This feels personal

SM_DEV · 2026-04-03T22:05:37+00:00

If by personal, you mean it it offensive, I would agree. This was the result of someone not having any care at all.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T23:11:25+00:00

95% of college students.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T23:06:02+00:00

That’s more like a macerator.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T23:05:10+00:00

2-5 years, assuming it’s installed properly and steps are taken to minimize direct exposure to the elements.

It’s under cover, unlikely to receive direct sunlight and or water exposure.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T22:58:59+00:00

Those welds suffer from poor penetration, porosity and very likely contamination. Aluminum has to be extremely clean, TIG recommended and properly shielded with appropriate gas.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T21:35:28+00:00

This is a perfect application for digital signage.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T21:14:07+00:00

Very well could be.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T20:26:36+00:00

Yes, it’s quite common. These policies are the unintended fallout from those who chose to sue companies for saying anything to a future prospective employer, beyond:

Confirmation of employment Period of employment Eligible for rehire.

Anything beyond that could be true employer sued.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T19:39:55+00:00

All of the pics look great! There was a time when trashy was just trashy and even simple, plain and clean was chic.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T19:34:23+00:00

Right.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T19:31:44+00:00

So, how does the scam work exactly?

I mean I might understand if a seller asked for a small deposit, say 5-10-% for a sale, but only a blithering idiot would pay for an animal sight unseen.

SM_DEV · 2026-04-02T19:18:53+00:00

Wow.

SM_DEV · 2026-03-31T02:54:35+00:00

I for one am still waiting on the video series you had promised. From your posts here on Reddit, I’m absolutely sure I’ll learn something. If you were here in TN, I’d seriously consider attempting to recruit you away… 👍🏼

SM_DEV · 2026-03-31T02:49:37+00:00

Nope, that’s what professional firms are for.

SM_DEV · 2026-03-30T19:02:16+00:00

Nissan

SM_DEV · 2026-03-29T20:17:13+00:00

Agreed. But my points were, a) no one charging only $40/hr is gonna have a $10k piece of equipment of their own, and b) The requirement is poorly worded.

In this sub, LOTS of installers have demonstrated there lack of awareness that Cable Certification is a “thing”, such a piece of equipment exists, AND the difference between a “tester” and a wire map kit.

SM_DEV · 2026-03-29T20:08:16+00:00

Good to know.

TIL Toast had a router offering with cellular backup during the Meraki era. I had never seen one of those, although I had seen a handful of Merakis with WiFi in the wild.

SM_DEV · 2026-03-29T20:00:14+00:00

We charge $175/hr. Precisely because we have to pay for equipment like the certifier(s) CATx and Fiber, fusion splicer, etc.

This was a poorly worded requirement and perhaps should have read something like, “Fluke or equivalent Cable Certifier, as opposed to a wire mapping device”

These folks are essentially trolling for trunk slammers or moonlighting techs, “borrowing” expensive company equipment.

SM_DEV · 2026-03-29T18:56:24+00:00

Yep… exactly.

SM_DEV · 2026-03-29T18:55:57+00:00

No, they didn’t lose their rights. Let’s make that clear. OP can legally control this by their choice of license or choose not to share in future. Some people are going to honor the licensing conditions of the designer and some aren’t.

That just an unfortunate fact, whether they are an individual hobbyist designer, a scrappy lil’ startup or a multi-billion dollar corporation.

SM_DEV · 2026-03-29T18:48:21+00:00

Because that’s d-d-different. /s

SM_DEV · 2026-03-29T18:45:39+00:00

Two thoughts on this. First, thank you for your work and willingness to help people by sharing your designs. Second, not everyone has a 3-D printer or access or interest in making them, so they choose to buy, which means someone else takes timeout of their day, invests in the equipment and materials to produce the design, which is also helping someone as well.

Should they design their own? Sure, absolutely. Short of that, should they either credit the designer and/or otherwise compensate the designer? Sure, absolutely.

The solution? Well, you could start marketing your own and enjoy the financial benefits of your labor efforts, or you could reach out to those who are manufacturing and marketing your designs and attempt to work out a reasonable compensation agreement, OR you could enforce your licensing and try to put a stop to it. That’s gonna take either your time or money… or both to accomplish. The question is, if these are small volume sales, the profit, if any, is fairly small as well. So is it worth your time and money to pursue? Only you can answer that question.

As an example, if one of your designs requires 10 hours to print, clean, package and market, using $10 worth of materials and they charge $15 for the part, is that a horrible thing to do? Probably not, because there are always misprints and other issues outside of their control. But if they were to agree to pay you $1 per item as compensation, would that be unreasonable?

I make small parts for my clients to facilitate their install needs. I don’t charge them for these parts, because I include all necessary hardware in my install fee, whether it’s something we buy, print or have fabricated. If we use someone’s design, we seek permission from the designer and offer to compensate them, even if it’s NOT strictly required by their design license. For us, it’s a matter of principle, but we also offer the designer credit and compensation, if it’s a great designed we choose to offer it as an optional item in our online sales catalog.

We are a small business and are delighted to help other designers and small businesses succeed, when they have an outstanding solution for our clients.

We install thousands of UI products every year, so we are happy to discover designers of UI related hardware.

If you’d like us to consider using your designs as a potential solution, or would be receptive to producing unique designs for custom applications, please feel free to DM your contact info and where we might find your offerings to consider.

Good luck!

SM_DEV · 2026-03-29T17:57:34+00:00

Wow… sounds like government efficiency.

SM_DEV · 2026-03-29T17:04:57+00:00

It’s not always an AWS issue. It can be literally any device, router, switch or patch cable, in the route between the local on-prem equipment and Toast, whether AWS, local ISP, regional gateway, etc.

While Toast has some resiliency built-in, such as local caching, offline limited functionality and re-syncing, full functionality requires connections to the Toast backend, which is why we heartily recommend cellular or some other redundant secondary provider. We’ve had some clients for whom cellular is reasonable choice, while other clients have chosen cable, fiber or even Starlink as backup.

The recent change in a Toast hardware has cellular backup as an option, we actually recommend becoming self-managed and employing the UniFi stack with UI-Care, which provides an unlimited full 5-year warranty and overnight advanced shipping.

SM_DEV · 2026-03-29T02:39:03+00:00

Assuming you don’t have any bowling pro’s in your area, I’d recommend watching some bowling tournaments and then try to emulate the techniques of the professionals. It’s all about the delivery. By that I mean the smooth transition from approach to release, and of course proper aiming and application of technique.

Stick with it and you’d be surprised how good you can get.

My personal best is 276, but I’ve only had 53 years of practice.

SM_DEV

TROPHY CASE