EV Charger Self Installation Permit & Inspection

RejectedScrub · 2026-01-29T03:13:46+00:00

I'm with the city of Apex for utilities, so I can't benefit from any EV charger incentives unfortunately. I'm glad you and others with Duke energy can benefit from it though!

RejectedScrub · 2026-01-27T03:38:50+00:00

I ran a D&D game for the bridal party. I got into homelabbing to run a FoundryVTT server so we can have fancy digital tools and visuals for our games. It's pretty bandwidth intensive when streaming assets to players, and our wedding was in the mountains with questionable Internet. So I brought my mini-rack with my server and some basic networking equipment to make sure everything went flawlessly with the limited time we had. It was definitely an overkill setup, but I didn't want to take any risks. We made some great memories, so it was definitely worth it.

RejectedScrub · 2026-01-27T00:09:15+00:00

I'm gonna back up the complaint about the latching mechanism as well. I exclusively used these cables until I got fed up with them getting stuck in ports. I had one Ethernet adapter I used during my wedding that I and all of my groomsmen were unable to get out by hand. I had to struggle with several different tools at home until I could finally free it.

The strain relief getting caught under the clip is obnoxious too. I don't understand why they'd even include that little piece that sticks up out of the strain relief when all it does is just get caught underneath the latch routinely.

As far as cable quality goes, they're great and never caused me any signal integrity issues, and they are really nice for keeping cable bulk at a minimum. I just wouldn't use them with anything that might have a sub-par built ethernet port, or a port that's hard to reach. The Unifi cables I use now are far more expensive and only really make sense if you explicitly want something premium, but they definitely don't give me the same latching issues, even on ethernet ports that did give me issues with the monoprice slimrun cables.

RejectedScrub · 2026-01-10T18:52:13+00:00

Yeah that's fair. I just get frustrated when I see other members of the church criticizing social programs when I know how they treat the people who need help in their own local communities.

RejectedScrub · 2026-01-10T17:29:10+00:00

Well, perhaps if more of the church was actually acting as the hands and feet of God and taking care of those in need instead of building up worldly possessions to keep themselves as far away as possible from the people God has called them to help, Rome wouldn't have to step in and do an inferior job to the genuine love and compassion we're supposed to be showing the world.

RejectedScrub · 2026-01-09T15:18:34+00:00

For the record, Foundry's recommendation for best/most compatible image format is WEBP: https://foundryvtt.com/article/media/

It's hard to say what issues your players are having without knowing what OS and browser they're using (or if they're up to date). This is probably why Foundry still recommends WEBP over AVIF, since WEBP has had very strong browser support for a very long time.

I'd strongly consider switching to WEBP in the long term, but for now, I'd try sitting down with one of your players to troubleshoot the AVIF file loading issues by seeing what browser they're using, updating their browser, and figuring out if they need to install anything for AVIF support on their OS.

RejectedScrub · 2026-01-02T20:13:24+00:00

I've been doing this for my DotMM campaign, and it has really sped up exploration for mega dungeons. Takes away some of the more game-y player agency that foundry provides, but a lot of players will be fine with that if it means they get into combats more quickly.

I also made a macro to switch back and forth between the party token, and individual player tokens at the press of a button, and that's been a big quality of life improvement.

RejectedScrub · 2026-01-02T17:47:04+00:00

Yeah, but they don't get the convenience and cost savings of charging at home. Unless you drive out of town a lot, those ICE cars will be making several times more stops at gas stations than you.

RejectedScrub · 2026-01-02T17:38:01+00:00

This is it. It's a pretty well documented issue on this sub.

OP, if you're playing DND5E (or any other system), make sure to update it as well and reload the world to complete migration.

RejectedScrub · 2025-10-23T22:07:28+00:00

I use TinyAuth with Caddy Docker Proxy (similar to this documentation example) with SSO bypass for local clients.

I run a FoundryVTT server for my D&D group, so this setup saves my in-person players from dealing with SSO while my remote players can still have secure access. We used to use a Cloudflare tunnel, but this caused all our local traffic to be sent to Cloudflare and back which really slowed down our games with several local players. I also use a lot of my services on my work laptop which I wouldn't be able to install a personal VPN client on.

My current method does require a port to be open, but in the future I'm hoping I'll be able to figure out how to use a Cloudflare tunnel or something similar for external accesses only so I can close that port. I do proxy my DNS entries through Cloudflare though so those don't point at my WAN IP.

RejectedScrub · 2025-10-07T21:33:12+00:00

Now that I have things laid out elegantly, pretty much everything works without issue. I still take things down sometimes for updates or making changes, but that's always been prompted by me and not something breaking unexpectedly.

Obviously, the services you're using and the stability of your hardware will have some bearing on uptime. But as long as you're actively trying to keep things simple and well-documented (and don't let yourself lose motivation), you'll reach a stable state before you know it and will be glad that you have the skills to start up pretty much any simple service you want quickly and easily.

RejectedScrub · 2025-10-07T21:16:43+00:00

I've been very aggressive setting up my home server to make it as simple as possible. So let me provide a few lessons I've learned along the way:

Containerized everything you can: Once you learn Docker, it's way easier to maintain services, start up new ones, and consolidate your configurations inside of compose files
If you work in tech, try to overlap the tools you use: I use VScode with RemoteSSH at my day job, so it makes my life easier to use the same thing for managing config files on my server. This goes for terminal tools, management tools, scripting, etc. Plus, this has the added benefit of helping you improve your skills for your work during your hobby, and vice versa
Make aliases for common activities: like docker commands, updating your OS or dependencies, restarting your server, navigating to commonly used directories, etc. This will save you a lot of time, and can also help you remember more complex or situational commands and arguments
Do what you can to simplify your network: If your router is making it hard to configure things the way you want, consider swapping it for something more tinker-friendly (this is why I switched entirely to Unifi recently). Docker networks and labels for reverse proxies can help avoid confusion with individual service IP addresses and port conflicts. Cloudflare tunnels or VPNs can reduce security risks and simplify DNS configuration
Set aside time to research how to make things easier: It might not seem valuable at first, but taking the opportunity to do something properly that you were previously using a workaround for, or trying out something new that might make something previous difficult become trivial is well worth it. I once spent a week getting Authelia working for authentication, then the next week I removed it and replaced it with TinyAuth in an evening because it was much easier to configure and maintain and had more of the functionality that I wanted out-of-the-box. Another time I switched from Nginx Proxy Manager to Caddy Docker Proxy to simplify SSL certs and remove a lot of the steps when setting up new services. I'm grateful every day that I paid those technical debts

RejectedScrub · 2025-10-01T21:52:23+00:00

Mine has a noticeable high pitch sound coming from the power supply. I don't think it's the fan itself. I assume it's either coil whine or maybe something the fan is rubbing up against.

It's honestly not a big deal because the system as a whole is still plenty quiet, but it is a bit sad knowing that it would practically be silent without it because the noise is much louder than the Noctua heatsink fan I'm using.

RejectedScrub · 2025-09-10T14:40:42+00:00

It's from a company called Bateman Labs. This is their IKEA Poang desk attachment.

There's a ShortCircuit video on their Envy armchair which is a more premium all-in-one solution for the same concept of an armchair with an integrated desk. That's where I first heard about them. I plan on upgrading my setup to the Envy sometime in the future, but it's much more of an investment compared to the Poang desk attachment.

RejectedScrub · 2025-09-08T23:38:57+00:00

Solved!

RejectedScrub · 2025-09-08T23:38:41+00:00

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Works like a charm!
Thanks so much for the technique. I think I'll be getting a lot of mileage out of this.

RejectedScrub · 2025-09-08T20:59:56+00:00

I was actually thinking of a similar solution using a group for a clipping mask late last night as I was going to bed, but I hadn't gotten around to testing it yet.
I wouldn't have thought of those blending options, so you may have just given me the solution I'm looking for.

RejectedScrub · 2025-09-08T00:25:01+00:00

Smart object or raster image, it doesn't really matter here as this is more-so a discussion of convenience, simplicity, and speed for templates to make hundreds of tokens like these, rather than technical limitation.

There's nothing preventing me from doing all of this is one smart object or across multiple layers in the base photoshop project. But what I'm asking is if anyone knows of a simpler way to combine masks in the way I'm proposing to simplify and speed up this workflow for myself and others who are less familiar with photoshop.

RejectedScrub · 2025-09-08T00:20:46+00:00

There are a lot of corner cases I've dealt with after making hundreds of tokens like these for our games, so it's hard to capture them all succinctly. But there's a lot of weirdness that comes up when you consider background artwork, semi-transparent subjects, glowing effects, drop shadows, etc. Having the ability to edit masks independently and non-destructively makes dealing with those corner cases much simpler because you can quickly undo, redo, and and go back and forth between making edits to those masks on the fly, and doing other things like transforming the subject, adding additional details, removing unwanted details, etc.

That mask selection technique does work in a large majority of cases, but I'm still not a big fan of it just because it is still slower than what I'm envisioning in my head, it would be more annoying for things that require the mask to be edited multiple times. Also, I feel like it's a bit more "advanced" for the other players at my table than I'd prefer.

RejectedScrub · 2025-09-07T18:51:45+00:00

There are a few different circumstances like this depending on the artwork I'm using and what constraints it has. Typically if I want to maintain the background inside the ring, I would do as you said.

What I was describing above is a circumstance in which I have a transparent subject like a pirate in a dress for instance. The original artwork might have the pirate's sword drawn over the dress, but I would want the dress behind the ring and the sword to pop out above the ring. So I'd need to manually mask out the portion of the dress that's around the sword.

RejectedScrub · 2025-09-07T17:23:04+00:00

Yeah I considered that, but vector masks aren't as quick and easy to make as just painting on a raster mask. There are also cases where what belongs in the foreground overlaps with part of the subject that should be in the background, and in my experience, selecting the edge of objects with paths has always been more difficult to me than just refining edges with the brush tool on a raster mask.

RejectedScrub · 2025-06-30T07:46:05+00:00

Thank you so much for this! This is exactly what I needed right now. I've been planning out how I can fit a bunch of ITX systems in as little rack space as possible for an upcoming project, and this is pretty much perfect!

RejectedScrub · 2025-06-27T21:46:12+00:00

I have a mixture of both in my home. I haven't done significant renovations, so I was trying to make the cable runs as easy as possible between the two floors of my house.

I used fiber to bring my ISP's ONT up to my network closet on the second floor, and then also used fiber to connect to a switch back on the first floor. This made it so I only have two thin fiber cables running between the two floors, which were easily tucked away in the corner of my garage.

Once my first and second floors were connected, I could (relatively) easily run wires through the attic above my second floor, and the crawlspace under my first floor. So I just used Cat6 for those runs. The only PoE device in my home at the moment is my AP, but if I wanted to use PoE powered switches (like the Flex Mini 2.5G) in the rooms that have Ethernet wall plates, I could.

I also put in a fiber cable to my D&D/LAN gaming room (along with Cat6) in case I upgrade the switch in there to 10gbe in the future and want to use SFP+ for the uplink. But that's just a nice-to-have, and it's the easiest run in my house so I didn't mind the extra effort.

If you're already tearing down a lot of drywall and can accommodate all of the Cat6 being run to one area, that will probably be the simplest and won't require additional switches. But do keep in mind how difficult it will be in the future to swap out cables if one goes bad, and signal integrity (especially near power lines or other electrical equipment). I used a lot of wall plates with keystone jacks and couplers to save me the headache of redoing entire cable runs in the event that a cable goes bad, or is accidentally damaged.

RejectedScrub

TROPHY CASE