they are still cold, don't let the dough warm up.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    56m here and I look like a simple farmer, a person of the land. The common clay of the Midwest, you know.... A moron.

    The reality is I don't own a gun although I can handle one. My vocabulary is quite broad and I can use sesquipedalian words rather adroitly. I drive a hybrid Camry and my wife is highly intelligent and educated. She actually holds two doctorates. I didn't have a problem staying at home with our two boys while she got her career off the ground. Our oldest is starting at Northwestern in two weeks.

    My political leanings got me disowned from my Maga loving family and I'm just fine with that.

    But I still look the part of a Midwest redneck.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

    I like both to be honest.

    With that said, I actually lean more toward the Fi end of things, because when a book or movie gets something obviously wrong it's really grating. Where as with technobabble it's true in that universe, so who am I to contradict it. It's easier to stay in the moment.

    As a case in point, I actually turned Prometheus off at the point when it's stated the ship traveled a billion miles... Or you know, out to Jupiter. The writers could have taken 10 seconds to educate themselves that as far as distances in space go, a billion miles isn't even out of your own yard yet. Much less an interstellar distance. Given the reviews on the rest of the movie, I apparently didn't miss much. Yes, I'm aware that Prometheus is solidly in the Fi end of the spectrum, but come on... Some one actually thought a billion miles was an interstellar distance? JFC education is really going down the tubes.

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    An Interconnect cable is the patch cable that goes between audio separates. For home use they typcially use "RCA" style connectors. The following post is aimed at those types of cables and not XLR style interconnects which can be found on some home audio components.

    Go onto Craigslist, Nextdoor, Ebay, or Facebook Marketplace and look for RG6 75ohm coaxial cable. It's the cable that is run in most houses for cable TV. You might even have this stuff laying around your house in a box somewhere. Either way you can get it for pennies per foot if you look hard enough. There are versions with a solid copper core , or a copper clad steel core. For audio use, either is just fine, but as a personal preference I like to use solid copper core as it's better quality cable. However, it does cost just a bit more, but still cheaper than buying cables in a box store.

    Next you'll need RCA compression fittings for RG6: Amazon Link

    Then purchase a compression tool and coaxial cutter: Amazon Link

    If you have cables with the "F-type" connector on them already, then there are adapters to go to RCA male: Amazon Link

    Follow the instructions that come with the tools and enjoy cables that outperform even those that are made of unicorn farts and fairy dust that people with too much money but little sense like to tout. These cables will also last forever as RG6 cable is very tough, especially the solid copper core version. I have cables that are north of 30 years old still in daily use.

    The only issue with RG6, it is a stiff cable. So making short runs bend at sharp angles is not an easy thing to do. You will need to come up with a method to keep stereo pairs together, or just run them separately. Plus mark the cables as Left or Right channels. I use either colored heat shrink tubing, or electrical tape for this purpose.

     

    Vintage Audio Addict is a great YT channel that I recommend for all Budget Audiophiles to subscribe to.

    This video is a dissertation on the work of Peter Aczel. An engineer that lays it out in plain language how audio really works and why "Audiophiles" are wasting their money. I've known about Peter for quite some time and his perspective went a long way in shaping my own in regards to audio equipment.

     

    I have a love/ hate relationship with early 90's to early 2000's audio equipment.

    This is an Adcom GTP-350, which a decent mid-range stereo pre-amp from 1993. I bought it off of Ebay for $80 and free shipping. It came to me with no left channel and scratchy to non-working pots. So several applications of Deoxit and working the pots they all came back to life. However, the left channel would just now work, EXCEPT for the radio. The radio played normally through both channels. That told me this unit has fallen to the curse of dry/cold solder joints. So I took about 30 minutes and resoldered all the joints in the signal path of both channels.

    Then... I ran into my own stupidity... Sometimes I'm just and idiot and using an extremely flawed testing method and a defective external part (USB-C to 1/8" Stereo adapter) I thought I hadn't fixed it. After messing around with it for another 30 minutes, I discovered my mistake... Then discovered the adapter I was using to play music from my phone was defected (if you guess it would not play through the left channel, even on known good equipment you get a cookie.) So I figured all that out finally, as I said, I'm an idiot sometimes, and it's working great.

    The plan is to run it for a week or so and make sure nothing else happens. I am contemplating recapping it, but we'll see. If it passes, then it will go up to my living room so I can get my main stereo back to working. Right now I'm running a Marantz receiver I fixed and while I really like it, I like my main stereo even more.

    Here is a photo of the work I did today. I started at the inputs (top center of the photo) and just worked my way down. To the left in the photo is the radio section and it's working fine, so I didn't touch it. Also, we don't listen to the radio, so if something does happen to that section I'll just isolate it from the signal path and just leave it.

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