u/TapewormNinja

My small but growing local has been incredibly privileged that we have a member who owns a building with office/meeting space, and allows us to use it. It's absolutely not a boat I have any intention of rocking, and we'll likely be able to keep this space for decades.

I've recently started thinking about what plans the local needs to make for when this member can no longer provide free space. This member is awesome, and I can't give him or his support of our team enough credit. But what happens if he sells the building? Or passes it to a family member who doesn't wish to provide us space? The whole question started as a joke, but the more I think about it, the more I think that making plans now, while we have decades to plan is the safer bet, rather than wait and see what happens and shoot from the hip.

I'm curious what happens out there in other places, especially with small to midsized locals. I've seen Local Ones digs, and we're absolutely not playing the same game. But what are those of you in locals with 200-300 members doing for meeting and office space? Do you own or rent? Did you luck into something? What plans did you make prior to purchasing space? What kind of programs or resources did you take advantage of to make something happen and keep costs low? What were some concerns that your members had as your local started to make moves, and how did you address them?

Thanks for your input!

We've been trying for the last couple years to see what we can of the national parks, and now that my kids a little older, she's fallen in love with the junior ranger program, and badge collecting.

We were recently in Yellowstone, and that helped to kickstart her collection. She had previously picked up the sequoia/kings canyon, and Independence hall badges on separate trips, but in the Yellowstone area you can get the Yellowstone badge, grand Tetons badge, and earthquake lake badge.

For those not familiar, if you're in the parks, you can get a packet at any visitors center, or from most of the rangers you see out and about. Your kid does an age appropriate level of work, learning about park history, or the animals, or science behind geological features. When they're done, you can turn it into any ranger, who will check their work, and do a little swearing in ceremony, and give them their badge.

In Yellowstone we saw kids everywhere with tons of different badges. When I talked to one ranger about it, he said the highest number he ever saw was 26, but that there were over 400 different badges kids could earn.

Anyway, I wanted to share since it's a cool way to get your kids interested in the parks, and nature, and it's the closest I think we can get to IRL pokemon gym badges?

I've been stewing on this one for a couple of weeks, and I'm not feeling any better about it.

Three weeks ago my wife and kid and I were planning on going on vacation. We were set to leave Sunday morning, but I had a change in my schedule and had to stay home and work Sunday. Well, I didn't have to per say. I'm a freelance stage hand, and a gig came up that was an early in/late out on a Sunday, and it was enough money that it was worth delaying a day.

We were just going to stay at my Mother in laws condo at the beach, and so my wife and MIL decided that rather than miss a day, my MIL would come pick up my wife and kiddo. Which was great for me, because it meant that my kid could still get to the beach Sunday, and I could sleep in after getting home at three in the morning.

Anyway, they leave, I do the gig, I wake up around 8 and get moving. I have to pack the car and stuff myself, get our bikes strapped to the roof rack, and do a couple of closing up errands. I get everything done around noon, and I'm off.

I hadn't eaten yet that day, so I'm getting hungry, and I figure I'll duck into a burger king quick on the way. I'm flustered, after doing all the things on my own and sleeping less than six hours. So when I pulled into the drive thru, I had completely forgotten that my bike and my wife's were on the roof of my CRV.

There was a line, and it was moving pretty slow. And as I get closer I notice the guy behind me in my mirror and he's leaving a huge gap in the line. Which I thought was odd. But then I look at the driver himself, and he's animatedly pointing and laughing. And he seems to be pointing at me? Something is fucking hilarious, and it takes me a few minutes to remember my bikes on my roof. I slide open the shade on my sunroof, and sure enough, the handlebars on my bike are less than three inches from the clearance bar.

Since he's left me so much space, I assume so that the bikes wouldn't fall onto his car when I wreck them, I back up and pull out. I ended up just driving away and got lunch at a pizza place down the road. But the whole things stuck with me. Yes, I did a dumb thing, and had I destroyed my bike and ripped the rack from my roof, It would have been entirely my fault. But this guy who saw the danger rather than warn me, was just going to sit and laugh while I did it? That absolutely doesn't sit right with me, and I keep feeling mad about it every time I put the bikes up on the roof to go somewhere. It's just frustrating how callous some folks can be.

Hey y'all,

In the park this week, and we've been living pretty frugally. Packing our food in the park, got an airbnb with a kitchen so we could cook other meals. We're a bit ahead in our budget, and thought we might try and eat out a meal or two. Are there any places y'all would recommend in town?

Had an idea last night, but I'm in no way modder, and thought I'd just put it out to the ether and see what happened.

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I sold a bunch of pirate/spacer ships that I'd been taking, and afterwards when I was selling all the junk out of my inventory, I had a bunch of newtons cradles. Over a dozen. Of all the weird books and bottles that came to my inventory from the sale, it was noticibly higher than any other single inventory item. Enough to catch my eye at least.

​

So the idea. Every time you pick up a newtons cradle, a "tangled newtons cradle" gets added to your inventory, and the value drops by half. There's no way someone's walking around with even one of these things without getting the balls wrapped up like a testicular tortion PSA video. Add more than one, and the whole pile should automatically turn into a Philadelphia rat king.

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Anyway, feels low lift for someone with skills. Do with this information what you will.

I'm tired of wiping up y'all's piss every time I need to take a shit.

There's a rental in my theatre this week. Just a dance studio gig. We do a dozen of these a year. This client usually has some video content. Usually cell phone videos of girls dancing in the studio, or dancing in public places. This year we got something different. Several very uncomfortable videos of young children playing, and women dancing in fields.

All the signs are there. Weird fingers, extra hands appearing from nowhere. It's not even a good representation of what AI can do. They all go on too long, and are just uncomfortable to watch.

It's just a bummer. The old videos were cute. They showed the heart of the studio. I can't not play the content that the client gave me, but it's just really upsetting to have to play a part in this.

We didn't know this place existed until my wife found the library passes. It's not an oddity museum, but a hyperfocus on the history of LGH and medical technology that they used themselves. It's located on the 400 block of North Duke St, right across from the U.S. gas. Admission without the library passes is $8 for adults, and I'd say it's about $8 worth of afternoon entertainment.

Edit: North Lime street. I'm a dummy.

Ride my bike past Brendees yesterday, and they were installing a new door. Looked like the fridge just inside was stocked with beer already. There's gotta be an opening date if there's beer in the fridge, right?

Hey all,

Coming back to the game after awhile, and one of the things I want to do is build a proper moon base. The idea that I'd have to land, suit up, and go through a couple airlocks seems silly, so I'm hoping to find a mod that would either let me park a ship inside a hanger, or have a connection that I could connect my ship right to an airlock. Haven't found anything searching for creations or nexus mods. Wondering if anyone's seen a mod like this?

This school is run by some of the worst humans I've ever had the displeasure of meeting, but the kids at the school don't deserve to suffer by association.

In my city, street cleaning comes around every two weeks. Cars that don't move get a ticket, but there are some cars in town that have two or three street cleaning tickets on them, meaning that nobody's been back to move them in 2-4 weeks.

Police should be required when issuing a second ticket to do a welfare check. If you're not coming back to move your car for a month, and racking up tickets, chances are you're trapped in your living room under a bookshelf full of out of date encyclopedias. Someone should probably look into that.

Overhearing some whisperings at my kids school about some of the layoffs, and it all sounds dumb. People are being laid off, and while the district is actively hiring for other administration positions. I don't want to say anything too specific and get someone in trouble. The team at my kids school is great, but I feel like the decisions being made at the top are just going to make the whole situation worse.