And honestly, you can make a lot of really good bread quite quickly. Leaving out proofing for a bit, it’s less than watching an episode of a show. Bread it also easy enough that you can totally watch a show while making it, and not worry about chopping off your fingers lol

But they were at least limited in their portability and loudness and battery life. Now you can have a tiny speaker that gives up any semblance of sound quality for loudness, but will also manage to last 8+ hours.

So far, no ghosts yet! Only haunted by the vague odor of the church it was in before, so it kind of smells like an old lady’s house, but it’s going away pretty quickly.

I went on the low side since it’s not in perfect shape and is an older (1985) Young-Chang built Wurlitzer. It was a church piano so it has some bushing wear in the keys, but still very playable, and had a broken string on D2 that was an easy $50 fix. I think after moving, tuning, the string, and eventually rebushing it in the next year or so, I’ll have about $900-1000 into it all said and done. Still definitely a pretty inexpensive piano overall, but understandable why they might not have wanted to put money into something that was probably a donation to begin with.

A $1 grand piano off of eBay. I had been looking around on stuff like FB Marketplace for a “real” piano after learning with a really basic keyboard for a while, and happened across a gorgeous 6’1" grand piano on eBay. It was reasonably close, the ad said it was in good working order, and they took very detailed pictures of basically every single flaw in the case. I called up a piano mover, and had them pick it up from the church, sight unseen. I was so worried that I’d made a mistake, given that the moving was still about $400, but I got insanely lucky, with a beautiful looking and sounding piano worth about $5k for basically just the cost of moving it.

I’d put good money on a company doing something marketing/ad related. My first summer internship was at a company that did digital ads, and the amount of alcohol that was consumed on literally a daily basis was insane. I’m talking the majority of the office being having a minimum of 2-4 drinks after about 2pm rolled around, and probably triple that on Friday.

The only party I was there for was the CTO’s birthday, in which at lunch he received a piñata filled to bursting with those little alcohol shots, and by the end of the day basically everyone had to Uber home. For 19 year old me, it was pretty unreal seeing my bosses and coworkers that drunk in the middle of the week.

Knowing how fucked up everyone was during a normal workweek in the office, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if a Christmas party there was an absolute drug-filled rager.

yiffit.net

Yeah, that tracks

World War Z is phenomenal as an audio book. Absolute all-star cast of readers with a great story, 1000x more entertaining than the movie.

You should take a look at SteveMRE1989 on YouTube to see how long those packaged foods can last. He’s eaten rations from the early 1900s without issue usually. It’s pretty wild how well packaged some of that stuff was

It definitely sucks, but there are an increasing number of people like Ian of Forgotten Weapons getting people interested for the same reasons I am, really only getting into the politics from the historical or design perspectives, and always in a very objective manner. I’m also now in a far more liberal area and the local ranges are very inclusive, so that helps immensely.

Try being someone on the liberal side of the political spectrum who is primarily into the history and engineering of firearms, rather than the power fantasy of “gubmint and libruls better fear muh guns”.

It’s an absolute hellscape and it’s extremely disheartening to start talking with someone and sharing in a common interest, then seeing “FJB” and 1488 bumper stickers. I refuse to let bigots ruin my hobby though, and make an effort to make the hobby as inclusive as possible.

Oh, for sure. Likely, it’s not even going to be a “better” car, it’s going to be a much slower car, but with a better driver. That would be even more galling, to have his flashy sports car passed by some dude in a Miata.

This was explained to me as being a car person vs a “car person” by a friend who mentioned what giant douchebags car people are, in a group chat with her best friends who are extreme car nerds.

I know it’s getting into a sort of strawman/“No True Scotsman” realm, but I’ve definitely noticed it at a lot of car meets unfortunately. There are a lot of people who are very much attracted purely to the idea that “fast loud vroom car will make me attractive as a person”, and those tend to be the assholes who buy a $100k sports car that they won’t even take to a local autocross, and will use it solely to terrorize people in surrounding neighborhoods.

On the other hand, there are people who get excited seeing basically any interesting car. It doesn’t matter if it’s slow and cheap and isn’t flashy, it’s just a unique car and that should always be exciting to see.

My stepfather very much falls into the 1st category, and going to Woodward (absolutely massive car show/cruise in Detroit) was absolutely painful. He would shit on basically every car that went by, and on the rare occasion a flashy supercar drove by, would be like “I bet my car is just as fast”. He’s had multiple very nice sports cars, and I’ve invited him numerous times to autocross/track events, but he refuses it every time questioning why he’d want to. He’d much rather be an idiot doing 3x the speed limit on backroads than just take it to any one of the many nearby track events. Absolute numpty

He forgot to mention that after Home Depot, he stopped by Timmies on the way to his rec hockey game

I totally get that, but what I don’t understand is why Progressive was so reasonable compared to literally everyone else for literally identical coverage. It’s like for whatever reason they were the only ones who didn’t care I was in that <25 age bracket.

I’ve noticed that some insurers give insane “fuck you” quotes for no reason. I had Progressive under my parents since I started driving, and when I got my own insurance, it was around $500/6 months through them. I wanted to get other quotes from some other insurers and the rates were absolutely insane by comparison. Like, $500-800 PER MONTH. I have no idea why they were so much more. I know there are loyalty discounts and such, but I don’t think they’re going to be ~85%.

Yeah, I think that a lot of people misinterpret this since “turn hobby into job” seems to be the only way people think about it.

I like cars and work in the automotive industry, and very much enjoy what I do. I also enjoy working on cars and other mechanical things as hobbies, but would absolutely loathe being a professional mechanic or technician. There’s enough separation between what I do for fun and what I do for work that it won’t sour my hobbies, but also enough overlap that my passion for my hobbies makes work far more enjoyable.