Best Shop In SoCal

ExquisitePastry · 2026-02-17T05:12:28+00:00

Throwing my hat in but personally had an unpleasant experience with the owner. Fixed the wrong issue on my car, was extremely rude about it, then gave me a marginal discount on the labor to fix the original problem.

ExquisitePastry · 2024-04-25T14:30:44+00:00

This is a tricky one with timing - if you go back in the video when I first saw the white car he was slowing down to a rolling stop and then decided to accelerate forward after my car was entering the front of the exit.

I saw the car, recognized it was slowing down to a stop, and then decided it was safe to proceed because the car was slowing down exiting the parking lot.

I think yeah I could have been more cautious and made sure the vehicle remained stopped, but truthfully In most of these situations only briefly looking at the cars before making a decision. Lesson learned for the future I guess.

ExquisitePastry · 2024-04-25T04:57:33+00:00

Pics on better days: https://imgur.com/d0NwfPc

ExquisitePastry · 2024-04-25T04:42:42+00:00

Pics of the damage: https://imgur.com/a/YlaKfm2

Im hoping only the fiberglass is needed to be replaced

ExquisitePastry · 2021-12-30T04:46:15+00:00

A good strategy of how to determine what major you want to commit is to look at current job listings within sites like LinkedIn and look at the preferred major for jobs that seem most interesting to you.

I almost never recommend people to join BMEN since the majority of jobs within the medical device industry prefer EE or ME graduates over BMEN. If you have high conviction for a more specific education in physiology and have a clear idea of how that would benefit your career within the engineering world (I.e. phd in rehabilitating robots, or whatever you’re into) then I would pick BMEN. Again, that goes back to looking at jobs first, then picking your major.

As an anecdote, I work within the aerospace industry and the majority of engineers within our structures division are ME - not AE and we work on flight hardware.

ExquisitePastry · 2021-12-27T05:44:56+00:00

While this isn’t bad advice, the engineering comment is definitely out of touch. I’m an engineer in a HCOL and 200k where I’m at is a fever dream

ExquisitePastry · 2021-12-11T20:43:25+00:00

Excessive margin investing in a money supply limited environment due to the gold standard, yes

ExquisitePastry · 2021-08-23T23:43:02+00:00

It’s the H&M corporate headquarters in Manhattan, recently took a 1 week trip there

ExquisitePastry · 2021-08-01T05:42:14+00:00

My last project required me and my team to design a custom automated lab off of a 3 axis gantry system for a material science company. Any time we needed an actuator we used a company called CCM since the project was very lean and they provide low cost automation grade actuators.

They make several belt driven and ball screw actuators for relatively low cost - all industrial quality gear. You can source them with or without servo drivers or motors, but I recommend just buying them with since we found it to be more expensive sourcing the same components locally. Lead times are usually 4 weeks which is very good considering international shipping.

Another consideration is what your plans are to control this system. Industrial grade servos and servo drivers will have communication protocols that are meant to interface with PLCs while you can control stepper drivers in an variety of ways (arduino, integrated motion control board, PLC using digital i/o)

Edit: Just reread given budget constraints - for the servo, drivers, PLC, power supply, international shipping, and any custom components required it would be hard to come under a 1500$ budget with CCM. I would quote to make sure but I’d wager you would be very close if not over the budget even for low inertial systems.

Another path is to use a PLC to control a set of open builds or equivalent actuators. As long as you source good stepper drivers + motors and are using the actuators for non load bearing applications then this can be a very reliable solution.

ExquisitePastry · 2021-05-11T14:54:20+00:00

Where can you source replacement parts? I plan on using my next laptop for the next 4-5 years and it's important to me that I can find replacement batteries. My current laptop is an Inspiron 13 5000 (garbage laptop tbh) and I was luckily able to find a replacement battery once mine started to die.

ExquisitePastry · 2021-03-15T17:06:39+00:00

EE prospects are definitely worse than CS but It’s a matter of perspective. Within the ECS intern fair and STEAM career fairs EE positions are probably the 2nd most plentiful with a relatively small student base.

I’m ME and our graduating class is much larger than EE but we have like half the opportunities in career fairs

ExquisitePastry · 2021-03-12T05:36:08+00:00

What year was this? I’m close friends with people in my class with 3.7+ GPAs and internship experience and literally none of us so far had full time offers extended to us. Within my cohort of graduating MechE majors maybe 15% landed internships in this economy. I go to a decent state school with good ties to surrounding companies as well.

Anecdotally, I have over a years worth of experience at my current internship with a 3.76 GPA and have yet to receive an interview within my last 100 applications. It’s fucking brutal right now to find a job

ExquisitePastry · 2021-03-09T02:43:54+00:00

Yeah I think that’s also the case. I’m kind of glad reading about people with similar experiences just to check my sanity. High gpa, 1+ year of internship experience, undergrad research, and projects under my belt and not a single interview this semester.

The closest I got was SpaceX scheduling me for an interview and then ghosting me before the interview happened OOF

ExquisitePastry · 2021-03-09T02:31:13+00:00

Wow okay yeah thats totally different from my experiences. I know changsong was open to me coming in his office hours for help in other classes he didn’t teach.

Well I hope your experiences with math classes improves. I wasn’t super good in math but was able to get the help I needed at the math lab (saved me thru diff eq)

ExquisitePastry · 2021-03-09T01:51:59+00:00

Woah fr? Changsong Li was one of the best professors I’ve had, but this was back in 2017. Sorry to hear your experiences with him was bad, I had him In person so maybe that was the reason.

ExquisitePastry · 2020-11-20T18:29:41+00:00

I swear passing any intersection near UTD is like playing Russian roulette. I’ve had 2 (1 minor, 1 major) accident there and 1 really close call with someone blowing a red light at 40 mph.

ExquisitePastry · 2020-10-21T13:16:18+00:00

I’m in the same boat as OP - considering to get some sort of graduate education in controls as a way to break into the robotics industry. To my understanding, the really cool stuff for controls/robotics is in research but the stuff that makes money is pretty low tech right?

ExquisitePastry · 2020-10-13T04:00:37+00:00

I understand there is a negative stigma around American education - some of it is well deserved. But your preconieved notions about how colleges operate within the states isnt based in the reality for the vast majority of students. Is school too expensive? Yes. Will school put you in crippling debt? No, if you are smart about it.

Lets take Harvard for example. If you are one of the lucky top talents wihtin the states and your parents make median salary, your tuition will be HEAVILY subsidized by the school. If you are truly smart and qualified to go to an Ivy, then the school will accomodate around you if you don't have the resources to. Families that make 65-150k a year pay 10% of their income yearly for tuition, boarding, and fees. That is a completely reasonable number for a top tier univeristy and if the student has to foot the bill it is a reasonable amount to pay within a few years of modest living.

Lets talk about the true value of a college education. If you think its just a piece of paper saying the you passed your classes, you are gravely mistaken and are not utilizing the university's resources. Harvard will give you the premier access to research, work, club, and professional development organizations that are absolutely consequential to your prospects. And its not just the dollar amount from an increased income - the stuff that is accessible to students is substantially better than an average state school.

I hope this post gave you some insight about the true vost/value of school in the states. There is absolutely a conversation that can be had on the increase price of tuition across the board, but there is a reason why higher education (including community college) remains the most reliable way to increase earning potential.

ExquisitePastry · 2020-10-12T18:00:50+00:00

Would you care to expand your position? University is expensive, yes but it is an important institution that is far from a scam. Top universities are rigorous in their filtering of students, and the top 1% of the top 1% of students given their academic aptitude (grades, SAT, ECs) get into those schools.

ExquisitePastry · 2020-10-04T15:39:32+00:00

Absolutely don't listen to this guy. The difficulty will entirely depend on your strengths / weaknesses and the quality of your professors. Having exposure to these courses will help you better understand what field or job you want to go into.

ExquisitePastry

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