and three lenses to complement my Mamiya RB67 when I don't want to carry heavy. I usually have my Canon R6 Mk 2 when I'm shooting along with my Minolta flash meter for those Mamiyas.

But I'm weird. And my iPhone 16 gets plenty of work.

I needed to cut my stay short by two or three days, and because I booked direct on the hotel site and not through a third-party site, I had no problem. They said if I had not booked direct, they could not have stopped the charge because of the site wanting their commission cut. At the same time, you have to look at whether or not you're booking a non-refundable room rate or you may be stuck regardless. You still have to be a savvy shopper.

I can imagine a cluster of tape writers as I've seen one. At Apache Point Observatory, during the initial phases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, they were gathering so much data every night that they were streaming it on to like six DLT tapes. Those were then shipped daily to University of Washington. Rinse, repeat. It was a pretty neat rack installation.

I'd love to see trailers for fake movies, if it were done well. Like for that Orson Wells(?) movie that never got made, I think there was also a gangster movie trailer that circulated, I don't remember the details. I think that could be a lot of fun. But I doubt they'd ever get that creative.

My wife and I toured it ten years ago, they were still assembling Phaetons there at that time though they weren't in production that day. It was a very cool production plant, all the tools were electric, and the system was designed to lift the car or whatever was being worked on to the correct height for the worker to minimize ergonomic difficulties. I believe it was the last year for the Phaeton and it was going to be switched over to a more mass-market car.

I'm saddened that it's no longer going to be a production plant, I was hoping to see it again some day. But things change. As I said, very cool place. I didn't take any interior photos of it as nothing was really going on.

I work for a university branch campus. We have public patron cards available for $5 a semester (spring/summer/fall) that gives you full borrowing privileges for books and DVDs and public computer access, printing is extra. The only thing that you don't get is interlibrary loan and library database access. Sadly, we just removed our audiobook collection. I expect our music CD collection to go next.

Isn't that what Meta won a court case arguing last week? Better not let the judge see this!

When I moved to the area as an adult 20 years ago and started taking some classes there, I needed remedial algebra as I hadn't used it in the 20+ years since I'd left high school, and it came back pretty quick. They require everyone to take tests in math and English. And yes, the number who need remedial education is truly frightening. The primary and secondary education system in this country has been methodically destroyed over decades, and it's going to be a long slog to reestablish it - if it ever happens.

Heh. Reminds me of Wizard's Guide To Baking.

I just find the cost of D&D to be a bit stultifying. And you can count on them dumping the system in 15 or so years to get everyone to repurchase it and shore up their profits. Yes, it's theoretically open source, and there's absolutely no reason you can't continue playing the older versions of the system. I've always had an aversion to any game, such as Deadlands, where each class needs its own rule book.

Regardless of whether or not this survey/study may be flawed, there's no doubt that long-term gaming helps with mental acuity and building community: it's a cooperative, creative endeavor that is very mentally stimulating. I'm not far from retirement, and while I don't expect we'll be moving to a retirement community or home, I definitely hope to engage in more gaming when that happens.

Of course, I do have the advantage of having worked in the industry at Flying Buffalo Games in the early '80s, they made Tunnels and Trolls and the Nuclear War card game, among many other goodies.

A friend of mine works for a certain insurance company based in Omaha, Nebraska. I don't know how big their data resources are in total volume, but we can safely assume they're big. They have two off-site backups that are widely geographically separated.

The Korean gov't didn't want to spend the money or were lazy.

I remember seeing photos and video of the highway they tore through the rain forest so attendees could get from airports to the conference site. Massive wildlife disruption, native tribe dislocation, etc. Kind of interesting to destroy and disrupt the thing you're allegedly trying to save.

Back in the '90s I worked for a major police department as a civilian in IT. They set up their first computer investigation unit while I was there. They were quite meticulous about custody of seized hard drives and how they were examined, and the attorneys of whoever owned that computer could have easily gotten that evidence, if not the whole case, thrown out over how they had you examine it.

That, along with other things like the rise of Faux Newts, seems like a possible explanation for the increase in conspiracy theory believers. Critical thinking has certainly suffered over the last 20-30 years. I remember being shocked when Dubya said in an interview that he doesn't read books, and now that seems to be the norm.

I don't blame it all on the smart phone. I think part of it is also availability. Amazon and the big-box book store destroyed the local book store: within 75 miles of me right now the only place to buy books is Walmart and the local public library's Friends Of store. That's not much for selection or getting good recommendations. I work at a university (branch campus) library and happily make recommendations whenever possible, including encouraging people to buy the Hugo bundle if they have an interest in science fiction and fantasy.

Interestingly, I've already broken a book a week for this year, a record that I haven't exceeded in a long time. Currently re-reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy, apparently Peter Jackson completely overwrote my memory of it!

Just yesterday I saw an article - didn't read it - purporting that Macs basically had no reason to exist anymore. I wish I'd read it to see what idiocy they were pruporting.

I remember back about '08 I was working as a SQL Server administrator for a city and the IT director came during the lunch hour to give me all sorts of shit about my MacBook Pro sitting on my desk. I used it as a music player and for surfing when I wanted multiple screens to do my job. I was really getting mad at him interrupting my quiet time, so I turned to my Mac and ran uptime then turned back to him.

I said, "Yeah, they're garbage. This one has only been up for 59 days since its last reboot."

He huffed and left. One of my wife's Mac laptops has over 200 days on it. She's an astronomer and most of their entire infrastructure is Linux VMs, Macs make great front end workstations for them. She converted me shortly after we got married as I was getting so angry over the constant OS reinstallations for Windows machines to fix problems. Right now I have a '15 27" iMac, M2 Max MacBook Pro, a '14 Mini, plus iPhone, Watch, and a couple of iPads. Considering a M2 or M3 Mini in the not distant future to replace the '15 iMac.