The Coffee House

[MartinCrabtree109 3]

My furnace took a powder last week. Checked some connections and all has been good since. Still going to install a wood stove. I've got a few wooded acres so supplementing the gas furnace takes labor. I've got a couple cords of dead fall I can burn through and then some standing dead wood. Needs a clean up anyways.

 

[SquarePeg37 8]

Had a great dinner yesterday with the family. Small crowd for us this year - only 10 at the table. I hosted but didn’t cook. Everyone brought the food and we all had a nice meal followed by some games (Taboo, LRC, Spades).

Today it snowed for a few minutes - not enough to stick except on the grass. Going out for lunch tomorrow and pedicures with my SIL for her birthday. Sunday got tix for Wicked part 2.

Me this time, I had surgery in 2019. Claimed they got it all, apparently not as I've relapsed.

So sorry to hear this. Sending healing vibes your way.

 

[VidThreeNorth]

Techmoan -- One of the Earliest Testers of Technology on the Net

I was working on photography stuff and getting tired and numb, and decided to do something a bit different. In the end, I searched for and found one of the earliest channels I ran into on YouTube. "Techmoan" is a British fellow who looks into and reports technology. If you want a photographic tester, well, he did cover GoPro style action cameras years ago, and maybe he still does. The link that I found was a review of a pocket radio, from around 1977. It was posted to YouTube Nov 2, 2025, and was about 29:59 long.

"Panasonic’s Mr Thin CIA ‘spy’ radio", "Techmoan"
""​

 

[smoke665]

I know I don't "really need it", but a 26TB external HD for $249!!! - https://www.newegg.com/seagate-expa...N1L5RPVUsNzM6l7nTszUW1BcbE_QN_M8aAlNYEALw_wcB

 

[cgw117 142]

I know I don't "really need it", but a 26TB external HD for $249!!! - https://www.newegg.com/seagate-expa...N1L5RPVUsNzM6l7nTszUW1BcbE_QN_M8aAlNYEALw_wcB

Apologies to Wallis Simpson but you can never have too much storage. Forget the rich and thin stuff.
Inventorying my trove of old Nikon camera accessories scarfed from eBay and local photo swap meets. Had to have this old $hit...
Scary! Nikon once charged the earth for beautifully made bits that allowed "A" to connect to "C."
Felt smart getting a used "BR-3" lens reversing ring for 10 bucks. "Best of Show" is the little PX-625 powered viewfinder illuminator for the Nikon F Photomic Ftn finder. Weird in 2025 but sexy in 1962.

 

[SquarePeg37 8]

I know I don't "really need it", but a 26TB external HD for $249!!! - https://www.newegg.com/seagate-expa...N1L5RPVUsNzM6l7nTszUW1BcbE_QN_M8aAlNYEALw_wcB

My problem with that big of a hard drive is you’re putting a lot of eggs in that one basket. If it fails, that’s a lot of data to have to try to recover or to lose.

 

[cgw117 142]

My problem with that big of a hard drive is you’re putting a lot of eggs in that one basket. If it fails, that’s a lot of data to have to try to recover or to lose.

Agree. I use RAID storage at several sites for docs/work and select images. Most other images get plopped onto multiple SSDs. Still, I like using 64GB thumb drives as "sketchbooks" for image files I'm toying with. My key stuff is secure but non-essentials get squirreled-away far less systematically. Just bad housekeeping.

 

[jeffashman11 2]

Hiya Hosers! I hope everyone who celebrated Thansgiving in the US this past week had a great time! We had two Thanksgiving dinners this year. My wife prepared a traditional one for Wednesday (Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, cranbery sauce, and a couple of pies). My three sons came over, along with various girlfriends and granddaughters, and we had a very nice time. On Thursday we went over to one of my son's Inlaws where there was a much larger feast. Two turkeys, one deep fried (scary to watch them put that bird in that really, really hot oil) and one smoked, a ham, a variety of other sides. I'm not much into football, but enjoyed watching the Dallas Cowboys pull out a win. Was also happy to see Cinci beat Baltimore, since I'm a Steelers fan, and standings-wise, that was the preferred outcome.

"Cold" weather finally made an appearance again, and temps got down to 33F last night. The black gumbo clay around here is saturated, so it's a muddy walk just about anywhere that isn't paved. The kind of sticky mud that builds up to six inches on the bottom of boots.

I've been giving almost everything a rest, including online time, except for some time on Instagram. Speaking of Instagram, my feed has been filled with the most incredible AI generated art-in-motion, with Kelly Boesch being one of my favorites, along with pillart.ai, julia_vineboo_ai, arvizu_art, and black.ai.butterfly (and several more). It is mesmerizing to watch how they put their artwork together with complementary music themes. I can only imagine what Picasso or Salvador Dali would do with this medium if they were still around.
Kelly Boesch

 

[jeffashman11 2]

Oh, yeah… forgot to mention I had some supervision in the kitchen with food prep…

 

[cgw117 142]

Oh, yeah… forgot to mention I had some supervision in the kitchen with food prep…

Cats know everything--if only for self-serving reasons.

 

[snowbear116 47]

Snow flurries this morning then changed to rain. We are supposed to get snow in a few days but it doesn't look like anyone can agree on how much, so somewhere between two and twelve inches (5 to 33 cm).

I started the indoor decorations and will work on outside tomorrow.

I went to the Houlton, ME lighted parade last night. Houlton and Houlton airport are the last two exits from the I-95 crossing into New Brunswick.

 

[terri35 7]

Oh, yeah… forgot to mention I had some supervision in the kitchen with food prep…

I love it!

What a gorgeous kitty!

 

[SquarePeg37 8]

Snow flurries this morning then changed to rain. We are supposed to get snow in a few days but it doesn't look like anyone can agree on how much, so somewhere between two and twelve inches (5 to 33 cm).

I started the indoor decorations and will work on outside tomorrow.

I went to the Houlton, ME lighted parade last night. Houlton and Houlton airport are the last two exits from the I-95 crossing into New Brunswick.

View attachment 292393

I need to get started on decking the halls. With only 3 weekends in between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, it’s going to fly by. Every year I say I’m just doing the mantle and a small tree but then I end up doing all my usual little vignettes around the house… will definitely be putting some lights outside as that’s my favorite part of the holidays!

Just watched my first holiday movie - one of my favs. It’s called Holidate - it’s on Netflix. It’s like a raunchy version of a Hallmark movie. It always makes me laugh.

 

[terri35 7]

It’s like a raunchy version of a Hallmark movie.

Sounds perfect.

I just remembered that last year at this time, I still didn't have a mantle. We had hired a guy to re-do our crumbling mantle in August of last year and he didn't get it together until January of this year. So, we were looking at a ripped up wall over the fireplace throughout the holidays last year.

I'll have to pull out my Yule boxes and look for my strands of mini lights for the mantle this year. Should be festive!

 

[snowbear116 47]

I brought the pencil tree and a box of ornaments up from the basement. The bigger, fuller tree is still in MD so we got this last year. I'll post a couple pics when we are further along.

We picked up some string lights to add some light on the front porch. There's an outlet at the top of the outside wall, under the porch roof, but it has no power. Circuit breakers are all on so it may not even be hooked up, so I have to go through the window until we get an electrician. This isn't a priority.

There is no fireplace in the house so we brought up MLSIL's fake one.The rest of the stockings are in one if the other boxes in the basement; I'll bring them up in the morning.