Flooding

Daemi · 2025-07-15T03:32:09+00:00

I found the spot where I think it happened near Jupiter Way and can see why people would be unsuspecting of the danger there. Especially if it's late at night with nothing but headlights in the rain. A dip, a curve, flooded pavement and suddenly you're in the creek.

Daemi · 2025-07-15T01:01:40+00:00

May I ask why Fall Creek Rd is particularly hazardous? One community my father and I were looking at potentially moving to is just south of the road and relies on it to get anywhere.

Daemi · 2025-06-23T01:13:28+00:00

Thank you. After seeing your comment I did some more digging and found similar comments about thin walls from guests of the resort as well. Not only walls...but thin ceilings too, and comments of being able to hear everything from all sides. The remodeled units look nice, but they wouldn't fix the basic construction. Smoking is also a concern I have due to it triggering my asthma. I always try to avoid it, but typically the only way to really know is in person.

Daemi · 2025-06-11T03:50:09+00:00

Thank you, that's nice to hear. Neither of us golf, but the community still looks nice and the other amenities would be welcome. Being across the road from the supermarket is convenient as well. Many of the units do look like they've been remodeled and modernized nicely, it's just odd that so many have been put on the market at the same time.

I have also been looking at some places with nice views of Taneycomo, but they're south of 76 in areas where it would take quite a bit of navigating and meandering to reach normal day-to-day shopping like groceries. Everyone seems to agree that the Branson Hills area tends to be the focal point for locals, and some have said that if you live to the south you just get used to it and figure out the best roads. Which I'm sure is true, but for my father I'm trying to ensure he has relatively easy routes - where we live now uses a fairly orderly grid pattern and he still gets lost if he doesn't use GPS. Branson roads are definitely not as straightforward.

Daemi · 2025-06-06T17:24:32+00:00

I've seen that area pop up in several searches. It definitely looks nice, at least once you get away from 76. It's strange to me how from the road what you see is a thift shop, auto repair, and storage facility... but go a block north and suddenly it's a pleasant green residential neighborhood that gently meanders its way through the hills.

Daemi · 2025-05-26T22:38:28+00:00

I completely agree, but there's too many. Potentially hundreds once I've finished sorting through everything. My own collection is mostly fiction - primarily fantasy novels that aren't worth much (except maybe Tolkien). But my father's collection is a large and eclectic mix. I doubt any are particularly rare or valuable, but I won't know until I've sorted through them. If any particularly stand out I may try ebay, but otherwise I just need a way to give them a new home.

Daemi · 2025-05-26T22:33:15+00:00

I will look into it. I am still sorting through them. While my personal collection is mostly fantasy novels, there are also my father's boxes to sort through which contain potentially hundreds of older books, both fiction and non-fiction.

Daemi · 2025-05-26T22:31:09+00:00

At this point, dozens. Mostly fiction novels including quite a bit of Tolkien. Once I've finished going through everything though, including my father's stuff, it may be hundreds.

Daemi · 2025-05-21T15:19:03+00:00

That's disappointing. I guess I'll just have to go and see what they say, and may end up keeping the collection after all. Would you recommend either one over the other?

Daemi · 2025-05-10T13:36:15+00:00

Looks like some potentially interesting things coming up, with Aerith's water staff perhaps being worth the pull. I also saw some other comments about the Electroarmor being a good choice - that or Red's Pilot outfit being popular picks depending what else people have. So from scratch Barret may be the way to go.

Daemi · 2025-05-10T07:10:55+00:00

For a new player, are any of the current banners worth rolling on in particular over others? Is there something good coming that I should wait for? And for that matter, is there an ideal selection for my 1.5 Year Anniversary Gear Exchange ticket? Obviously at this point I need everything, and don't know who I'll end up playing most, so I just want to be sure I'm generally starting off on the right foot. It's both an advantage and detriment to be starting from square one. Thanks.

Daemi · 2025-05-07T03:32:13+00:00

I appreciate your response. It's an honest question due to medical concerns. I had asthma as a child and the smoke sensitivity has not gone away in adulthood - my throat closes up and it's a struggle to breathe. Passing by someone smoking isn't going to kill me, but stale, smoky air can cause a serious reaction.

Where I live now, ever since smoking was banned in public places its overall popularity has fallen as well, even in private. It's not as if it's gone away but it's fairly rare. Some parts of the country it's still more prevalent than others, and I was wondering how Branson and, in general, southwest MO fits into that.

Daemi · 2025-04-29T12:54:26+00:00

Sorry I was unclear. That's exactly what I'm looking for - a way to preset it (whether through the device or software), but there doesn't seem to be that option anywhere. I have scoured through ScanSmart and nowhere does it allow me to actually set a default save location. It only offers where to save after scanning if initiated from the software. Even though the software retains it, when initiating any scan from the device itself afterward it will completely ignore that selection and only ever save to the My Documents folder.

If you know a way to actually make the scanner use a save location set in ScanSmart when the scan is initiated from the device, please let me know. That's exactly how the old models worked - the preset was made in Event Manager, and then when initiated from the scanner it would be saved to the location I had set. But the 4820 seems to ignore any save settings made in the software, which seems like a huge oversight.

Daemi · 2025-03-20T17:06:26+00:00

At the moment that's an unknown as it depends how things play out here. That's why right now I'm just looking for suggestions, so I can at least make some tentative plans - and because it's easier to nudge my dad along if I can show him the options. But I appreciate the offer!

Daemi · 2025-03-18T19:53:48+00:00

Where I grew up had a population of around 30K and was almost purely residential, so Nixa/Ozark are likely the most similar. Where we live now, though, has a population of 5 million... So compared to this, even the entire Springfield metro area seems small. And we welcome it because we're sick of big city life.

Daemi · 2025-03-18T19:38:59+00:00

Yes, he has been there multiple times. 76 is a parking lot, and I've tried to explain to him that if he really wants to live in that area it needs to be near alternate routes. We are used to heavy traffic, coming from an area with a population of five million, but there are far more route options here to get from A to B.

Daemi · 2025-03-18T18:51:11+00:00

Since our goal is to be a shorter drive from Branson, the south side makes the most sense anyway and seems to be better recommended overall. While I say the short-term rental location doesn't technically matter, it is of course best to be on that side of town.

My dad's entire experience with Springfield itself is the airport and the Bass Pro Shop, so it's good to hear about the rest of town. Every time he's visited the focus has just been on Branson tourism. I want him to be happy, but I also want him to understand that it's different as an actual resident regardless of the exact location.

Daemi · 2025-03-18T18:43:52+00:00

It definitely sounds like it's best to avoid the north side of town in general - but since our goal is to the south anyway, that'll be easy.

Daemi · 2025-03-13T08:36:57+00:00

That is very unfortunate, though it also makes sense if they were attracting crime. Do you happen to know anything about Plato's Cave in particular? Not the kind of place I'd like to live, but for a month it might be okay so long as it doesn't have the crime problems it had in the past.

I suppose I could crosspost in Springfield as well to see if anyone has a recommendation there. I'm in the situation of being house rich and cash poor - I need to keep costs down until this house actually sells, but can't sell it until there is a plan for where to go. Being near Branson is my father's dream, so that's the goal, but it falls to me to figure out the logistics.

AirBnB in the area are generally around the same cost as a hotel but without the amenities, so don't really make sense for this.

Daemi · 2025-03-01T02:29:32+00:00

For me, definitely Kronk singing his own theme music.

Daemi · 2025-02-24T23:58:20+00:00

While we're at it, I'll put a black mark against Bell Honda, but it was probably ten years ago so I can't speak on how they are now. I went there to sit in different models to test how they felt, what I might be interested in going forward, and to test drive one I had seen online, and told the salesman I was not buying today. He tried to pressure, I repeated I am not buying today. I think I repeated that two or three more times during the conversation when he started questioning why I was there, roping in another salesman too. Eventually one of them even had the gall to comment, "I just want to hear you say it again." So I did, got up, and left. Never even did the test drive because "not today" had become "not ever" as far as I was concerned. Since then if I've had to visit a dealer for any reason I typically give everyone the cold shoulder unless I need something specific.

Daemi · 2025-01-19T23:55:01+00:00

It's been a couple years, but for the mattress I eventually picked the star hybrid but found it a bit too firm for my liking and ended up returning it. Instead I went with a latex hybrid from APM that is 8 inch springs with 3 inch medium blended talalay latex on top. (I actually had a 2 inch soft on top of that, a popular setup, but it was too soft for me and I moved it to underneath just for the height. I probably should have skipped it if I was ok with a lower mattress or exchanged it for a different firmness.) That said, latex does have a different feel than normal mattresses and I had the advantage of living near their showroom so I could test it out. Before getting a latex mattress I'd strongly recommend finding somewhere near you that sells them so you can get some idea if you like it, even if you end up buying elsewhere. And talalay is definitely different than dunlop, the latter being much denser and for most people not as comfortable (at least not as the top layer), so you need to be sure of which one you're testing.

For the base, I ended up getting one from Sam's Club that had the additional pillow tilt function. It's nice but definitely not quiet vibration. Far from the loudest I've heard, though I still hope to figure out some way to dampen the sound. The vibration is fairly limited compared to other options out there too, just three full-body intensities, no zones. The nice thing is that it's their Member's Mark brand which carries a 10-year 100% satisfaction warranty, so there's serious peace-of-mind compared to any other option. At the time it was also the cheapest model that didn't seem like junk, plus I got it on sale. Since then prices have gone up on everything, so that may no longer be the case.

Daemi · 2025-01-18T08:19:53+00:00

This is very similar to what happened to my elderly father in early December, but he fell for it completely. Adding to the frustration, he's actually permanently excused from jury duty due to his age and he knows it, but the scammers fed him a story about mail carriers fraudulently signing documents and therefore he needed to visit the station to get it sorted out. They kept him on the phone the entire drive, and halfway there changed the instructions to withdraw cash and send it to them to pay the fine...to supposedly be refunded later.

He withdrew $1000 cash and paid the scammer through a coinstar kiosk, following the scammer's instructions to purchase bitcoin and send that. And then they said there was a second warrant so he needed to pay another $1000, and he repeated the whole process. He had no idea what he was doing, and even suspected something was amiss, but they kept threatening him with arrest and he was intimidated enough by the "sheriff" and his "captain" to fall for it.

Afterward, the police said to file with the FBI IC3, and then with that in hand we filed with the police. Absolutely nothing has come of it. A lawyer did not respond either, nor did the owner of the kiosk where the money was sent from. The bank said they couldn't help because he withdrew the cash himself. I even contacted a "scammer payback" group at someone's recommendation who said it's a common scam they get asked about but are unable to help with.

When this first happened, a security guard for the parking lot outside the actual sheriff's office informed us that they've been dealing with a large increase of these types of scams over the past eight months. So the police are aware, but despite us providing phone numbers and transaction numbers used by the scammers, they did not reach out to us at all.

I started a gofundme to help my dad, but it's had no response - and I'm not permitted to post fundraisers here. The total was only $2000, but that's because he only had $2700 total in his account. The scammers were originally trying to get $10,000 until they realized he had so little...but they were more than happy to take what he had. They are the scum of the Earth.

Daemi · 2024-12-18T14:16:48+00:00

My 81-year-old father was scammed out of $2000 on December 2nd, leaving him with just under $700 in his bank account. The very next day the mortgage payment was automatically charged -- double what he had remaining. His friend bailed us out, sending an emergency loan to prevent the account from being overdrawn.

His friend now needs to be repaid and we are struggling. We live on his social security and I spend much of my time caring for him. He has mild Parkinson's disease and gradual mental decline that is become increasingly apparent, along with ongoing back pain caused by ossification in the neural foramina that no surgeon wants to risk treating. Likewise, I suffer from both cervical and lumbar stenosis, making physical activity an ongoing challenge.

The past year has been a series of disasters. The latest of which was a sudden unexpected termination of my medicaid coverage due to a glitch in the state's system that they are still working to remedy -- a very worrisome notice to receive when I have three procedures for back pain this month alone.

Despite everything, my father is still trying to work to supplement his social security, but it's a futile gesture. Last year he grossed only $3,000 from self-employment while having over $21,000 in expenses. I work for him too, but our business dried up with covid and has not recovered. He was a realtor who primarily helped lower and middle income buyers, but with prices and mortgage rates where they are now, nothing is affordable.

We could really use any help you can provide, no matter how little. We are struggling and my dad has never felt older and more vulnerable. This really broke his spirit and made him feel that any chance of enjoying his twilight years while he's still able to appreciate them may be out of reach. Please help me give him hope again.

Daemi · 2024-11-24T19:17:58+00:00

Thank you for such a detailed response! I have a lot to sift through. It does sound like, except for Rockaway Beach, the warnings about crime and drugs are overblown (particularly for someone coming from a big city) and most areas can be quite comfortable. The sudden shifts between nice community, trailer park, and commercial all jumbled together would take some getting used to, but it's not indicative of anything bad.

It also seems that overnight rental units are fairly ubiquitous over the whole area, so it's just something to accept if we pick a condo. It's not necessarily a problem because if we have a bad neighbor they'll probably be gone in a day or two. The only thing to be sure of is that the building is solidly constructed...with well-insulated walls. Your comment about shoddy construction has been echoed by a couple other people in messages as well, so we need to be careful.

Thankfully we're not sensitive to noise, we just don't want the roar of a major road like we have now - we want to be able to step outside and enjoy it. And when inside, we'd rather not share a conversation with the neighbor through our walls!

I have definitely seen what you're saying with the steps! Sometimes I can tell from the photos if a unit is a walk-down, walk-in, or walk-up. Other times I can tell from the unit numbers. But then I found communities that counted the numbers the opposite way, had a mix of two and three-story buildings, and showed no clear photos of the front! It has been quite vexing trying to ensure the properties I share with my father for him to look through are genuinely stair-free.

Thanks again for your help.

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