So I figure it's time.

@f00l Yeah have you seen the snow that PA got recently? I feel pretty good about Texas these days lol. Texas definitely has fantastic tacos, especially at gas stations.

@Targaryen You can come visit (and shovel) the snow. I am in the middle of that mess. We do not expect to get above freezing until the 5th so plenty of time to come play. Today is double digits at 12° expected high of 13.

What do you read? Last book you really liked?

@Targaryen

Texas definitely has fantastic tacos, especially at gas stations.

Food Trucks!

If you decide to cross the border to the south, ask around first, locally, on the N side of the river.

You will need a passport in order to get back to this side.

There are places that are ok for the day. Places that arent. Places that are ok in the shopping and restaurant areas, but don’t stray.

If you decide to drive into Mexico headed to the interior, read up first. Esp re insurance and liability. Possibly do a rental?

And then ask locally which roads into the interior are safe and which not, and what times of day are good. On some roads, it’s best to travel in a scheduled police-led convoy.

The major highways are usually ok, but ask.

The big reservoirs on the border;. If you go out on the water, find out where to go and what to avoid. Stay closer to the N side. There have been some serious incidents.

Don’t be afraid to go to Mexico. Just cautious, and check it out first. And don’t get completely and utterly wasted beyond all sanity …

I have eaten street food many times, across the border, and been fine. And it was great. But there is a risk …

@speediedelivery when I visit the parents and it happens to be winter or something I’ll shovel for them.

@f00l I’ve driven as far south as Laredo, it was an interesting experience. I have some relatives that live in New Braunfels and around the Eagle Pass areas. Haven’t driven to Mexico yet, I do have a couple friends living in Mexico though. I have gone on vacation to Cancun, which was really nice. The one thing I do miss about living in Texas is having the ocean close by.

@Targaryen

Come on, now. It’s close.

Only 300 miles or so. Practically right next door.

@speediedelivery Last book was The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig but if we’re talking my typical genre then I read Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. You?

@Targaryen I am just starting Stephen and Owen King’s Sleeping Beauties. I like Brandon Sanderson from Mistborn and the Wheel of Time but Way of Kings is on my shelf to read.

I read a bit of everything, romance to horror. I should be reading instead of playing online.

@Targaryen said:

Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig but if we’re talking my typical genre then I read Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. You?

@speediedelivery said:

Stephen and Owen King’s Sleeping Beauties. I like Brandon Sanderson from Mistborn and the Wheel of Time but Way of Kings is on my shelf to read.

@sammydog01’s “Book Deals” topic is also a bit of a “book discussion” topic.

Please come! You are wanted!

https://meh.com/forum/topics/share-book-deals-here

@f00l I have been lurking ☻

I clicked a few of the audible links but have not listened yet. I am listening to the Harry Potter series on cd in the car.

@speediedelivery

Which version are you listening to?

Narrator Jim Dale (US/world distribution), or narrator Stephen Fry (UK/Commonwealth distribution)?

(The slang and local UK terminologies were somewhat modified in the international/US/world printed versions of these books, so they proceeded to record two slightly different versions of the audiobooks to match each.)

Both versions are excellent.
They have slightly (very small) differences in emotional orientations, and both are illuminating in that way.

@f00l At the moment it is book 5 by Jim Dale. I have a couple books from each one. I like listening to the differences between the two and think Stephen Fry is my preference. I was planning to own a copy of all books by both readers but I haven’t worked on it recently. I keep telling myself to break down and buy the ebook versions.

@speediedelivery

Have listened to both. More than once.

I think they are both great, and can’t really give a personal preference as to “best”.

I would say Jim Dale is insanely good for different voices per character, and for serious emotion, esp for the last portions of books 5 and 6.

I’d say that Fry is better for storytelling. For the narrative line and sequence of events.

But both are great. And both are a treat.

Incidentally, for anyone who doesn’t really want to hear this series narrated in an American drawl, the two narrators, Jim Dale and Stephen Fry, are both UK natives, and both normally use something close to *received pronunciation" in daily life.

And both created appropriate “voices” for this series.

Jim Dale has a long theatrical, tv, and film history, and Olivier specifically chose him for the National Theater.

He’s been nominated numerous times for Oscars and Emmys. He’s won a Tony, and won Grammies for the HP book, as well as sweeping the “Audies” (audiobook awards) for the HP series. Also got some mentions in the Guiness Book of World Records for the HP series.

And Stephen Fry? Well, for starters, he’s Stephen Fry.
Incidentally, he’s done a full narration of the entire Sherlock Holmes canon.

So I hope you love them both.

@RiotDemon Pretty eclectic, used to like rock music mostly when I was younger, these days I find myself enjoying things like country, Michael Bublé, jazz (real and digital), some rock, pop music. Nothing in particular. You?

@Targaryen mostly:

https://meh.com/forum/topics/the-metal-thread-for-metalheads

@RiotDemon Man, I’m going to check some of these out.

@Targaryen cool. That thread needs some love.

@Shrdlu Oh I know I just trying to stay in those weeks if I can. I didn’t realize when I first arrived, that they didn’t have snow trucks or salt. That first winter I fishtailed down the road trying to go eat Chinese food realized “this ain’t good” and went home and had ramen noodles.

I could go for some breakfast.

@Shrdlu

it snows in Texas, too, right?

You trying to mess with our Texas-given right to hot weather?

In some places it snows. Wichita Falls. Amarillo. Lubbock. They get some of the genuine.

Here, it “snows”. Kinda. It dusts. As in, not enough to make a snow angel with. Maybe twice a winter? Gone within 24 hours.

When I was a kid, I remember a few incidents of 2-3". People got out their sleds and skis.

And one glorious snowfall of 4-5". I didn’t have any boots high enough to keep the snow from getting into my socks, that time. (I was little.)

And once, in 1930, I don’t know if there was snow. But it got so cold for so long that Lake Worth froze over.

My uncle and his fellow TCU buddies took a car out onto the ice. Wish I had the pix.

My uncle, or some other idiot, having some fun.

Extreme snow conditions in FW:

OTOH, ice
Now our fucking ice-over sheets are a damned PITA.

But only usually once a winter. And usually gone in a day or two.

The worst ice I remember was the week of Jerry Jones’s effort to host his first triumphant Super Bowl at his fancy new “ugliest stadium ever”.

Poor Jerry. Instead, we all got entertained watching very heavy sheets of ice slide off that roof of that JJ White Monstrosity and shatter big-time on the ground; almost as good as Star Wars.

A stagehand, and possibly some other people, got hit with ice boulders and ice missiles.

Cowboys Stadium Ice Lawsuit Heads to Court

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Cowboys-Stadium-Ice-Lawsuit-Heads-to-Court-246855341.html%3Famp%3Dy

@Shrdlu

Boston snow, for comparison

@Targaryen

They use sand. Not salt.
At least your vehicle won’t rust.

No plows. People “drive it off the roads”. Heh.

No one knows how to drive on it.
A few have 4w drive or chains. No snow tires.

They have fancy machines to get snow/ice off the bridges.

Everything closes.

This is economically efficient.

@targaryen Welcome to Texas. I lived back east throughout my childhood, including Massachusetts. I’ve been in west Texas all my adult life. It snows here every 2 or 3 years. Rarely sticks for more than a day. We don’t have the equipment or infrastructure for it, which is bad. But on the plus they close the schools and most businesses when we get a substantial snowfall (more than a couple of inches that sticks around for a couple of days) because the city wants people off the roads. The roads are warm when it starts snowing, which melts, and as the temp drops becomes ice, pretty invariably. So everyone takes a snow day and droves of people walk to their neighborhood park with big sheets of cardboard as improvised toboggans and have a blast making horrible first time snowmen and having sloppy snowball fights. I walk around taking photos of cactus in bloom with snow on the flowers, the desert trees frosted over and the mountains rimed in white and blanketed with fog.

@moondrake
@Targaryen

DFW is about 1/2 way between Nashville and El Paso.

So figure the weather here to be a kinda compromise between the Gulf of Mexico, and those two fine locations.

The equation resolves down to:
Often hot, and kinda weird.

/giphy "wierd weather"

@f00l Yup I was attending classes at UT Dallas and what appeared to me to be a dusting a little ice was enough to call off school for 2 days. Was surprised and a little relieved.

Honestly, I’ll take the shut down DFW dustings versus the every weekend snowfalls in the north. I did get to see snowfall in the middle of the ocean once when I was deployed that was neat.

@Targaryen

They do that (close down all for any ice/snow) so that there won’t be needed rescue and cleanup for 5-10 wrecks per block.
Doing that is too expensive, and no one would ever arrive where they were going, anyway.

Even so, if you go out on ice and snow, and you wind up needing RoadSide, your wait might be 8-12 hours. That’s with everything possible closed, and everyone at home.

Because no one, exactly no one, knows how to drive on it.

And if you do know how to drive on this, you will be behind and in front of people who don’t.

@Targaryen My sister lived in the greater Dallas area and my task was to bring back 3 sleds (from mom’s in the snow belt) for her kids for the SNOW they get there on occasion so her kids could go sledding. Yes that is snow. And ice. And more snow.

@Kidsandliz Didn’t realize there was a market for that I’ll be right back going to get some sled just in case.

@Targaryen I bought them the plastic flat bottom kinds since the snow is too shallow there for the kind with runners to work.

@Kidsandliz

@Cythwulf That’d likely work. In the end though sleds are cheaper if you still want a functioning trash can lid when it’s all over.

@f00l Here in Georgia, we call that bipolar weather…well at least that is what I call it!

@mehbee

Yeah. Every place that’s far enough from the Gulf for the northern weather and the Golf weather to fight about it.

Love them ice storms. : p

@f00l not fair using the blizzard of 76 for comparison!

@jbartus

Fair enough. Snow vs dust.

And it was '78.

And you’ve seen a lot more serious blizzards up thataway since then, too.

@f00l It was '78. I was in 8th grade.

@f00l sorry your right I wasn’t even on the horizon yet so I get my years mixed up sometimes.

@mfladd
@jbartus

Saw it. Drove in it (no snow tires, no chains, explosive pinto). Fell into piles of it. Shoveled the exploso-mobile out of it.
And shoveled some other people’s cars as well. I was young and stupid. I offered.

Froze my ass off, out in it, for weeks/months.

Walked and slipped on those narrow icy footpaths people dug between walls of snow.

Manhattan, and visiting the Boston area.

Damn, it took forever to melt. The last piles of it, when? April? May?

The comparison pix are fair, considering.

Boston “blizzard” vs DFW “blizzard”.

@f00l we’re not to blame for DFW’s gross misuse of the term

@f00l They are really beautiful and really dangerous

@mehbee

Ford Pintos?

I never thought of “beauty”. Hmm.

@f00l Giggles NO…ice storms!!

@mehbee

@CaptAmehrican Definitely Irk, he’s my kind of humor, but Glenn is like Robin to Irk’s Batman.

Favorite Color: Coquelicot or blue.

Gotta say Gummy bears because it’s satisfying to bite the heads off first. Then I feel a little guilty then that feeling passes and I eat the rest.

I’m saying knives, until someone invents a knife-speaker, so I can invest my own comical sounds to cue when I open it up.

@mfladd Yeah I’m a Patriots fan, and funny enough I did live close to Worcester right on the border of “rural” Massachusetts and “there be dragons.” In the home of the Elias Howe and his illustrious hair.

@mfladd

Are Maryland and Delaware in W MA?

@f00l Questionably.

@mfladd

Questionably

So many, many queries about you and your world can be answered that way.

/giphy "Questionably"

Glad you got family+Yoshi. That way, you’re at least somewhat other than “Questionably” sometimes.

@f00l No one really knows, they’ve sent teams but… i-it’s better not to ask.

@Targaryen
@mfladd

Then let’s ask.

/giphy ASK

@f00l
@Targaryen is right.

@Targaryen I know of the town of which you speak. My only experience with it is sleeping with a girl from there once. Ok, TMI.

@mfladd Yeah, it’s pretty grim there in the winter. Christmas has a certain charm though. As for the women I’m dated some as well lol.

@Targaryen welcome to the ranks of the most reviled and despised members of our little community.

@jbartus Thanks, I’ll make sure to try my hardest to lower the standard just a little bit more.

@Targaryen

@mfladd

@Targaryen @mfladd

The question now though is which one of you is the duck?

@Targaryen I’m not sure I’d call routing for the Patriots a low standard. Maybe in the eyes of less enlightened fans of other teams but we know better.

@Cerridwyn That picture sure has a lot going on in it.

@therealjrn gamer girls gotta game

@Cerridwyn So you say…

@therealjrn nah
i remember going into game shops back when i was not yet a mother and the nerds saying, ‘you game’ and i said yep, and even GM’d a bit here and there. My daughter grew up gaming, and going to gaming events and even placed 3rd in an early regional MTG tournament when she was like 11 or 12

@Cerridwyn @therealjrn

@RiotDemon

@thismyusername Really? That’s interesting didn’t know that.

@Targaryen if you get any swag from him grab me something and include it when you ship my goat trophy please.

@thismyusername That would probably be my second question right after “what do the halls of Blizzard smell like.”

@thismyusername we get trophies?

@jbartus I didn’t. Still waiting for my whatever for asking irk.

@jbartus supposedly… but ya know it look them over a year to get one to whats his face, and I’m moving up on 2 years waiting…

@RiotDemon I got a button/badge…

@thismyusername maybe it’s still waiting on the shelf to be mailed out. I don’t think I’ll hold my breath.

@RiotDemon I didn’t think about that, or maybe all the goat trophies are in a box under the speaker docks… just a matter of time before they find them!

@thismyusername @RiotDemon I am feeling for you kids. I have my trophy and all of you should have one also. If meh staff support the electing of a GoaT as indicated by a badge, I would like to know that at least a trophy would be sent to the GoaTs for use as a paperweight.

@mfladd wow. It does exist. So appropriately meh.

Somehow I think they stopped doing silly stuff like that.

@RiotDemon Yup. MIne is still in a box from moving, but Narf’s was in Google images!

@mfladd

If they gave the Goats Emeritus specialized badges, the Goat Vote competition would really heat up.

Cool Goats Table. Everytime wants to sit there.

/giphy "cool kids"

@Pavlov Sir, in the service I was trained to only perform to the best of my abilities, to strive for greatness, to be a shining beacon of all that is great about being human and America… I graciously accept your invitation to step myself down a few rungs.

@Targaryen

Step down a few rungs? Not fall?

Slacker.

/giphy fall fail

@f00l I’d be ok with a controlled descent.

@medz

@mfladd some days I wish I were so inclined as to affix stickers to my car… Some days.

@mfladd

As a Masshole, do you take advantage of the Texans with your wicked mad driving skills?

Different sort of highway system. Driving conditions around greater Boston kinda force some of the local behind-the-wheel aggression.

Roads around here are either jammed to the degree that only people who know shortcuts are moving, or everyone’s slow, or there’s plenty of open road.

No driver madness to get to/thru an intersection or exchange a little faster would help much.

If you are thinking of driving here in a manner as is legendarily common around Boston (I’ve driven there); be aware that in western states, there is far less need to be a complete “masshole” on the road.

And, perhaps, certain notable added risks, as well.

People who are most likely to get seriously annoyed are either “masters of the advanced slow-down blocking techniques”, or are driving with some notable HP.

So these latter drivers can catch you and harass you if they don’t like you. And if they are inclined to harass (these are rare, but still!), they prob don’t care much about being late to something else. They got time to chase you down. Some will.

You never know who might get real po’ed, or what they might have with them. Or how far they might wanna take things.

@f00l You don’t even have to live near Boston to drive like a Masshole. Just be born in MA. It’s in our DNA.

@mfladd

There is stuff in Western DNA too.

If you drive the cities and roads in the American West , go fast if you wanna chance the cops. (85 isn’t fast).

(If you want some competition, try out a road from a well drilling site or area heading toward town on Friday evening. You won’t win.)

Speed if you wish. But be a little polite about it. DNA, ya know.

@mfladd Heh, I try to drive pretty safe around here in Dallas at least, this place can be kind of a mad house with various philosophies of “driving” it’s better to drive with the mindset of “imagine what the dumbest thing everyone around you can do and then anticipate that.” I’ve done well so far.

@Targaryen

Yeah. Much local “stoooopid” on the roads.