Vacay time 
Iām off work for the next 2 weeks! Going on a 10 day cruise starting Monday and I wonāt be thinking about work at all 
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While weāre talking about Douglas Adamsā Infocom games, he made a second called Bureaucracy! which is basically impossible to win. At one point, youāre on an international flight on a jumbo jet, and unless you sit in the exact right seats and change over to them at the right time, the plane crashes. I got through it because I basically highlighted everything in the hint book. It was nuts.
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I had that game and I swear I never got more than, like, 2% into it. Iād get shot with the elephant gun every time if I even made it that far.
I loved the swag that came with it though, like the form in triplicateā¦
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You basically died every time unless you did something really specific. I have no idea why he thought anyone would figure it out.
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Sort of a grimace. But a smiling sort of one! About as close as one gets chez moi!
After a big discount, a four channel (each channel can accept a stereo input, i.e., a 6.35mm TRS jack) line mixer arrived today.
I should have known beforehand that the outputs are either one TRS stereo output, on the L/Stereo output or using both 1/4" outputs for mono. Actually, I think it will sum to mono if using both outputs driving two separate outputs, but not sure. That would involve plugging it in and doing stuff to find out.
My mind went a little crazy trying to find various adapters and cables I had lying around.
But then, SERENITY NOW!!! I can make that work as is. I donāt have any need especially to blend the mono guitar signal with audio from another source, and if I were wearing headphones (the only reason I jumped on this box), the device can still do that fine, with one stereo output.
If I need more, thatās just a tiny, cheap little splitter (from 1 TRS male to two TRS femalesā¦just not the kind that breaks the stereo out into L/R, but duplicates the signal).
And half of the channels have a ground lift, so I can put the DI box back by the Rhodes piano, to get its signal to the real mixer without blasting the input channel into maximum overdrive.
Itās a nice enough tiny little mixer (wouldnāt really call it a proper mixerā¦itās just a line mixer, sort of a unitasker compared to a real mixer but it has its uses, for sure): surprisingly heavy in weight, metal housing, even came with a couple of 1/4" to 1/8" TRS adapters, which are always nice to have in abundance. Toss those in the mound of random odds and ends. Made by Donner, a company that specializes in lower-end but serviceable bits of gear.
Now I just have to stop saying quotes to myself from The Shining (movie version) when I recall the companyās name.
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Sounds like the original Tomb of Horrors D&D module. I doubt anyone ever got through that without help from the DM.
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Iām a huge Infocom fan, still have some paper copies of The New Zork Times floating around. Their games could be hard enough on their own, but Adamsā two games took it to another level. I too never got through more than about 2% of Bureaucracy.
In their heyday, Infocomās parsing logic was second to none, as were their writers. But the logic was reverse engineered long ago, and repackaged into an open-source app called Frotz:
http://davidkinder.co.uk/frotz.html
Infocom changed hands several times, and the old classics are still copyrighted, but with a little creative web searching (cough, cough) can be found and plugged into the Frotz interpreter. You can actually play Zork or Hitchhikerās today on your iPad if you want!
(The link above is for the Windows installer for Frotz, but thereās also an iOS version in the App Store. Frotz is just the parser/interpreter; the game files themselves are available separately elsewhere online, among the many hundreds of new ones that fans have created over the years.)
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Blur us the details of where you remember failing to continue and letās us all rememblur what you were missing for you.
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My memory of the game is pretty good for being 35 years ago but itās not that goodā¦ I remember taking the buffered analgesic, and making the not quite tea, and I think there was a screwdriver maybe? But the only other item I can actually remember is the bag that you could put infinite stuff into.
Near the end of the game ā I had, like, 395 out of 400 possible points, there was a space only large enough to bring one item into at a time. It seems obvious that youād use the Bag of Holding to bring in the thing(s) you actually need, though I donāt know that for a fact. But I never seemed to have the right item to complete the final task.
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As I recall, there were two tricks to the Thing. There was no indication that you could put things in it. There was also no indication that you could drop the thing and it would automatically reappear in your pocket several turns later. Itās been a very long time since I really played the game. But, looking at the hint system, you had to put the flowerpot into the Thing and then drop the Thing, so that it would reappear once you got out.
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Ah, if itās the issue that I think it is, itās that the game is specifically trying to look for an item you donāt have.
Are we sure this is the right thread? This is supposed to be the no complaints thread.
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Good point, weāve gotten somewhat off track!
My non-complaint is that for a little while at least, itās not raining here.
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I was super excited the other day when we got about an inch of snow. Rochester averages 100" per year and our normal average for right now is 42", but this year we only have gotten 11". And thatās even hard to believe, because it certainly feels like less; this was the first snow since Christmas Eve. So much 40F and raining that itās like being back in Columbus. But for the time being everything is pretty and white instead of soggy and gray.
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A conditional non-gripe about finally finding a hand held AM/FM radio that works. If it keeps working and I can listen to Phillies games Iāll be happy.
There are a million of them on Amazon, but probably only a handful of different actual devices, you see lots of the same unit rebranded to dozens of different names.
I had a little one I used to use about 10 years ago but that one only worked with headphones, I wanted a little one with a speaker. First one I tried worked for about a day, the tuning dial was so touchy it was a miracle if you got the station you wanted tuned in, after a day it started getting noisy, then all I got out of it was a buzzing sound. All of these units are pretty cheap so I tore it open to see if it was just a bad connection or something, the am/fm switch was crap so I soldered it to fm only and it worked for another few hours then went back to just buzzing.
This new one has a digital tuner, runs off AAs so I can use rechargeable ones in it, and so far it sounds good. Also has NOAA.
FYI here it is:
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I have a FIOS line going to my house from the previous owners but am using Comcast coax for internet. If there were a way to buy my own modem to use with FIOS I would switch just for the faster upload, but the extra modem rental fee makes the cost of FIOS higher than Comcast for about the same download speed I have now. But that sweet upload speed sure is tempting the few times a year I upload a video to YouTubeā¦ They just upgraded the Comcast network around here so sometime in the next year hopefully my area will get faster upload, 900 down and 24 up is pretty sweet most of the time.
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I upload large files for work all the time, so this will be terrific.
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Weāre very lucky to have a local fiber company too. And they actually keep dropping the price. Weāre paying $50/month for 500Mb/s symmetric (used to be 500 down, 100 up for $50), and up until a couple weeks ago it was $100 for 1Gb/s, but they dropped the price to $75 and added a 2Gb/s for $100 and 5Gb/s for $200. Iām half tempted to take the upgrade to 1Gb/s for valueās sake, but itās hard to even saturate the 500Mb/s.
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Oh, yeah. Holiday OT on a ten hour day.
That is, rest assured, the kind of sugar papa likes.
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Only time I get close to my full download speed is if there is a big game download from Steam, and that seems to plateau around 800Mb/s, so going to 1Gb/s only makes sense if you have multiple people at home that are all downloading at the same time.
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