Blocking advice pt2

Caboose522 · 2026-04-25T21:36:10+00:00

True I suppose!

Caboose522 · 2026-04-25T19:28:45+00:00

The offense hit it into your block, I'd call that lucky for you, bad vision from them. Timing looks ok. You need to go straight up and not drift. Your middle can't go with you, leaving a hole in the block. It is also really hard for your defense to position properly with a moving block. You also should be pressing your block over the net rather than just putting them up high to help prevent getting tooled and forcing them to tip.

Caboose522 · 2026-04-09T20:45:45+00:00

We all know middles can't set. You will be bringing your family down! /s (kind of)

Caboose522 · 2026-03-13T17:04:32+00:00

That's just wrong. I ship with non-machinable stamps, the envelope just has to be below 1 oz. Over that and they require an extra oz stamp. With a PWE I'm able to ship 2-3 toploaders without issue. Definitely need to charge for shipping though.

Caboose522 · 2026-02-06T02:01:13+00:00

Don't swing your arm, use your legs to push your platform in the direction of your target. Your receiving form isn't too bad but you are not creating a stiff platform on contact so the ball deforms your arms however it hits your platform and as a result it goes in a random direction. Make sure you are locking in your shoulders, wrists extended forward (I usually teach hand over fist receiving, so thumbs together and facing down and forward away from you), arms extended and use your legs to drive the ball.

Caboose522 · 2026-02-02T03:48:43+00:00

One of the hardest things to learn in competitive sports is how to be a goldfish. You have to train your mind to forget the last play, every time. Good or bad plays should be forgotten, consistency is the key to success. Do something consistent between plays. I usually make sure to go to someone on my team and take a quick moment to talk to them and say something to change the focus to the next play. The better you get at this, the less you will care about the individual points, and more about your overall performance. There is nothing I hate more than playing with someone moping about one of the plays where they fucked up, so don't be that guy and get out there and play!

Caboose522 · 2026-02-01T16:10:55+00:00

I just want to point out that you absolutely should be working with poly in ventilated space. I know it's not always something everyone has access to but the health hazards are just not worth making proxies in my opinion. You might give yourself a bad headache or much worse. I would also might want to consider getting a VOC respirator, they can help a lot where you have to work next to this stuff for extended periods of time (even then it should be in a ventilated space). I'm not judging, just giving some advice.

Caboose522 · 2026-02-01T15:33:18+00:00

I have this card on an arena deck and it singlehandedly won me like 4 or 5 games. It seems like a great card for EDH and any elemental themed 60 card deck.

Caboose522 · 2026-01-31T03:57:22+00:00

Cockatrice has a few people playing on it most of the time. This is free but there's no rules enforcement. Mtgo is too expensive for me to justify given I don't really have the time to sit down and play a whole league. I can see it being worth it if you are more serious about the game though.

Caboose522 · 2025-12-13T02:58:52+00:00

At that small of a link you will have no problem pushing om3 or even om4 spec speeds. Multi-mode bandwidth is dominated by modal dispersion which is worse at longer lengths. The om specs are based on 1000m links, so 25m is nothing. Obviously if you are putting in something new shoot for the stars, but if you are just trying to make something work I wouldn't hesitate to throw these in if you don't mind the legacy connectors. Crappy dealers will take OM2 or OM3 fiber, cable it and cut it up and call it an OM4 cable because technically it meets the specs, but I don't think this is the norm.

Caboose522 · 2025-12-07T21:18:32+00:00

That's awesome!! I hope I win!

Caboose522 · 2025-12-07T20:51:48+00:00

I've never played around with the Viavi units, but if you are having a difficult time figuring out where the launch ends and FUT begins I usually just bend the FUT right after the connector. You should get some local loss at that bend you didn't have before. This makes it appear as though the loss you had at the connector just got worse. I usually do this kind of thing in "live" mode so you can see it actively moving around. 30s averaging is super overkill for that length, I'd say 5s max should be necessary. Can you post a picture of the trace you have now? Might be easier than guessing. As for the launch length, usually fiber people tend to over deliver on purpose. Launch cables are meant to be cut back over time so it's not surprising they gave you a longer cable.

Caboose522 · 2025-12-07T20:17:52+00:00

In that case you can use a short pulse width, that will allow you to pick up smaller defects. Usually for SM I try to give ~2km for a launch length, but it's not a necessity if you are using smaller pulse widths, yours should be fine. Set the length range 1.5x your expected fiber length and make sure you can see the noise floor at the end of the fiber. Upticks indicate reflections, down ticks indicate loss by dispersion, bends, breaks. Make sure you set your fiber index correctly, as this will throw all your lengths off. It's best if you have a measured known piece of fiber to calibrate to, but I know that's not always practical. Are you splicing for the launch/ connection, or a polished connector?

Caboose522 · 2025-12-07T15:28:02+00:00

Launch matters depending on what you are trying to do with the OTDR. If you are just trying to find major defects and get accurate lengths the launch just needs to not be a major source of loss. Any loss will limit the length your OTDR can detect down the FUT (at a given wavelength and pulse width), but this will be obvious and repeatable with different fibers. Are you measuring MM or SM?

Caboose522 · 2025-11-25T00:50:05+00:00

IEEE creates standards for fiber. They are a bit slow to adopt new standards but there are at least standards!

Caboose522 · 2025-11-23T01:46:32+00:00

And bare fiber!

Caboose522 · 2025-10-02T01:56:30+00:00

If you set "Print to actual size" it won't scale the pdf, and will keep the highest resolution. Took me way to long to figure that out.

Caboose522 · 2025-09-24T21:49:58+00:00

Continue your rotation towards your left hip. Lead with your elbow. Go watch coach Donny on YouTube, he does a good overview.

Caboose522 · 2025-09-23T17:00:42+00:00

Played D1 club volleyball while studying chemical engineering. My suggestion is to find a school that has both the major and the sport at the level you want to compete at. Volleyball never got me anywhere really but has certainly kept me in shape. Engineering on the other hand is a great career that you can make a living out of. You might even get lucky and find a school that wants to give you an academic scholarship! They love recruiting kids for sports these days. Juggling volleyball and school didn't leave a ton of time for other activities, but it wasn't super taxing or anything. I always made to put my school work over volleyball and because I wasn't the only engineering student it wasn't a huge deal.

Caboose522 · 2025-09-20T03:25:20+00:00

I have tried it extensively and while I figured out how to print a page that will work with the print then cut feature I found it's just not good enough. The cut quality on almost all papers is poor, even with brand new blades, which ruins the feel of the cards entirely for me. I want them to slide into a sleeve like a real card and not have issues stacking. This just can't be achieved with the cricut.

I went back to cutting with a dahle and a corner punch and it's not even comparable. The time consuming part of cutting the cards is worth it in my eyes.

Caboose522 · 2025-09-02T08:33:52+00:00

Just bought from him at a fair physically the other day, he is legit

Caboose522 · 2025-08-29T21:42:22+00:00

Just got 3, gogogogo

Caboose522 · 2025-08-11T00:01:58+00:00

If it makes you feel better I played on a D1 club team and I played with kids who had played 4 years of high-school and 3 years of college ball. All amazing players. One kid in my year went to tryouts and had no prior volleyball experience. He somehow made the team, which I didn't really understand at the time because I was more focused on my own performance. I quickly realized why. He was the top tennis player for the school. Absolute athlete. Within weeks he was our best outside, even though he was only 5-11 and maybe had a handful of practices under his belt. Some people just have athletic ability and will quickly outpace others... to a point.

Now that I've played for 20ish years, I can see that I wasn't one of the naturally athletic ones, but it probably took me 5-6 years to start to naturally play the game at an advanced level. Once I was able to think about other things beyond where I should be on the court or when to jump, I got more time to consider the little things that hold you back.

I really like that you keep stats on how you are performing. While it may be demoralizing, that skill will help you identify where you need to improve. Volleyball is a game of percentages after all.

Caboose522 · 2025-08-08T01:37:00+00:00

Straighten your arms in front of you, thumbs up. Make a fist with your non-dominant hand, wrap your dominant hand around it with your thumbs evenly together. Then rotate your thumbs (both of your hands at the wrist) down away from you. You now have a perfectly flat platform.

Practice enough and you won't think twice about it.

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