I have two Wireless Access Points (WAP) and a separate router/ firewall. The WAPs are meshed, meaning as a WiFi connected device moves through my house, it will be automatically handed off to the WAP with the best quality.

Power and channel of the two WAPs use are automatic. I live in a fairly dense neighborhood. Meaning my neighbors are so dense they barely have done any configuration of their WiFi. There are also a lot of them. The main thing I worry about is having just enough transmit power to give a good quality connection within the house, without being so strong it interferes with my neighbors’ networks.

I would never leave the management of my home network to an ISP. With that said, I’ve been an IT professional for 30 years and got my start in networking.

My upstairs WAP often works at higher power, but I don’t remember seeing it at 100%. It is fighting all the other WiFi routers that are nearby. There are so many that there are no clear channels on 2.4GHz and very few at 5GHz. The WAP in the basement is better shielded, so I almost never see it at high transmit powers.

My router is a separate unit that provides routing, firewall, IPS/IDS, DNS, and management for itself and the WAPs.

No, you almost never require 100% transmit power out of a WAP. The best thing is to have a good quality WiFi router or WAP and set it to “automatic” for channel and power settings. That way the unit can determine what is best for network quality on the fly. It will be better at it than you logging in multiple times a day doing the same thing manually.

When used properly, yes absolutely.

Vinegar is very useful in balancing flavors in recipes. Personally, I love balsamic vinaigrettes far better than other dressings. Malt vinegar on french fries is better than ketchup (and no I’m not British). Mario Batalli’s “Chicken in Cooked Wine” would be very boring without a healthy dose of red wine vinegar.

Everyone has different tastes. I personally detest olives, passion fruit, and rye bread. My wife absolutely loathes eggplant.

Random bonus content, mainly because I made this last night for dinner:

My Alabama White BBQ sauce recipe:

3/4c Mayo

2 TBSP Sugar

1tsp Prepared Horseradish

2TBSP Apple Cider Vinegar

1/2tsp Salt

1/2tsp pepper

1/4tsp cayenne pepper.

Throw all the above into a food processor and blend till smooth. Great on chicken and french fries.

Older Gen X’er here.

This list was basically a Tuesday for me back in the day.

Playing a high level (19th) home brewed adventure. I’m playing a Dragonborn Twilight Domain Cleric, my wife is playing a Sea Elf Paladin Oath of Vengence. There are two other players in the party a Tortle Warlock/Bard and Triton Ranger.

The party runs across a large chamber absolutely filled with various monstrous insects and other nasties, with the latest BBEG at the other end of the chamber. In between are chasms, and other obstacles. Basically, the entire room was designed to wear us down before we get to the BBEG.

My wife’s Paladin has Gauntlets of Storm Giant Strength, so her strength is 29 AND she’s hasted. So my nearly 300 pound armored Dragonborn Cleric climbs onto her back and casts Spirit Guardians… at 9th level.

Then my wife runs as fast as she can. Her movement was 120 and she was able to leap over all the chasms in the way. I rolled for Spirit Guardians and damn near maxed out the damage and the DC was 22… There were THREE monsters left, besides the BBEG, and they were severely bloodied and easily dispatched by the other two characters, at range obviously. Also, the BBEG had to use one of its Legendary Resistances to save against Spirit Guardians, and with smart work from the Warlock/Bard and Ranger its next two LR’s got used up and we killed it in 3 turns.

Our DM was too impressed to be pissed.

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant Who was very rarely stable

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar Who could think you under the table

David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel

There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya 'bout the raising of the wrist Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill

Plato, they say, could stick it away Half a crate of whiskey every day

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle Hobbes was fond of his dram

And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart “I drink, therefore I am.”

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed

First drink? 19

First time actually drunk? 21

Last time drunk? 29

Number of times actually drunk: 3 I find it really an unpleasant feeling and not just the hangover. Being drunk and not having complete control of my body, the weird fog in my brain. Yuck… Couple that with the hangover the next day, it’s just not worth it for me. I never saw the point of going out with a group of friends to just get “wasted”.

Current Age: 54 and I enjoy 1 to 2 glasses of wine at dinner with my wife around 3 or 4 times a month. Once in a great while I’ll get a 6 pack of beer. Usually when a local brewery has their Dark Doppleboch out.

How about…

Inside the damn airplane. It was a Beech 18 with Pratt and Whitney Wasp Jr engines used for skydiving operations. The pilot was also the drop zone owner (DZO). The DZO normally kept 3 loads worth of fuel in the plane and I got on the 4th load.

We take off and are on climb out and about 200 feet off the ground it gets… quiet. Did you catch the previous paragraph where I mention the plane had two Pratt and Whitney Wasp Jr engines? I mention that, because those engines are loud… Like really really loud. We crashed in a corn field off the end of the runway. It was like being in a car accident, except a whole lot more noise and grinding metal and quite a bit scarier. With that said, no one was hurt and there was no fire, because there was no fuel in the plane.

All but one person in the crash got out and jumped into the other Beech 18 and did our jumps.

Yeah, skydivers are a bit of a different breed, no doubt about that.

As far as closest to an airliner accident. I saw the remains of United 232 in Sioux City IA about 4 hours after the crash. My parents and I were on the way to see my oldest brother and his family that lived in Sioux Falls, SD at the time. We passed by the airport on I-29 which is less than half a mile away. It was far enough to see the debris and rescue crews working, but not close enough to see the victims… Thank god.

Seeing that accident, plus a strong love of aviation ignited an interest I have had ever since to learn as much as I could about aircraft incidents. I probably should have pursued a career in aircraft accident investigation, not sure why I never did.

That’s awesome!

I live about an hour away from Lake Geneva, WI, which is Gygax’s hometown and the birthplace of D&D. I worked with someone that worked at TSR during the 2e days and he has a lot of stories. (The only thing he has to say about Gary Gygax is; “The guy owes me money.”) Last April I attended a conference in Lake Geneva at the location of the very first Game Con. The Wisconsin Historical Society sponsored it. It was a great time and will be going back again this year.

My books look in great shape… From that angle. LOL… They have thousands upon thousands of hours of playing behind them over the last 40 years. Every page has smudges on them from where they’ve been turned again and again.

Here are the older edition books I have. My 1e DMG and PH have been lost to time. That copy of the Monster Manual is one of the originals. The Deities and Demigods though is NOT one of the issues with HP Lovecraft’s monsters in it. I have seen one of those editions, one of my local games stores has one for sale for over $300, but that’s not what I have. Not shown are all the 5e stuff I have. In my youth it was a challenge to save up enough to buy material when it came out. As an adult, especially since I got the wife playing, yeah… I’ve indulged quite a bit.

54M here. Rolled my first D&D character in 1978. Played GURPS, Twighlight 2000, Traveller, you name it I probably have at least dabbled in playing it.

Today I play D&D 2024 and 5e, Call of Cthulhu, Castles and Crusades and a few others. Some on Roll20, or Foundry VTT (which is awesome BTW.) My primary gaming group is all fathers and mothers spread out across the country.

As far as actual Computer games, I used to be into Flight Sims, but dropping $500 plus on JUST a graphics card is just not something that is going to happen. It’s not the wife acceptance factor, it the sheer balls the graphics card manufacturers have charging that much for their crap. I still dust off MS FS 2004 and run it on my Dell Precision laptop, but my machine won’t run the latest version. I would like to see if it would run Battlestar Galactica Deadlock though.

Otherwise, I have had a home server for many years. It runs Proxmox and I have containers running Plex, Homeseer, SMB (acts as my NAS), and it provides backup services for every other computer in the house.

For reference, I am an IT Professional, with about 30 years in the business.

I have several direct antecedents that lived over 100. The last was my paternal grandmother, who died in 2004 at the age of 103. She was born in 1901 and outlived 3 of her 6 children (one child was stillborn). Her last child, my Dad, died just this past February at the age of 88. He was the youngest.

Former skydiver.

Performed a lot of Demonstration jumps into everything from airports, race tracks, professional sports stadiums, high school sports stadiums, golf courses, and a few other places that required skill and knowledge to land in safely.

Also, spent a lot of time teaching canopy skills to up and coming jumpers.

54m here for reference.

Best long term romantic relationship: We will be celebrating 20 years married this year. Two kids and we’re well on our way to spending our dotage together.

Best Friend: We’ve been friends for 5 years. Have literally played hundreds of hours of D&D and other role playing games, along with a group of fellow fathers and mothers that all like family. We got to play D&D in Lake Geneva, WI at the very birthplace of Game Cons this past year. That was pretty great.

Familial (specifically, blood relations): Terrible. My parents are dead and I would be estranged from them now if they were still alive. Estranged from both my older brothers. I have no plans to reconcile with them. They made their choices and it did not involve their younger brother. I have a FB connection to ONE of my many many first cousins.

Asparagus, Broccoli, and broccolini… although to be fair, I didn’t discover broccolini until about 20 years ago, when I was in my mid-30’s.

Also, I found out it wasn’t the veggie that I disliked, but the way it was prepared. My family boiled (ok Blanched) all vegetables when I was growing up. That’s about the worst way possible to cook most veggies, especially the three I mention above.

Here is what I do to prepare them:

Asparagus: Heat oven to 350F. Trim woody ends and place them in a single layer in an oven proof dish. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil. Finally top with Parmesan Reggiano. Roast in the oven for 25 minutes or when cheese is browned.

Broccoli (florets only) and broccolini (trim woody end, but leave as much of the stem as possible: Heat oven to 350F. Place veggie in a single layer in an oven proof dish. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil. You can top these two with Parmesan, but I usually do not. Roast until slightly charred about 25 minutes.

I will never blanch a veggie ever again, except for green beans. There are times when you’re serving a spicy dish, or something with a sauce and just need something plain to go along with it. Case in point, for my General Tso’s Chicken, I serve it with blanched green beans. Otherwise, I sautee them with salt pepper and red pepper flacks and a bit of high temp oil.

Heinlein has entered the chat.

He was a hedonistic bastard, that’s for sure.

Acquire all Investiture.

The powers of a dead god.

Ka’Dargo in “Farscape Peacekeeper War”. They were on their way for Moya to pick them up. The worst of the fighting was over and BAM.

At least he went out as a warrior.

The concept behind Cloud Atlas made for a much better movie than book, IMHO.

Having the same actor play the same part in each time made following the plot easier, at least for me. The book was a bit of a slog at times and following each characterization was confusing.

Plus some of the casting in the movie was really good. Jim Brodbent in particular, I thought, delivered a spectacularly good performance.

Spaghetti is not my favorite either, but if the pasta you’re using is not holding onto the sauce, then try a “bronze die cut” brand.

The brand I use and have had good luck with is Delallo.

But I completely agree with you, pasta that has a smooth exterior is useless. Since the whole point of it is to be a vehicle for the sauce.

Level 1: Can put something edible on the table, but lacks experience or does not practice enough. People may or may not want to eat it.

Example: Cooks ribs at high heat with a cheap jarred sauce.

Level 2: Capable of putting edible food on the table consistently, but still not a lot of experience.

Example: Has learned that reducing the heat on the ribs makes them come out slightly better, but still not smoking them and still using a cheap jarred sauce.

Level 3. First level of competency. Cooks often enough to have the experience to put decent food on the table, still uses some jarred sauces, higher quality ones, and the like, but starting to make their own too.

Example: Cooks ribs low and slow, but may not quite yet know what the 3,2,1 method is, but realizes that some wood chips along with temperature control makes for a better product.

Level 4: Competent cook. Cooks many times a week has a broad experience with a variety of cooking techniques. Mostly makes their own; spice mixes, sauces, gravies and the like.

Example: Not only is capable of using the 3,2,1 method for ribs, but knows that is not the only method. Is quite capable of making either fall off the bone ribs or competition worthy ribs with a delightful chew. Able to control not only temperature, but the amount of smoke on the meat.

Level 5: Professional cook, maybe even a chef. Quite capable of putting food on a table that people would pay a lot of money for.

Example: Quite capable of producing competition winning ribs using their own spice mix, sauce, and cooking method.