Canopyflyer

First drink? 19

First time actually drunk? 21

Last time drunk? 29

Number of times actually drunk: 3 I find it really an unpleasant feeling and not just the hangover. Being drunk and not having complete control of my body, the weird fog in my brain. Yuck… Couple that with the hangover the next day, it’s just not worth it for me. I never saw the point of going out with a group of friends to just get “wasted”.

Current Age: 54 and I enjoy 1 to 2 glasses of wine at dinner with my wife around 3 or 4 times a month. Once in a great while I’ll get a 6 pack of beer. Usually when a local brewery has their Dark Doppleboch out.

That I’ve met personally?

Don’t know, but here’s a list that I consider the coolest people I’ve personally met and I’ll give a brief synopsis on how I met them:

Neil Armstrong: Went to get a haircut in Loveland, OH where I was living at the time. Walked into an old school barber shop that was on Loveland-Medaira RD, just down from Krogers. There were three men in the shop, the barber, who was cutting the hair of a man in the chair, and one more who was reading a newspaper, so I couldn’t see his face. The barber finished up and looked at the gentleman reading the newspapers and said; “Neil you’re up next.” The man put the newspaper down and I found myself face to face with the first man to walk on the moon. Yeah… It was a trip to say the least. He lived in the town next to Loveland and he was there looking for a new barber, as his previous one was a bit of a creep.

Paul Tibbets: My Demonstration Skydiving team was performing in an airshow at Lunken Airport on the east side of Cincinnati. Col Tibbets was there as part of a Hiroshima presentation. After my team wrapped up after the show I toured the displays. I had my team shirt on and walked up to the table where he was sitting. He asked a few questions and said my team and I were really brave doing demo jumps… Yeah… the guy that dropped the first nuclear bomb called my team and I… Brave… Rather a surreal moment for me. He was really interesting to talk to.

Chuck Yeager: Gen Yeager drove the pace car for the 1986 Indy 500. My high school marching band also was marching in the parades and around the track. Yes, I’m really old, I was 16 that year. Some friends and I were walking around the campus where we were staying and actually just ran into him… Literally. I knew who he was, but none of my friends did not, so I didn’t say anything. He gruffly dismissed us and walked off. Yes, we did apologize for running into him.

James Doohan: He gave a presentation at Indiana University Southeast in the early 80’s and my Dad took me to see it. He never announced that he was staying afterward and for some reason my Dad and I hung around after most everyone left. There was only about 8 people that were in the auditorium and we got time to talk directly to him. He was the type of person that you just… Loved. He was an actual good person who was also very intelligent. I actually cried when he died in 2005.

Anyway, that’s my submission of people that I think of as “cool” that I had direct interactions with. Other’s than that I would consider cool:

John Young: Robert Crippen, in an interview, stated that his heart rate while Columbia was sitting on the pad, for its first launch was over 140. John’s was 70. Yeah, John Young was sitting on top of thousands of pounds of brand new untested rocket and wasn’t bothered in the least… FUCK ME. If that ain’t cool, I don’t know what is. I never got to meet him, unfortunately.

How about…

Inside the damn airplane. It was a Beech 18 with Pratt and Whitney Wasp Jr engines used for skydiving operations. The pilot was also the drop zone owner (DZO). The DZO normally kept 3 loads worth of fuel in the plane and I got on the 4th load.

We take off and are on climb out and about 200 feet off the ground it gets… quiet. Did you catch the previous paragraph where I mention the plane had two Pratt and Whitney Wasp Jr engines? I mention that, because those engines are loud… Like really really loud. We crashed in a corn field off the end of the runway. It was like being in a car accident, except a whole lot more noise and grinding metal and quite a bit scarier. With that said, no one was hurt and there was no fire, because there was no fuel in the plane.

All but one person in the crash got out and jumped into the other Beech 18 and did our jumps.

Yeah, skydivers are a bit of a different breed, no doubt about that.

As far as closest to an airliner accident. I saw the remains of United 232 in Sioux City IA about 4 hours after the crash. My parents and I were on the way to see my oldest brother and his family that lived in Sioux Falls, SD at the time. We passed by the airport on I-29 which is less than half a mile away. It was far enough to see the debris and rescue crews working, but not close enough to see the victims… Thank god.

Seeing that accident, plus a strong love of aviation ignited an interest I have had ever since to learn as much as I could about aircraft incidents. I probably should have pursued a career in aircraft accident investigation, not sure why I never did.

That’s awesome!

I live about an hour away from Lake Geneva, WI, which is Gygax’s hometown and the birthplace of D&D. I worked with someone that worked at TSR during the 2e days and he has a lot of stories. (The only thing he has to say about Gary Gygax is; “The guy owes me money.”) Last April I attended a conference in Lake Geneva at the location of the very first Game Con. The Wisconsin Historical Society sponsored it. It was a great time and will be going back again this year.

My books look in great shape… From that angle. LOL… They have thousands upon thousands of hours of playing behind them over the last 40 years. Every page has smudges on them from where they’ve been turned again and again.

Here are the older edition books I have. My 1e DMG and PH have been lost to time. That copy of the Monster Manual is one of the originals. The Deities and Demigods though is NOT one of the issues with HP Lovecraft’s monsters in it. I have seen one of those editions, one of my local games stores has one for sale for over $300, but that’s not what I have. Not shown are all the 5e stuff I have. In my youth it was a challenge to save up enough to buy material when it came out. As an adult, especially since I got the wife playing, yeah… I’ve indulged quite a bit.

54M here. Rolled my first D&D character in 1978. Played GURPS, Twighlight 2000, Traveller, you name it I probably have at least dabbled in playing it.

Today I play D&D 2024 and 5e, Call of Cthulhu, Castles and Crusades and a few others. Some on Roll20, or Foundry VTT (which is awesome BTW.) My primary gaming group is all fathers and mothers spread out across the country.

As far as actual Computer games, I used to be into Flight Sims, but dropping $500 plus on JUST a graphics card is just not something that is going to happen. It’s not the wife acceptance factor, it the sheer balls the graphics card manufacturers have charging that much for their crap. I still dust off MS FS 2004 and run it on my Dell Precision laptop, but my machine won’t run the latest version. I would like to see if it would run Battlestar Galactica Deadlock though.

Otherwise, I have had a home server for many years. It runs Proxmox and I have containers running Plex, Homeseer, SMB (acts as my NAS), and it provides backup services for every other computer in the house.

For reference, I am an IT Professional, with about 30 years in the business.

I have several direct antecedents that lived over 100. The last was my paternal grandmother, who died in 2004 at the age of 103. She was born in 1901 and outlived 3 of her 6 children (one child was stillborn). Her last child, my Dad, died just this past February at the age of 88. He was the youngest.

Former skydiver.

Performed a lot of Demonstration jumps into everything from airports, race tracks, professional sports stadiums, high school sports stadiums, golf courses, and a few other places that required skill and knowledge to land in safely.

Also, spent a lot of time teaching canopy skills to up and coming jumpers.

54m here for reference.

Best long term romantic relationship: We will be celebrating 20 years married this year. Two kids and we’re well on our way to spending our dotage together.

Best Friend: We’ve been friends for 5 years. Have literally played hundreds of hours of D&D and other role playing games, along with a group of fellow fathers and mothers that all like family. We got to play D&D in Lake Geneva, WI at the very birthplace of Game Cons this past year. That was pretty great.

Familial (specifically, blood relations): Terrible. My parents are dead and I would be estranged from them now if they were still alive. Estranged from both my older brothers. I have no plans to reconcile with them. They made their choices and it did not involve their younger brother. I have a FB connection to ONE of my many many first cousins.

Asparagus, Broccoli, and broccolini… although to be fair, I didn’t discover broccolini until about 20 years ago, when I was in my mid-30’s.

Also, I found out it wasn’t the veggie that I disliked, but the way it was prepared. My family boiled (ok Blanched) all vegetables when I was growing up. That’s about the worst way possible to cook most veggies, especially the three I mention above.

Here is what I do to prepare them:

Asparagus: Heat oven to 350F. Trim woody ends and place them in a single layer in an oven proof dish. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil. Finally top with Parmesan Reggiano. Roast in the oven for 25 minutes or when cheese is browned.

Broccoli (florets only) and broccolini (trim woody end, but leave as much of the stem as possible: Heat oven to 350F. Place veggie in a single layer in an oven proof dish. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil. You can top these two with Parmesan, but I usually do not. Roast until slightly charred about 25 minutes.

I will never blanch a veggie ever again, except for green beans. There are times when you’re serving a spicy dish, or something with a sauce and just need something plain to go along with it. Case in point, for my General Tso’s Chicken, I serve it with blanched green beans. Otherwise, I sautee them with salt pepper and red pepper flacks and a bit of high temp oil.

Commoner Adventurer: All stats are 10. You start the campaign at level 0, no class. Throughout the campaign, the characters attain a class based on their actions.

Wrong class for the race: Halfling Barbarians, Half-Orc Wizard, etc. This can be a lot of fun, as instead of having an optimized character that can deal a lot of damage, you have to think through things and come up with strategies. I personally have always liked playing characters that are small that have to use their wits to survive in combat. Oh, I like playing a tank once in a while. Currently, I’m in two different sessions. In one, I’m playing a Dragonborn Cleric that has served as the melee support for the party’s paladin. The other session I’m playing a halfling rogue Soul Knife that rides the barbarian into battle. I have a lot more fun with the Rogue.

Doing a Horny Gorilla skydive with 5 friends.

Representative photo of a Horny Gorilla not a photo of me or my friends:

We get into the formation, actually get stable and the next thing we all see is a one jumpers deployment bag, with their main parachute in it, come out from his back. Goes above the formation, then the deployment bag comes down into the middle of the formation… goes back up… comes back down. Lines are streaming all around and it’s turning into a really dangerous situation. Getting tied up in the lines, while in free fall has a great chance of being fatal.

But it was just a surreal moment for all of us, seeing this deployment bag dancing around in the middle of the Horny Gorilla.

The person next to the jumper with the deployment bag out, reaches down and pulls the affected jumper’s Pilot Chute, which is what actually deploys the main, and tosses it into the air stream. The affected jumper went flying out of the formation as his main parachute deployed. The rest of us break and track hard.

The guy actually landed his main parachute! He did not end up cutting away and pulling his reserve. The way that deployment bag just danced in an out of the middle of the formation was just unreal and we all just stared at it for what seemed an eternity.

25 years on and we all still talk about it.

Heinlein has entered the chat.

He was a hedonistic bastard, that’s for sure.

Acquire all Investiture.

The powers of a dead god.

Ka’Dargo in “Farscape Peacekeeper War”. They were on their way for Moya to pick them up. The worst of the fighting was over and BAM.

At least he went out as a warrior.

The concept behind Cloud Atlas made for a much better movie than book, IMHO.

Having the same actor play the same part in each time made following the plot easier, at least for me. The book was a bit of a slog at times and following each characterization was confusing.

Plus some of the casting in the movie was really good. Jim Brodbent in particular, I thought, delivered a spectacularly good performance.

Spaghetti is not my favorite either, but if the pasta you’re using is not holding onto the sauce, then try a “bronze die cut” brand.

The brand I use and have had good luck with is Delallo.

But I completely agree with you, pasta that has a smooth exterior is useless. Since the whole point of it is to be a vehicle for the sauce.

Level 1: Can put something edible on the table, but lacks experience or does not practice enough. People may or may not want to eat it.

Example: Cooks ribs at high heat with a cheap jarred sauce.

Level 2: Capable of putting edible food on the table consistently, but still not a lot of experience.

Example: Has learned that reducing the heat on the ribs makes them come out slightly better, but still not smoking them and still using a cheap jarred sauce.

Level 3. First level of competency. Cooks often enough to have the experience to put decent food on the table, still uses some jarred sauces, higher quality ones, and the like, but starting to make their own too.

Example: Cooks ribs low and slow, but may not quite yet know what the 3,2,1 method is, but realizes that some wood chips along with temperature control makes for a better product.

Level 4: Competent cook. Cooks many times a week has a broad experience with a variety of cooking techniques. Mostly makes their own; spice mixes, sauces, gravies and the like.

Example: Not only is capable of using the 3,2,1 method for ribs, but knows that is not the only method. Is quite capable of making either fall off the bone ribs or competition worthy ribs with a delightful chew. Able to control not only temperature, but the amount of smoke on the meat.

Level 5: Professional cook, maybe even a chef. Quite capable of putting food on a table that people would pay a lot of money for.

Example: Quite capable of producing competition winning ribs using their own spice mix, sauce, and cooking method.

Kids are wonderfully resilient for the most part.

They should not have to be that resilient though.

Who ever owns that gun, should be absolutely crucified and thrown in jail as accessory to murder. Apparently the girl, who was the same age as my youngest, had a long history of suicidal and homicidal thoughts.

There are too many morons that own guns and they really need to start paying the price for being morons. You want a gun? Fine, for the first time in your life UNFUCK yourself and spend some time thinking about the responsibility of owning a weapon. The 2nd amendment also say “well regulated militia”. Maybe gun owners should be mandated to join a militia where a Marine drill Sergent instructs them the ins and outs of gun safety in that way only the Marines can do.

Fellow Madisonian here.

I’m very happy that your daughter is home and safe with you tonight.

My kids go to Middleton HS. Even so, today was a very scary day.