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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 19th, 2023

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  • 60 miles away from the broadcast center, but luckily in a very flat area. I still have an old-school antenna set up on a tower and rotor, and can pull in between 25-30 stations if you include the digital substations.

    I got this set up from Radio Shack in the early 80s. Cable made me regret it for a long time, but let’s hear it for laziness allowing me to get good use out of it since I clipped all but internet service.

    Bonus: you can split out the signal and hook the antenna up to home stereos, and get TONS of FM stations that even my car won’t pick up.

    Old stuff gets useful again! Yay!




  • Indiana and Wisconsin USA here. Approaching 50, and learned back in high school, as well as driving old tractors. My first car, a classic even when I got it, was a 63 Chevy Bel Aire manual. Drove manuals all through college and didn’t buy an automatic until 2013, when the type of vehicle I needed didn’t come in a manual.

    I really miss driving stick, especially in snowy Wisconsin winters.






  • Get to know a taxi driver. Ask locals where to go and what to see. Stop by a visitors bureau or welcome center. Hit up a local colleges student center.

    When I traveled a lot, I used to start with the local phone book. Not only did it have business information, but government info, and a section devoted to local arts and museums. These days I (gasp) talk to people at pubs or bars or coffee shops. Obviously, if they are annoyed, I let them be, but you’d be surprised how many people are happy to brag about their community.











  • We had very few rules in high school until a new principal came in during my senior year. We didn’t even have attendance, as the school believed that it was the students’ responsibility to succeed and graduate (it was a laboratory school, basically part of a college, so it was weird. It was K-12, and I graduated in a class of 25.).

    This new principal comes in and lays down new rule after new rule, most were either ignored or caused enough uproar from tenured faculty and parents that he caved. For some reason, one day, he walks through the hallway and cleans out all the lockers, as well as picking up the unattended backpacks left on the floor. He takes ALL schoolbooks, notebooks, supplies, and electronics. Amazingly, he left some lockers alone, deaming them organized enough to satisfy him. They all belonged to his daughter and her friend group.

    Then he takes all this stuff into his office, and proceeds to charge students $50 each to get school issued books back. He keeps all other supplies and electronics, announcing that he will have a sale at the end of the year to raise money for school athletics (which, being an extension of the college, had shitloads of cash to play with).

    The University Police department showed up and were ready to arrest him for theft. It took nearly a week to redistribute everything, and he ended up in front of a local judge who was the father of a student.

    Then he abruptly ended music, theatre, art, and home econ. classes by locking the rooms and firing the staff by posting signs that these were a waste and unnecessary strain on the school budget. All of the teachers were tenured through, and the classes and programs paid for by a combination of parent donations and a hefty amount of money from the university, which is well known for its communications, theatre, teaching college, and school of music (these are the programs that sell the university nationwide).

    At the end of the year, during commencement, the University president made a speech that basically dressed down the principal publically, and then he announced that the principal was not taking part in the ceremony, and should go home as he would not be returning next term. The principal was in his robes, sitting on the stage, and waiting to hand out diplomas while this happened. The entire gathering of parents and students cheered.

    And that’s how a principal who thought he was going to be adored for “cleaning up” a school for the gifted like he was trying to run a drug riddled, inner city, school in the middle of Chicago, instead of school basically run by the students in a mid-sized University town surrounded by corn fields in Indiana.