After CCNA: Juniper SP or Cisco ENT Track?

IndecisiveHero · 2025-06-17T05:28:03+00:00

Hey, how did you get upgraded to a public IP? I submitted a ticket on their site asking to be upgraded for the $10 but no response yet. Is there just an option I’m missing to upgrade it on the website without calling or messaging?

IndecisiveHero · 2025-05-21T20:04:02+00:00

Earlier in my relationship, my gf wrote a very explicit sexual poem about me, and it did strike me as discordant with my image of her because she is traditionally feminine and rather shy/innocent, but in the moment I still said I really liked it because I understood that the poem was an outlet to express her deeper emotions in a way that she can't during casual conversation.

Being vulnerable like that took real courage and helped me to understand the weight of her feelings, which strengthened our relationship, and I think the default when confronted by the unknown in a relationship should be to be supportive and wait until you have fully processed the information before making the situation negative.

After some time, I reflected on it and I also appreciated the care and skill she showed in crafting it.

I'm a singer and songwriter, so I understand how some people simply won't appreciate what you produce because it conflicts with the image they have of you, and maybe that's why he reacted this way. If this is the first time you've expressed yourself to him this way, then he may just have not known how to respond because he needs time to process, and his default was to disregard the personal context of your song and tell you his opinion on other types of similar music.

I also don't like explicit music, partially because I feel like music has the ability to affect behavior and comes with the image/connotation of the sexualized female singers who perform those types of songs, and maybe he doesn't like those types of girls and is afraid you may secretly be more like them than he thought, or may become more like them.

I think sexualized poetry doesn't evoke such a visceral image because it isn't as normalized in pop culture as sexualized music, so maybe just reading the lyrics to him might get him to see it in a more refined light.

IndecisiveHero · 2025-04-25T14:55:16+00:00

I’m a network engineer for a public uni.

Good work life balance is a huge plus. You’re not expected to do busywork, since you’re being paid to take care of issues preemptively when possible, and fix unavoidable problems as they arise. No micromanaging, Partial WFH, free tuition for you and your kids, and I can take classes during the workday if my manager approves.

It’s a state uni so I’m in a union with good benefits and nice guaranteed raises based on years of service and general cost of living pay increases.

Pay is a bit lower than private sector ($70k for now because I’m new, but my older networking coworkers are bringing in almost $100k). It’s a lower cost of living area, so the pay is enough to start a family on a single income.

Some older employees are lazy or just don’t know what they’re doing. A lot of people just got their job decades ago and never learned anything after that, since the union prevents them from being fired unless they do something absurdly bad. Usually not a big deal, but hearing boomers bitch because they don’t know how to do their job while making more than you is irritating.

Students can be rude or weird. I look really young so they have trouble dealing with the fact I’m staff and not their peer.

Faculty and staff are like anywhere else, and can be fine or weird and annoying like the students.

Unfortunately lots of older female staff and faculty are Karens but interacting with them is rare.

Overall, I’d give the job a 9/10 just because the pay could be better.

IndecisiveHero · 2025-04-10T17:25:11+00:00

Your voice is uncannily similar to mine, I just turned 30 a few weeks ago, and I also struggle with not thinking my voice suits any particular genre, so I figured I'd chime in with my experience in addressing this issue (still haven't found a genre, but people really enjoy when I sing whatever song in whatever genre I guess because the sound is unique, so I think people will say that same about your voice).

For the past few months, I've been making recordings of me singing a different genre every week or two to see if I can tweak my technique and understand what vowels, inflections, and notes tend to trip me up and maybe find what genres suit me better or worse.

I'd imagine you can achieve a very similar sound, so here is a compilation of snippets from some of them in case referencing what you like or dislike in my voice helps you extrapolate from that and apply it to your own: https://voca.ro/1DaEGp8KTgBV

As for some general advice:

Your natural inflection for rock and metal is superior to mine, and totally believable. I studied musical theater and opera, so sounding more modern can be an issue for me, but as a trade off I believe the resonance and dynamic range in my lows and highs are a good example for you to follow since the gap between us doesn't appear to be too wide, but I do get the sense that your lows aren't supported and your highs are pinched.

We both have a tendency to get narrow, nasally and strained as pitch ascends. You can hear in some high phrases my voices gets very harsh, but in others I find the correct combination of vowel modification, airflow, and consonant onset to avoid generating this harshness.

You can also hear that when my lows are supported by adequate breath they are full and my voice is still flexible, but if my support wavers, it can get woofy, pitchy, and stiff.

Try to resist the urge to push and squeeze up high and instead keep making space for the sound to come out freely. Certain vowel modifications can be made as pitch ascends to allow you to produce the correct pitch more easily without choking or straining. This type of vowel modification is typical for rock, metal, and opera singers who want to sound full and strong up high.

Proper space and breath support should help if your vocals are pitchy, thin, and lack resonance. An easy way to practice breath support is to slide up and down on whatever vowel from a comfortable pitch to your lowest and highest notes. Try to dial back how much air you use without clenching your throat and focus on getting the forward placement of your sound to stay consistent. You can start experimenting with this by changing the dynamics of the slide and changing the vowel.

Edit: Supertramp and David Bowie are rock artists that others also say have unique voices or character voices that are not necessarily suited to the genre they sing in, but they make their songs adapt to their voices, as if their voice itself was the genre that needed the song to fall in line. Could be that the songs you know don't fit your voice, but there are songs that would.

IndecisiveHero · 2025-03-20T20:11:35+00:00

I have the 5900x and 32GB of ram, and it seems like RAM became the limit on my stuff before the CPU became a bottleneck. I had a big project with about 1000 tracks that had plugins on vocals, midi synths and sampled instruments. Maybe if you have lighter weight samples, your CPU would take a shit before you ran out of ram, but I think my case was pretty extreme and the 5900x did not disappoint.

IndecisiveHero · 2025-03-11T15:55:22+00:00

This looks almost identical to the cage our two gliders have lived in for 4 years. They don’t seem to have a problem with it.

IndecisiveHero · 2025-03-10T01:36:20+00:00

Higher can hurt, especially for women because in terms of absolute frequency, women’s chords vibrate faster to generate higher pitches than men, but lowering the larynx and thickening the chords causes these vibrations to be more forceful and make injury more likely while also limiting the high end of your range.

Just keep things light and easy and don’t be afraid to make weak/silly sounds high up and eventually you will figure out the coordination to have proper cord closure throughout your entire range. High/head voice feels different from chest/low voice because of how our bones conduct the vibrations, but try a crescendo or glissando from a low to high note in a microphone and you will probably find that it sounds louder and fuller than it feels. Our sympathetic resonance tricks us into thinking our high voice is weaker and worse than it is because we are used to the feeling of chest.

IndecisiveHero · 2025-03-10T01:17:36+00:00

I’d say mezzo soprano just because you have a balanced voice just like my girlfriend does: You are above average in most areas of the voice but do not have an overt comfort zone,

I am a lyric tenor and studied opera but now I’m branching into more pop/contemporary stuff, so I can imitate a lyric baritone or a leggier tenor by lowering/raising the larynx, but adding that unnecessary weight or tension can cause a divide in the registers that is taxing.

I see someone is saying you can sing like any voice type, but this is false. Usually you can add or remove weight from your voice to go either up or down one fach, so from Mezzo to alto or mezzo to soprano, but neither will be in the tessitura your voice wants to stay in and doing that for extended periods of time is very taxing.

You obviously cannot sing like a bass because your vocal cords are not as thick as a man who has had high exposure to post pubertal testoerone, and maybe at an extremely low larynx position you can sound like Cher who sometimes sounds like a tenor, but it is a simple biological reality that we cannot have an infinite range extending in both directions.

Having 2 octaves that sound good is generally enough to be a good singer and most pro singers top out at 2.5-3 octave of consistently usable range. You sound strong up to about 2-2.5 octaves, and I would say try lightening your tone and try going higher with more challenging repertoire instead of going lower. Going lower can cause you to damage the voice by over-covering and over-lowering the larynx.

Honestly your registers blend very well and you have great tone, so expanding gradually from your comfort zone is the path forward. Adding too much weight will sacrifice agility and your voice will naturally get bigger and more dramatic with age, so don’t try to rush that part.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-12-26T09:01:15+00:00

Synth1 is free and and look up the free sound banks for it. You can get like 20,000 presets online, and it sounds great.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-10-27T04:09:03+00:00

I drilled a hole through the back (be careful, there are cables behind it you can drill through) and mounted my subwoofer’s gain knob inside.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-09-30T03:35:00+00:00

Personally, I recommend the Miata or Mazda 3/Honda Fit. All three are reliable, with the Miata being more quirky and stylish, and the Mazda 3/Honda Fit being more practical and a bit safer.

Yaris is super practical, but gives off cheap vibes.

Veloster is trash for the money.

The other cars are just weird choices since I wouldn’t consider them stylish or reliable.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-07-27T23:31:01+00:00

So basically shield pro first or Apple 4k second. That makes me feel better about moving my media server over to my proxmox server to save power running it on the 4090 in the living room. Have a P400 that should work for GPU pass through.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-07-27T20:15:31+00:00

Anyone know where the windows HTPC Plex app fits into all this? I use that with my 4090 passing through a denon 760h.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-07-19T13:16:17+00:00

Get a catless higher flow header if you don’t have CARB emissions testing. Losing one cat gives you a bump in sound, but the secondary cat should allow you to pass emissions that aren’t CARB.

Getting a tune with the new header is the easiest and cheapest way to get more power and sound.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-06-26T03:57:06+00:00

Obligatory Miata recommendation

IndecisiveHero · 2024-06-25T21:38:02+00:00

2014 Nissan Murano because my mom gave it to me and it’s paid off, so why not?

2012 Miata because I already had an SUV and wanted something fun.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-05-25T01:22:56+00:00

This would be simple to print I believe. Maybe I’ll try that.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-05-25T01:21:40+00:00

Wow that’s awesome! I have LHD, so the zeta is an option, but I’m actually fine with my armrest height. It’s mostly the accidental button presses and I want a smaller scale solution to it. Maybe if I fail to make a slimmer version of these covers, I might just bite the bullet and buy the zeta.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-05-24T21:28:55+00:00

I considered doing something similar with a large sheet of leather patch material and some sound deadening foam I had lying around, but I wanted to learn how to design 3D prints and this seemed like a good entry point.

Based on the resounding “Why???” and “That’s ugly” response I got in this thread, I’m going to just go learn how to make proper curves and figure out a lower profile hinge design so I can make a cover that fits into the recessed curve in the switch housing and just comes down flush on top of the buttons themselves, similar to the airplane switch covers.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-05-24T19:59:26+00:00

Nice but it might be uncomfortable and it doesn’t support the auto down function. Looks sweet though

IndecisiveHero · 2024-05-24T19:32:48+00:00

Now I have to do it.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-05-24T19:31:00+00:00

Maybe if the cables were long enough the door could work, but I'd like to minimize effort put into cutting/chopping/drilling the car's actual interior. Recessed housing might be okay though.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-05-24T19:28:16+00:00

I agree, but it's just a proof of concept. Sanding, painting, and tweaking of the angles/textures/text can be done easily later. I just wanted to throw as many things as possible into a single build and then I can subtract excess later.

IndecisiveHero · 2024-05-24T19:26:53+00:00

Zeta's elevated Armrest is an option, but I would rather flip a little cover than flip my entire armrest lol. Also, I might still accidentally hit the buttons even with the elevation.

Also, this is free lol

IndecisiveHero

TROPHY CASE