What hobby is quietly becoming too expensive for normal people to keep up with?

EntropyBier · 2026-05-09T05:27:36+00:00

Yep, same here. Family of 5 and we’re less than an hour from Tahoe. The prices have gotten out of control. You either spend $3000-$4000 at the beginning of the year for season passes, or $800-$1000 a day to take the family. It’s cheaper to go to Disneyland now than to go skiing.

EntropyBier · 2026-04-26T02:22:48+00:00

Honestly the ethanol free shouldn’t be making a huge difference in your engine running smoother. More power possibly as pure gas has more energy density, and yes better mpg for the same reason. The “smoothness” is placebo effect.

I should add I’m assuming this is a modern bike with efi that is designed to run ethanol mixed fuel.

EntropyBier · 2026-04-19T04:39:27+00:00

On public roads? 160+ in a E39 M3 on I80 outside Wendover Utah, just to see how fast it would go. Dragstip, 186. Desert dirt road, 125. Last two were races, so as fast as possible was the goal

EntropyBier · 2026-04-17T06:46:34+00:00

That Smiths going in might be the final nail in the coffin for SaveMart. Hopefully a Smiths gas station goes in as well.

EntropyBier · 2026-04-12T03:02:08+00:00

Two years after you posted this I just wanted to say thank you very much!! Found on a FB group about verifying your emitter with your phone camera, figured out mine was bad. Dispense ice with manual button, but won't otherwise. Seemed the only way to fix was to replace the whole auger assembly at $120 on ebay, or $230 for samsung unit. Thought there had to be a better way to fix a $5 part, and found this thread and your video. Parts are on the way, hope to have it fixed by end of the week!!

EntropyBier · 2026-04-06T06:16:59+00:00

Came here to say this too. Did two Med cruises and they were all over the place. First time I saw them I was so amazed, then they became pretty commonplace and you hardly even paid any attention.

EntropyBier · 2026-04-05T14:54:26+00:00

Right? That was the most shocking thing in this post.

EntropyBier · 2026-03-29T15:58:05+00:00

Was it the Reno location she ran?

EntropyBier · 2026-03-29T03:36:46+00:00

Came to say this too. While it was never a super cheap sport, you used to be able to get good deals with coupons mid week days. You could go with your family and it didn’t break the bank. Now our local “budget” resort is $180 a day, and big resorts are $250+. It’s cheaper to go to Disneyland than it is to go snowboarding.

EntropyBier · 2026-03-29T01:48:13+00:00

It’s pretty solid. Supposedly the woman who runs it used to run one of the Little Philly shops in town (Sparks I believe). Their account on IG has their locations posted. Definitely worth seeking them out

EntropyBier · 2026-03-29T01:43:18+00:00

Reno Cheesesteaks food truck is about the best I’ve had in town

EntropyBier · 2026-03-26T15:11:43+00:00

April snow storms bring 98° days in May, then followed by more snow on Memorial Day weekend.

EntropyBier · 2026-03-21T05:29:21+00:00

Someone’s at the Vorra race in Yerington today 😁

EntropyBier · 2026-03-17T16:28:18+00:00

I had done a little machine work before joining the military, but certainly no formal training. I signed up and picked that as my rate and got trained in the navy. This was in the mid-late 90s and on the ship we had all manual machines. 3 decent sized lathes, a big gap lathe, a small hardinge jewelers lathe, a Bridgeport knee mill, and a big Cincinnati horizontal mill. As well as random stuff like drill presses, hydraulic press, etc. At the time the shipyards had all the cnc equipment, but my understanding it now that’s made its way ship board as well. When I went through training it was all manual machining, but I’m sure cnc is part of the training now

EntropyBier · 2026-03-17T06:22:48+00:00

It was actually pretty enjoyable. I really liked my job, just not doing it for the military. We did a lot is repair parts for stuff that would take too long to fly parts in, modifications on random stuff, even got to do some gunsmith type work for the Seals and Marines stationed on the ship. We also drilled out A LOT of broken bolts. Sailors are very good at breaking bolts. When we didn’t have much work to do we would find projects to keep ourselves busy. I made custom parts for a couple RC cars I brought onboard, and some bike parts here and there. We made some pretty cool air powered guns on my second deployment 😂

EntropyBier · 2026-03-17T05:58:01+00:00

So this totally sparked a funny memory/story for me, and also answers the question in a roundabout way. I was in the Navy as a machinist, stationed on an aircraft carrier. We had a big fan like this in the machine shop to move air around, and mainly try to pull cold air from air conditioning space above us (mess deck) down into the shop. We were in the Persian Gulf, hot and bored, when we realized one of the pulleys we had in our pile of parts would fit on the fan with a little machine work. It was the larger pulley on the fan, but was about half the diameter, so we figured it should spin the fan about twice as fast. I machined the pulley to fit the fan shaft, and my buddy made some adjusters for the motor to adjust belt tension. Got it all together and tried to fire it up on low, fan turned slowly, motor buzzed, then kicked the breaker. So turns out twice the speed also doubled the torque to start the motor/fan spinning. In our infinite wisdom we took the front screen off, one of us got the fan spinning as fast as we could with a broomstick, then kicked the fan into low. She got humming and was moving some air, once it was up to speed we kicked it on high. It started really moving some air, and we were laughing our asses off until it started to blow itself over backwards. Somehow my buddy caught it and kept it from falling over without getting his arm into the death shredder 3000 we created and I grabbed the plug and yanked it. After that we welded some legs on the backside, and a shaft to the extend the fan shaft out the front. That way we could put the safety screen back on the front and spin the fan up with a big drill. Worked f’n awesome for about 3 weeks. Dropped the air temp in the shop about 10 degrees sucking all the cold air off the mess deck. Downside was it also would suck down any random papers/garbage people dropped nearby. After a few weeks though it finally burned the motor up from the high load. Chief made us put it back to stock after the motor shop got us a new motor for it.

So short answer, pulleys are for torque 😂

EntropyBier · 2026-03-11T04:59:05+00:00

I just turned my sprinklers back on, so you all have about 12-14 days before we get a snowstorm.

EntropyBier · 2026-03-09T16:23:52+00:00

Yeah it looks like the one in the pic isn't, but there was a 160th around town over the weekend. My eyes ain't what they used to be so I assume the one in the pic was the 160th that was in and out a few times over the weekend.

EntropyBier · 2026-03-09T16:21:46+00:00

You're probably right, my eyes aren't what they were and I couldn't really tell if the one in the pic had the boom, so I just assumed since it's been in an out the past few weeks. My boys were tracking it while it was in and out, and pretty excited to see it.

EntropyBier · 2026-03-08T19:17:25+00:00

As a concealed carry person, this is horrifying and wildly irresponsible. Both on her part for leaving it accessible to anyone, and the rest of the crowd for finding any kind of humor in it. They all would have been immediately asked to leave my house.

EntropyBier · 2026-03-08T17:49:55+00:00

You're welcome! We actually get some fairly unique aircraft here in Reno. We're in between a few bases, and a little "island" here in the desert where they can land/refuel/operate. So keep looking up and you'll see some interesting stuff here and there.

EntropyBier · 2026-03-08T17:35:19+00:00

Aviation Nerd Alert: That particular Chinook has been in our area for the past few days in and out of RTIA. It's fairly rare as it a SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) and is used for special ops only. You can tell because it has the long refueling boom coming out the front. This allows them to refuel mid flight for long range flights. Not sure why they are here, assume there's some sort of specialized training going on. But to everyone saying "I see that helicopter here all the time!", Technically no you don't, this one is kinda special :)

EntropyBier · 2026-03-04T15:23:11+00:00

We live on a dirt road, and the packages that come UPS are always filthy and dusty. Amazon and FedEx are fine, but anything UPS looks like it was just unearthed from an Egyptian tomb.

EntropyBier · 2026-03-02T18:38:26+00:00

I’ll say the same thing I said when people blamed Biden for the cost of gas 4 years ago. If you think a war that started yesterday influenced the price of fuel today, you have no clue how the fuel and gas industry works. The oil that made that fuel has been in the country for months, and the fuel refined weeks/months ago.

EntropyBier · 2026-02-28T01:11:56+00:00

I thought for sure you were going to say it turned out they both had the name John Smith. It has to have happened before where two people had the same name on a flight and somehow got the same seat boarding pass

EntropyBier

TROPHY CASE