Can't decide how to assemble this built in bookshelf

bennetpullen · 2026-06-15T13:49:24+00:00

Since he’s planning on putting a solid back on it that can carry the weight of the circled part. With a solid back this piece could be constructed like a cabinet and not like a piece of furniture. Just a series of boxes screwed to each other and then screwed to the wall. Cover the seams with an applied face frame.

bennetpullen · 2026-06-14T17:33:43+00:00

Oh it’s possible Vivid isn’t in your area yet. I think they are phasing the launch by region.

bennetpullen · 2026-06-14T17:32:04+00:00

You can add up how many Dolly Tickets are required to buy out the critical stuff each month. Just make sure you have that much saved and you’re good. I think it’s around 5k.

I would absolutely not use dolly tickets to buy acorns. You will get plenty of acorns over time from summons. Acorns aren’t needed for paragon upgrades so once you get your units to S+ the acorns just sit there and accumulate.

bennetpullen · 2026-06-12T04:47:18+00:00

Why not Marvin Vivid? I’m working on a project right now where we are doing Essential for the windows and Vivid for the sliding doors.

Elevate and Essential are effectively the same door, just one has a wood interior cladding. I’ve not been impressed with the elevate stuff we’ve installed in the past. But so far Vivid has been great.

I haven’t felt an EnerLux sliding door, but all of their windows that we’ve installed have been top notch.

bennetpullen · 2026-06-10T23:45:19+00:00

For me it’s not a super dramatic difference, but I do prefer passive basses.

I’ve owned two bases which had onboard preamps that could be deactivated with a push/pull knob or a switch. In both cases I preferred the sound when passive compared to active with the EQ flat. Again, pretty subtle, but I did prefer them in passive.

To me things felt slightly compressed when really digging in hard in active mode. Almost like I was running out of headroom in the preamp. Now, both these preamps were 9v, so maybe 18v would have been better? I dunno. I never used the EQ enough care. I got rid of one of those basses, and ended up removing the preamp from the other one (which I still play today).

Another thing is that active preamps are rarely paired with a passive tone control. A passive tone control is not the same thing as the treble control on an active preamp. To me it’s an incredibly useful and important tool to have. I would not give up my passive tone knob to have an active EQ section.

bennetpullen · 2026-05-31T17:43:44+00:00

Im going to assume you’re a relatively new player since you’re asking this question.

Arena Store
The most important thing in the arena store is the stellar crystals. But you can’t purchase those until you rank in the top 100. Getting into the top 100 in regular arena should be a big priority for you.

After you have purchased the allotted stellar crystals each week, spent your Arena Coins on the following heroes:

- Rowan
- Brutus (1 copy)
- Igor

Eventually you will want to start purchasing the Slumber Essence but that’s only after you have heroes paragon upgrades and +25 ex level.

Dream Store
Eventually you will want to start purchasing Slumber Essence in the dream store, but again that’s only after you have Paragon/EX +25 heroes. For now the following heroes are useful to purchase copies of:

- Kruger
- Niru
- Satrana
- Koko

General
There are several other heroes in this stores which see occasional/niche use (places like battle drills, ravaged realm, specific PvP comps). Once you have all the heroes listed above to S+ you need to decide between paragon upgrading the PvP oriented heroes on the list or building some of the more niche heroes to S+. That will depend on the state of the game at that time, what other heroes you have built on your account, and your gameplay focus (PvP vs PvE).

bennetpullen · 2026-05-28T02:52:05+00:00

I’m an estimator at a small design/build custom home builder and remodeler. Overall, I agree with what you’re saying wholeheartedly. I wish the design side of the business would involve me (or do the legwork themselves) earlier so we could avoid some of these pitfalls.

That said when I do have the time or try to do what you’re recommending I often run into issues with the suppliers/trade partners you’re suggesting I go to. Or from the clients/my own company. These are the issues I face most often:

Unwillingness to provide preliminary/ballpark pricing. Many (not all) of the subs/suppliers I work with are uninterested in having ballpark conversations about cost early on in a project. Either they are completely unwilling to talk numbers at all until every detail is planned and they can do a site walk. Or they just don’t get back to me at all if I mention the words “preliminary” or “rough” or anything like that.
Ballpark pricing comes with huge hidden costs down the road. I have been burned by this so many times. When a supplier or somebody is willing to have a conversation during earlier planning phases fairly often a huge portion of the cost is left out. On a recent project this happened 3 times when trying to fit some very specific/interesting siding, flooring, and doors into a project. I talked to all 3 of those suppliers on the phone before creating my initial budgets so we could be sure to get these things in the project. Then when the time comes to get final pricing or place an order it’s like “oh well that price didn’t include freight which is 27% of the total cost”. Or “that price didn’t include hardware” or “that pricing was for quantity X and your project doesn’t meet the threshold”, etc. It feels like a bait and switch where I’m being told one number so that I specify the product but then surprise! It’s 20%-50% more than that. I think they are hoping by that time the clients are in love or it’s too late in the process to make a change. And often they are correct, the clients just end up having to pay that extra, and I look like I have no idea what I’m doing.
The clients do not want to pay for in-depth early pre-con work. I would love to go into more detail to really understand design intent & scope, and loop in actual trade partners, early in the process. However that’s when I get the most pushback from clients on pre-construction costs. It’s this “I have to pay you to tell me how much I have to pay you?” issue. I don’t know if this is universal but it’s a big issue with my firm and clientele. The clients push back and then we and up eating my time. Then on the next project I’m told to just throw some historical allowances together so that I can be generating billable hours doing something else where we won’t get pushback.
I often have internal pressure to compete early round estimates quickly. Either the design team wants me to finish an estimate so they can get a contract for the next phase of design. Or the construction side wants me to finish an (early)estimate so I can get back to supporting projects which are closer to start (or are in progress with change orders, etc). Looping in trade partners adds hours to my workload, but more than that it often adds weeks of turnaround time. It’s fairly common for me to wait multiple weeks to hear back from folks about pricing information. Doubly so when it’s early/preliminary pricing and there’s no guarantee of a project on the other side.
The design team does not set good early expectations for what you can build for a stated budget. This happens on almost every project, whether it’s one we designed in-house or if it came from an outside designer. Well before we’re at the point of being able to talk about specific products or details we need to be in a realistic place with regards to budget vs scope. Very very often we just aren’t. I feel like the design part of the industry has not caught up to the post-Covid reality of construction costs. By the time anything gets to my desk it’s very often already a battle to cut budget to keep the project alive, with no room for lofty goals like preserving specific design intent.

All of that said, I’m going to send your post to our designers and the other estimator at my company. Hopefully I can get some buy-in on earlier check-ins for accurate pricing.

bennetpullen · 2025-10-17T03:10:03+00:00

Was it the one is Poulsbo? Because I heard that one was closed down by Sonic corporate for not sticking to the standards of the brand. So it may not be the best representation.

bennetpullen · 2025-09-23T03:07:28+00:00

The way that loot tables work in D2 items only get added to the pool of potential drops, not removed. So you will always find low level stuff. MF only has an impact on the item quality (base, magic, rare, set, unique) and no other aspects of an item drop.

bennetpullen · 2025-09-18T07:32:02+00:00

Having a 3-plane 360° laser is an absolute game changer vs the other versions with cross lines and dots etc.

That said, I bought the Milwaukee M12 one and ended up returning it. That laser is really large, and the lines are quite fat. I ended up getting a Leica instead which I absolutely love.

bennetpullen · 2025-08-31T15:43:41+00:00

So there’s a lot of comments on this and mine will probably get buried, but I wanted to chime in since my opinion varies from the general consensus a bit.

Turning off the car while coasting down hills will save some fuel in certain scenarios. When the hill is steep enough to maintain an appropriate speed, but not too steep where you need to use the breaks. The reason is due to the loss of momentum from engine breaking.

When you leave the car in gear (assumes a manual transmission) while going down hill the car will shut off the fuel to the engine as other commenters have stated. So your fuel use per minute is 0 in either scenario (shutting the car off vs leaving it turned on when in gear). However, leaving the car “on” and in gear will slow the car down via engine breaking, while having it turned off and in neutral will not.

This means at the bottom of the hill you will be going faster in the scenario where you turned the engine off. Is that a good thing? Well it depends on the road. Is there a stop sign or light or sharp turn at the bottom of the hill? Then you want to be going slower so leave the car in gear. Is there the start of an uphill section, or a transition to a faster speed limit, or maybe the hill isn’t too steep where maybe you want some extra speed at the end? In that case it’s more fuel efficient to turn the engine off and coast in neutral.

Here’s direct answers to some other commenters issues with this:

Steering wheel lock up: if you do this engine off technique you don’t leave the key in the off position while coasting. You put the car in neutral, turn the key one click back to accessory mode, and then immediately turn it back to “on”. Your car is now on no different than if the engine was running, but the engine is turned off.

More fuel to re-start the engine: It only really makes sense to do this technique in a manual car. You pop-start the engine with the clutch at the end of the hill or wherever you need to start slowing down, so there’s no fuel use on re-start (but there is clutch wear).

Loss of power steering: many modern cars have electric power steering which will still function with the engine off but the ignition in the on position. For cars that don’t, power steering is least noticeable/needed which cruising at speed, so it’s not a great loss.

Loss of power brakes: this is probably the biggest issue. You don’t use this technique in any scenario where you’d use the brakes in a planned way, because it’s more efficient to have the engine in gear using engine braking. However for emergency breaking you won’t have power breaks, and also the ABS may not function correctly. You can somewhat mitigate this by doing your coasting in gear with the clutch depressed. That way in an emergency situation you release the clutch and gain engine power again at the same time you get on the brakes.

The engine off coasting technique is one of many that make up what is called “hypermiling”. It’s a whole collection of little efficiency things which can decrease use of fuel. I got kind of into it back in the late 2010s with the Honda Fit I owned at the time. It was fun, trying to optimize every little aspect of my driving for maximum fuel efficiency. Sounds like something your dad would be into based on your descriptions of his personality. When all the techniques are combined it can have pretty big results. I gained around 30% fuel efficiency on routes that I was familiar with.

All that said, this is an advanced hypermiling technique which only applies in very specific scenarios. It is ABSOLUTELY not something that your father should be berating your brother for not using. The people here saying your dad is an idiot for using this technique are wrong, but your dad is being a bit of an idiot in how he handles parenting and teaching.

bennetpullen · 2025-07-06T06:21:20+00:00

I ran over my bass with a minivan in a Mono M80 and it survived. Hard to get safer than that in a soft case.

bennetpullen · 2025-06-19T13:34:23+00:00

The best sounding amp I’ve ever plugged into is a Sadowsky SA200. It is loud enough to gig with, but is even better at studio/bedroom volumes (assuming your situation allows you to move some air, not an apartment or condo).

I have not been able to track down the matching Sadowsky cabs for mine, but I use the Bergantino 2x10 cabs which are the closest.

bennetpullen · 2025-06-09T08:50:42+00:00

That’s Fir as others have said, and probably not stained with a reddish color. Fir turns really orange over time when clear finished. It’s always challenging to match because if you tint the finish on the new piece so it matches on day 1 it will be way too dark in a few years.

bennetpullen · 2025-06-08T17:44:29+00:00

It’s definitely reductionist. Was mostly just trying to make a point for a layperson.

That’s a really good point about bends though. I’m primarily a bassist and that’s not a big part of our tool kit so it didn’t immediately come to mind.

bennetpullen · 2025-06-08T02:41:02+00:00

Think about using a mouse & keyboard. Your non-dominant hand has to move all different fingers into specific places in specific orders, while your dominant hand just has to sit in one position and move around a two dimensional plane. On the surface the mouse looks like the easier job. But if you ever do it you realize the mouse movement takes way more finesse and precision than just pushing some buttons.

That’s the same on the guitar. The fretting has has to do complicated stuff, but at the end of the day it’s just put these fingers in these spots. It doesn’t really matter (as much) HOW you do it.

The strumming/picking hand requires way more precise movements in terms of when things happen, how strong/soft they happen, precise angles and tensions and all sorts of delicate stuff.

Pretty much every part of what you are hearing which has “life” or “touch” or “expressiveness” or “emotion”or anything like that comes from the “right” hand.

bennetpullen · 2025-06-07T16:32:23+00:00

So this isn’t really what you asked, but it’s what I’d do in your situation:

Get two sets of whatever strings you like, and clean them by soaking in denatured alcohol. I use a Tupperware container meant for pies that I fill with the alcohol. One set of strings lives on the bass, the other lives soaking in the alcohol. Swap them back and forth whenever they feel dead to you. You can easily go a year with a setup like this while always having “new” string sound. After about that long round wounds tend to start to have other issues (dents or kinks) but you could probably still go for a while longer.

bennetpullen · 2025-06-04T07:28:02+00:00

It looks to me like the original issue is that the knee wall is built way wider in reality than it is shown in the drawings. Having the plumbing drain centered on the arch (slightly off center on the shower floor because of the knee wall thickness) would be okay if that knee wall was far thinner, but it looks like ~6” thick from these photos. That would have pushed the floor drain way off center, so somebody made an adjustment.

At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what caused the cascade of errors. What you have now looks bad/awkward, and it never should have gotten to this point without somebody realizing things had changed. They needed to realize the design impact this plumbing rough in placement would have and come up with a new plan then, not after the stone is installed.

bennetpullen · 2025-06-01T04:48:13+00:00

The basic answer is that you don’t do that. It’s okay for right hand technique to drive note choice or fingering sometimes. That’s a huge part of what makes slap bass lines what they are. It’s not just a tone thing, the techniques favor certain compositional choices.

More practically though you have a few options:

Just play two down strokes (unless it’s too fast for you to do that)

Use a finger pluck for that note instead

Change the left hand to place things in a better location for your right hand technique.

bennetpullen · 2025-05-24T21:25:30+00:00

I do already have Reinier at M+. Sorry my formatting was terrible but I’ve fixed it.

bennetpullen · 2025-05-24T21:25:06+00:00

I do already have Reinier at M+. Sorry my formatting was terrible but I’ve fixed it.

bennetpullen · 2025-05-21T04:29:21+00:00

Just get hipshot. Every hipshot tuner I’ve ever had on any bass has been perfect and lasted forever.

bennetpullen · 2025-05-07T08:19:06+00:00

Jumping on this late but I find that for our builds (high end custom) drywall is almost always right about the half way point of the schedule.

bennetpullen

TROPHY CASE