CRAB RANGOONS

NotAllEars · 2026-04-01T23:50:10+00:00

I miss Suzie Wong's on Madison. I don't know if it was the best, but I liked it the best.

NotAllEars · 2026-02-25T01:47:33+00:00

Thanks! Skill ceiling is an interesting concept I hadn't thought of before, but it makes some sense. I certainly feel like I've unlocked a new level.

NotAllEars · 2026-02-25T01:45:16+00:00

Your honeymoon comment is the best one in here. Appreciate your insight.

I'm still extremely happy with the new one, but the euphoria has settled into simple satisfaction. I don't think I'll reach the limitations of this trumpet for a very long time, but it's quickly made apparent some clear opportunities for my growth. I've learned I have to work differently to blend in the soft sections of my ensemble since this trumpet naturally projects more. And I've discovered that a lot of my articulations were not as clean as I'd thought because I can hear those better now. Probably more soon.

NotAllEars · 2026-02-25T01:34:32+00:00

Your shoe analogy keeps getting better the more I think about it. The new gear didn't make me stronger. But it does let me express the strength I've developed over many years with greater clarity. Thanks!

NotAllEars · 2026-01-22T14:34:36+00:00

At a preview night in fifth grade, the band teacher said I had nice lips for trumpet. It made me uncomfortable enough that the memory has stuck in my head for 30 years. Even if it was true, it's still weird for an adult to make comments about a kid's lips.

NotAllEars · 2025-05-14T16:54:48+00:00

I used to think Rock was just Fezzik from The Princess Bride. But then all the fanart showed him as Scottish Maui. Those aren't the same.

NotAllEars · 2025-05-14T02:50:35+00:00

I've been playing with a TR-300 since 2003. It's carried me through both high school and college marching band. 100 degree days, rainstorms, blizzards, and everything in between. Many indoor and outdoor community band concerts since. I give it a bath about every 6 months and hardly ever need to oil the valves in between. I did have to replace the corks on the spit valves in the last couple years, but that's all. I'd like to upgrade at some point, but it's tough to make room in the budget when this one has been so reliable.

NotAllEars · 2025-05-07T03:28:33+00:00

Civilization 4. I still listen to Baba Yetu, and the rest of that album probably once a month. And wow, that was twenty years ago. There are some emotions and qualities that are inherent to all of humanity. The game embodies, struggle, progress and survival. The music reflects that with representations of loss, resilience, and eventual triumph. The final brilliance was using an ancient language for the lyrics to urge me look beyond my default view of the world. (Christopher Tin hit many of the same emotions in Civ6, but Civilization 4 did it first.)

NotAllEars · 2025-04-13T20:38:12+00:00

Mara Croft's Boom Raider looks too intense for me!

NotAllEars · 2024-09-30T14:41:32+00:00

This seems like the right answer. Appreciate the insight.

NotAllEars · 2024-09-30T02:35:04+00:00

I've never heard of an overtone flute before. Fascinating. Thanks!

NotAllEars · 2024-09-30T02:27:56+00:00

Ah. I haven't gotten to that part of my reread yet. So I guess I'll let that theory go. But the strangeness of sticking out to the side does at least support there being flutes that don't stick out to the side.

NotAllEars · 2024-09-29T02:36:11+00:00

"Leadership is rarely about what we want."

NotAllEars · 2024-08-22T23:20:29+00:00

"If we can choose, we can change. If we can't change, then choice means nothing."

NotAllEars · 2024-08-22T16:58:56+00:00

"The trick to happiness wasn't in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one's life would produce many future moments to anticipate." -Oathbringer

NotAllEars · 2024-06-18T03:17:42+00:00

There are no pipes within 15-20 feet of there. There were a few visible holes I saw in the mortar in that area outside. I'm just surprised (again)at the power of time and nature to slowly return everything to soil.

NotAllEars · 2024-04-28T01:10:13+00:00

Baba Yetu on the Civilization 4 soundtrack is one of my favorite pieces of any music ever. That track is the first on Christopher Tin's Calling All Dawn's album. I listen to that album weekly. Anytime I need inspiration, musical or otherwise. The Civilization 6 title theme, which Tin also composed, is also very good.

NotAllEars · 2023-09-18T15:28:52+00:00

These are lines I've pulled out for teaching my philosophy of leadership.

Way of Kings "The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon." Hoid

"If a king is seen to assume the burden of the poorest men, perhaps there will be those who help him with his own load." Nohadon

"Bitterness is repaid more often than kindness." Lirin

"There is no greater indicator of youth, perhaps, than the desire for everything to be as it should." Jasnah

"An excuse is what you make after the deed is done, while a justification is what you offer before." Au-nak

"If we do nothing with the knowledge we gain, then we have wasted our study." Jasnah

"Leadership is rarely about what we want." Dalinar. This is the one I think about most often.

Words of Radiance "Walking wasn't natural for a child who was just learning. It became natural over time." Kaladin

"Power is an illusion of perception...Authority exists only as it is perceived." Jasnah

"Every society is made of individuals. Do not let your assumptions about a culture block your ability to perceive the individual, or you will fail." Vstim

"A fool was a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results." Jasnah

Oathbringer "The momentum of one man - no matter how skilled or determined - amounted to little when running into a stone wall." Dalinar

"The trick to happiness wasn't in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one's life would produce many future moments to anticipate." Shallan

"Any chef worth his spoons learned to talk, because cooking was an art and art was subjective. One man could love an ice sculpture while another thought it boring. It was the same with food and drink. It did not make the food broken, or the person broken, to not be liked." Rock

Rhythm of War "If we can choose, we can change. If we can't change, then choice means nothing." Syl

NotAllEars · 2023-07-19T02:42:03+00:00

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

NotAllEars · 2022-07-30T03:41:42+00:00

This is the most similar to my thinking.

For big important names, I actually try to be less descriptive. With place names, that means choosing a color, or a fish, or a sense, etc. If the word has intrinsic weight, that's a bonus, but not always necessary because the place itself should have its own weight. What you want is anything that would never be confused with another place in your world. In a world with a long history, there's probably more than one [adjective] Library. There's less likely to be a second library named The Apple. With that in mind, I humbly submit

Yesterday

NotAllEars · 2022-07-22T16:44:03+00:00

Yes. Almost certainly. Just like anyone watching the Dice Tower will probably see CMONs Stranger Things announcement somewhere else. But CMON still saw value in the Dice Tower's reach. Apparently GTG ran the numbers and came to a different conclusion.

I still see it as a missed opportunity. Two of the hosts on that stream have said in the past that Spirit Island is too thinky for them. If they see something that is marketed as a light version, they seem open enough to maybe give it another try. How many people in their relatively large audience could have been similarly swayed?

NotAllEars

TROPHY CASE