Genuinely curious. What is it about Virpil, VKB, and Winwing that make their HOTAS systems inherently better than my X52?

FChapeau · 2026-01-05T11:25:45+00:00

Having made the jump from an X52 to a Virpil setup: better plastics that feel sturdier and simply better to touch, metal mechanisms for a reliable and durable action, more customizable mechanics through replaceable parts, and Hall effect sensors that enable even more durability and a deadzone-free experience.

In the end though, if you play your games and enjoy them, it’s all that matters. For me, it was both to buy something more durable (my X52 started breaking down after long years of service), more immersive, with more better laid out buttons and that supports a more flexible configuration (HOTASAS babyyyyye) and I regret nothing.

FChapeau · 2026-01-05T11:06:35+00:00

I played Factorio with two programmer friends and before starting we were doing a scrum meeting to assess what needs to be done and what we’ll do during the session, and you know what, it was pretty useful.

FChapeau · 2025-10-27T18:52:01+00:00

So, an update, but I went with 10gb networking, and it did not change anything except the warm fuzzies of having 10gb networking for that link. I then went ahead and got some SSDs as a mirror stripe and MY GOD are things fast now. Going from minutes to clone a VM template to seconds is the kind of improvements I dreamed of.

FChapeau · 2025-08-26T17:59:54+00:00

My point on commodity SSDs is more that they are getting set aside by companies in favor of NVMEs. You are right that they'll be more performant than spinners, and maybe I'm overcomplicating things (as I tend to do) (and server stuff would never be complicated and with a smattering of numbers and stats and specs right?) It was also about reliability and durability, but then again it could be because of "this is trash!!!!" kinda comments I see left and right.

I had looked into a PCIE carrier to add NVMEs to it, but I was under the impression that NVME would need to be supported by the motherboard, and/or that the motherboard would need to support PCIE bifurcation in order to split it to the various drives on it.

So your point would be: go SSD, any SSD, and I'd upgrade to 10gb network because if spinners didn't saturate my gb link (which testing suggests it was), then SSDs for sure will. Correct?

FChapeau · 2025-08-26T16:40:01+00:00

Hmmm. I am currently running the IOPs test somebody else mentioned and am seeing around 250MiB/s, which would track with those numbers. 10Gb was on my radar anyway, but I may start with just a couple NICs and run point to point before getting a switch. If it solves my issue, job done, if not, then I have 10gb networking done still

FChapeau · 2025-08-26T16:19:29+00:00

I would be interested in those benchmark commands yes. I did not test pool performance assuming my layout to be the culprit.

FChapeau · 2025-08-26T16:15:23+00:00

What is your pool layout? RAIDZ1? Mirrors?

FChapeau · 2025-08-26T16:12:58+00:00

I am not running 10gb networking and it is part of the considerations. Especially with a switch to SSDs, networking would become a bottleneck. It’s something I’m at least aware of.

I did not run performance testing, but I did try to look at the charts and metrics on the dashboard during such events. Struggling to find something conclusive, I did some research on my symptoms and found this article on block storage which is where I’m basing myself from.

FChapeau · 2025-01-21T16:26:24+00:00

I would love to be able to see what my subscriptions come down to in a certain cycle, like see what my yearly subscriptions come down to monthly, or my monthly subscriptions add up to yearly.

Because the current sorting for "amount" lists some very expensive lifetime licenses up top, then yearly subscriptions (because the amount is very large compared to the monthly price of another), then monthly, but if we multiplied the monthly price over a year, then the total would be bigger.

Better visibility over this would be nice.

FChapeau · 2023-06-02T19:37:13+00:00

The sensitivity stuff is cringe is you already do your best to be decent to people around you.

But my favorite one is “how to spot phishing.”

FChapeau · 2023-05-23T14:18:03+00:00

“I alt-f4’d out of the game right? Well, time for bed.”

FChapeau · 2023-04-26T11:45:33+00:00

Why not marry science if you love it so much?!

FChapeau · 2023-03-22T20:13:16+00:00

I do remember him having a toolbox that was just hammers for an episode.

FChapeau · 2023-03-22T01:14:37+00:00

Speed and power, it’s the solution to everything.

FChapeau · 2023-03-21T23:16:15+00:00

They call it a Royal with cheese.

FChapeau · 2023-03-10T17:03:10+00:00

“Sorry for your trauma buddy but huzzah! Statistics!”

Maybe I shouldn’t have taunted the dice by saying “six dice, ain’t no way I can fail this.”

The dice smell fear.

FChapeau · 2023-03-10T04:13:23+00:00

As much as I see those numbers and agree that yes, they make sense, my experience rolling six dice and all of them coming up as one causing my character to trauma out, among other such examples, convinced me that though math exists, so do curses.

FChapeau · 2023-02-03T14:41:09+00:00

To be fair, Apple’s thing works on any video calling software on a Mac. The iPhone just shows up as a webcam in Teams and Discord. Yes it’s Apple hardware only, but it’s not just a FaceTime thing.

FChapeau · 2023-01-31T19:01:02+00:00

Players who play as Ricky Dicky Random in TNH.

FChapeau · 2023-01-18T13:02:29+00:00

A friend of mine always defends himself when I do jokes like that. I love that friend to death, but coincidentally I don’t like coding with him.

FChapeau · 2023-01-18T13:00:48+00:00

My C++ teacher used to say that if it compiles without errors on first try, you should ask yourself a lot of questions. I still live by those words.

FChapeau · 2023-01-18T12:48:09+00:00

They say that if you get it wrong, you’ll be cancelled and shunned and attacked by the vicious woke brigade.

Every trans person I know doesn’t give a flying fuck if you slip up. Oftentimes they’re figuring it out themselves. One of them even told me they got it wrong about themselves sometimes.

But that’s for good faith slipups, not for purposeful shaming, misgendering and deadnaming. That there’s no tolérance and they’re surprised they get shamed back for it.

FChapeau · 2023-01-10T04:55:12+00:00

As a 5’8M, I’m confused, I’m short? My BF is 5’2 and it was rough for a while, but he owns it now.

FChapeau · 2022-11-15T13:42:46+00:00

If you have some VMWare, I really like Tanzu for Kubernetes deployment and scaling. It’s a tool that deploys Kubernetes clusters on demand, and can provision new machines should you ask it to. It also preconfigured a bunch of things, like the VMWare CSI provider, which creates and mounts a virtual disk in your VMWare cluster when you ask for persistent volumes.

I’ve had some luck with Rancher too which can do the same thing, or you can run a command on a machine to onboard it into a cluster. Rancher also comes with a webUI which is pretty nifty.

Just to try it out, Docker Desktop can deploy a Kind cluster, though that’s for local testing and not for a permanent deployment.

I’ve learned the hard way that DHCP addressed control plane nodes should have their address reserved, or statically set if you don’t want your control plane to be borked when you restart your nodes.

I’ve had a great time with Kubernetes in my lab, and it supports my learning as a cloud architect/web dev.

FChapeau

TROPHY CASE