u/Califrisco

I'd heard of Audiobookshelf and wanted to do it but the self-hosting and technical aspects of it have been blockers for me. So I found this person Lucas Fobian, who is a German software engineer and put out a private cloud instance of Audiobookshelf as a service, called audiobook-library.

Essentially, for $9/ month you get your own private instance of Audiobookshelf that is available both on the web and on mobile devices. He takes care of the backup and hosting and all that technical stuff that I loathe doing because I'm always afraid of messing it up or misconfiguring my network configuration to allow external library access for me anywhere I can get internet.

That $9 monthly cost is nominal for me to free me from needing to care and feed the server or the back up or update the module. It probably also covers his bandwidth costs as well, so I consider this a good option for me to get my Libation M4B library available after leaving Audible.

The only downside is that there currently is a 100 GB storage limit, and I have over 600 GB of books, so I will be seeing if this is a housekeeping issue (i.e. remove the books I listen to and offload them from the service).

So far, the Audiobookshelf set up doing it this way was virtually painless and I am evaluating two IOS Audiobookshelf players that work with the system, Audiobooth and Adsorb. They both work beautifully and have everything I need to organize, play and gather stats on my audiobooks and my listening.

Lucas appears to be the entire team behind this, so that (like the developer behind Libation) is a worry for me about the longevity, so I hope he does well and continues to support this service.

I hope this might help you if you're in this same situation as I am; where I'm trying to distribute my own Libation library to myself on my phone wherever I am on the internet.

Finally after chasing down the pharmacy that had the contract to fill this prescription, I got it. But it was a challenge to find which ones would/could fill it and which were unable because they had no contract do so.

Since I take a statin (one of the few meds I take that interacted with it, but I was cleared because my dose didn't cross the threshold of interaction). I also take the statin at night so I decided not to risk any initial interactions and took my first dose today in the AM.

So far, so good. 🤞 No side-effects at all for me.

The insurance is definitely the hardest part of this; prior-authorization and the copay for just 30 days/pills was all I could get at a time. But it is covered with restrictions" by my plan (Humana). The cost I was given is $4,154.59 for each month. I was close to paying all my co-pays for the year so my share was limited to the remaining my yearly max out of pocket.

I'm glad to hear that it has helped others here and I hope to report good results as well.

This is honestly as scary as it gets for me because I can see all the points these two journalist are making and with negative historical ramifications.

I used my Wacom Inuit Pro for photo restoration on Affinity. Yesterday, the driver software they put out no longer supports it and it is essentially unusable now. So I’m looking for an alternative pen tablet that travels well, is solid and has good software support and does not have a screen.
Do you have any recommendations? Thanks all.

8/4 Update: thanks to this forum, (Smiley Dafe) I have new life for my tablet. After removing the Wacom Drivers, I installed OpenTabletDriver, it found my tablet and it’s operational again.

8/5 Update: Just to show me how much they "valued" me as a customer, Wacom offered me a 5% discount for a purchase. This is what they said when I asked them if I could apply this to a refurbished model offered or use a military discount: "To receive the 5% discount, you will need to contact us by phone or request a callback, as the order must be processed over the phone by our Support Team for the discount to be applied.
 
Please note that only one discount can be applied per order. If you choose to use the 5% discount, you will not be able to combine it with a Military Discount [which is 10% BTW].
 
Regarding refurbished devices, it may be possible to apply the discount; however, we cannot guarantee this. Refurbished products sold through the Wacom eStore are typically already offered at a reduced price, and additional discounts may not be eligible."

Yeah I'm not going support them going forward.

My Dr. prescribed me Rezdiffera but apparently who can fill the prescription is dependent on the pharmacy. Rezdiffera falls under the Specialty Pharmacies because of its class and cost. I got a call from a specialty pharmacy that I've never used and it appears that this is where the Dr's prescription went, even though I have Walmart on my account as the preferred pharma. I asked it to be transferred and it was, but the Walmart Specialty Pharma does not have any ability to access Rezdiffera because it is not contractually able to.

So I am back to trying to get it from the specialty pharma that my insurance carrier recommends. It is very costly: (Walmart said it was about $4900/ month (probably before insurance)).

Net Net Story: always check with your insurance carrier first as to which pharma will carry Rezdiffera. Fill out the forms that this pharma needs to get the process going and follow-up with your Dr. to ensure that this does not get lost.

Just posting this as a PSA: I'm only in the latter stages of getting this started.

My KU membership is expiring very soon.

Is it worth waiting for another offer from Amazon to restart it, or isn't there a yearly commitment purchase option that saves some off the $11.99 monthly cost?

Any experiences and recommendations? Thank you.

I’ve never compared correctly fitted IEMs with headphones or earbuds with ANC.

So, I’m interested in your experiences: are IEMs as good or better than ANC as far as reducing outside noise isolation? Or are they simply intended for use in quiet locations? Thanks.

Hi All! I’m a 71M who recently was evaluated as Mild-Moderate F2, S3. My Dr. is going to get an authorization for Rezdiffra next month.

I’ve got ADHD and take non-prescription amino acids for it. For you who have taken Rezdiffra, what have you been advised stop taking, supplement-wise? My Dr. said just a multivitamin is OK.

My concern is ensuring that the Rezdiffra has the best chance of working, given the cost and effort to get these values down. Dr. Is suggesting that this medication will be taken for a year and then they will re-evaluate. I don’t know the prescription strength at this point.

Any experiences or non-medical advice you can provide? I’m good for diet choices but am concerned about controlling my ADHD. Thanks for any help!

Got my HD 600s yesterday and promptly swapped in a 4.4mm balanced cable and plugged it into my MBPro with the Boom 3D app set for the HD600s, and I am blown away listening to Spotify Lossless songs for Oldies, Classical, Trance, and Rock. Amazing with the EQ Fidelity setting on and for the specific genre I’m testing.

But when I turn Boom off, I can hear what others are saying about the diminished bass. Very clean, spacious sound straight-up but adding the Boom 3D’s headphone EQ does nicely correct for it and the bass is there in spades if I needed it.

Question: who here uses this App on a Mac? An iPhone/iPad unfortunately will not allow this same granularity so you meed some other App, but I’m interested if any of you listen with Boom?

Finally: I’ve never had balanced cables before (but did so on this sub’s suggestion), how much difference does it make?

Thanks to multiple, useful, discussions here on this subreddit, I have a Moondrop Dawn Pro 2, a NewFantasia Replacement Audio Upgrade Cable balanced 4.4mm, and the Apple USB-C to 3.5mm Dongle coming my way this Sunday to complement my new HD 600s.

FYI: My wife and I have an Apple ecosystem; MBPro M3 laptop, MBAir M1, iPad M1 Pro, iPad Mini 6’s, and iPhone 16 & 17s, so I think we are set for most configurations (travel and home, but will the HD 600s be compact enough to travel?).

Any other tips and suggestions are welcome, but this is to thank my fellow audiophiles for their help. 🙏🏼

We’re nearing the end of our first time back on Princess (Caribbean) after many years away and trying out MSC and Celebrity. This is a B2B2B with the last ‘B’ a switch to Caribbean Princess from the MSC Seashore. So we’ve been able to compare the two buffets very closely. In virtually every way, the smaller older Caribbean buffet has showed us the attention and a smaller array of food can beat a larger buffet of lower quality food.

The Princess food is always hot when it’s supposed to be. The MSC buffet had a problem: their breads and cooked foods were put out under hot lamps well ahead of opening. So this meant dried out or tough/stale bread or food that you would not serve yourself because it was dry/overcooked. This happened at nearly every breakfast/lunch/dinner on the MSC buffet. This very rarely has happened in the week we’ve been on Princess.

In fact, the seafood preparation has been so poor on MSC, that we avoid them in general. On Princess, seafoods have been much better and more consistent. The ethnic foods too (e.g. Indian) have been first rate on Princess and very hit or miss on MSC.

The Princess plates are stoneware and are always clean and even hot when we pick them up (MSC’s are plastic). The tables on Princess are each stocked with their own silverware (vs near the plates in MSC), so very convenient not to have to go back into the buffet crowd just to get a knife and fork.

So we are happy to report that the much older Princess ship has been a happy surprise to come back to compared to the newer, glitzier, bigger MSC ships, foodwise. As anything, YMMV! 😋

We've done YC on the Seashore, the Seaside and the Grandiosa. But we've never sailed the WA before and just booked a two week YC B2B on her in 10 Days (21st deck). How does the YC experience differ from the Sea class ships? We had one YC passenger who really didn’t like the YC experience on the WA, so we are curious how others have compared it.
Thanks for any advice or feedback.

We are super-early parked in the garage at the Port Canaveral Princess Terminal 3. Our arrival window is 12-1230 and we are two hours early because we just go off a cruise from an MSC ship at Terminal 10.

Will they allow us to check in early? Thank You! 😊