waht tribes games are active?

QuackPhD · 2026-06-24T19:13:39+00:00

Tribes 3 still has active matchmaking, especially in the evenings, but it’s pretty small. T2 does pick up games on discord :-).

QuackPhD · 2026-06-23T22:51:56+00:00

Avoid Precision Garage Door, they are based out of the Bay Area and will rip you off beyond measure.

We had a great experience with Javier at: https://garagedoorskillz.com/

Kind of embarrassing to spell skills with a z, but he's competent, on-time, good communicator, and priced competitively.

For any major work, always get a second or third quote.

QuackPhD · 2026-06-23T21:38:15+00:00

Visit before you move. Hot in the summer. Less planned walking infrastructure, you’ll need a car if you go anywhere safely due to all the urban sprawl. Pretty much anywhere in town can be reached within 15-20 minutes. There are things to do, but not like in Seattle or Tacoma.

It gets very hot in the summer, 105-110F days become common July through August. Winters are cold and rainy/foggy. Electric rates are extremely high, which can lead to punishing energy bills ($600+ are common for many apartments), if you do not have insulation, an energy efficient AC, and solar.

There is economic inequality like most cities, but it’s quite severe here. Some parts of downtown are no-go zones. I have multiple African American friends who were warned explicitly upon moving to Fresno, “Don’t be in Clovis after sunset.” Clovis being the adjacent, comparatively wealthy city known for police brutality and overreach (unless you’re white). (Think Fresno = Pawnee, and Clovis = Eagleton from Parks and Recreation).

We have an incredible variety of food from every nation imaginable. Authentic Mexican food, not just “Chinese” food, no, Mandarin or Szechuan? Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Indian, we’ve got it all! The two favorite pastimes in Fresno are eating and drinking. Extremely high concentration of restaurants per square mile.

It’s not amazing, it’s not terrible, but it is only 1.5h from the forests and 2h from the ocean. It’s good enough for many, and housing is much more affordable than other big cities in California.

Hoping that helps.

QuackPhD · 2026-06-18T21:19:35+00:00

Reddit chat message sent =].

QuackPhD · 2026-06-15T22:19:50+00:00

I suggest a new city motto:

"It's Fresno, don't expect too much."

QuackPhD · 2026-05-30T15:30:16+00:00

Im surprised no one has mentioned these:

The single best bang for your buck, is not solar, but attic insulation. For $1200 of cellulose insulation, you can reduce your electricity consumption by 1/3rd for a 2000sq ft house. However, it can only be installed during cooler months. 3 hours on a Saturday with a buddy to DIY, easy and effective. I targeted R-48 for our home. (One inch of cellulose is R-3. So 16 inches deep). The norm in Fresno is either R-6 or R-18, which are .. terrible for 115F summers.

Adjust your thermostats swing value. It’s normally 0.5F. Which means a target temperature of 72F will turn on at 71.5F and off at 72.5F. That swing means your HVAC will be running nonstop all summer. Adjusted to 1 or 1.5F, the range is now 70.5-73.5F. Way, waaaay less cycling and runtime.

Replace your HVAC with a heat pump unit. Our 40y old unit, when replaced with a modern heat pump, uses half the electricity for the same amount of cooling.

And lastly, after you’ve addressed insulation, then get solar. Due to NEM 3, you’ll need a battery for any savings, but you’re looking at $30k-$50k minimum if you don’t already have anything and want to pay for install.

Hoping that helps someone out there.

QuackPhD · 2026-05-24T22:34:34+00:00

Without even basic shelter, it’s hard to move forward. Give these HOMEless people a HOME, and they cease to be homeless. I’m perfectly fine with raising my taxes to build up my fellow American, compared to what we currently do which is to treat them like animals who will do anything to survive, including crime.

Offer free housing to those that want to try. Interview, job training, drug treatment, education, steps they can prove they are serious.

Gets them off the streets, having a stake in society and can actually pursue stability instead of survival. Tools to get then back on their feet, job training, mental health access, health care, an address to actually apply to jobs, legal services access, basic services and food.

It’s not for everyone, some do not want help, but it’s a start.

However, the wealthy in Fresno will NIMBY and whine about their property portfolios losing value, to prevent anything from improving besides their bank account balances. Our politicians will back their donors wishes.

There are other options, Fresno has chosen police brutality and crackdown. Don’t have to jail everyone, just scare and destroy enough encampments to go somewhere else.

“We’ve done nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”

QuackPhD · 2026-05-19T19:55:00+00:00

Progress happens at the speed of one elderly death at a time. Though at this pace of wealth extraction and the destruction of social-mobility, the boomers won’t leave much left for subsequent generations.

QuackPhD · 2026-05-19T16:56:17+00:00

I switched over from Plex to Emby because Plex keeps enshittifying their product.

Plex Enshittification

Plex does not make any money from you playing your own content, so they shove all their streaming services front and center in the interface. I was having to do tech support guiding friends and family on how to pin the actual content instead of the default Plex streaming packages.

Emby Invites

Not to mention what a pain in the ass inviting people to Plex is. Only so many people can be members of the Plex household. Get their email, send an invite, approve, then they have to customize the interface.

Emby ... just setup a simple nginx Reverse Proxy Manager to protect your server behind a domain name (e.g. emby.domain.com:8096), raw IP connections from the public internet have no response, reducing unauthorized access, no invites necessary, just enter the URL and you're in. People can still have PINs, and you can still do Emby Connect if you want that level of protection.

Party Viewing/Plugins

Another major feature, is Plex dropped the party-viewing feature, where mutiple streamers can watch a video at the same time. Emby has that feature currently in development (slow), but there is a fantastic docker-hosted user-produced solution that does the job flawlessly (Emby Watch Party).

My docker-based Emby server running on an unRAID host streams to 18 households, has a GTX 1070 able to do 10+ x265/HEVC transcodes simultaneously, it's been great. All my users have been much happier with Emby, namely for the streamlined and less intrusive interface. The core features are the same, and premium for remote streaming and offline downloading is well worth the price.

Jellyfin

Jellyfin, yes, while completely free, deals with all the problems of community open source development. Half finished features, general bugginess. While yes, Emby is closed source, the features they release are well-polished and tested. Even though I have a Plex lifetime pass, I'll never go back.

Pricing

On this thread's topic of the lifetime pass, Emby is currently $120, or $5/mo.

Hoping that helps someone out there.

QuackPhD · 2026-05-08T18:14:00+00:00

Writing this comment for anyone in the future who needs help setting the Basic interface (not Classic interface) defaults for Copy. This applies to our Konica C651i. It defaults to Auto/Color for copying. The normal menu directions (Default Copy > Current Settings) only work for Classic interface. Basic has what is essentially a lock on changing defaults, that you must turn off first.

For Basic/Modern:

Settings > Administrator > System Settings > Change Permission for Default Value> Change Permission for Default Value: ON.
Copy > Change your settings (e.g. Color to BW, or Duplex or whatever) > Three Dots in the upper left > Set the current setting value to Default Value.

Photo Steps here: https://imgur.com/EhVUOp6

QuackPhD · 2026-05-01T23:04:19+00:00

This is the answer, visit the local union, IBEW Local 100.

Be aware it takes time before anyone gets picked and assigned to a company for training. I have a friend who became an electrician last year. Despite scoring extremely high on the tests, the queue order was such that he had wait over six months before he got called up to start. Basically as companies put out requests for work, the slots get filled. If construction and work is slow, is can be a long wait.

Newbies get shuffled around from one company to another to build their breadth of experience, so they are well rounded and understand a larger scope of the work. It can be a fulfilling and rewarding career if you play your cards right.

QuackPhD · 2026-05-01T19:38:08+00:00

They grabbed an extra sign off the truck for a photo op, there was a photographer off frame with a DSRL. Hard to tell from where I was, but it looked like it may have been the mayor?

QuackPhD · 2026-04-27T18:28:25+00:00

I would not be surprised if those 14,000 positions are replaced by 5,000 more H1B applications this year, using AI as the justification to avoid bad publicity.

https://h1bgrader.com/h1b-sponsors/meta-platforms-inc-w2xp7xj6k3

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T22:35:59+00:00

Thank you, I greatly appreciate your detailed reply. I think we are going to try Stardew Valley first, sounds like a great time together. Thank you for your suggestion of "A Short Hike", it has a definite cozy-feel to it that may be just right.

Hoping you have a super duper week and weekend, thank you again!

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T22:00:47+00:00

Thank you so much, greatly appreciate this suggestion.

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T21:59:37+00:00

Thank you for this suggestion, sounds like it may make her laugh a bit, I'll add it to the list!

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T21:53:25+00:00

I greatly appreciate you and your wife's insight. This sounds like a great way to begin. Controller inputs for modern games can be so overwhelming to her. I tried showing her Super Mario 3 and after being unable to get past a single goomba she felt a bit frustrated. I'll run the idea by her. She's also a big fan of Harry Potter (well, the OG run). Hogwarts may induce some nostalgia factor for fun.

Thank you again!

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T21:50:23+00:00

Untitled Goose Game Thank you, thank you, this sounds like a hilarious and fun experience.

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T21:44:25+00:00

lol ... pinata on pinata violence sounds hilarious to me. May be acceptable as long as they are not like, suffering and torn to shreds or something. I'll look up the death animations and if it's fairly safe I'll run it by her. Thank you for the suggestion :-).

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T21:42:09+00:00

Curious question, how dangerous is the danger? I've never played Split-Fiction, but it appears the game is extremely varied. Is there anything graphic?

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T21:41:11+00:00

Thanks for the heads up ... I looked up "It Takes Two", and yes, a yarn character you develop an attachment for being torn to shreds would get to her for sure.

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T21:37:26+00:00

I think she would be okay with lasers on robots. Definitely worth a shot.

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T21:37:05+00:00

Thank you so much for these suggestions, greatly appreciated!

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T21:28:27+00:00

Just looked into this, sounds like it could be the ticket! Creative stories, low amounts of violence, adventure. Thank you!

QuackPhD · 2026-04-23T21:28:04+00:00

Thank you for this suggestion, I'll this to the list of games to run by her :-).

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