Canopyflyer

You always were an asshole Gormon.

Harold “Wisconsin” Johnson is the answer to your question.

Actually got to meet him this past Sunday in Lake Geneva, WI at the “Dreams and Nightmares” Convention put on by the Wisconsin Historical society. Also got to meet Tom Wham, who is the original artist for many creatures in the original Monster Manual including the Beholder.

Wisconsin Johnson was hired to to be an editor of the original first edition books. His degree from Northwestern University is listed as a BS in Biology. What that doesn’t tell you is he minored in European and Eastern history. He has extensive knowledge of European, Middle Eastern, Sumerian and Asian mythologies. He used that knowledge to add to the AD&D compendium. He drove a lot of design and content in the 1e days at TSR as he was promoted very quickly after he was hired.

Also, there is a AD&D Monster Manual II that is even larger than the original.

As to why he is called “Wisconsin Johnson”. He loves to wear hats, especially at conventions so that people could find him. He settled on wearing a Fedora exactly like Indiana Jones wore. Someone even called him “Indiana Johnson”, but Harold stated emphatically that he was from Wisconsin. So the moniker Wisconsin Johnson was born. Yes, he was wearing his Fedora this past Sunday at the convention I attended.

Raspberry, Dark Chocolate, Chambord. The Chocolate Passion Cookbook has my absolute favorite cake ever on its cover. My wife makes it for me every birthday. If she doesn’t make it for me, she makes it for our oldest’s birthday, which is only 2 weeks after mine.

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Used this against my controlling mother, who liked to lay BS at my feet and make me think it was my responsibility to fix. When it was HER that caused the whole thing. The look on her face when I hit her with that phrase and just turned around and left was priceless.

There a LOT of things that are just flat not your problem, even if someone else tries to make it yours.

Schindler’s List

It is a cinematic triumph and a film that everyone should see. With that said, I am unable to ever view it again. The scene where Schindler is breaking down realizing that if he didn’t have expensive items he could have saved more people just absolutely killed me.

8 way skydive. Two friends were getting married and they wanted to do a formation skydive as part of their wedding ceremony. They were going to get married, then 8 of us would get into the plane and do an 8 way formation dive. Land and eat cake.

The problem was they were both low time jumpers, with about 70 jumps each. The other 6 jumpers were all highly experienced, so we tried to make it work. The jump in question was a practice jump about a month before the wedding.

The bride fell out of the formation and went low. Meaning she was below everyone else and was continuing to get even lower. People in a formation will fall more slowly than an individual.

The formation of 7 other jumpers gets to about 5000ft and she is about 500ft below us and just sitting there. She is making no moves to track out and it is becoming a very dangerous situation. Then she starts waving off, which is what you’re supposed to do right before deploying your parachute. We all see it, break the formation turn and burn. The jumper to my right videoed the whole thing. By happenstance I was the closest to her. The video shows me in a full track when she and her deploying main parachute come into frame. I might have missed her by about 20ft. Later she told me I sounded like a jet airplane passing by.

Everyone needed a change of underwear after that jump. I grounded her except for coached jumps, which I took on myself. I did about 15 jumps with her over the next month with increasing number of people until it clicked with her on how formation skydiving actually works.

We did not get to do the jump the day of the wedding unfortunately. Just after the nuptials were completed and we were to head to the airplane an intense thunderstorm blew in grounding the planes. We still held the reception in the hanger though and it was a good time. We did the wedding jump a couple of weeks later and sent the video to all the wedding guests.

But yeah, it was pretty fucking scary.

I’m a Gen X’er… Not sure if the Lemmy’s word limit on posts would allow me to list it all.

So here are a few:

Drank from the garden hose? Check

Rode in a car without seat belts? As a toddler? As a baby? Check

Rode my bike all over town with no helmet? Had an accident that put me in a coma for 48hrs because of not wearing a helmet? Check

Harvested tobacco on my grandparents farm? Check (Anyone who has done this by hand, working with those stakes knows the risks.)

I started skydiving in the early 90’s. My mother was absolutely appalled and constantly berated me about how “dangerous” it is to jump out of an airplane.

The truth of the matter was I was far safer in free fall than I was during most of my adolescence.

My Friday night group started playing 2024 rules a couple of months ago. Also made the change from Roll20 to Foundry VTT, so it’s been a little bit of a learning curve for the group.

I absolutely love Weapon Mastery. It’s a mechanic that is long over due. Haven’t been playing long enough to say what could be done better about it, as so far it’s been pretty good across the classes. I play a Rogue Soul Knife and having Vex, in order to get Sneak Attack damage every turn is really effective. Plus, as a Rogue I can use tactics more individualized for my character.

The lack of flanking giving advantage was annoying… At first. With that said, it has forced the party to actually engage in tactics that didn’t just involve lining up in a row.

So far so good… Just waiting for everything to go behind multiple paywalls due to Hasbro having a bad quarter. I really tried pushing my group to go to Pathfinder after the License dust up, but was overridden. My group is more important to me than the stupidity of Hasbro, so 2024 is what we play.

Vallejo makes really good paints. Game Color is another good company.

They can be expensive, but they last a very long time and look great. I purchased a 75 color set of Vallejo, when my wife went full in on painting, 4 years ago. We still use it today. It was expensive, but I’ve not had to invest that much since. Just replacing the more heavily used paints once in a while.

53m

Learned how to drive synchro’d transmissions on a 86 Ford Escort.

Learned how to double clutch and rev match on a non-synchro’d transmission in a 49 Willys.

They look fantastic!

I got my family into playing D&D a few years ago. My wife, who is also an artist, has gotten swept up in painting miniatures. She likes the videos by Dr Faust on Youtube. Dr Faust goes from basic methods all the way up to layering and more advanced methods.

Seconded on the Bosch 800 series. Have had mine for 4 years now. It does a great job cleaning dishes, much better than the GE it replaced. Mine is run just about once a day and the screen needs to be cleaned every week to two weeks.

It’s also very quiet. You can’t even tell it’s running when in the kitchen.

You came in that?

You’re braver than I thought.

Keep your starship out of my backyard.

(JN Chaney book reference)

Former Skydiver here.

At least for the Skydiving community… Skydivers are not better, nor are they worse than the general public.

What skydivers are… is different. Your average jumper will not experience fear on an average jump. I’ve actually fallen asleep on the way to altitude. There are things that can scare us though, usually when we’re in the plane. I’ve experienced two bailouts (both from the same plane), one crash (fuel starvation on climb out), and multiple rejected take offs. All of those events gave everyone aboard those planes a good dose of fear, including me.

We all still jumped the very next time we could, even after the crash.

As I said… Skydivers are just a bit different, but we still experience fear.

Why did I quit skydiving? I got bored. Yes, literally. Made a skydive, it went perfectly with people I was good friends with, got to the ground and started daisy chaining my main and realized… I just didn’t feel anything any longer. Felt it was better to leave the sport than to try increasingly crazier things to find that feeling again. I know people that did that and it usually doesn’t end well.

My (53m) idiot older brothers (61 and 59 respectively).

The oldest decided to scam me and the middle brother out of our shares of the family farm. It’s not a huge amount of money, but the fact he did what he did is enough.

My middle brother informed me, at Thanksgiving 2 years ago, that he was a member of the oath keepers and that essentially he was the new patriarch of the family. All of my political beliefs are bullshit and I had to subscribe to the right wingnut bullshit he adhered to. Military this and guns that. The stupid fuck was in the army for 6 years back in the 80’s.

Haven’t spoken to either of those assholes in years, nor will I ever again.

“Attractive people in absurd situations.” — Samantha Carter Stargate SG-1