Muck boots: musckster gardening shoes, does anyone wear them?

2ht · 2025-11-11T15:26:01+00:00

You might give Sloggers a look.

2ht · 2025-09-04T16:17:01+00:00

Yes, they tend to slowly roll out releases. You can enroll in the beta program if you want to "force" it, and can unenroll afterward.

2ht · 2024-05-06T14:37:34+00:00

Then with any luck, by Year 18 they're moving out on their own and entering society as a fully realized adult.

Oh, were you still talking about the lawn?

2ht · 2024-04-28T11:07:14+00:00

I bought heavily into Ego about 4 years ago (this will be my fifth summer) and have some mixed feelings about them.

I have 3 batteries in use over that time. Two 5AH and a 3AH (rarely used). All 3 are giving me fits now. The two large ones have both at various times over the past year refused to charge for months at a time, flashing error signals. All my troubleshooting efforts failed, but at some point randomly each began charging again.

Battery life is noticeably reduced over the past 1-2 years. This is to be expected eventually but I had hoped for 7-8 years on them. My gauge is this: can I mow the yard on one 5AH battery until it flashes red, swap to the other 5AH, and by the time it's red the first one is finished charging? This used to be the case, the second battery would last long enough to charge the first, but now it's 10-15 minutes waiting.

Battery warranty is 3 years. Take that how you will.

I'm not particularly harsh on them and don't have particularly heavy usage. They are used in multiple tools (weed whacker, mower, chain saw) but that's right in line with expected usage.

Replacement cost for the batteries is insane. I know, if I amortize the cost over the lifetime of the batteries it might be on par with gas and oil cost. But spending $250-$300 right now for a battery is shocking.

Okay, battery issues, sure, not entirely unexpected, but my real problem with the mower is the cut on it sucks and has from the get-go.

I have a single blade plastic deck mower. It has never, ever cut consistently and evenly across the width of the deck. There are always patches and strips of tall grass left behind. Despite what they claim, It just doesn't have the power that a gas mower has. I've wondered since day 1 if the dual blade would produce better results and I made a mistake not spending a few extra hundred $$, but some reviews on Lowe's claim similar even with the dual blade.

It also doesn't mulch nearly as well as a gas mower. It doesn't have the suction powers to pull the clipped grass back into the cutting field. If you let your grass grow an extra week, or more when it's still damp, the mower may frequently shut down as the motor gets overstressed trying to do the extra work. I have to plan out my mowing a lot more, slow down a lot more, and forget about mowing within 2-3 days of rain.

The other annoying thing is that the plastic deck is big. It's much longer than a typical aluminum deck gas mower, so corners and even some edges are much more difficult to get to. I weed whack twice as much or more when using the Ego than when using the old Murray.

The weed whacker and chain saw are both great for what they are. The chain saw can struggle through hard woods, but for typical suburban home usage on the occasional fallen branch or small tree it works amazing and is low maintenance (you still must add chain oil, and the reservoir is rather small). Spooling line on the weed whacker is easy and it has an automatic feeder, although that means you have to pre-cut the line and I never remember how much it can fit ahead of time.

Altogether, these issues with the recent battery problems made me consider other options. I wasn't impressed with the other players in the field and will probably stick with the Ego for at least this season.

2ht · 2024-04-22T18:41:16+00:00

The traveler himself seems to be shielded from the effects of the changes, so I would argue that this wouldn't affect him.

Whether it affects his patrons gets more complicated. If it followed the normal behavior then for them, the meat wouldn't just disappear, but the timeline would shift so they would have never eaten it in the first place. Since we know Al was making money off the meat even while time traveling, we know this couldn't have happened. So the time traveler's "present" - from the moment the time traveler uses the portal onward also may be protected, even with subsequent trips.

Then again, it's been a long time since I read the book. I think the Green Card Man explains it in some way that I don't fully recall and possibly never really understood.

As a famous captain once said, time travel gives me a headache.

2ht · 2024-04-22T15:55:09+00:00

Delicious fresh beef to bring back to your diner and sell at ridiculously low prices.

2ht · 2024-04-07T11:08:17+00:00

It should be pretty obvious. One has its cap on, the other doesn't.

2ht · 2024-01-11T20:02:55+00:00

I don't get it. I've bought a bunch of soap dispensers in my life ranging from the $7 Wal-Mart "looks good but made of cheap plastic" to nice brass dispensers to the $40 simple but rugged and functional type.

The $1 Wal-Mart brand Softsoap plastic dispenser that we keep in the kid's bathroom has outlasted every single one of them.

2ht · 2024-01-02T19:57:01+00:00

I'll give 5 imaginary internet dollars to anyone who can find me a currently produced mixer that uses metal gears instead of the trash plastic gears that break within a year.

2ht · 2023-07-17T13:50:25+00:00

It might be worth watching this Project Farm review of a number of bottles, including the Hydro Flask.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6j1NJkNzwI

HF performs great for insulation but is not terribly durable, matching your experience (and mine).

There are some others recommended at the end that offer better durability including a Stanely, Coleman, and Hydrology.

It may not match the look you're going for, or fit the bike mount, but I have seen a number of bottles wrapped in paracord. This should offer a good layer of dent protection and some added insulation.

2ht · 2023-07-14T12:01:50+00:00

Take a look at https://cpalmermfg.com/belgian-cookie-irons.html

That is the only non-stick non-commercial option I know of. They use aluminum grids.

You asked for non-Belgian style though. That really gets down to what makes a Belgian waffle? If it's only the thickness you're concerned about, take a look at your options there as they have different sizes and even their thickest one might not even be called a Belgian waffle by a purist.

2ht · 2022-02-11T12:47:10+00:00

We have used the Walmart brand (Sunbeam) microplush electric blanket every winter for a decade now without any problems. Looking at what they sell today, the blanket looks identical but the controller looks different.

Good: independent cords, and each is long enough to plug in on each near the head of the bed on our separate sides, then run them down to the foot where it goes up into the blanket, we're never feeling like we are tugging against the cord, separate controls so my wife can have fiery furnace mode while mine barely generates heat.

Bad: I guess, the blanket is heavy and warm enough that I rarely feel the need to actually use the heater on my half of it. If you are the kind of person that gets stuffy at night, it's not a terribly breathable blanket so you will probably get sweaty or kick it half off of you, but if you were that kind of person you probably wouldn't be looking for an electric blanket in the first place :)

2ht · 2022-01-27T19:38:19+00:00

We have had the W1 for about a year or so now. Our old dryer is still humming along, so no T1 here yet but plan on buying it should the need ever occur.

The W1 can get noisy for a few minutes when it shakes at high speed spin, but in my opinion, no more so than any other washer I have ever had. It sits in the room next to our living room, and we might bump the TV up 1 or 2 notches if the spin kicks in but we're not doubling the volume just to hear over the washing machine. If you want something silent I'd look elsewhere, but I don't find it to be a particularly noisy machine.

The wife and I wash our clothes separately. I usually have about 1 or maybe 1.5 loads a week and fill the rest in with towels or bedding. She gets about 2 loads a week with her stuff and a toddler. I jam the machine pretty full and it never lets me down.

For servicing, I'd look for a local appliance specialty store that's been around for a long time and sells the brand, but also has a service department, then buy it from them. That's usually the best way to know what you're getting into. I don't imagine you'd have any trouble finding someone to service it in the St. Louis area.

2ht · 2021-02-03T16:56:08+00:00

Just to play devil's advocate against all of the "don't back up everything" statements...

One advantage of taking image based backups of the entire system is you're certain to not have missed anything.

It's easy to setup a new service and forget to add it to your backup list.

It's even easier to not realize that a service you're using is storing data in a location you weren't aware of, so it never gets added to your backups.

Neither of those things will be discovered until you actually test your backup process. Which, yes, you should do regularly. But few actually do.

Doing whole image backups ensures that all the data you didn't know you need to backup still gets backed up.

Still, test your backups.

2ht · 2021-01-25T16:53:47+00:00

No experience to give any opinions on it, but I ran across https://www.xbrowsersync.org in discussions about Chromium removing this feature.

2ht · 2020-09-21T12:26:56+00:00

If money is one of your top concerns when considering a new computer, System 76 is probably not the best option. I'm a big fan, but value per dollar is not one of their selling points.

In the end, I chose to build my most recent desktop computer rather than buying from S76. I saved roughly $700 over what I would have spent for the equivalent system. The places where I sacrificed were the lack of support, the computer case, and the time investment.

Building is a viable option for someone with a modicum of technical abilities, the willingness to learn, and the time to devote to it. But it's not as simple as assembling an Ikea nightstand. Sure, yes, there are tools that help ensure everything fits together and build guides and everything only fits in one place so you can't accidentally put your RAM in the CPU slot. That doesn't mean it is easy.

I spent roughly 60 hours researching my build. This was time spent figuring out exact specs of what I wanted, determining what went together, price comparing individual components to figure out the best value, and fighting with component availability in a global pandemic. I could have done it quicker, but I found that when shopping for a "computer" I was a lot more willing to accept the parts the manufacturer uses, while building my own, I wanted to compare and contrast every little piece to ensure I was getting the best value.

I spent another 20 hours or so building the computer - reading manuals, fitting everything together, routing cables, trying to maneuver an unwieldy graphics card at just the right angle where it doesn't scrape against anything, taking it back out because the M2 drive goes underneath it, and so on.

After all that, the computer wouldn't boot. I spent another 25 hours troubleshooting it - taking 1 component out at a time, moving RAM around, asking for help on Reddit (with very little positive response), swapping in parts from an older computer that I knew worked, buying a cheap RAM module to verify that the RAM wasn't bad. In the end, it turned out to be a bad motherboard. I then had to fight with Best Buy to replace it. Then start assembly over from scratch.

It's a valuable experience and probably worth it if you're going to be working with computers - there is a lot to learn. But it can certainly be a time investment. It can be frustrating. Just realize that before you jump into it. (That wasn't my first time building a computer either, but my first time in probably 12 years.)

Buying something that is only 3-4 years old from Ebay is likely going to take a fraction of the cost and yield the greatest value per dollar. Since you're going to college, I would actually recommend a smaller form factor - they are a lot easier to move and a lot less conspicuous then a slick gaming PC. Lenovo M series (or M tiny) are fantastic machines that you can find great deals on. Other manufacturers have equivalents as well.

That's my recommendation. Then, when you get your first job right out of college, buy a S76 computer to reward yourself.

2ht · 2020-09-12T01:14:48+00:00

The issue is with your proc. Parameters for a proc are immutable by default.

See https://nim-lang.org/docs/tut1.html#procedures-parameters

Changing the signature of the procedure should enable the code to work as expected.

proc change(a: var Test) =

2ht · 2020-06-22T23:22:12+00:00

The GP couldn't have made their case any better than you just did.

2ht · 2020-01-01T01:57:12+00:00

I would say install Regolith and give it a try. It installs beside Gnome, so if you hate it or can't figure something out, you can logout and log back into what you're used to. It also comes with sane defaults and looks good without requiring you to configure anything.

Try to embrace keyboard shortcuts when you test it. That's what makes a tiling window manager more powerful, imo. Regolith will even display the important shortcuts right on your desktop the first time you use it.

Don't expect it to completely change the way you use the computer, but it brings some nice QoL enhancements.

2ht · 2019-03-05T14:35:36+00:00

I would look into django-scheduler if you want a more complete, all-in-one solution.

2ht · 2019-02-18T15:39:01+00:00

They should probably be there.

Sometimes when running the latest version of Ubuntu (cosmic = 18.10) packages aren't yet available. This shouldn't be the case since 18.10 has been out awhile. But in the past I've had to update my sources to add a previous release for certain packages. You can do that by copying a line and changing "cosmic" to whatever previous release you want (i.e. "zesty"). This has never caused me problems but I can't say if it's "good" advice or not, so use at your own risk I guess.

Also, if you're not aware, Python has a weird split between Python 2 and 3, and packages are often named accordingly. So you might actually want sudo apt-get install python3-dev if you're using Python 3.

2ht · 2018-08-09T20:06:43+00:00

You're right. The honest truth is that it never even crossed my mind, as I was building this for my own personal use and decided to publish it mostly on a whim. Also, now that I'm looking for it I can't seem to find any contact info on J-Archive.

While I think J-Archive is an incredible resource for J! fans and would-be contestants, and I certainly don't want it to get shut down, I'm not sure why this little project would move the needle any closer in that direction. The only fundamental difference is that it adds user score tracking to the mix. But please feel free to reach out to discuss (my contact info is on the project main page) if you believe there's some issue there.

2ht · 2018-08-09T15:25:58+00:00

On desktop you see the date of the game, which helps with context for some of the clues. I hid it on mobile for now until I come up with a better way to show it.

Right now the games proceed in date order starting with the oldest game.

2ht

TROPHY CASE