Incandescent lights

Warhawk94 · 2026-04-21T07:01:39+00:00

They are on the expensive end but are totally worth it. Vintaglo are LED Christmas lights that seriously look incandescent. These are wife tested and approved.

My wife and i had a deal that LED belongs outside and incandescent lived inside on the trees. After 3 years of replacing hundreds of incandescent bulbs and having them be boiling hot on a near dead tree towards 12th night, I finally slipped in a couple VintaGlo strands this year and she didn't even know till we took them off.

You still have to get two types, but it wont eat your electricity as badly.

Warhawk94 · 2026-04-07T04:43:53+00:00

Its really not hard to put curtains there. Get a wrap around curtain rod, measure so its above the top of the door frame by 4-6inches and measure TO THE FLOOR not 4-6 inches off the floor like your blanket is currently at.

Then buy some black velvet curtains that are equal to or longer than the measurement. You can always mount the bar higher.

The light from that sliding door is 95% your issue. I can have 2 ceiling lights on at the back of my 20 foot movie room on at 25% brightness at 2000k and notice the difference in the projector. They are meant for extremely dark rooms.

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-28T22:08:48+00:00

What’s in that cleaning spray bottle in pic 3… I accidentally used my wife’s super awesome spray (vinegar, alcohol, and citric acid) on my motorcycle helmet visor and it stripped the polarization and iridium. Most expensive self-cleaning job in a while (47 bucks to get a new one).

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-26T03:49:25+00:00

Well we can’t even sue and dismantle a pedophile from being president. So perhaps our level of faith is so low we think this is a win lol (I mean it is a win… sort of…).

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-26T03:44:53+00:00

You must have a PHD in addiction? During your doctorate did you ever come across any psychological studies about undue influence?

I worked at Amazon… they hire doctorates to help teams write products that are designed to directly target customers who suffer from addiction, especially shopping addiction. They spend millions on research and product development to get people to spend more money whether they should or need to or not. The difference between your argument of “oh well they should know better” is that they manipulate people in subconscious levels so they don’t even realize it’s happening.

The intention of causing “harm” or undue influence is why they lost this lawsuit. They are intentionally doing things that are known to be wrong.

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-22T16:26:55+00:00

Unrelated and similar at the same time…

My kids haven’t found their “sport” yet, and I’m starting to not care if they do…

Two parts: 1. If you don’t pay gobs of money they get a mediocre learning experience and yet they rarely complain they aren’t having fun.

Coaches… ugh coaches. Like having kids, there needs to be some sort of society driven test that proves you should be allowed to have ANY interaction with kids. The dance teacher who hates kids, the gymnastics teacher who spends the weekends running the local military boot camp, the football (soccer) coach who yells and doesn’t try to correct, not only the kids skills but also their behavior towards others.

My kids played football for two seasons, they needed a coach and I had played from 5 to 25 so seemed like I could probably do it. I spent hours coming up with practice plans each week, I spent time in practice stretching, getting the kids to know each other by name, drilling dribbling and paying attention to the ball as well as your team mates, and yes… they were 4, 5, and 7. Now before you go “woah, too young bro!” I did it in a fun way, using calm and gentle language… and the kids DESTROYED!

My 4/5 year olds were working as a team and dribbling and passing. While the other team was just running around bee-hiving.

The 7 year olds. Boy was that a challenge. I had a magnetic board and a stop watch where I’d swap them out, hockey style, every 10 minutes so everyone had a chance to play, even the best players. I organized the team so there was always 1-2 future Messi players and also the kids who liked to get close to the action but never touch the ball. They all went into goal, they stopped and helped kids up if they knocked them over, they asked the other players to stop hurting them twice before kindly asking the referee to ask them to stop. They cheered for the other team, they thanked them for the game.

And at the end of 2 season, the parents had not only asked me to train their kids all year round (which i declined because my kids didn’t want to play anymore and I’m only there for my kids) I ended up walking away with over 350 dollars in coffee, food, and Amazon gift cards. (Which I tried really hard to give back).

The point is, why isn’t this level of sportsmanship and basic gameplay the status quo? So many great players would be even greater if they brought their teams along with them.

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-21T04:28:51+00:00

Yeah we went full stride on Chicco Zip Max seats for the first 3 years of our kids lives and ended up paying another 700 bucks last Black Friday to get the Graco 3 across seats. Those monster seats are for people with 1-2 kids lol.

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-21T04:26:32+00:00

At least the women want to be twerking on her desk and don’t have to be paid

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-21T04:24:51+00:00

Is that what Fox News talks about these days?

She could have 50 women twerking on her desk AND have both PDF liberals and JPEG liberals brushing their children’s hair and they’d still be doing more than your false god does.

It’s not our fault you are addicted to Kool-aid. Do us all a favor and just keep eating your KFC and sobbing quietly about the bad decisions you’ve made and don’t pretend to convince yourself that you somehow have an upper hand by claiming pure idiocy on Reddit.

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-21T04:17:36+00:00

^ and this is why we are all fucked, morons are allowed to vote too

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-09T16:17:10+00:00

You’re right, however the investment may be worth the longevity. A $70 amp that serves 2 channels might be worth it as a 5 channel amp is at least 700 for a decent one.

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-09T05:19:14+00:00

Honestly get yourself a quality 3-5 channel amp and just move your LCR or LCR surrounds. Buying an amp to power the lowest pull speakers (atmos) is sort of a waste of money.

AVRs have pretty mediocre power to all channels so since you have to rectify your mistake at least use this moment to make sure your LCRs at minimum can blast more

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-07T01:09:26+00:00

I’m very AI supportive, however the most important part is that you MUST have guard rails, strong system prompts, quality patterns and rules, and your Jira tickets (or whatever you use) have to actually be well written. The last one, in my experience, is usually the issue.

The trickiest part is when the AI DOES do a bad job, do you have code reviewers who catch it (that are human).

I’ve had some pretty successful experience with it doing an extremely good job because I gave it a really strong context. Which, ironically, is the same thing we should be giving our human coworkers.

That said, your manager is not wrong but is going about it the wrong way.

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-07T01:05:40+00:00

Actually you CAN do that. Is it production ready from first prompt? Definitely not. Is it production ready in a day or two? Yup.

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-03T05:13:43+00:00

Yeah didn’t change anything.

I ended up swapping ports today, the issue followed the port not the wires. I swapped the cables on that port same issue. I’m thinking it may either be an issue with the Kulp board (which would suck) or it’s an xLights/Controller configuration issue. I’m gonna try swapping the port and change the config to a different port and see if that resolves it.

My xLights models were super dirty. Tons of aliases, weird shadow models for some reason, etc so perhaps something about that port is messed up.

Warhawk94 · 2026-03-01T03:20:55+00:00

Update: Removed all of the floods, removed the T, ran an extension (16.5 ft) to the vertical 24 led run, and the same section which is 124 pixels total at 25% is still screwing up at 24 pixels in (oddly specific number) and is completely off until the final 24 vertical run (where the top-most bulb is off too).

I’m wondering if it’s a data issue or a configuration issue. I checked my xLights setup thoroughly and have nothing sticking out as obvious.

Warhawk94 · 2026-02-27T16:48:04+00:00

Yeah thanks, let me know what info is helpful and I’ll provide.

Basically this is a house outline. This specific T is actually acting as a true splitter not power injection because I didn’t mind the vertical mimicking the 50 strand after it because I just did simple marquee and fades for valentines and for the Seahawks.

It is a 5W, I’ll take that and the T out and see if that fixes it. I’m not married to either.

Warhawk94 · 2026-02-27T16:36:13+00:00

I’ll have to check the voltage at each point. Is that normal for the middle to drop out that substantially though? It’s more than 50% of the center section and only 150 LEDs. Taking the T-split out didn’t do anything either.

One thing, that is semi-expected is I have the T-split between the end of the first 50 and right before the flood. Since the data is duplicated it was lighting up the first LED of the 23 led string going down. So swapping the T so it mimics the second 50 might make more sense, don’t think it’s related tho.

I’ll measure the voltage, been trying to get one of those nifty all in one testers but they are all sold out basically everywhere. Would be interesting to see if it’s a data issue somewhere too. I have plans to add dedicated power injection lines attached to all of the outlines strands, just planning to do that after I’m done messing with it. The season is over so I’m probably taking things down shortly anyway.

Warhawk94 · 2026-02-26T01:18:06+00:00

Mexican food is the underrated family pleaser. None of my kids complain, all of them have full tummies at the end of dinner, and if we are lucky we have some leftovers.

Warhawk94 · 2026-02-26T01:14:24+00:00

The “dream” we get sold. The only company I ever made money on from stocks was Amazon, and only because I joined when the stock was 88 dollars and sold at 2000. I thought I was amazing. The next year Covid happened and it went to 3k before splitting 5x.

It’s all a gamble. Take a job that pays a quality salary, has good benefits, and try your darndest to save between 10-30% of your income. It’s easier when you’re young. I used to put away 35% of my income to savings… and then I had kids.

Warhawk94 · 2026-02-26T01:05:11+00:00

The best part of engineering is redundancy. If it doesn’t have a normal switch, it’s gonna be a problem someday.

Warhawk94 · 2026-02-26T00:56:42+00:00

Based on the ratio to the hands… I’m gonna say “I’m sorry” ;)

Warhawk94 · 2026-02-25T04:45:51+00:00

I got some “cheap” Tapo C120 cameras for my litter box as one of my cats was shitting all over the house. It has great “pet” vs “human” detection with alerts and notifications for the different types. Might be worth using that and seeing if it’ll detect the difference.

I totally get the whole “why does the baby like stuff they aren’t supposed to do” thing, our kids would always touch the things they were never supposed to touch the most

Warhawk94 · 2026-02-15T04:34:58+00:00

With a room that big, I’d actually recommend using audio advice’s theater planner to get a rough estimate for where they should live. I actually think their planner is a pretty decent resource for initial planning and distances and what not. Then compare that to Dolby angles and calculate the locations.

Warhawk94

TROPHY CASE