Damor

So all you engineers help the liberal arts major out here with the EMP topic, please. Is there any reasonably constructible shielding/Faraday cage apparatus that's even worth attempting? I have one of those 'solar generators' (big-ass battery and panels) which I suppose might keep my kegerator cold long enough for me to polish off my homebrew whilst watching humanity's journey into darkness. I've resorted to incognito mode to try to look something up online, but it seems to be a mess of unhinged prepper types arguing over the utility of wrapping AM radios in tinfoil and putting them in a galvanized trash can or sketchy shit on Amazon with reviews like, "My family is having lucid dreams again now that I shielded the electric company's 5G smart meter!!!"

File under "What I'm gonna be reading." Cormac McCarthy has two new interrelated novels coming in October and November: https://lithub.com/cormac-mccarthy-is-publishing-two-new-novels-this-fall/

Autobaño

I'm guessing y'all already know this given the 26 prior pages I can't understand, but when my wife signed up she went through the AMEX pre-qual offer site and got a 150k bonus offer for 6k/6mo spend on the personal Plat. I'm guessing that's influenced by the fact that we've never had an AMEX, though.

Thanks, y'all. It's looking like the personal Amex Platinum will come reasonably close to paying for itself for her purposes, as the benefits align well with how she'll use it. I thought the AU fee was $179 and allowed up to three users (not $179 each), am I seeing that right? And in doing a little more reading, it looks like spousal income can be claimed on credit card apps these days, so I don't have to fret about fudging anything anyway.

Dumb question(s) amnesty, please. My wife is starting a new job and working on a 1099 basis, and while she won't have a ton of business expenses, we were planning on getting her a card (thinking AMEX platinum) to help keep things separated for accounting purposes and pick up a few perks while at it. 1) I've never had an AMEX. She has an excellent credit score, but as she's just getting started it'd be difficult to provide much income info. I don't quite understand how credit "limits" work on AMEX, but would obviously like to have as much flexibility as possible. Are we better off having me as the primary account holder and adding her as an authorized user? 2) Does the AMEX site make it reasonably simple to view/download transactions by user for accounting purposes? The plan would be for her card to be used only for business expenses, and on the few occasions we'd use it for personal spending (outside of hitting the initial bonus spend), I'd use mine. 3) I understand that the $179 AU fee allows up to 3 AUs. In that case I figured I might as well add our teenagers to get a start on their credit history, even if they aren't going to use them much (if at all). Any potential negative ramifications for them when we eventually take them off the account? I hate the credit score game, but would like to help them get a good start without screwing anything up.

Like you, I did my stint in the med center area a while back, so I know you've experienced it, but I'll echo that when I took my boys on a trip down there a few years ago (10 and 12 at that age), they really loved the zoo and goofing around in Hermann park. That whole area has really changed (Capt. Obvious), but that and the RIce VIllage area are still pretty cool, and it was a lot of fun to revisit some old places we used to hang out. The Natural History museum is indeed awesome for kids. Don't forget the butterfly museum portion. If y'all are okay splitting up to take the older ones for dinner, I took mine to the Mucky Duck for an early show and pub grub. I don't even remember who it was, but they had a great time and still talk about it. I love that place.

You probably shouldn't stress. Stressing about low-probability things largely out of my control is one of my things that I do. Hopefully, the rules/situation will change by summer, and we were not in any place I'd consider high-risk once we got out of the transfer van to the ferry, what with all the outside dining and activities. And if you order those emed.com kits as well as some regular BinaxNow ones, like I said it would be ridiculously easy to 'modify' your results if your ethics allow it. I'd imagine one could pay a "fee" for a negative re-test down there somewhere, but I have no firsthand knowledge of this. (And to be clear, while I don't love that idea, I've personally reached the point where our family has done all we can about COVID, and I think that for the the current situation, testing asymptomatic travelers going from a lower risk area to a higher one is of dubious value. I would not have considered allowing anyone symptomatic to travel.)

We have only been fishing with Keen M, but have had great experiences every time. A half day is good for us, although we're fishing pretty casually. It can get rough this time of year, so if anyone is remotely disposed to seasickness, take scopolamine patches. The Lilly M, although one of their smaller boats, has the most open cabin. COVID testing was the biggest thing stressing me out on our trip. We were all as fully vaccinated and boosted as possible, but Omicron doesn't care, so my nightmare was someone testing positive and getting stuck (a messier issue with kids). Ixchel does have a plan for reduced price isolation accommodations if needed. There are multiple places offering walk-in antigen testing. I have no idea how rigorously they do it (obviously their incentive is for you to be negative), but being a control freak I elected to take tests with us with online proctoring. They are Abbott BinaxNow tests from emed.com. You get a result/QR code in the app you can show at airline check-in (although it confused the guy at SWA, who just said "whatever" and sent us on). To be sure I was prepared for any disaster, I made everyone test 2 days before we left, using regular BinaxNow kits we had. I won't get into how dumb I think it is to restrict travel at the current Omicron stage of the game, and I'm only a moderately awful person, but it would have been stupid easy to remove the test guts from one of our prior negative tests and put it into the "official" casing with its QR code had we needed to.

Like the thread title says, just got back. This was our second trip and we had a great time again. Stayed at Ixchel this time (thanks to @wood for the contact info for rental) for convenience and the 2bdr was perfect for our family, including two teenage yahoos. @Mac8111, don't know if you've stayed at Ixchel since you've been there before, but while I don't think they have any 3bdr, I wonder if they could get you a 2bdr and 1bdr nearby? It was just nice to be right on Playa Norte and at the end of Hidalgo so we could give them some autonomy at that age. The last time we went, we got two rooms at Secreto and that worked well for us if you don't need to cook or mind doing the hotel thing instead of a house. @GrahamCracker, again Ixchel was great for us but we were in family mode. I thought the smaller place next door, Playa Arena, looked good if we go back on an adult trip, but obviously don't have first-hand experience. Had a great time, ate and drank too much, didn't have a disappointing meal. It was pretty busy being the holiday week, probably twice as busy as last year, but didn't have any issues with restaurant waits or lack of beach chairs. Only thing that seemed to be running short was golf cart rentals. Meal highlights included Qubano, which everyone loved and we would have eaten at multiple times if they'd been open more regularly. Cuban sammich was the best I've ever had: My 16yo demolished the tomahawk steak at Xantolo, which I thought would just be a novelty but was really damn good: We went out on two half-day bottom fishing trips with Keen M (did sailfishing last year, so tried something different), and had a great time. Hauled in a ton of yellowtail and triggerfish, which was a lot of fun for the boys. I don't know what the whole saga of Ballyhoo is (read about it on here but it has been closed), but it is now reopened/rebooted or whatever on the dock. It is now operated by the family that runs about half of Isla, I guess (Keen M, Secreto, Playa de Media Luna, etc.), and only opened about two weeks ago. We ate dinner there twice after our fishing trips, and they were two of our favorite meals. About 8 bucks per person to fix your catch family style is a pretty good deal, and it was an obscene amount of food. Triggerfish ceviche was amazeballs. So another great trip. Although I don't want to get into a rut and still hoping to try some different places, nobody in the family has any argument about a return trip in the future.

Now that F Street is a pedestrian zone, sitting outdoors at Amicas with a view of the "S" is one of my favorite places in the world. If you haven't been lately, the new Pizza Rio above the Boat House (run by the same folks, NY style) is pretty damn good as well. Between Amicas, Moonlight, Rio, Great Divide in Gunnison, and Secret Stash in CB, you'd think I'd get tired of pizza and beer when on vacation. Nope.

Thanks! Looks like they have more availability at least. Since there are three of us I'll have to think about whether to hope they could combine us with another small group or try to talk my BIL or someone else into going. Although when I mentioned going without her last night, my wife started getting pouty.

Thanks, y'all! I'm checking in with Black Canyon, but it looks like this is something I probably should have thought about earlier -- I got an additional recommendation from the guys at ArkAnglers for RIGS, and they're already booked all but one day in July. I'm even having trouble getting our usual accommodations in Gunnison and Salida this far out -- guess the whole world has gone crazy.

Do any of y'all who have done the Gunnison overnight float trips have a trusted guide/outfitter? Paging @MoJames, @DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt, @troph, others? I'm looking at stuff to do next July, and I'm thinking this would be a good time to take my 17yo and 14yo boys as a bucket list experience I'd like us to have before they fly away.

Call it You'd Better Not Pout, You'd Better Not Die. She sings "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" in a depraved manner a la Eliot Loudermilk each time she snaps.

I still consider myself quite green, but I'm still enjoying it using my pretty simple Mash & Boil electric setup. Because COVID/everything sucks, I went through a dry spell for most of this year but restarted a couple months ago. Chilling wort for a porter right now, with a stout in secondary, a saison carbonating, and an ESB, rye IPA, and grapefruit IPA currently on tap. I agree with the sentiment that it's nice to be able to just brew some simple basics that get easily overlooked. One of my favorites last year was a barely >3% mild.

Adios, Big 12 "Did we just become best friends?" No, cousin-fuckers.

The officiating in this conference is so shitty and utterly incompetent that it becomes a signal-to-noise issue with regard to any bias. Flagrant examples like OSU are rare, but the small imbalance in the number of awful calls in favor of either team is just enough to make the officiating a factor in each game on the order of weather or injuries, and allows for a lot of fuckery. Sometimes your team benefits, sometimes it gets screwed, but the waters are so muddy that it's hard to make a demonstrable case for getting fucked (aside from OU is always allowed to hold). And the conference office is happy to let it ride as it is. Just one more reason that, while I have plenty of reservations about the SEC move, I have zero about jettisoning this feckless piece of shit Big 12.

It's like a human barium enema. Turdition indeed.

Is it muledick?

I've seen them mentioned in passing on occasion (most recently by @Brisketexan), but never a dedicated discussion. We have a current HS junior who is bright and an incredibly kind and empathetic soul of whom I am extremely proud; however, the other side of his particular coin makes him somewhat passive and lacking in confidence as compared with his peers, as well as lagging in maturity and self-motivation (in retrospect, he would have been a very good candidate for a redshirt kindergarten year, something I'm trying to stop kicking myself over). I'll try not to get all longcat with some of the issues we're working on at school (in case you wondered, high school still sucks), but what it really boils down to is that we are working to help him find inspiration and self-motivation. We've always tried the philosophy of pouring gasoline on any spark he's showed, and we'd hoped to do some horizon-broadening travel the last couple summers that hasn't worked out (thanks COVID), but we know that his time with us is drawing to a close and we need to use what we have left wisely to help him find a direction and a goal other than "I'm supposed to go to college." I could go on and on but I won't, because I imagine we aren't the only ones trying to work this out, and I really intend this to be less about him in particular and more about understanding what's available to him. A gap year is something we've briefly discussed with him, but it's probably time for us to learn more seriously about it so that we can all get some reliable information and insight -- one thing we do know is that this is going to have to be his decision, because trying to make it anything else is not going to end well. I found what looks like a reputable site to start at in the Gap Year Association, and it seems that the main pathways are to go with an established program provider, use a counseling service for something more individualized, or let them come up with something and do it independently. I'd be happy to hear of any other trustworthy resources to check out. I'd be deeply interested in anyone's personal gap year experience (yourself or as a parent), as well as any good (or bad) resources/experiences along the way. We plan to visit with his counselor about this, but frankly, my expectations for that are low, and I guess I trust you degenerates on the whole much more when trying to look for a broader worldview than the relatively small and insular one his formal education has given him thus far. And I did already check -- his 529 will not reimburse for 'hookers and blow.'

Pfizer, second dose 1/10 S 473 N (-) Paystub [redacted] Only 31 payments left on Corvette

4) Everyone is the hero of their own story. 3) The great thing about life is it's never so bad that it can't get worse. 2) Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to. 1) ou sucks

^^^ That's my scenario right now with 16yo and 13yo boys. They are both vaccinated but I am certain a large number of their teammates are not. The 16yo doesn't want to wear a mask at school, and the 13yo is ambivalent (he's around more kids who are under 12). If mine develop symptoms, they will be tested and held out (we already had to do that for the 16yo when he spiked a 103 temp right before two-a-days, tested negative). I've warned them both that while I consider it being a bad teammate to be unvaccinated, if mine don't mask up and take every precaution, they're still at risk for getting thrown under the bus when shit inevitably happens, because people suck, and nobody's going to blame the unvaccinated starting senior. It does help that vaccinated exposures won't require quarantine, but: 1) That guideline predates Delta 2) Nobody is going to demand proof of vaccination. Let the shitshow commence.