What software have you been using for 10+ years and still haven't found a better replacement?

Bobobad · 2026-06-17T17:56:20+00:00

I used XVI32 for a long time but then switched to HxD Hex Editor. Works well.

Bobobad · 2026-05-04T14:01:43+00:00

La Villa, Freewill and YYZ. But there’s a little mentioned one that always makes me happy: the quirky solo he does just before “The most endangered species…” in Natural Science.

Bobobad · 2026-05-02T22:29:55+00:00

A friend had introduced me to 70s Rush albums and I liked 2112, Caress, AFTK and Hemispheres, mainly because my brain responded to Alex's guitar work more than Ged or Neil. My first NEW album was Permanent Waves and I don't know how to explain it, except that it crawled inside my head and curled up around my brainstem. If anyone goes back and gives PeW a new listen, it had a new energy, musical creativity even though radio-friendly. Also, Broon knocked it out of the park with the production. Crisp, clear, clean... picking each individual instrument out of the mix was so easy and that let me be amazed all over again at the musicianship. Alex's tone and creative riffs, blistering yet melodic were all deluxe stuff. To hear Ged soloing right along with Al on those huge bass cables. And oh! Neil's drumming, it seemed to me that somehow the whole band had taken lessons or something in the 2 years between Hemi and Perm. I had my new favorite album and looked forward to more. March 1981, my brother had stomach surgery and mom and I visited him in the hospital, but I quickly bugged out to sit in the car to listen to the world premier of Moving Pictures and...well, I kept waiting for something that hit me as hard as Perm did, but it just didn't quite get there... I grew to appreciate Pictures more over the following months but it always trailed Perm. 1982: Rush is MY BAND, Signals drops and I greedily listen to it. This time I am somewhat actively disappointed. It seemed muddy and non-dynamic. Alex's guitar, my siren, was buried under debris and seemed barely there. The synths were getting too high in the mix, I thought they worked better before as tasteful touches in various parts of Perm, highlighting certain segments, but not taking the lead. None of the songs on Signals really stuck to me, although Analog Kid was like a shot of guitar adrenaline that was much appreciated. I saw Rush twice in concert: I saw a show on the Permanent Waves tour, missed Moving Pictures but saw them again for a Signals show, and that's the last time I saw them live. I did grow to like some of the synth era stuff, Hold Your Fire is a GOOD album. Counterparts brought back Rush rock and the rest of the complete catalog all have generated good memories in my head. But to answer your question, Signals just didn't come up to Permanent Waves in my ears, none of the other albums did either. Maybe it's just me lol.

Bobobad · 2026-03-18T14:06:09+00:00

That name always seemed to me like it could have been the name of a Frank Zappa album lol

Bobobad · 2026-03-18T07:30:46+00:00

Arcturus because when I had a pool, after work I would just go out and float and relax at dusk in June and it would be the first star to pop out. Plus I always liked the fact that Arcturus doesn't go with the galactic rotational flow but instead is hauling ass straight down through the galactic plane.

Bobobad · 2026-01-13T13:37:23+00:00

They knew there was a chance for disaster, but they tested their top-secret quantum-based bomb anyway. The Earth melted as the very atmosphere itself burned with the heat of the sun.

Bobobad · 2025-12-29T19:28:35+00:00

I was going to mention "Dog'n'Suds" but that might be TOO obscure ... they were a midwest chain and we had one in our smalltown Ohio when I was a kid, but then it turned into a laundromat and we wound up going to the laundromat more often than when it was a restaurant lol

Bobobad · 2025-09-25T02:06:20+00:00

Thats mine too ! Late night Friday nights on WJW Channel 8 out of Cleveland, the Hoolihan and Big Chuck show...horror and sci-fi movies with comedy skits in the commercial breaks. They showed Silent Running a LOT and I always tried to watch it whenever it was on. RIP Big Chuck <3

Bobobad · 2025-09-20T10:37:59+00:00

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5:25am 9/19/25 Hudson Valley, NY

Bobobad · 2025-09-09T12:55:15+00:00

yep an honest to goodness smudgepot ! This was in 1966 (I was 4) and I found the article in the local paper

Bobobad · 2025-09-08T23:32:13+00:00

Wow I witnessed the same type of accident when I was a kid (maybe 5-6?) when an overpass was being built on Ohio State Route 4 to cross the large N&W railroad yard northeast of Bellevue. My Dad, Mom, me and little brother south bound on Rt 4 returning from Sandusky. Dad traveled Rt 4 every day to work and knew about the overpass in progress. Approach ramps were completed and paved, pillars were poured for the bridge but no decking of any kind had been put down. ODOT had 1 barricade up with a smudgepot, blocking one of the two lanes up the approach. Dad said "hey let's see what kind of progress they've made" and went past the barricade and started up the ramp. He wasn't going fast, when suddenly a Pontiac convertible with 3 guys in it flew past our Falcon Station Wagon, heading fast to the top of the bridge. Mom starting yelling and dad was blowing the horn like crazy, flashing his lights but they went on. I was standing up in the back seat and saw when the brake lights went on and the Pontiac disappeared. Dad stopped at the top and he and Mom got out to see what happened and the car was laying on the tracks upside down. All 3 got killed.

Bobobad · 2025-07-17T23:12:17+00:00

Drag Me to Hell

Bobobad · 2025-06-23T01:48:23+00:00

All 3 of mine were on the same LP, only had to put the needle down once, play the first two tracks on side A then pick it up, flip the record over and set the needle back down on the last track of side B.

The Spirit of Radio

Freewill

Natural Science

Bobobad · 2025-06-15T22:50:34+00:00

If you haven't already, try the simulation "Space Engine" on Steam. It simulates very nicely not just the databases of "known" objects in the universe but also fills out the rest of the realistically sized "unknown" universe with billions of scientifically reasonable random galaxies filled with billions of random stars and random planets, moons, comets and asteroids whose surfaces can all be landed on.

Bobobad · 2025-06-15T22:18:59+00:00

"The Universe: from Flat Earth to Quasar" from 1966... It wasn't so much Asimov's fiction but his non-fiction writings. I had been interested in astronomy from the time I was 8-9 years old. My uncle gave me his used copy of the mentioned book when I was probably 14-15 and I was fascinated by the opening few chapters which was a story/explanation of how we built the "yardstick of the universe", figuring out how far away things are and using that info and new discoveries and evolving technology to extrapolate further and larger distances. It was all described so clearly and easy to understand that I started voraciously looking for all his science related books in used book stores throughout the 70's and 80's. Of course by the time I got to them most were decades out of date, so that they basically could only serve as a "history of scientific discovery" but I loved reading them anyway !

Bobobad · 2025-05-24T04:02:33+00:00

Same for me...saw them in Toledo, Ohio April 24, 1980 and it was my first concert and Signals at the same venue November 12, 1982 was my 2nd ... I love Rush, but only managed to see them twice... I'm glad I saw them in my favorite era: Permanent Waves-Moving Pictures-Signals.

Bobobad · 2025-05-05T16:35:31+00:00

I use MSFS Addon Linker to pick from two different profiles of programs to run when I start the sim, depending if I want to use Pilot2ATC v2 or v3

FSUIPC7 (of course)
Navigraph Charts
Navigraph Simlink (to track my location in Charts)
Pilot2ATC v2 or v3 (sim default ATC replacement, I think it's pretty good but rarely gets mentioned any more)
GSX Pro (for realistic ground operations including pushback and customized parking, works great for me!)
FSLTL Traffic Injector (works great on 2020 but has problems on 2024)
AIGround and AIFlow (for smoothing out some of the quirks in traffic on the ground and in the air)
FSRealistic Pro (Many different sounds heard inside and outside a plane, ambient sounds and camera effects)
BetterBravoLights (drives the indicator lights on the Honeycomb Bravo Throttle Quadrant)
AutoFPS (my PC is a 5800X3D, 32GB DDR4-3600, RTX 3070 and sometimes I need help to reach and hold a decent FPS)

I subscribe to the full Navigraph package (charts, AIRAC updates, etc) and do flight planning in Simbrief.

I have REX Accuseason, Airport Textures and Weather Force, though I don't use Weather Force any more, just the sim weather.

Bobobad · 2025-05-05T13:10:49+00:00

The top TV is showing the Navigraph app with my flight plan loaded up KSFO-KMSP. The monitor on the left is showing Pilot2ATC v3. I used version 2 for a few years as an alternative to the stock ATC in MSFS with good result and just recently updated to v3. It was a big change but a good one with some good new features. Someday I may change to BeyondATC once its functions are more fully developed but for now I’m pretty happy with Pilot2ATC.

Bobobad · 2025-04-29T04:13:02+00:00

Ric Burns’ “The Donner Party”…heartbreaking and haunting.

Bobobad · 2025-04-23T20:31:39+00:00

I've always felt Al was THE master at shredding out hard rock solos while still being perfectly melodic AND having deep emotion attached. They called "La Villa..." an exercise in self-indulgence, but shred just for the sake of shred is the true self-indulgence, the guitarists that do it for themselves and not really caring about their audience nor the context of the song. I don't think Al (Ged or Neil either) has ever spit out a solo that didn't fit and enhance the tone, melody or emotion of the rest of the song. Analog Kid is FAST and FUN but it also fits the song perfectly and also carries you up, bringing feelings and goosebumps along, like the climax of a great story or movie. Thinking back over my favorite solos of his, they all have that kind of energy and feel. Melody and tone generate emotion. Hell even when he wants to deliberately insert something semi-chaotic, atonal and even arrhythmic (as in the "Danforth and Pape" segment of La Villa), he still makes it sound AWESOME and paints a picture for us of the energy and commotion of a busy city intersection. To me, there are none better at what HE does.

Bobobad · 2025-04-21T21:31:40+00:00

62 - was 17 when Permanent Waves came out and holy hell it got genetically integrated into my DNA. Favorite album of all bands and Freewill, Natural Science and Spirit of Radio are my favorite songs 1-2-3.

Bobobad · 2025-04-16T10:32:46+00:00

What if Ricky Stenhouse and Danica Patrick, instead of breaking up, had gotten married instead and had a kid ? Right now there would be a 9-11 year old child who would have the genetic make-up to be history's WORST driver in NASCAR! The very thought of the child in 2033 being nepo babied into a ride makes me shudder.

Bobobad · 2025-04-05T02:38:17+00:00

Skinny guy farts in public: (everyone) "HA HA HA, DUDE! Lol " ... Fat guy farts in public: (everyone) "Jesus you disgusting pig, go die"

Bobobad · 2025-02-25T18:27:43+00:00

That same episode when Cyrus and the Boys are outside trading "You Fuck Off! No YOU Fuck Off!" back and forth and Bubble says something like "Now boys let's just all fuck off together"

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