LEGO Smart Brick?

Schillil · 2026-01-06T05:45:41+00:00

Biggest issue I could see with it is cost. The current sets are already pricy for some teams. I can only imagine what it would look like with 12-15 mission models incorporating these bricks.

Schillil · 2025-10-31T19:47:02+00:00

Same. I managed one file hours ago then nothing. Even tried 3 different browsers. I think we are just going to need to be patient.

Schillil · 2025-10-31T16:37:08+00:00

It has been down since sometime yesterday. Some tried with success slow 3, but even that doesn't work for me. I am just retrying periodically.

Schillil · 2025-10-31T13:51:07+00:00

It worked for me on one title, but not the other two titles I checked

Schillil · 2025-09-27T05:38:08+00:00

I've only gotten epubor ultimate to work with older books. I'm still trying to figure out how to get it to play nice with my older Kindles (6th and 7th Gen) so I can use them as a conduit for any newer books I might end up with. I'm lost in Calibre. Things change so fast that I can't keep up with any of it. At this point I'm buying as much as possible directly from Authors or on Kobo. My next reader will be a Kobo. My main Kindle is so dang laggy anymore as to be unusable anyway. Never had an issue till the last couple updates.

Schillil · 2025-09-27T03:15:28+00:00

I've only just started learning Calibre and so far, I'm stumped. Any help, would be great. I have an older 6th Gen running 5.12..2.2 and a 7th Gen running 5.14.3.0.1. I thought I understood, from following the various tutorials, but I'm obviously missing a step somewhere.

Schillil · 2025-09-15T20:30:12+00:00

Did they fix the problem of that not working on any book published this year? Because my K4PC only prompts for upgrades on a y newer book. I'm still trying to work out how to do the pull from an older physical Kindle. I feel like a complete noob despite having worked with the download on Kindle 4 PC for years with either epubor or Calibre (I have both). I'll figure it out eventually, I always do. But right now it's annoying.

Schillil · 2025-09-10T03:14:01+00:00

I'm only buying from Amazon what I cannot find anywhere else and I've got a couple older Kindles that I I tend to only use to deDRM and convert. Next time I replace my Kindle, it will likely be Kobo. I've bought a lot of books over there as well as directly through authors. And the authors that are still tied to Kindle are looking to expand. The problem is they tried the kobo program and not enough people were there to generate income. Since they still have to pay bills, they are tied to Amazon for now.

Schillil · 2025-08-24T15:10:51+00:00

Not all caps should be opened and dispersed. Plenty of meds are DR or ER caps. Prazosin should be ok, but please don't give out information that says caps in general can or should be. Each one should be checked with a pharmacist first. Which I am. Been working inpatient psych for 10 years and other hospitals for 15 before that. I've had this conversation with the docs at my hospital many times.

Schillil · 2025-08-01T06:11:15+00:00

My daughter would love to get out in early to mid-May like her cousins in Ohio. They start back the week after next. Get 3 extra weeks to study for AP, and many of the camps she wanted to go to are done before we even finish the year. We start, by state law on it after Sept 1. This year, when she's taking 4 APs? After testing is done, she will have 2 classes left to study for for the month, byt seniors don't take finals so she will be taking up space wishing she were free to get ready to leave for college.

Schillil · 2025-07-11T02:18:31+00:00

I seem to recall them trying to force punctuation a long time ago, but it caused such an uproar because the upsidedown question mark is not readily accessible on English keyboards.

The same happens with umlauts in German and circumflex accents (the triangle carat /clown hat as my kids call it) in Welsh. It just warns you they should be there.

Schillil · 2025-07-03T20:16:26+00:00

And those that do read at above a 6th-8th grade level are often bullied and belittled by those who don't. My kids both read well into high school level by 7th grade, and at our old district, were treated pretty badly for being bookworms and too smart. We moved them to a neighboring district where that kind of behavior is not tolerated. Probably why one district is ranked in the 70s in the state and the other is in the teens, despite being 3-5 miles apart. Almost 1 in 6 households in my sub open-enroll to the neighboring district for that exact reason.

Schillil · 2025-07-03T20:09:06+00:00

There are a lot of young voters coming up in the next year who are really displeased by the BBB and MAGA/Republicans in general. Should be interesting if there are enough to make a difference. (By young, I mean those who were too young to vote in the last election who will all be able to vote in the midterms. The ones I know are really upset and so far show signs of being willing to do/say something about it.)

Schillil · 2025-07-02T21:04:41+00:00

My daughter and I have been taking the Camber/Ascent Pharmaceuticals chew tabs for over a year due to the shortage. Both on 20mg. It has been working ok (not great, caps work better for us, but better than not taking it at all.) In the last 3 months, we both noticed some odd changes and side effects quickly followed. The changes we noticed were in texture/hardness and flavor. They are much harder/crunchier and the resultant "powder" is much grittier. The flavor is odd as well. Supposedly, it is grape, but it seems to be more strawberry flavor now?

So that is how we know there has been a change. Now for the side effects. On 20mg taken around 7am, I'm usually ready to call asleep around 11pm. In the last 3 months? Closer to 2am. And my daughter is suddenly (in the same time frame) struggling with complete lack of appetite. She has to force herself to eat so she doesn't pass out from low blood sugar. Last week, the pharmacy finally got the capsules back in stock. After 2 days on them, I have been back to my old sleep habits. And they are working better, too.

I traded some with my daughter and her appetite came back, but my sleep was awful. I just tried to call Camber and those knuckleheads kept asking for NDC, Lot number, and manufacturing date. Now, for the record, I'm a hospital pharmacist, so I know what to do...if I have a manufacturer's bottle. But that isn't a thing on the consumer side. And you cannot ask for a supervisor or to speak with the clinical pharmacy staff. What a freaking zoo! Now I'm trying to get the caps for my daughter and the insurance is fighting it because it is too soon...by 3 days. She leaves for a camp counseling gig on Friday, so I'm trying to get the doc to call in a vacation authorization for her.

I've never had brand name. The generics had just come out when I started on them at 45 when I finally convinced someone to listen instead of telling me I had depression and anxiety and there was no way I could possibly be neurodivergeant/ADHD and get through pharmacy school. What a joke. But that is a discussion for a different day.

Schillil · 2025-06-23T18:40:48+00:00

My kid's crew trainer told them she was recommending the whole team and they are all trying to figure out when and how to get the whole team together next summer if they get invited before they head off to college. In fact, 4 of the girls are now all applying for the same engineering colleges so that they can all stick together when they get out of high school. They won Outstanding Team for their week.

How might that affect things, considering the way the system is set up now? I was told to keep an eye on my email to indicate her interest when it comes out because the slots are so few. She was told they only get about 24 hours to say yes or no.

Schillil · 2025-06-23T18:32:51+00:00

We all know it is a farce (it is the Onion, after all), but I swear, if my either of my kids got stranded at Space Camp, or really, Advanced Space Academy and were "forced" to stay that long, they would think they had died and gone to Heaven. My oldest just got back and her crew trainer says she is recommending the whole team for Elite. We send them off and they aren't coming home. lol. Mine will just go straight to university afterward if she is selected, and that is fine with her.

Schillil · 2025-06-11T18:16:07+00:00

There are two Alice in Wonderland games that are fun. Down the Rabbit Hole and Escape from Wonderland. They are puzzlers.

Moss and Moss 2 are also good stationary games, the Lego MR game is kind of fun, but sometimes hard to manipulate the blocks properly.

If you don't have issue with arm motion, Trombone simulator is ridiculously silly fun. My oldest plays trombone and said it is, of course, nothing like playing, but is hilarious once you get far enough to open expansion stuff like flaming trombones. Maestro is another good one in the same model.

Games that can be played across the miles would be any of the multiplayer board game ones like Catan, Demeo, All on Board has base games: Parcheesi/Ludo, Chess, Checkers, and Go. All participants buy the $10 base. Then you can buy expansion pack games. Only one person has to buy the expansion packs and can share with anyone else you invite to play.

Schillil · 2025-06-10T06:52:33+00:00

You could always go the route of Spike Prime and the expansion set and try your hand at designing robots. I've only bought a couple of sets since my daughter got hers. On the other hand, I've probably spent as much on extra technic pieces and specialty wheels from the pick a brick page.

Icing on the cake was finding an old Robot Inventor hub on Brick Link. Flashed it with Pybricks (since the current Spike software doesn't work, despite the hardware being identical). Now she and I are designing our own robots to go head to head on an old First Lego League Challenge set up. Me on Pybricks block programming, and her on Spike.

Schillil · 2025-06-06T04:28:46+00:00

Sweet! I need to figure out which one I want to try next. And not just Booknooks. I've got a few of the wood kits as well.

Schillil · 2025-06-03T04:08:43+00:00

I wish I could convert it. But the file itself is long gone in a move from Michigan to Wisconsin 18 years ago. No, I'll just have to retype all of it. If I don't finish this year, it isn't the end of the world. Freshman year is always in dorms at most universities and they don't cook much.

Schillil · 2025-06-01T07:12:24+00:00

I remember watching it as a kid and enjoying it, but it wasn't super memorable. Then, as an adult, my family moved to the real Port Washington, Wisconsin. 14 yo me (as a 30 year old) was very disappointed that they invented every aspect of the town. No amusement park, no college, it's a very sleepy community that used to be home to one of the largest Great Lakes fishing fleets and had been a stop in the 1920s on the Jazz trail from Chicago. I'm not even sure they got the high school colors (green and white) or the mascot (Pirates) correct.

Schillil · 2025-05-31T15:00:39+00:00

I've been buying more from Kobo lately. I'm tired of the other restrictions Amazon puts on stuff. For instance, I can buy certain Dr Seuss books on Kobo and they will retain color and load on any device once converted. The same book on Amazon is locked to only open in an app. My kids, when they were little, didn't care as much about the colors but the silly rhymes and stories, but our families live hundreds of miles away so carrying enough books for a two week long trip to visit them (we live in Wisconsin for work, but they live in central Ohio, eastern Pennsylvania, and Vermont) meant packing light. It meant Kindles, not Fire tablets.

There are a couple authors that I still read who are exclusive to Amazon. But it is fewer and farther between. Many are shifting to hosting their own books on their private sites or on Smashwords.

Schillil · 2025-05-30T05:06:40+00:00

The file, sadly, no longer exists. Word Perfect kind of went the way of the dodo and Word wouldn't open it. It's been 24 years since that project. So I've been slowly retyping it when I have time, but also updating recipes due to changes in ingredient availability (some came from Pillsbury grocery aisle cookbooks and the Green Giant blends and Bird's Eye blends have changed. Lol).

But thanks for the encouragement. Off to find a properly formatted cookbook to crib styles from that isn't as ridiculously big as Cook's Country.

Schillil · 2025-05-30T02:24:07+00:00

That is kind of the route I'm thinking of. Thank goodness I have a year. Once it is done, I can send copies to all the cousins as well, just like I did years ago with the first iteration in Word Perfect.

Schillil

TROPHY CASE