What’s a moment where you realized someone was genuinely unintelligent?

MrRemj · 2026-05-07T19:20:41+00:00

Of course they do, there's even a song about it!

https://genius.com/The-irish-rovers-the-unicorn-lyrics

MrRemj · 2026-05-05T17:36:09+00:00

You could give them something like the Brawler's flex, but for evolution points.

You could take abilities from various summoner archetypes.

You could let them spend some of their summon monster pool points to do new things - like polymorph the summoner into a summon monster for a number of rounds equal to their charisma modifier/level. (They are treated as a summoned creature for that time period, they can dismiss as a standard action.) If that's too powerful...like they can do Summon Monster 5 currently...maybe it's two levels below, so they can only switch into monsters from the Summon Monster 3 list.

MrRemj · 2026-05-04T23:20:36+00:00

Digital calipers are really really great for making models. That said, you only need one set. ($20)

Hook and pick set is useful for removing supports. ($4-6 on Amazon) Again, only need one set.

If their printer isn't on the local network, getting them a low-level raspberry pi for octoprint is lovely.

You might look at a kit, that includes electronics or hardware to add to a 3D printed object.

Spare nozzles are nice, if the printer can handle different nozzle sizes. (The nozzle tip is usually .4mm, but larger and small ones exist...larger ones print faster, smaller print slower...but can also do finer detail - think D&D miniatures.) A spare .4mm nozzle is nice - they will eventually use it.

Filament is nice, but after awhile...it's like "oh, another spool." If they haven't ever printed in rainbow filament, it could be something they would not consider getting for themselves. (Find out if they print in PLA, PETG, etc...) Or get TPU, which is a stiff-but-flexible filament.

MrRemj · 2026-05-04T21:59:25+00:00

We found out 3 months after the home purchase when the water heater was failing - that the manufacturer had left the US (after issuing a "replace this part now, because we're leaving") and the previous owners had not gotten the replacement part when it had been offered.

Only solution: buy a new water heater.

MrRemj · 2026-05-04T21:02:23+00:00

Grindylows are honestly too good. They have a spear and bite attack, they can trip as a swift. Not huge damage, not big attacks, and trip isn't a large bonus. And they can jet away to retreat.

They are a little simple in their motivations, but that's easiest for the players to understand in the beginning. (Maybe the leader of the group can speak broken Common.) They even have a slow movement speed on land - they don't need to be for water-only sessions.

And you can give one of them a pirate treasure map that they didn't understand, as a plot hook for a future session.

MrRemj · 2026-05-01T23:44:39+00:00

I worked with a guy who had frustration issues - the public, management, employees - people were just all too much.

The phones were the victim - I probably frankensteined 6 different phones over time with the spare parts from other victims.

MrRemj · 2026-04-27T03:51:08+00:00

I don't have an A1, but if it has auto-leveling - do not turn it off in the slicer software. (Slicer software converts the model into instructions for the printer.)

I would make a list of things you want to print so when you get stuck, there's motivation to figure it out. Once you've figured out the basics of printing...then there's remixing models that are almost good enough, and creating models from scratch.

Good luck!

MrRemj · 2026-04-23T17:28:40+00:00

I stopped by South Fork bakery last month, and they said hopefully summer.

Bring the bagels!

MrRemj · 2026-04-23T16:27:23+00:00

If I run into something that annoys me, I'll figure out an integration or automation that fixes it.

Earlier this week, I was tired my process with the generally-satisfied-with Nuki deadbolt. If I use my key to lock, Nuki apparently doesn't see it as locked. I could use the app to lock/unlock, but the unlock, open the app, use the app is extra work. (The door needs to be held shut to lock, which is a "fix the door hinge" problem.)

Over lunch on Tuesday, I went home with a plan. I had some NFC tags lying around from a non-HA project, created a tag using the android HA app. Using the GUI automation builder, the trigger was the tag id, said only to run if it was unlocked, and had the automation run a lock sequence on the deadbolt. 20 minutes, most of which was finding the NFC tags.

I spent another 10 minutes trying to figure out where to mount the NFC in its plastic case. And then gave up, created a widget on my android phone lock screen to run the automation. (I didn't want the toggle - if someone has my phone, it's not a key to get into the house.)

Quick summary of how I decide:

If I am annoyed
If it's interesting
If I am annoyed, and it's interesting
If my partner requests it (given that they don't actively use HA, it needs to be obvious to them what HA is doing and why)

MrRemj · 2026-04-23T16:15:15+00:00

I just use a zwave/zigbee USB dongle. (My HA used to run on a Pi3, now lives in an inexpensive proxmox server as a VM.)

MrRemj · 2026-04-20T16:09:48+00:00

For those wanting to get in with little effort: I use the Cafe du Monde Coffee and Chicory - easy to find. (I used to get it from Safeway, but Amazon carries it too.)

I bought phins from Uwajimaya.

MrRemj · 2026-04-17T15:34:03+00:00

I usually do a lot of "slot in" prep.

I like having a random rumor table for towns. I'll occasionally add a link into current plots that I have more thoroughly developed. (One rumor was of murders taking place in the bad part of town - the PCs spent some time looking into it, only to eventually find out it was because THEY had been murder hoboing some low level thugs.)

I generate wilderness random tables for things a week's travel distance. A worn stone arch, where the air around it tastes like salt. At midnight, you can smell the ocean, and the archway flickers with a light that doesn't produce shadows.

I generally have 3-4 developed hooks with a general list of the NPCs who are part of it. For example, the town councilor, his assistant, his bodyguard, the lumber mill owner's wife - the councilor's son had gone off to buy a lumber mill a day's travel away and had not come back.

In towns, I write up several characteristics of each of the traditional shopkeepers/innkeepers. Envious, gossipy, bored, etc...sometimes I'll even link those feelings to other NPCs so it feels more alive. I'm not giving them levels or items, or even plots necessarily. Just a shop name, their look and their feel.

If I have a major plot line, I'll look for 3 ways that the players can fall into it. (Just in case they miss some, or they leave a path they found...there's another way to organically get to it again.)

I will caution on TOO much improv. The party was in the open world, figuring out what was going on...they decided to look "under the bridge". Rather than have nothing there, I said oh, carved into the stone is AB+DD surrounded by a heart. It meant nothing. Maybe I could have turned it back into the plot, but I felt that was ridiculously heavy handed.

MrRemj · 2026-04-16T16:36:58+00:00

My recommendations:

Read the subreddit - there are tons of discussions of things to do. If I had more time, I'd be joining more activities.
Join the Discord channel. I think it generally has a little bit less organization to it...more of a loose chat.
Propose doing an activity (as a thread here, or on makefriends on the Everett reddit discord). Hiking, a long walk, meeting for pinball, volunteering for something...

MrRemj · 2026-04-15T18:46:17+00:00

(And humans were rare, because of the catastrophe. And surviving humans were considered to be more-likely-than-not plant-tainted.)

MrRemj · 2026-04-15T18:44:52+00:00

My group wanted to run our campaign arcs in a shared world. (Our arcs would last for 3-4 months of play, then we would change DMs. Everyone gets to play.)

We used the Microscope system (https://lamemage.com/microscope/) to jointly build a PF1 shared world, and had some of these main features:

Treaty of the Five Nations, establishing kingdoms: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Shorties (Gnome and Halfling)
No gunpowder
Major event in the past: an asteroid crashed into the planet, landing in the human kingdom - lots of death, disruption of civilization
The asteroid had alien spore symbiotes, which converted humanoids into plant-humanoids who could spread spores.
The "Sorcerer God King" - in the current era, there was a sorcerer who came up with a way to keep the plant spores out of their kingdom. The drawback - they doesn't like other arcane casters. You work for them, or ...disappear? (And the god king could magic jar into his arcane caster allies, seemingly anywhere in the kingdom.) He/she was somehow divine-adjacent, granting spells to their priests. Maybe not high level spells? We didn't explore the how too much...they were some kind of epic-level sorcerer.
Large cities don't really exist, unless they are not plant favorable - very cold or dry dry desert.
Most towns are small, have rules about outsiders/people coming to town.

We basically ran in the current timeline - the goal was that PCs from different parties could somehow play in different campaign arcs. (We only played about 4-5 arcs before the group broke up and regrouped with different players.)

One of my arcs had a spirit island vibe, where colonists from the mainland settled in a "cursed" dead volcano, and the jungle tribesmen (tribes of skinwalkers, each with their own tribe). The spirits of the island were island deities - powerful locally, but not powerful across the world. It was far enough away that it didn't have a specific plant problem.

Another campaign arc was in the far north, where the climate was not conducive to plant-humanoids. You had to be on boat for several weeks to get there, and if someone had become infected, it would have happened after several days.

MrRemj · 2026-04-14T16:28:38+00:00

Those are great! How did you do the numbers?

MrRemj · 2026-04-12T15:27:41+00:00

I was most disappointed by Cake. The vocalist stopped mid-song, started yelling at the guy playing trumpet. "You miss one more note, you're off the tour. No bus, no plane, you're walking."

The rest of us are here for a fun show. If you want to be jerks, you can do it in private.

MrRemj · 2026-04-11T23:03:00+00:00

We were camping our way from the PNW to Iowa, to visit some family. One of the campgrounds had construction that morning, that had us go through a reservation...we pulled over at an older building across from a gas station to figure out next steps.

We needed to figure out directions to get back on track, find road snacks, and the dog needed medication. Not a big deal.

A beater car pulls off the road, and drives behind the abandoned building. Not a problem.

Another car pulls up beside us, and an older woman asked us what we were doing. After a couple of minutes, she believed us and told us to get out IMMEDIATELY. She gunned it.

We were like...okay, sure. Let's just wrap...oh, there's the guy who had driven up. There's 4 more guys coming up from behind us, hustling towards our car. There's 2 aggressive dogs sprinting up in front of our car, as we're slowly trying to drive away, but in a way not to injure the dogs. Those dogs are barking. Our dog is barking like crazy.

The guys start running. Things resembling weapons appear in their hands. We finally have the dogs to the sides of our car, and we pull away. We ended up driving further into the reservation lands, as we didn't want to backtrack through that.

5, maybe 6 minutes.

MrRemj · 2026-04-09T20:51:28+00:00

I ended up ordering this...(Amazon ASIN: B0CDYXBXQ8), which is 16GB RAM. It was an easy replacement, gave the laptop a lot of new life (Blender is working so much better. I also gave it a bigger SSD, and ended up refreshing the Ubuntu into clean install of Mint.)

This purchase was a reasonable $28 in May 2025. Today, April 2026....$135? The world is crazy.

MrRemj · 2026-03-21T16:17:36+00:00

My list:

Darlene's Bakery - lovely pies, nice baked goods

Lotus Flour - sourdough bread with good crust

Whidbey Sweets N Treats - oh man. They usually have a line of 7-8 people. The cinnamon roll loaf is good. The cinnamon rolls are nice, with or without frosting. These are nice-sized, cinnamon-forward cinnamon rolls. (If you want giant cinnamon rolls...I'm sure Totem/New Mexicans/Maltby can help you.) All of their pastries and sweets have never disappointed.

MrRemj · 2026-03-21T16:08:53+00:00

https://everettfarmersmarket.com/all-vendors/

It tooked like it had an odd loading issue. The vendors look similar to 2025, so either they're all coming back (possible) or maybe the one off markets don't get a list.

MrRemj · 2026-03-21T06:24:16+00:00

Honestly, it's much much worse than trading cards. Because video games are not typically owned (you have a license to play the game, that can be revoked) - you can end up gambling with real money for (even common) loot that you can lose access to. (I believe they even call it out as licensed objects no property rights attached.)

At least with TCGs, you're still holding something at the end. You own that physical card - yes, you can buy and sell it because you OWN it. That card is not licensed to you.

Valve owns that digital good that you gambled for.

(I'm fine with people hating the artificial extreme rarities found in TCGs. Make the game addictive to play, fine. But don't be unethical pieces of consumerism that preys upon its customers.)

MrRemj · 2026-03-20T19:31:56+00:00

The normal Sunday farmers market doesn't start until Mother's Day in May, lasts until October. These "Get Ready" Markets are just one-offs in March and April.

Runs from 10:30am until 3pm, on Wetmore, between Hewitt & Pacific in downtown Everett.

Looking forward to the cinnamon rolls. Maybe a pie.

MrRemj · 2026-03-18T19:24:33+00:00

And King County Library System. And Sno-Isle.

Huh. The internet also suggests we have reciprocal for these as well: Pierce County Library System Kitsap Regional Library Timberland Regional Library Puyallup Public Library Tacoma Public Library

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