Category: Uncategorized

Bethel—Heidi Nikolaidis, 79, passed away on September 21, 2024 at Cedar Hill Nursing Home. She was born on April 8, 1945 in Plattenhardt, Germany, to Otto and Lydia Boepple.

Heidi immigrated to the United States with her family in 1955. Heidi moved to New York City in 1963. She attended and graduated from the Latin American Institute, where she studied languages, later working for Appleton Century Crofts.

In 1966, Heidi met Nick Nikolaidis on a blind date. They married in 1968. During this time, Nick and Heidi had side jobs catering events.

While driving through New England one weekend, Nick and Heidi became enamored with central Vermont. Rather than spending their savings on a planned vacation to Aruba, they bought a one-room cabin in Bethel. It was their primary residence for more than 50 years.

They owned and operated the Buckboard Restaurant in Randolph in 1976, and later the Black Forest Café and Caterers in Bethel. While Nick and Heidi’s careers primarily were in food service and catering, Heidi had other pursuits. These included insurance sales, dabbling with local politics, substitute teaching in Bethel and Randolph.

Heidi was also active in the Bethel Business Association, the Bethel Historical Society, and the town hall restoration project. She was the driving force behind the hanging baskets that lined Main Street’s lamp posts for several years. Heidi got her pilot’s license in 1980, and joined a flight club. Her love of flying led her to joining the Civil Air Patrol, where she achieved the rank of Captain and was a Wing Commander in Vermont.

Heidi loved animals, gardening, cooking, travel, and her family. Her passion for travel took her on multiple trips to Asia, including trekking in Nepal.

She is survived by her son, Peter; three siblings; and several nieces and nephews.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, Oct. 12 at 2 p.m. at the Bethel-Lympus church on Gay Hill Road in Bethel. 

Nick Nikolaidis, aged 78, of Bethel, Vermont, passed away peacefully on Friday, March 29. He was born on May 31, 1945 in Athens, Greece to Anna and Miltiatis Nikolaidis. 

Nick immigrated to America in 1963. He embodied the immigrant’s American Dream, arriving in New York City with $20 in his pocket. His first job was at Morgan Guarantee (Later JP Morgan/Chase). In 1966, Nick met Heidi Boepple on a blind date in New York City. They married in 1968. 

While driving through New England one weekend, Nick and Heidi became enamored with central Vermont. Rather than spending their savings on a planned vacation to Aruba, they bought a one-room cabin in Bethel. It was their primary residence for more than fifty years. They owned and operated the Buckboard Restaurant in Randolph in 1976, and later the Black Forest Café and Caterers in Bethel. Nick worked in the foodservice industry for his entire adult life, including time spent catering at the Green Mountain Horse Association in South Woodstock, VT and weddings, parties, and auctions. 

Nick’s favorite pastime was collecting postcards. He was an active member of several postcard and stamp clubs. He can be fondly remembered sharing his love of this hobby at the Bethel Forward Festival. He was a founding member of the Bethel Business Association, a longtime member of the Bethel Historical Society, and an active member in the Bethel Town Hall restoration project.

For the past 8 years Nick showed his love and dedication to Heidi through his diligence and care after her stroke. She was able to live in her own home for the majority of that time because of Nick’s unwavering devotion.   

He is survived by his wife, and his son, Peter, whom he referred to as his “pride and joy.” 

A memorial service will be held at the United Church of Bethel at 2 pm on Friday, April 19th, 2024 with Pastor Thomas Harty officiating.  A reception will follow at the White Church. The service will also be livestreamed via YouTube.

The family would like to extend their heartfelt thanks to Gifford Medical Center, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, and the Cedar Hill Nursing Home for their support and care during Nick’s final days. Special thanks to Craig and Tonia Pratt for their years of loving care for Nick and Heidi. 

Nick showed care by providing delicious food (especially spanakopita) for his loved ones and community. His passion for good food, wine, and the Bethel community will be sorely missed.

A few years ago, during peak COVID, I was playing role-playing games (like Deadlands and Dungeons & Dragons) 3-5 times a week. I was glad to reconnect with my favorite hobby as a kid, and also to reconnect with friends with whom I’d lost touch.

Initially, I played on Roll20.com because that was where my D&D friends were. But some time later, my Savage Worlds (mostly Deadlands) friends introduced me to FoundryVTT.com. I was blown away at how polished the UI was, and the great support for Savage Worlds that Roll20 lacks to this day.

But Foundry was not without its drawbacks. I won’t go into a comparison of the two platforms – there are dozens of those just a Google or YouTube search away if you want them. The one drawback that Foundry had which Roll20 could not claim was simple: every time I tried to upgrade Foundry from version 9.something to 9.something+1, it broke my games. I reached out to Foundry’s “support” on Discord, which was a complete joke. I was told by one lurker in the channel that he could not help because I was running on Windows. So I backed up my configuration, ported it over to a Linux server, and… reproduced the problem. Still no help was to be found.

Eventually, I gave up. Despite having invested hundreds of dollars and – more importantly – dozens of hours configuring Foundry to my and my friends’ liking, I gave up and went back to Roll20.

And almost immediately questioned my decision. Sigh. After a few months on Roll20, and seeing more Savage Worlds games and modules available for Foundry, I decided to give it one more shot. After all, there was a Mac version now, and I could hack at it locally on my MacBook, so why not?

It took a couple hours, but I eventually successfully migrated my old Foundry 9.x installation and worlds to version 11. I was thrilled to see that – somewhere between 9.x and 11.x, the bug I experienced which broke my worlds during upgrades – had been fixed!

But I had one lasting problem – I like having my Foundry server local on my laptop (especially when working offline on an airplane or in Vermont when the power goes out), but I need a way to let my friends play on it too. And I don’t want to have to remember to back up and restore and move my world around from my Mac laptop to a Linux or Windows server, having to deal with path differences, and re-licensing it every time I start the server.

The solution? I set up SSH forwarding to redirect traffic sent to my Foundry server on to my Macbook.

ssh -i my_ssh_key.pem -R my.foundry.server:30000:localhost:30000 -p 2222 [email protected]

This command allows you to access a server running on your local machine via port 30000 on the remote server my.foundry.server, by creating a reverse SSH tunnel through the remote server.

1. ssh: The command to initiate an SSH connection.
2. -i my_ssh_key.pem: Specifies the private key file (my_ssh_key.pem) to use for authentication. This key should correspond to a public key that’s authorized on the remote server.
3. -R my.foundry.server:30000:localhost:30000: This creates a reverse tunnel that forwards connections to port 30000 on the remote server (my.foundry.server) to port 30000 on your local machine (localhost). This is useful if you’re running a Foundry Virtual Tabletop server on your local machine and want to make it accessible from the remote server’s address.
4. -p 22: Specifies that the SSH connection should be made to port 22 on the remote server. This is useful if the SSH server on my.foundry.server is configured to listen on a non-standard port.
5. [email protected]: Specifies the username (ubuntu) and hostname (my.foundry.server) of the remote server. You should replace ubuntu with the appropriate username for your remote server.

Now, as long as I can reach my foundry server (on port 22 in this example) and have a decent speed connection, my friends can play on my server while I have the convenience of having it local with me wherever I go.

If you’re like 99% of the civilized world, you’ve been on a Zoom, WebEx, GotoMeeting, Hangout, Meet, or other similar platform within the last two hours. Even though it’s been just over a year since the first reported case of COVID-19 in the US, I figured it would not hurt to give some folks some best practices on attending online meetings.

Know if Your Camera is On

I recommend cameras on for small meetings. It shows that you are (or are not) engaged. For a large meeting with dozens of people in attendance, don’t turn your camera on if no one else has – just go with the flow. If you’re a manager and you want people to be more engaged, have your staff turn ’em on.

If your camera is on, act accordingly. Don’t be that guy.

Mute if You’re Not Speaking

If you’re a good meeting attendee, and you’re paying attention to what’s going on, you may not need to mute. However, if you’re splitting your attention, typing, using a scratchy microphone, or have background noise (kids, spouses, pets, traffic, smoke detectors, etc.) please mute. And then remember to unmute when you speak. Another reason to keep your camera on – if you forget to unmute, people can helpfully tell you “you’re muted.”

Use a Good Microphone

Lots of people have cheap headsets or use their laptop microphone. Some of these sound absolutely terrible. If your microphone is the kind that hangs by your neck, you’ll likely make a sound like steel wool over a chalkboard every time you turn your head. Laptop mics also tend to have a lot of echo and can sound like you’re very far away. Using your phone for audio is often better. Amazing! A device built for audio calls is better at audio. Most platforms offer an iOS and Android option, and these will usually let you call in over the Internet and via a phone call. Try these if anyone complains of audio quality issues when you’re using a laptop microphone. And if other people on the meeting are complaining about your audio quality, do something about it. Don’t ignore it or just hope it gets better.

Use Do Not Disturb

Another annoyance is the constant buzz or beep of notifications going off in the background. Enable do not disturb or sign out of your email and messaging platforms.

Share Only What You Want

If you’re presenting, share only the application you want everyone else to see. This is safe than sharing your entire screen. Showing up nude when your camera is on is pretty bad. Slightly less embarrassing is getting a pop-up on your screen about how stupid someone else in the meeting is.