What's your thing? Something you really enjoy. Hobby or other?

Almost anything to do with firearms.

I enjoy quiet range time, and I have the land to do just that. Reloading goes hand in hand with that. I started just reloading pistol ammo because I was going through about 200-300 rounds of 45 acp a week. This lead to rifle reloading and the whole how small a group can you get, it's a rabbit hole of repeatability.

Fishing, but not the bass boat and millions in gear fishing. Again I am fortunate to have a small pond on the property. Just fiddling around down there with an ultralight rig is an afternoon's worth of enjoyment.

Not a hobby yet but... I've got a 3d printer that i am just starting to play with.

I may add to this later.

What I like and enjoy has changed over the course of my life along with my hobbies. I have done and experienced many different things.

Hobbies I have enjoyed over the years include fishing, hiking, exploring, firearms, sailing, snow skiing, water skiing, biking, reading, trading stocks, trading crypto, playing poker with friends, music, planting, growing, and harvesting food, archery, building things, cooking, golfing, woodworking, meeting people online, playing sports including baseball for many years as an adult (not professionally). I ran for and was elected for various positions.

I used to love to travel and I have done a lot of that. I still enjoy traveling, but not as much as I used to. One really memorable trip was to Eleuthera Island in the Bahama’s. I was really not that thrilled to be going there but it ended up being a very memorable trip and definitely exceeded any and all expectations I had. I went with a couple friends and we rented a car and a house. Every day we explored the tropical island and new secluded beaches where there was no body else anywhere. The beaches were beyond anything I ever imaged. Some of the sand was pink from the corral. The water was warm and extremely clear and you could see the fish really well especially with polarized glasses. There were turtles and all kinds of aquatic marine life. We fished every day. We would wade out in the flats in shorts and sandals and the water temp was always perfect. The Island was narrow and long. One side was the Atlantic Ocean and one side was the Carribbean. 2 vastly different oceans in someplace only separated by a couple hundred feet. Some of the restaurants were just chairs in someones yards with a BBQ and tables, but the food was really good.

I have met many different people from all walks of life including famous people, bums, and one that is in the top 100 richest in the world, another that isn’t top 100 but a billionaire, and every kind of people you could image. This along with working in many different industries over my lifetime has given me a very unique perspective.

I am looking for my next hobby or thing. What will it be? I have been thinking and looking at the Pacific Crest Trail. I don’t know if that is it though. I am getting older but I am still in pretty good shape. I need a new hobby but I am not sure what it will be yet. I know I am not like anybody else. A lot of people don’t understand me. Some people I meet totally get me. I usually form better relationships with above average intelligent people but not always. So that is a little bit about me and my hobbies and life experiences.

I used to love hunting upland game birds, pheasants, quail, ptarmigan, grouse, and upland game like rabbit and squirrel. I don't get to do that now because I'm a poor bastard, I'm hopeful changes are otw though. I also hunted big game like deer, moose and bear but I never bagged any big game. I had really nice, easy shots on a 400 lb black bear and a 50"+ moose but I got buck fever and missed both times.

The rifle I was using both times was accurate enough that I hit a thumbtack at 100 yards from a benchrest and I could routinely fire 3 shot groups and cover them with a quarter, but I missed the fucking bear at less than 50 walking like he was taking a stroll in Central Park. The moose was probably under 40 yards, standing broadside and big as a barn door. I won a 6 pack for the thumbtack shot though.

I love to fish and to make my own fishing gear. Heck, just making things is fun and that's probably why I like making/building things in games so much. I used to fire so many shotgun shells while shooting clay targets and hunting Mourning Doves that I started loading my own shells so I could afford to beat up my shoulder even more.

Eve Online, the industry system there is vast and I try to make as much of my own stuff as I can. In Fallout IV every time I try to play a different storyline I always end up helping that guy from the Minutemen and once again, I'm rebuilding the Commonwealth, one settlement at a time... lol

I think next weeks video will have improved sound volume for the intro, if not next week, the week after for sure. I'm about 87.629% positive this is the last week of blaring music though.

It will be a few weeks before you see the audio quality improvement from having the correct adapter cable for the mic.

I have the new adapter cable and I've tested it, sound difference is huge. I can't believe Sluggo didn't keep pestering me to fix it.

I thought I had it fixed a little over a year ago, I bought an adapter cable...

Some guy, and we won't be mentioning any names here, ordered a TRS to TRRS cable when he should have ordered a TRRS to TRS cable...morons, morons everywhere...

I like DCS a lot also and I'm buying the Phantom as soon as it goes on sale.

In this threadover at Eagle Dynamics I told this story, this story and others are why this is an instant buy for me.

Quote

The Phantom depicted from SJ is the wing commanders plane, note the multiple colored tail stripe, one color per squadron. There is no red tail stripe so this pic was from before or after the existence of the 337th TFS. I can't read the tail number either and that's important to the following story.

In Sept 81 I arrived at Seymour Johnson fresh out of tech school at Lowry AFB in Aurora CO. (It's been shut down for a few years now.) About 2 weeks after I arrived I was going through AGE training (to the left and behind the aircraft depicted). We were learning how to operate the various power units and such that we'd be using on the flightline. Two flights of 4 Phantoms each was preparing to sortie. Our instructor stopped the class and told us, you guys have to see this, it's cool as <profanity>.

The ground crews cart started the first flight and 40 years later, I have to admit, the memory is still impressive. You'd hear a loud boom when the cart fired, and about the time you saw a plume of smoke coming from the aircraft, you'd hear that engine spooling up. It was pretty impressive watching 4 fighters being started like that in quick succession.

The 2nd flight had some issue that I don't recall except that the aircrew stopped it's preflight and went to a spare. That spare was the wing commander's aircraft and by the time that aircrew and his wingman (or maybe it was the other way around) the other two F-4's in their flight had already started taxiing to the end of runway operations. When they fired the cart to start the starboard engine of the wing commanders jet we heard a boom and then almost immediately another, much louder, BOOM!! And that's when the feces hit the rotary oscillator.

The aircrew abandoned ship immediately, the WSO jumped down onto the port wing and from there to the ground. The pilot went over the windscreen and slid all the way down the radome and fell off the pitot tube to the ground, both of them ran across the red line (some of you know what that is lol) to safety. When his wingman saw what was happening he gave an order over the comm headset to the crew chief, they kicked the chocks and the pilot didn't wait to be marshalled out of his parking spot. (He was in the parking spot right next to the wing commanders jet.) Ground crew folks were grabbing CB fire extinguishers and pulling them to the stricken aircraft and by this time, you could see the flames. One guy was using the extinguishers as fast as they could get them to him and he used 9 that day.

Coleman tow vehicles with towbars attached showed up seemingly from nowhere and started towing Phantoms that were within two rows of the burning aircraft. I never saw that many Coleman's at one time ever again. A fire truck showed up with the "cannon" mounted in to top front and before it came to a stop the airman manning it started foaming the aircraft and the fire finally went out.

The damage was pretty severe, titanium panels on the underside had drooped from the intense heat. When they fired the impulse cartridge (a really big one) to start the engine the cartridge retainer failed due to a hairline crack. When the retainer blew apart, among other things, it cut a fuel line and the fuel ignited instantly. The aircrew in their zeal to exit and escape a certain death trap failed to shut off either the fuel pumps OR the onboard battery. In fact, they didn't shut anything off. The fuel pumps kept feeding the fire with fuel making a bad situation much worse.

That was the only time I ever saw the Phantom get cart started and it turned out to be a pretty memorable event. A depot team showed up a few days later and disassembled the stricken aircraft, crated all the pieces parts and flew the entire mess to a depot in Ohio. Incredibly, about a year and a half later that Phantom landed back at Seymour Johnson looking all brand spankin new, like nothing ever happened. We all stopped working to watch it land and those of us who saw it burn explained why we were in awe, so they could be too.

Display More