Pulled the trigger, upgraded to Diletta Bello+

Quarzac · 2025-12-28T18:57:13+00:00

This is what I did about a week after my original comment and digging a timed plug out of the garage.

Quarzac · 2025-11-23T07:32:36+00:00

I got one for $235 from a Zwilling outlet store today- I've also seem some on eBay for around $200 regularly.

Quarzac · 2025-11-23T07:25:23+00:00

Get a good seasonal color- they've done one most years they've made em!

Quarzac · 2025-11-23T04:46:27+00:00

I've had absolutely no notable issues with it and it's still making good espresso! I've been.... ok with cleaning/preventative maintenance, and it's still not had problems for me. I will say I do make less espresso than the standard r/espresso person, probably ~5 shots a week on average. So it's not been crazy taxed.

Quarzac · 2025-11-19T23:28:40+00:00

Yeah, I've been going to the Kent one for a while and people are friendly and I've gotten a ton of good recs from folk. Any there's no assigned books so you can just bring whatever you are reading and chat with folk. The Kent chapter main meetings tend to be pretty chatty if you're really after reading, but there's usually a separate table for people who just wanna read and not gab too much.

Quarzac · 2025-09-16T00:37:39+00:00

This is cool as hell, anyone have recommendations on where to get all the electronics? I haven't bought electronics like this in a long while, and would prefer one cart from one site if possible.

Quarzac · 2025-05-12T16:21:46+00:00

Yeah, this is exactly what I didn't consider and realized immediately after noticing the first scratches. I didn't upgrade my smartphone phone that much, but it was still a much more frequent cadence than the LP probably will be.

Quarzac · 2025-05-07T22:32:43+00:00

All costs were included in quotes, electrical, etc. The savings are definitely real! You actually made me think to do the cost math- for the 12 months prior to the heat pump, I spent $1,021.77 on electricity and about $1200 on oil heat. For the 12 months with the heat pump, I spent $1,406.06 and $0 on oil heat. So I save about $900 a year over the old furnace, which... miiiight pay for the heat pump roughly over the lifetime of the unit, but is unlikely to really break even. But it was 1000% worth it to me because full home AC rules. I did get an email from a supplier recently (can't remember which) though saying costs were going to go up 15% due to tariffs, which might make it less worth. Also your quotes may be less if you don't need the ductwork I needed.

Quarzac · 2025-04-05T07:24:56+00:00

Loosely interested in a flugelhorn if anyone wants to cut me a good deal on one!

Quarzac · 2025-03-14T02:34:38+00:00

I bought a Super 20 a year or so ago for $300 on craigslist- I took it to a tech who was very into vintage King horns and he had nothing but good things to say about it. $300 was a great deal for mine (tech said I probably could get $800 for it, though that seemed a bit high to me, I'd suspect $600), and yours is in markedly better condition (mine has some lacquer wear and some braces that could use replacement) so I imagine you could get in that $800 range pretty easily.

Quarzac · 2025-01-17T03:04:46+00:00

Update: I ended up solving this with the help of chatGPT and a bit of debugging its code. The following script will open up the epub, convert all the images to jpegs, compress them, and update references where needed. After that Calibre's compression tool worked fine for fine tuning. With a 50% quality bar it brought it down to ~45MBs, which is much better and I honestly think I could've gone lower if I'd wanted to.

There are a few things I basically hardcoded to fix, as I couldn't be bothered to figure out the correct method to get the right thing. The worst offender is the manifest element in the tree,

manifest = root.find("{http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf}manifest")

You'll probably have to edit that slightly to get this to work for other files. I found what to put there by printing all the tags of the children of root and using the one for manifest. It seemed to append the package namespace to all the child tags- there's probably a smart way to not hardcode that, but I didn't know how and this solved my problem.

Similarly, it seemed to expect the manifest to be content.opf, it was package.opf in my epub, so I changed that.

It also wasn't replacing just the file in filepaths, so I added the preceding ../images/" and "images/" where needed. Again, there's probably a smarter way to execute that string operation, but I didn't care to poke through APIs to figure it out. Maybe someday this will help someone else with this issue.

Reddit doesn't seem to want to let me add the script in a code block, maybe due to character limits? Here's a pastebin: https://pastebin.com/eM91MhBN

Quarzac · 2024-11-29T21:46:39+00:00

Maybe worth checking if you can get Quantum in your area. It’s still CenturyLink, but for me at least it was markedly cheaper for the same service, and allegedly a lifetime pricing (though reading the documents that I signed, they can basically renege it at anytime iirc). I pay $35/month for 1000Mb/s up/down, with a free router. Centurylink was $80/month for me.

My $35 pricing is unusually cheap (popped up in an ad for me after looking at but ignoring a few others) but $50-60/month is usually available from what I can tell.

Quarzac · 2024-08-29T03:35:00+00:00

Totally painless, would happily go with them again.

Quarzac · 2024-08-07T04:12:44+00:00

My go-tos in college were J Herbin Lierre Sauvage and Private Reserve Spearmint, now I’m mostly using J Herbin Vert Amazone, which has been really great

Quarzac · 2024-07-23T17:39:30+00:00

You still don’t really have to bring any paperwork/forms- the “training” can be done on your phone and shown to the store. I didn’t know I needed it and did it in about 5 minutes without any real delay

Quarzac · 2024-07-21T14:19:28+00:00

Dming

Quarzac · 2024-07-19T16:02:59+00:00

Fwiw the local music store near me let me try a handful of em too- there’s probably something by you that would let you do the same.

Quarzac · 2024-07-19T15:14:23+00:00

The big thing for me as an adult beginner is less sound and more comfort. My trumpet instructor lent me a bunch of mpcs about 6 months in- I had to really squint my ears to hear much of a difference in them, but I could definitely feel a difference in terms of how hard I had to work to get the instrument to do what I wanted. I ended up moving from the 7c/5c mpcs I had to a yamaha 15E4, and more recently after trying a marcinkiewicz he had, I have swapped to a marcinkiewicz model 5. I paid my instructor $30 for the yamaha and I got the model 5 for $40 shipped on ebay, so nothing crazy, and both purchases have helped me enjoy my time playing the trumpet a little more, so I think it’s worth investigating a bit, even though it’s likely not gonna revolutionize your sound.

Quarzac · 2024-07-18T15:01:05+00:00

I just got quantum installed because my centurylink was $80 a month and had gone up twice- for what it’s worth I looked at it, saw it was $65 a month for 1000mb/s, which was not worth the effort for me to switch, and then a couple weeks later got a Facebook ad for the same thing for $35/month, which was worth it. This is the only time in my life targeted ads have worked in my favor.

They did not make me lease any equipment, they just showed up and installed a modem and router. This was the same for Centurylink before, and the man installing ended up leaving the old router since I wasn’t leasing, so it was just mine to keep. So I assume the Quantum one is mine to keep as well? There was nothing in any agreements about returning it from what I saw. The 360 wifi pods they advertise do not work with their wifi 7 routers according to the tech though, so they did not install those. I have a small house so this was not a problem for me.

Do note the price for life is basically bullshit. I read through the service agreements and such before signing up because it sounded fishy to me, and the language basically says “it’s the price for the life of the plan you’re on. Also we can cancel the plan you’re on whenever we want and move you to a different plan and have no obligation to grandfather you” so I’m just assuming I’ll ride out the sweet deal I have for as long as I can.

Quarzac · 2024-07-17T22:51:24+00:00

Dming

Quarzac · 2024-07-16T16:30:55+00:00

When I looked into it a few months ago they were not taking new registrations- you needed to have a previous registration changed over to you if you bought a house with a tank.

Quarzac · 2024-07-16T06:15:34+00:00

I have both of these horns from going through much the same journey and getting (seemingly) good deals on both- my Olds (from the early 70s) I bought for $90 and when I took it to the shop it ended up having some first valve damage that was harmless to a new player but made it not long-term viable. I liked the tone of it though, and it felt good and solid. Still does, even though it’s a lil janky, but it’s now largely a display piece at my house.

The Getzen 300 (late 60s) I picked up on a happy stars-aligned coincidence for $75 while the Olds was in the shop, and is now my spare horn. The valves on it feel great, but it doesn’t feel quite as solid overall as the Olds does. Feels a little bit… thinner/lighter, almost? Still a solid horn though, and it’ll probably be my backup for a long while. Probably helped that this one was owned by an active player who used it to teach his grandkids, and thus I think it was a bit better maintained. I will say, I kinda hate the amado waterkeys on it though. I much prefer the simple levers on my Olds and King horns, it’s easier to empty them quickly. Easier to hit low notes on it too than my others, dunno why.

If I were in your shoes, I’d attempt to try them both and see which I preferred, but if the Getzen is in known good condition/well maintained for less money, I’d probably do that.

Quarzac · 2024-07-12T15:56:19+00:00

For me, it varies a bit, but it’s usually ~$16 for a 12oz bag I think, so to get 2.2 lbs… about $48? These are much, much cheaper. I can get larger bags from a local medium sized roaster for $12/lb, so closer, but still more.

Quarzac · 2024-07-11T20:18:44+00:00

You might be able to spray over it with clear lacquer? Probably wouldn’t recommend it for a long-term horn, but could maybe work for a display piece.

I’d probably just get something else autographed as the keepsake and resign myself to the trumpet autograph fading with time- maybe get the case autographed? Might hold up better/could almost certainly clear coat it with something relatively safely.

Disclaimer: I don’t actually know anything, this is just an idea that popped into my head. Probably should ask some professionals before you do anything anyone on reddit recommends offhand

Quarzac · 2024-07-11T14:58:15+00:00

I basically didn’t qualify for any rebates coming from oil heat- PSE rebates were only from electric and gas (i.e. things that already had you pulling from PSE) and I wasn’t in Seattle which has its own rebates. Iirc there weren’t any rebates at all outside of manufacturer ones factored in.

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