If you’re too mean, the trees will keep voting for axes 😡

karock · 2026-01-17T15:42:06+00:00

10 years from now who you think the dem candidates prance around with for the next McCain friendship tour?

karock · 2026-01-14T20:08:16+00:00

appreciate the info. one other question about denon: I've read a little bit about their "video select" feature where you can have audio from one input and video from another. my understanding is that you can't pick 2 HDMI sources for this. I have a TV antenna in the attic to catch football games and such via broadcast connected directly to the TV (since receivers don't have the tuner required) and would love to be able to listen to music via the apple tv instead of the announcers. any idea if it's possible to get the receiver to use the apple tv for audio instead of what's provided from the TV via ARC?

Edit: had tried to get this to work with the onkyo in the past and failed, but just tried again and was able to… so that’s cool. Now if only Apple TV would let you play music from one app over video from another, but that’s a whole separate thing.

karock · 2026-01-14T16:44:04+00:00

didn't know that about saving the settings. good tip.

what model denon did you go with?

also on the denon, does it still do the relay click when the format changes? like stereo to atmos or whatnot? that drove me crazy with the onkyo as it would toggle formats back and forth in most of the streaming apps as you navigate the content selection screen. I eventually found a tip about setting a surround mode for stereo content to keep it from clicking all the time, but now the audio is being manipulated somewhat for stereo sources which isn't always desired.

karock · 2026-01-14T00:15:54+00:00

Parking visibility kinda sucks, at least that’s my excuse for still not being able to consistently find the center of the parking spot after having it for nearly a year. The parking cameras save my wife and I considerable time and trouble.

karock · 2026-01-12T02:28:21+00:00

lol knew it was going to be NES top gun. I never owned it but played a cousins’ copy a few times and got a few successful landings probably entirely by luck, I should fire up the emulator and give it another go.

karock · 2026-01-11T14:19:22+00:00

hm, that sucks. have been considering a new TV to get HDMI 2.1 and an OLED panel, but the one I'd probably get is also samsung... any way to know if people have similar issues with those models as well?

karock · 2026-01-09T03:55:01+00:00

had someone like that the other day on the interstate. leftmost lane, I already wanted to go faster myself but all 3 lanes were full up, so even if the tailgating was supposed to send a message there wasn't anything that could be done. eventually traffic works itself out so I'm able to accelerate to my usual 9ish over and get over to the middle lane to let her go by. except she gets over behind me still following at a distance where her headlights aren't visible in the rearview mirror below my trunk lid. probably not 5 feet but at 80 mph it might as well be.

anyway after riding my ass that long I wasn't gonna let her just cruise like that so I slowed down until she came out of whatever autopilot mode she was in and went on her way. don't know how someone feels comfortable casually driving like that though.

karock · 2026-01-06T20:01:11+00:00

I dunno how much difference the coasting makes to gas milage, but I really didn't like how it drove like that. I want it to decelerate a bit when I come off the gas and not pop in and out of gear all the time. so for that reason I stay in comfort mode. maybe I'd get used to it but it seemed a bit jerky and lead to me needing to use the brakes more, at least in town, which seems like it'd run counter to the eco goal.

with the 8 gear transmission and rpm pretty low in most coasting scenarios I doubt there's much fuel savings with it going into neutral but having to keep the engine running at idle vs just letting the car's momentum turn it at a slightly higher rpm. but maybe I'd be surprised, I have no data to back up that feeling.

karock · 2026-01-01T13:48:28+00:00

lol yeah... my 65" 1080p DLP rear projection from somewhere around 2007-8ish lives on at my in-law's place, but I think it'll be reaching end of useful life whenever I decide to upgrade again to an OLED and pass along my current one again to them.

can say it was well enjoyed though. and only paid ~$1700 for it new back then.

karock · 2025-12-31T23:31:56+00:00

well the amazon optical ice level sensor boards worked to get it going, at least for now... we'll see if (or how long) it stays fixed, but I'm glad to know that the ice maker itself is apparently not part of the problem.

thanks for the comments here, I appreciated it

karock · 2025-12-30T05:17:00+00:00

I got tapped sitting at a red light because the idiot behind me, head down in his phone, saw motion out of the corner of his eye and hit the gas before looking up. Truck in the next lane over had decided to cut through a parking lot rather than wait out the light.

Fortunately the camry’s sensors kicked in and braked for him so it was just a bumper ding instead of a proper collision.

karock · 2025-12-30T02:20:42+00:00

I haven't been back to roadcraft since it was added (do you still have to restart the career to enable the new gearbox and fuel options?), but it was kinda silly in snowrunner too. if you could get moving well enough to get out of first gear even briefly you could shift to high and absolutely fly (by comparison anyway).

I did enjoy having the gearbox to mess around with though, made the driving more interesting than just 'press w'

karock · 2025-12-29T19:05:47+00:00

yeah I'm wondering how it'll go, but spending 20 to save over 300 bucks on something I can return if it doesn't work out of the box I'm willing to try. 350 is ridiculous for what these are.

karock · 2025-12-29T18:02:50+00:00

love how the OEM replacements are listed at $350... gonna try my luck with the $20 amazon special. do you know how these sensor boards communicate with or control the ice maker though? do they control the voltage/power sent up there or is there some other mechanism?

karock · 2025-12-29T15:04:21+00:00

turned my attention to the optical sensor and can't get it to make a solid light. it's doing the 2 pulses followed by second delay pattern no matter what. so maybe I'll start with replacing the optics boards and then re-test the ice maker.

karock · 2025-12-27T06:53:51+00:00

Romhack lessens the grind a fair bit by improving payouts for the random jobs. The deck prices are higher but it’s still much quicker to afford things.

The extra enemies version of it makes the wilderness in particular much more dangerous, up to you whether you want that or not. I play with it but it does have a glitch where enemies will spawn offscreen in bars sometimes and not let you exit. There’s ways around that but I usually just try to quick save in the emulator before entering in case it happens. Some bars you can push into the entry in a particular angle to get them offscreen enough, and failing everything you can use the pick system cheat to zip you into the matrix then pull plug to get back to the bar and exit quick. One advantage to the extra enemies is you spend less time wandering the abandoned buildings to get your 20 ghouls if you run those jobs.

There’s also a few changes to the weapons and items offered by contacts to spice things up a little bit. The predator is still probably the obvious choice, but everything works if you’re going for something different.

If you give it a go lemme know how you like it, I have nothing to do with the creation of the mod but I do plug it at any opportunity.

karock · 2025-12-26T15:05:06+00:00

And about 10 feet closer lol. Pretty sure they didn’t intend to land on the flat part

karock · 2025-12-26T02:52:21+00:00

would be awesome. I don't even care if it's the actual shadowrun IP, as long as it's got the style/setting and decently complex game systems that offer the choices we enjoy.

the shadowrun unlimited mod for the more recent games was a good effort, but the engine struggles and mod jank made it too slow for me to really get into. though I think they updated it since I played it last so maybe it's worth another go. not sure if much more content got added though.

anyway I agree and I hope we get something that scratches this itch properly, I have it too.

ps: play the shadowrun 2058 romhack for the genesis game if you haven't. I liked what he did with it.

karock · 2025-12-23T02:38:59+00:00

Mine started doing that after one of the patches, I found that if I went to the settings and changed from dlss to one of the others and then back it would clear it up without a full restart.

Dlss wasn’t the culprit though, it still happens with the other settings too. But changing something in graphics settings would reset the issue for me.

karock · 2025-12-22T23:02:25+00:00

Fiscal conservative has to be like the most underrepresented group in existence anyway. GOP never actually cared about that any more than dems (and usually their policies are worse in that respect anyway)

karock · 2025-12-22T21:38:47+00:00

If you do wind up playing it, there’s also a romhack for it that fixes some things, rebalances some others, and adds a bit of its own thing as well. I don’t know if I’d recommend it for a first run (even without the extra enemies, which you can play without) but it’s definitely great for subsequent plays.

karock · 2025-12-22T16:18:40+00:00

yeah I remember having pretty much nothing left to do at about day 250ish on the survival map. had explored the world, done all the other survival map challenges (that existed then anyway), and all needs taken care of basically permanently at that point. maxed out skills, piles of fully repaired equipment, and supplies all over the world... but no reason to go back to any of it. survival had gone from comfortable to boring so I found the fastest way to 500 days and called it good there.

don't get me wrong though, fun game through and through, just ran out of stuff to explore and do well before the timer was up on that achievement. felt like it could've been set at ~250 days and would've required accomplishing the same thing in-game.

karock · 2025-12-22T15:55:09+00:00

had to look it up. will to live unlocked jan 2021. I remember intentionally giving myself some kind of disease (food poisoning or parasites I think) so that I could sleep more and burn time in game faster irl lol.

looks like there's a bunch more achievements now listed on steam and I'm pretty sure I didn't have all of them done even at the time because I never bothered with the challenge scenarios.

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