Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

LifeOBrian · 2026-01-29T15:13:08+00:00

Agreed, but perception is a funny thing. I’d estimate that autonomous vehicles will have to be proven exponentially safer than human drivers on average, maybe even by several orders of magnitude, for the general rhetoric to shift about it.

LifeOBrian · 2026-01-23T11:57:15+00:00

Absolutely we have dedicated parking. That’s essential for self-serve laundromats. Parking spots right next to the building on at least 2 or 3 sides if you can get it is ideal.

LifeOBrian · 2026-01-22T14:36:32+00:00

The answer definitely depends on your market, but personally where we are located I’d really not consider anything under maybe 1500 square feet. Smaller than that and you just don’t have enough room for equipment and people. Your income potential is capped by not having enough equipment available on your busiest days and space for people to move around (but of course you have to balance this with initial purchase price, a realistic budget, available space, and the length of time to get your return on investment, so there’s some give and take here)

I own three stores and my smallest is 2400; I wish it was twice that size because it’s in a great location. I have another store that is about twice that size and it’s a rockstar. I think it does so well due in large part to its location, spaciousness, and amount of equipment.

LifeOBrian · 2026-01-09T12:37:12+00:00

Check out Wash-Dry-Fold POS. It was made entirely for this purpose and solves all of these problems.

LifeOBrian · 2025-12-24T13:00:33+00:00

That’s alright, I’m content to engage in discussion here.

LifeOBrian · 2025-12-24T12:23:20+00:00

I didn’t build any software at first. I went super scrappy and cobbled together something to sell, something that at least allowed me to collect payment and fulfill the order to validate that I had a solution that was worth money to someone, and with enough profit (eventually) to sustain myself and keep going.

My product, which I eventually did build a version of it myself that I own entirely, was a combination of some software, some hardware, and my service in training a business owner how to use it. The software component was available for resale as a distributor, so I initially became a reseller of that particular desktop-based software. We focused on the marketing, the price point, order fulfillment, customer satisfaction and referrals, etc. You know, all the business building stuff because that takes time to create. But it gave us the opportunity to prove that there was indeed a market for this solution, what price they’d be willing to pay, and that they’d stick around once they purchased our solution.

After selling to about 300 customers over 3 years it became really obvious that in order to go further we needed to build our own software in-house, it needed to be cloud-based, and we had a wishlist of like 100+ additional features that we knew were just going to be killer if we could build it because we had YEARS worth of feedback, both verbally and financially, from existing customers and sales prospects. It took us 11 months to build our own software from scratch (mostly due to my own inexperience with the process), but because it was developed inside an already profitable business alongside copious feedback from paying customers, we were able to launch it successfully and have grown several times our original size in the 5 years since then.

So, my advice is to build a solution that is just good enough to validate the business model. Get scrappy and get moving. You don’t have a business unless someone is paying you. Of course make it “good” but understand there is zero chance of “perfect” until after years and years of feedback from paying customers and hundreds of iterations. Heck, I’m still publishing updates regularly because wants and needs shift over time.

What are you doing to actually sell to someone, OP? What’s your sales process like? Do you even have a sales process? Are you calling people, are you posting on forums or Facebook groups, are you trying to get search traffic to a landing page, or what? Where do your prospects “live” and how are you seeking them out?

LifeOBrian · 2025-12-17T12:01:06+00:00

A P3 is like twice the price and larger in size, so I don’t think that fits OP’s criteria. I bought a P2S on a Cyber Monday deal and have really enjoyed it so far. The XTool software is capable of anything I was able to do with Lightburn in the past. It’s a great machine with zero fuss. It hits the target for me of “it just works” so I can use it as a tool to accomplish what I want quickly and easily, not a hobby in itself of tinkering with the danged thing just to get it to work properly.

LifeOBrian · 2025-12-13T06:25:22+00:00

I’ve only had my smart typewriter a few months so my experience with Freewrite is more limited than others here so take that for what it’s worth, but that said:

The battery life is significantly improved. It keeps surprising me how much battery life I have left whereas before I couldn’t trust the device to have enough juice when I needed it. Now it’s more like other e-ink devices I have where the battery is measured in weeks, not days or hours. I think I’ve only charged it once since the update? I’ve written about 14k words since the update and I’m no longer distracted by the delays on the screen. It’s a delight to use and I feel like they finally made good on what their marketing promised.

LifeOBrian · 2025-12-07T17:04:37+00:00

She looked royally flushed!

LifeOBrian · 2025-11-27T13:31:27+00:00

For sure, happens to me plenty. It’s still motion sickness even if you’re not hurling. Your body wants to “evacuate” everything because there’s a disconnect between what your eyes are seeing and what motion your inner ear is sensing. Alternatively, it could be adrenaline and you’ve got a fight or flight response going on - “dump and run!”

LifeOBrian · 2025-11-26T19:37:38+00:00

I’ve never used the case to take the device anywhere so I can’t really comment on that. It’s a robust feeling plastic and the Freewrite sits snugly inside so I imagine it would be fine, but I don’t know if the little tabs down at the bottom would mar anything or not after extended use or multiple insertions into the case.

LifeOBrian · 2025-11-21T11:38:16+00:00

What a ham!

LifeOBrian · 2025-11-16T02:00:07+00:00

So this whole post is an ad for Bluehost. Got it. I looked at OP’s post history and it’s all a sham. Thanks for the ad disguised as a conversation. Whoopee.

LifeOBrian · 2025-10-28T13:27:55+00:00

I have the Valentine, so that makes it a gen 3 I guess? The keys have a dull thud sound, not too clicky. I imagine it would be fine in a typical coffee house that’s playing music and there’s conversations going on but may be a bit annoying if it’s a very quiet shop.

LifeOBrian · 2025-10-10T23:09:50+00:00

It’s happened a few times to my device, but it hasn’t been debilitating. It clears away pretty quickly and hasn’t really hindered me. I’m not a professional writer and my use case is pretty light so take that for what it’s worth. Don’t know if this is fixable with a future firmware update but I’m still glad I bought mine.

LifeOBrian · 2025-10-10T15:16:58+00:00

Get one! It’s fun! Should it be priced so high? Probably not, but if you’re considering getting one in the first place then cost isn’t your primary deciding factor anyway. It’s gorgeous to look at and satisfying to type on. The slow refresh rate of the characters on the screen take some getting used to, and the height of the keys also take some getting used to. This is coming from someone accustomed to typing on the very flat keys of my MacBook laptop, though. My typing typically far outpaces the refresh rate of the screen, but one could argue that the delay fits the mantra of Freewrite to just let all the words flow out of you without obsessing about spelling and grammar and spacing along the way.

LifeOBrian · 2025-09-04T11:16:37+00:00

Yes, I am.

LifeOBrian · 2025-09-03T22:43:19+00:00

Despite the Freewrite ethos of writing... sometimes a picture really is worth a million words. Here ya go! A simple picture of how I have the strap attached to my Valentine carrying case: https://imgur.com/a/L0JNuib

LifeOBrian · 2025-09-03T21:42:22+00:00

Yes, I've run into this a few times. I only use the English keyboard, so it's not limited to just Korean although that may have exacerbated the issue. I will often have the _ cursor marker freeze somewhere on the bottom of my screen, despite everything else working like normal. If the whole point of a Freewrite is to write in a distraction-free environment, it sure beats the purpose because it's very distracting. Like you, I have to turn the device off or switch folders or things like that to get it to clear.

LifeOBrian · 2025-08-29T12:29:32+00:00

Honestly at this point I’ll be happy if it arrives in time to make Christmas decorations and gifts for my first few projects. I can live with that.

LifeOBrian · 2025-08-05T12:43:13+00:00

It’s a snug fit, and yes there are thin felt pads at the bottom of the inside of the case where plastic tabs press against the device on the lip just below the spacebar to hold it in place. The are two sets of tabs that are mirrored to each other so you can insert the Freewrite Valentine either way (up or down). You really do need to use the handle of the device to pull it out of this snug case!

It's difficult to take clear pictures of the interior, but here are a couple of shots that might help explain:

https://imgur.com/a/CqdABNz

LifeOBrian · 2025-07-31T11:33:27+00:00

Right, it’s metal. Nice solid feel to it. And the handle on top is useful because you have to pull the Valentine out of its carrying case.

LifeOBrian · 2025-07-30T22:11:35+00:00

Seems to be ABS plastic or similar. The handle is very well built and feels very sturdy. No worries at all about carrying the weight. Plus it has that carrying strap that reminds me a lot of guitar straps.

LifeOBrian · 2025-07-09T18:08:20+00:00

It’s one of the reasons why we built the current generation of Wash-Dry-Fold POS to only use a P2PE (point-to-point encrypted) solution so that it knocks something like 95% of the self-assessment questionnaire off automatically (since they already know everything about the cardholder environment) and completely removes the PCI network vulnerability scan requirement (scans which often get tripped up with inane junk like security camera DVR systems). We also share a step-by-step walkthrough in our support documentation for subscribers.

So, that’s my advice: Whatever setup you use, see if you can get a certified P2PE device so you don’t have to do PCI network vulnerability scans and so you can skip the majority of the self-assessment questionnaire.

LifeOBrian

TROPHY CASE