USMB Coffee Shop IV

[gallantwarrior]

It's a sad day here in Willow Mountain. A friend came by with his new GF to introduce her. While here, he let his hound dog loose, like he usually does. I mentioned that the chickens were around somewhere and we should watch the dog. Sure enough, while the GF was posing for photos with the goat kids, a horrible squawking alarmed all of us. The dog had gotten not just one of the chickens but the one with the most outgoing personality and who laid an egg daily. While the punctured fowl was dying, my partner cradled it in his arms, stroking its head. I wanted to put it quickly out of its mortal misery and almost came to blows with the idiot. The bird is now laying on the kitchen counter, awaiting appropriate disposal of its mortal remains. Anyone have a good recipe for chicken?

 

[Montrovant]

I definitely would have gotten an A in my coding class if I hadn't managed to miss the first exam.

I took my final today. I got a 91.72 grade when I finished. Once it is manually looked over by the teacher, I expect to get at least a 97.24, or maybe a 98.62. There are only 2 questions which were actually wrong when I reviewed things, worth 1.38 points each. 4 others were marked wrong, but they were actually correct, the program just couldn't tell because they were write-in answers rather than multiple choice. On 1 of the 2 questions I got wrong, I think I may actually have been correct: the code that was shown seemed like an incorrect one to me. I'll have to see what the teacher has to say once she manually grades.

I needed to get 585 out of 650 possible points for an A. Right now I have 570.69. After the final gets manually graded, I'll have 576.21 or 577.59. If I had taken the first exam, I would only have needed to get 8 or 9 out of 50 possible points for an A.

I know it doesn't really mean much in the end, but this will be my first class not getting an A. It's annoying and frustrating.

Hopefully I don't miss any more tests!

 

[Montrovant]

Does anyone happen to have a recommendation for a pay-as-you-go phone service? I'm looking to just have an emergency phone for my car, not something I'm going to use regularly.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ok Nosmo King , did I miss the 411 on the road trip? Details, I want details with pictures of depravity...

 

[Foxfyre]

Does anyone happen to have a recommendation for a pay-as-you-go phone service? I'm looking to just have an emergency phone for my car, not something I'm going to use regularly.

There are all kinds of cheap phones out there--check most convenience stores even--that you pay for so many minutes up front and that's it. You can purchase additional minutes as you need them but don't have to sign up for any short or long term plan. That's absolutely the cheapest means of communication short of smoke signals.

I use a cheap Verizon program that allows me so many minutes per month--I rarely use more than a small fraction of the allotted minutes--plus some other useful functions, and unlimited text for $25/month plus tax. You do have to sign up for like a two year contract to get that rate.

 

[Ringel05]

Does anyone happen to have a recommendation for a pay-as-you-go phone service? I'm looking to just have an emergency phone for my car, not something I'm going to use regularly.

Basically look at the coverage maps for the areas you think you'll need the phone as a just in case to check out who covers that area best. If Sprint has the best coverage then go with Virgin Mobile, cheap plans without any contract.

Pre-Paid Plans | Virgin Mobile

As with most pre-paid plans you have to buy your phone outright.

Think about expanded use as you will probably end up doing what most of us do, move from using it as an emergency phone to almost everyday use....... convenience.

 

[Montrovant]

Does anyone happen to have a recommendation for a pay-as-you-go phone service? I'm looking to just have an emergency phone for my car, not something I'm going to use regularly.

There are all kinds of cheap phones out there--check most convenience stores even--that you pay for so many minutes up front and that's it. You can purchase additional minutes as you need them but don't have to sign up for any short or long term plan. That's absolutely the cheapest means of communication short of smoke signals.

I use a cheap Verizon program that allows me so many minutes per month--I rarely use more than a small fraction of the allotted minutes--plus some other useful functions, and unlimited text for $25/month plus tax. You do have to sign up for like a two year contract to get that rate.

My one concern is whether the pay as you go plans require you to keep adding minutes, or have them expire. I wouldn't want to get a phone, stick it in my car, not use it for 3 months, then when I get in an accident and try to make a call, it doesn't work.

 

[Foxfyre]

Does anyone happen to have a recommendation for a pay-as-you-go phone service? I'm looking to just have an emergency phone for my car, not something I'm going to use regularly.

There are all kinds of cheap phones out there--check most convenience stores even--that you pay for so many minutes up front and that's it. You can purchase additional minutes as you need them but don't have to sign up for any short or long term plan. That's absolutely the cheapest means of communication short of smoke signals.

I use a cheap Verizon program that allows me so many minutes per month--I rarely use more than a small fraction of the allotted minutes--plus some other useful functions, and unlimited text for $25/month plus tax. You do have to sign up for like a two year contract to get that rate.

My one concern is whether the pay as you go plans require you to keep adding minutes, or have them expire. I wouldn't want to get a phone, stick it in my car, not use it for 3 months, then when I get in an accident and try to make a call, it doesn't work.

The way I understand it is that you buy a card containing so much time that you insert in your phone. And as long as you don't use those minutes, you don't lose them. I have never had a phone like that though so maybe somebody who has would have better information on that.

 

[Nosmo King]

A God soaking spring rain came down this afternoon. Leaves on the trees are budding out at an alarming rate. This is not the same forest it was just two weeks ago. It is getting greener every hour!

We have two predominate colors in our neck of the woods; green or gray. In the winter months stretching from early November to early April it is gray here. The sky is gray. The concrete pavement is gray. The hillsides and ravines are essentially gray. The snow as it gets dirty turns gray. The river reflects the gray sky and forms a gray ribbon runnng toward the south.

But the color wheel changes this time of year. Yellow daffodils and forsythia explode waking us from our gray world. Purple and red and pink azaleas splash our eyes with their vivid colors. And then comes the green! I mowed the lawn and raked the clippings to expose the bright green shoots of this season's crop of lawn. The eastern redbud on the north lawn is spectacular in lavender blossoms and it's easy to ignore the gray bark of the tree.

My friend from Brooklyn comes in the summer and remarks on our greenness. Of course her's is a world of buildings and concrete with little room for big swaths of hardwood forests. When I take her out to sight see, the fields of standing corn scream green! The ravines and creeks and forests are not shy about being vibrant green.

We complain about the weather with its propensity to rain without warning. But knowing how other parts of the country suffer with drought and unrelenting dryness, we can't help but take stock and be grateful for our climate here. We don't suffer from wild fires because it's just too damp to burn. We live on a stable part of the continent and have never felt an earthquake. We live far enough east so when those violent spring storms breed tornadoes, it's late in the evening before they get here and have worn themselves out as they tear across the land.

All we get here are the occasional landslide and that is due to engineering that carves out roadways through our geology. Clay soils deposited over shale and slate makes for tricky land to build a four lane highway over. The Department of Highways favorite sign isn't "70 mph", it's "Falling Rocks". In Great Britain they drive on the left side of the road. In northeast Ohio, we drive on what's left of the road

 

[Foxfyre]

A God soaking spring rain came down this afternoon. Leaves on the trees are budding out at an alarming rate. This is not the same forest it was just two weeks ago. It is getting greener every hour!

We have two predominate colors in our neck of the woods; green or gray. In the winter months stretching from early November to early April it is gray here. The sky is gray. The concrete pavement is gray. The hillsides and ravines are essentially gray. The snow as it gets dirty turns gray. The river reflects the gray sky and forms a gray ribbon runnng toward the south.

But the color wheel changes this time of year. Yellow daffodils and forsythia explode waking us from our gray world. Purple and red and pink azaleas splash our eyes with their vivid colors. And then comes the green! I mowed the lawn and raked the clippings to expose the bright green shoots of this season's crop of lawn. The eastern redbud on the north lawn is spectacular in lavender blossoms and it's easy to ignore the gray bark of the tree.

My friend from Brooklyn comes in the summer and remarks on our greenness. Of course her's is a world of buildings and concrete with little room for big swaths of hardwood forests. When I take her out to sight see, the fields of standing corn scream green! The ravines and creeks and forests are not shy about being vibrant green.

We complain about the weather with its propensity to rain without warning. But knowing how other parts of the country suffer with drought and unrelenting dryness, we can't help but take stock and be grateful for our climate here. We don't suffer from wild fires because it's just too damp to burn. We live on a stable part of the continent and have never felt an earthquake. We live far enough east so when those violent spring storms breed tornadoes, it's late in the evening before they get here and have worn themselves out as they tear across the land.

All we get here are the occasional landslide and that is due to engineering that carves out roadways through our geology. Clay soils deposited over shale and slate makes for tricky land to build a four lane highway over. The Department of Highways favorite sign isn't "70 mph", it's "Falling Rocks". In Great Britain they drive on the left side of the road. In northeast Ohio, we drive on what's left of the road

We too can commend our weather for the lack of danger--the rare tornado maybe once in a decade is usually no more than an F-zero or F1 and does little damage if it does hit something. No earthquakes though we are on an ancient fault line that could trigger one 8.0 or more in any given millenia. Rare large hail, rare damaging winds, and unless we live in the forest or heavy brush, wild fires are not a problem. There is the drought and the occasional flash flood and we too have falling rock from the high cliffs abutting the highways. We don't enjoy the sea of green that you do, but we do enjoy abundant sunshine in skies so blue it can hurt your eyes to stare directly at it, and to stand in the high desert away from civilization is to actually feel the spirits that haunt the red rock adorned with a glorious blooming cactus or yellow snake weed.

I actually love country like yours Nosmo and I love the high desert and I love the prairies, and I love the high mountains, and I love the coast. But I think I feel here is where I most belong. At least for now.

 

[Oddball]

Had an incredible lucid dream last night..

Was in a home workshop very much like the one my grandfather had in his basement when I snapped into recognizing I was in a dream...Tried pushing my hand through a cinder block wall and it didn't work...Sure that I was dreaming, I jumped in the air and floated up until my head penetrated the ceiling, then floated back down to the floor like a feather falling..Spent a couple minutes doing wacky stuff like walking through walls and picking up refrigerators with one hand, then decided to try and have some sort of meaningful experience....So I shouted out that I wanted to discover something useful or meaningful for my "awake" life, then heard some grunting animal noises, that I guess were supposed to be scary, coming from down a darkened hallway...Knowing I was in a dream and that I couldn't be harmed, I shouted "NO! NOT SCARED!" and out of the darkness came a little toddler boy....Acting glad to see him, I knelt down and asked him what he had for me...He started babbling something incomprehensible that sounded like a foreign language that I couldn't even begin to take a guess at.

I then woke up...Fell back asleep and popped into a couple other lucid moments, but that was the most memorable of them...Curioser and curioser.

 

[Foxfyre]

Had an incredible lucid dream last night..

Was in a home workshop very much like the one my grandfather had in his basement when I snapped into recognizing I was in a dream...Tried pushing my hand through a cinder block wall and it didn't work...Sure that I was dreaming, I jumped in the air and floated up until my head penetrated the ceiling, then floated back down to the floor like a feather falling..Spent a couple minutes doing wacky stuff like walking through walls and picking up refrigerators with one hand, then decided to try and have some sort of meaningful experience....So I shouted out that I wanted to discover something useful or meaningful for my "awake" life, then heard some grunting animal noises, that I guess were supposed to be scary, coming from down a darkened hallway...Knowing I was in a dream and that I couldn't be harmed, I shouted "NO! NOT SCARED!" and out of the darkness came a little toddler boy....Acting glad to see him, I knelt down and asked him what he had for me...He started babbling something incomprehensible that sounded like a foreign language that I couldn't even begin to take a guess at.

I then woke up...Fell back asleep and popped into a couple other lucid moments, but that was the most memorable of them...Curioser and curioser.

I have 'supernatural' or 'sci fi' dreams too in which I know I am dreaming. They usually are not at all disturbing, just interesting. I can fly, breathe under water and do all sorts of things. I haven't lifted any refrigerators or walked through walls--that's probably a guy thing.

 

[gallantwarrior]

Had an incredible lucid dream last night..

Was in a home workshop very much like the one my grandfather had in his basement when I snapped into recognizing I was in a dream...Tried pushing my hand through a cinder block wall and it didn't work...Sure that I was dreaming, I jumped in the air and floated up until my head penetrated the ceiling, then floated back down to the floor like a feather falling..Spent a couple minutes doing wacky stuff like walking through walls and picking up refrigerators with one hand, then decided to try and have some sort of meaningful experience....So I shouted out that I wanted to discover something useful or meaningful for my "awake" life, then heard some grunting animal noises, that I guess were supposed to be scary, coming from down a darkened hallway...Knowing I was in a dream and that I couldn't be harmed, I shouted "NO! NOT SCARED!" and out of the darkness came a little toddler boy....Acting glad to see him, I knelt down and asked him what he had for me...He started babbling something incomprehensible that sounded like a foreign language that I couldn't even begin to take a guess at.

I then woke up...Fell back asleep and popped into a couple other lucid moments, but that was the most memorable of them...Curioser and curioser.

Do you have repeat dreams where you revisit certain locations or repeat some specific actions? I have a series of different places, and different themes that recur in my lucid dreams.

 

[Oddball]

I have 'supernatural' or 'sci fi' dreams too in which I know I am dreaming. They usually are not at all disturbing, just interesting. I can fly, breathe under water and do all sorts of things. I haven't lifted any refrigerators or walked through walls--that's probably a guy thing.

Been experimenting with it for the last several years...Worked the very first time I tried it after becoming aware of the phenomenon...The next one didn't happen for about a year and a half.

Read some books on it and spent some time on forums with people who are naturals at it...Tried a bunch of herbs and other things to have more success at it (were only coming once every 4-6 weeks)...Then I discovered a new preparation called Claridream...I can take that once at every 5 days max, and I've only not gone lucid a couple times since I began the regimen...I'm now working on staying in the dream and getting a little more out of it, other than just hanging in there and seeing where it goes.

A very surreal experience.

https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Lucid-Dreaming-Oneironautics/dp/0761177396&tag=ff0d01-20

Claridream PRO

 

[Oddball]

Do you have repeat dreams where you revisit certain locations or repeat some specific actions? I have a series of different places, and different themes that recur in my lucid dreams.

I have repeat dreams and locations, but haven't snapped into lucidity during those dreams...I'll have to put some concentration on getting lucid during the recurring ones.

 

[Oddball]

A video series on the topic...

 

[Foxfyre]

Interesting but I think I'll just stick with whatever dreams come to me.

 

[Montrovant]

 

[Nosmo King]

What's your earliest memory? I ask because I want to tell you mine. It was at our old house on the top of the hill at May Street in East Liverpool's west end. 1009 May Street. Mom and Pop bought the Big House in the city's Maplewood District in the autumn of 1966 when I was entering the fourth grade. But May Street is where my earliest experiences happened.

We did what small boys do. We excavated holes for no good reason. Our tools were a rusty masonry trowel and a large soup spoon Keith Roberts swiped from his Mom's kitchen. We explored the old stone quarry that sat atop the hill only a block away from our house at 1009. Those adventures were cut short once the Ohio Department of Transportation sited Ohio Route 11 stretching the eastern state line from the Ohio Eiver to Lake Erie.

I guess they used a lot of dynamite to carve out the Right of way for the highway because we were constantly lectured on the dangers of blasting caps that might be laying around due to some negligent engineers. I never saw one and I never knew anyone who had accidentally encountered one.

But my first memory was sitting on the front porch at 1009 with my Aunt Roxie, Mom's younger sister. Aunt Roxie couldn't have been a freshman in high school at the time and served more as a big sister than a matronly aunt. She taught me to blow bubble gum bubbles on that porch, making me a minor celebrity among my neighborhood friends. That was the summer of 1961 and I was four and a half (I would have insisted you heard the 'half').

Tonight Aunt Roxie is in trouble. She is in Cleveland waiting for the biopsy results from Uncle Jim's emergency surgery. They found a tumor attached to his bladder and effecting the function of his lower bowel. My cousins have rallied around and yet I feel helpless here 150 miles away. I am worried about her and my uncle. But Aunt Roxie was the first great influence on me after my parents and my big Scottish uncles. Every time I chew Bazooka Joe, I grin and remember Aunt Roxie.

 

[Michelle420]

Had an incredible lucid dream last night..

Was in a home workshop very much like the one my grandfather had in his basement when I snapped into recognizing I was in a dream...Tried pushing my hand through a cinder block wall and it didn't work...Sure that I was dreaming, I jumped in the air and floated up until my head penetrated the ceiling, then floated back down to the floor like a feather falling..Spent a couple minutes doing wacky stuff like walking through walls and picking up refrigerators with one hand, then decided to try and have some sort of meaningful experience....So I shouted out that I wanted to discover something useful or meaningful for my "awake" life, then heard some grunting animal noises, that I guess were supposed to be scary, coming from down a darkened hallway...Knowing I was in a dream and that I couldn't be harmed, I shouted "NO! NOT SCARED!" and out of the darkness came a little toddler boy....Acting glad to see him, I knelt down and asked him what he had for me...He started babbling something incomprehensible that sounded like a foreign language that I couldn't even begin to take a guess at.

I then woke up...Fell back asleep and popped into a couple other lucid moments, but that was the most memorable of them...Curioser and curioser.

Do you have repeat dreams where you revisit certain locations or repeat some specific actions? I have a series of different places, and different themes that recur in my lucid dreams.

I have repeat dreams.