I thought I'd add this future post, so it will always be at the top of my list as I've seen several people do. Feel free to use this as a place to send me general comments not related to my other posts posts, or request that I post some kind of information.  Also, now I'm adding links people may want to be able to reference quickly.

Persistent information:

Saturday morning Tea:
Just in case the world goes to hell:

( Comments will be screened, but I reserve the right to cut and paste them into a current dated entry of my own to start a topic unless you request otherwise. )

Moviepass is charging "peak" pricing to see a movie at 9:30 in a theater with 6 whole other people. It was nice while it lasted ... #peakmyass

Who wants to do a group outing to a water park in August? Somewhere like Magic Waters or Noah's Ark?

Every time I passed a sign that says mulch, I think that would be the name of the Moon Moon of the Klingon Empire

I'm not sure what game I'm part of, but I'm a part of some game my cat plays. When I go to the washroom at night, I walk out into the hall and a lot of times he's waiting just around the corner for me to walk out, at which point he runs as fast as he can to the other side of the room with his tail twitching frantically in the air. My awareness of my involvement does not seem to be important.

Ok, let's see how smart Amazon is, I needed 2 $5 parts for my 3D printer, to get it tomorrow adds $5.99 each, so I ordered one rush-delivery and one free-Prime. Logically it's cheaper to send both together tomorrow because each weighs about 1/2 an ounce. Will their computer figure that out and ship them together?

Does anyone have any Google Home actions setup/installed that will relay whatever I tell it to a local server? For example "Ok Google have computer turn on light" and it will send "turn on light" or something similar to a URL.

Noah's Ark Waterpark please tell me you haven't roped off the deep end of your wave pools the way MTO (not linking them, they don't deserve any recognition) did.

Recently I visited Mount Olympus - Wisconsin Dells and took advantage (or they took advantage of me) of their "All Inclusive" resort. Everything involving Mount Olympus (They abbreviate it MTO because that's the amount of effort they put into everything there) Saturday checking is 4pm, we're texted days in advance to come to their new checking facility which is about 3 miles from the main park. We checked in at about 5pm with a very nice person who spoke little English and seemed to be confused about the question "Which building are we in." as MTO owns everything north of the main street it seems. Finally realized we were in the same building as the check-in, 3 miles from the park. Get to our room, the "headboard" is painted on the wall, and the "furniture" is some kind of a shop class project made out of 2x4's (well made, but still...) There's a microwave, and a fridge, no tea, coffee, etc. It's a room I'd pay $25 for just to sleep in overnight on a long road trip, and is clearly a bargain at the just under $200 MTO charges. It's all inclusive I remind myself, despite not being anywhere near the park. The all inclusive food stops being served at 5pm as well, so we obviously missed it Saturday. However with a 4pm check in time, loading into the room, and then racing to the park miles away, I can't imagine many people actually make it to "dinner". We get to the indoor water park, which is open from 7pm till 10pm for "resort guests only" which as they own 1/2 the Dells is everyone who wasn't smart enough to go to Kalahari, Great Wolf or Noah's Ark. There's an activity pool for people to just float and swim in, and there's quite a lot of activity in the pool, apologizing to people you bump into, glaring at people who kick you, and generally trying to defend your 2x2ft spot in the pool, because everyone in the Dells is is there. We lasted maybe 25 minutes before going to the lazy river. Their lazy river is under 3ft deep, meaning an adult can't float in it without dragging some part of themselves along the rough bottom of the river. We went around once. We left had some awesome food at Bobbers, seriously, that place looks like a warehouse, and has some of the best food, go there, skip MTO. The next morning it was raining, yay, that meant less people at the park. We spent $60 to go ride the Ducks, a much better deal than MTO even when it rained on us sideways, and our phones announced a tornado watch. I might be biased, the rain and tornado actually made it better for me. Finally we go over to MTO around 2:30 to go swimming. I didn't mention above but their parking for the park is about 4 blocks away from the entrance to the water park (why not have a second entrance? Well MTO would have to spend money on more staff and barcode scanners, and clearly guest service isn't their gig) I drop people at the entrance, labeled "No drop offs" but who cares at this point honestly. Drive around some crazy maze of fences for god knows what reason, and park the car, before walking back to the entrance. Off to the wave pool, my old childhood friend, who I've swam in dozens of times when I was a kid and Family Land had yet to merge into MTO. They have a rope roping off the wave pool at around the 3ft depth ... WTF (really WTEGDSAYSF in my mind) is the point of a wave pool where I can't even sit my ass on the bottom and get my nose wet. The guard makes sure to scream at anyone who even dares to touch the precious rope. We swam for about 30 minutes. Tried their outdoor lazy river, it as well is 3ft deep, we go around once scraping along the bottom as we go. "Let's get food" words uttered with enthusiasm only once, never again. The all inclusive "food" was either an hour line to get pizza, or an hour line to get hot dogs and a side. Hot Dogs is is, we're allowed two of the precious meat sticks, and a generous side for each of potato chips, or coleslaw. Get the potato chips, the coleslaw was just cabbage, whatever they mixed it with was so thin that it had no taste at all. Which might be for the best since it was served from a large bowl floating in another bowl of what was probably once ice. Good times, fortunately I didn't get sick, probably because there was nothing in the coleslaw to go bad. Let's go check out the new wave pool, certainly it's been built better so that people can enjoy the deep end. Nope, it's walled off possibly even shallower, and there are specific no-no zones around which people are verboten to stand, but no actual signs to tell you that, just another lifeguard yelling at you. I got 2 waves and we left. At this point we're sick of the park, it's nearing 5pm and we want to get home not too late, so we get the car, and start off towards home. We got some great cheese on the way back, smoked Bleu, nom! So for $200, we got a $25 hotel room miles away from the "All Inclusive" park. "Exclusive" access to the indoor water park along with 50% of the rest of the people in the Dells. The next morning we spent more time in line than we did in the pools, waiting for the "All Inclusive" hot dogs and cabbage "meal". Quite the bargain. NEVER, EVER, EVER AGAIN. It was so bad I had dreams of going to other water parks the next night and finding out they'd roped off their wave pools as well and woke up yelling "Damnit!!" (true story!) I literally would have been better just getting a $50 hotel with a pool and just enjoying their pool, it would have been far more enjoyable. The Ducks and Bobbers were spot-on though, can't say enough about how much I enjoyed them.

Has anyone been to Noah's Ark lately? Do they rope off the "deep" (4+ft) end of the wave pool so you can't swim in any water deeper than your balls like Mt Olympus does? Because that's just pathetic.

Reading FB today, pets were all running away from the fireworks. My strange cat : Watching out the window at all the cool things in the sky. Micah is a bit of an outlier.

Gotta love that every time someone says they're going to come help out with something they bail at the 11th hour.

McDonald's I'm all for experimenting and the scientific method, but these new Quarter Pounders ... yay for fresh beef, but they don't taste even remotely the same, can we end the experiment now and have real Quarter Pounders back before I start crying?

Last night I got out my glow-rods (ceiling/wall fishing rods) and drilled a hole next to my projector. I managed to get the rod 15 feet (it just BARELY reached) to the laundry room and after two failed attempts (and some colorful metaphors) managed to pull HDMI, network and twine between the ceiling-mounted projector and the laundry room (my distribution point). I can now use my PS/3 with my projector. It'll be better when I find my controllers :P

Flexion Extruder, thanks for helping me get the right part to complete my extruder, now both of my printers are rocking your awesome hardware.!

Now that a minor heart attack at work is resolved, and no damage was done, I would like to say... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

As tasty as dinner was ... it did not sit well, blarg. No more stewed tomato and ground turkey surprise for me.

Is anyone I know a CDL A or B around Mchenry IL, Columbus OH, Dallas TX or Houston TX? My work is looking for some drivers.

I should NEVER be allowed to go to Microcenter without adult supervision.

OK!! Enough of this "unfriend me if you voted for Trump" or wishing members of political party X dead, or treating any other human being as being lesser for any reason. This is not how problems get solved, this is how rifts between people start out small and grow huge. Go find someone you disagree with, buy them a beverage and sit and talk to them. You know what you'll find out? They made their decisions, take their actions, for important reasons to them, things maybe you don't understand because of your situation in life. Maybe they changed their mind, maybe they still think there's hope, maybe they only agree with a portion of the actions going on, or are hoping for a specific outcome. The majority of people are not idiots, they may not be aware, may not understand, may be misinformed, or may be focused on fixing a different problem than you're focused on. Find out, understand their perspective and how they got there, share your perspective (calmly) and own that it's your opinion, not fact, not gospel, just the thoughts of one human being, focused on the issues important to you because of your life experiences. If you're not holding out your hand to someone you disagree with, it's not making things better, it's making them worse. All you end up doing is hating people over a single issue, without taking any time to understand them. I've seen the world doing that my entire life, it hasn't worked so far, try something new!

New glass, PEI, a better extruder, and some solid state relays, and this second 3D printer will get some nice upgrades.

Last nights rain I think made some of my mortar not stick on the firepit. It's also got 6 inches of water in it too.

Do I know anyone who does residential HVAC work? My computer room gets super-hot while the rest of the house is cold, and I think it's because the return vent is near the floor, I'm thinking adding one to the ceiling would help, with some kind of seasonal diverter or something.

I think I found a good projector for my home theater https://ift.tt/2ynpIc2

Sorry about the rain I was told you had to keep concrete wet while it was setting

Looking at buying a solder reflow oven, or a new projector. Maybe both, any recommendations for low-cost but quality versions of either?

How can you tell "full-on Canadian hate?" They don't say sorry before saying they dislike Trump.

The irony of getting a "Share this coke with ..." and it's a friend's dead name. Um, maybe not.

Hey Waffle House, "Ihob" is focusing themselves out of the breakfast market, now's your time to take Illinois by storm!!!! Please!?

How about Ihop or Ihob or wtf they want to call themselves, why not Ihos ... Internation House of "Sorry, our bad, we'll improve our food" That's a better reason to eat there IMHO. The majority of the ones that have closed around here did so because they were poorly managed, had inconstant food,a and employees who .... were clearly not treated well. Fix that, not a letter.

Free idea to some company who wants it: Lithium Batteries are readily available, and us 3D printing folks have proven that you can print adapters to run one brand's tool off of another's battery. Someone please please come up with reasonably priced universal batteries based around an open-source connector? I'd love to be able to buy just one brand of battery and run all my tools on it.

Public service announcement to companies who think they're clever: 1) If after 2 months, you're still sending "Hurry up, your $15 dollar off offer ends tomorrow" emails or your "%75 discount ends soon". Not going to buy your shit. 2) If your software offers a paid feature of auto-updating itself, not going to buy your crap. This is 2018, auto-updating should just happen, it's not a Premium Feature. 3) If you offer trial software that has the paid feature of "Saving your work", not going to buy your garbage. 4) If you offer me a $25 Amazon gift card to increase my bill by $50 or more monthly, sorry to say it's NOT going to happen. Now, can we stop playing stupid games and just set reasonable prices and sell working software please?

Best part of owning my own place, and watching TV shows alone. When the bad guy gets his, I can yell as loud as I want.

2018 version of Rickrolling ... send links to Amazon, Ebay, and Facebook searches about embarrassing things, so that they end up on your friend's interest lists forever.

I just built 9 : 6-36v -> 5v 3A regulators on a PCB I designed. It's odd soldering surface mount components I can place by hand. Stress tested one with a potential 18A draw, probably got 5-6A out of it before it overheated and shutdown. Put a piece of copper on top of the regulator, and it happily took it and after a few min the inductor got hot enough to start smoking. It's still working just fine, great regulation, 5.04v

(copied from a Friend) I'm here if you need to talk. Always here, right? I'd like to see five of my friends post this message (no sharing) to show you are always there if someone needs to talk.

I swear, MoviePass's customer "support" is going to be the thing that makes me start drinking.

Garfield without Garfield was funny, let's have Rosanne without Rosanne. Just her reaction to it alone should be good for a chuckle.

@instacart I'll make a deal with you! Add Round Lake Beach's Aldi's to your service, and I'll let you keep the $15 promo.

Anyone free this weekend to help me figure out how to build a fire pit in my backyard so I can get rid of the pile of bricks so I can mow my yard?

My hand is still sore from trying to figure out how to sweat copper pipe last night. It's not QUITE a burn, but it's not not a burn. Fast reflexes! I think I got it, haven't pressure tested the pipe yet though.

Success, Power meter interface talks to Linux, I can now read very cryptic XML data out of it. Next step to write a nice little Java wrapper for the device, an incorporate that into my home automation software. I'm using a Rainforest EMU-2 device by the way. VERY nice device, lots of information, just technical in format.

Yanny vs Laurel .... I listened enough I can switch it between the two in my head at will now. That's cool.

The Cat Genie demanded it's once yearly sacrifice of my dignity by clogging up. It's working perfectly again, but .... there are some things that can't be unseen.

Hooray, I got an EMU-2 smart meter interface, which lets me (and my computer) read the power-usage directly from my meter. Boo, ComEd takes up to 5 days to connect the device to my meter. Hopefully it's quicker than that and I can start monitoring how much different things like dryer, AC, catbox, etc take to run. I already know the computer's usage from my UPS.

Anyone know how to work with fireplace mortar? Want to come over sometime and help me finish my fire-pit so we can burn things in my backyard?

It was a productive evening ... I just got my 110' movie screen hung in the basement, it's nicer than I expected it to be (it was ~$50 on Yugster). Also found my cable box, and a box of wires to hook up the TV/Stereo downstairs. Pretty soon I can hook up my cable and Slingbox and watch cable anywhere in the house. And if I can find my projector, on the big-screen too.

Anyone free over the next week or so who can help me move a work bench from one garage to another?

Micah's new hobby (he's my cat) ... jumping in bed when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the washroom, and then refusing to leave my side of the bed. On the other hand, he continues to bring to me his little glitter-ball all the time. So, we'll call it even.

Today's revelation : If you spend more time embarrassing someone for not knowing something than it would to teach them what they don't know, YOU are the problem.