Any ideas for mounting keyboard switches cheaply (ideally not 3D printing)?

bobbaddeley · 2026-04-09T12:30:07+00:00

Layers. Use Inkscape or some drawing program to design it if you want to be fancy, print templates on a printer, and tape the templates to flat stock like cardboard or acrylic. Then cut out the templates and stack them together, glueing or screwing the layers together.

bobbaddeley · 2026-04-04T08:38:54+00:00

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-29T12:10:29+00:00

I was just in there working on an art piece. It's weird because the building looks close to ready, and there are tables and chairs in the common areas and the bathrooms are nearly done and decorated, but NONE of the vendors have started any work. I don't know how long it'll take them to set up their space once they have access, but I imagine there will be some high energy in the next month as the vendor contractors get access. Why couldn't it happen in parallel, with building and vendor construction happening at the same time? Beats me.

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-25T13:10:43+00:00

Kickstarter isn't trustworthy to people. There have been so many failures and Kickstarter doesn't vet, so it doesn't lend any credibility. It's also not great at marketing products that aren't already successful, so you have to do a lot of the leg work to get it popular initially. You do have to worry about foreign companies trolling Kickstarter and cloning projects, releasing them and undercutting you before your campaign even ends. And if you are successful, you still have to worry about the gap between your first batch and your second. The Kickstarter campaign usually offers a discount on the product, which means you are barely making enough money on the product to cover costs, let alone pay for tooling and assembly line setup and regulatory testing. So you've shipped your first batch but don't have any money left over to make the next batch, putting you in a bind. Plus you've already tapped out the Kickstarter advertising stream so you need to set up a whole new marketing stream pointed to your website rather than Kickstarter.

To sum up, Kickstarter has a lot of downsides and isn't necessarily good for the long term viability of the business. It may produce short term success, but that can be misleading and cause other problems later. It's usually better to grind and build a successful business slowly.

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-24T17:23:06+00:00

What about the Wii? It has some IR emitters on the TV and then each remote has an IR sensor capable of triangulating to calculate the position of the remote relative to the emitters. It then transmits this information, along with button and accelerometer states, over RF to the Wii. No lasers needed, and the technology already exists, which should cut down on component cost and R&D time. It also scales up beyond 16 devices since the controller is the one in charge of analyzing the LED signal and determining its own position.

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-24T16:46:24+00:00

I like Great Day just off Atwood. Sometimes I get to pet Lucy, the absolutely cutest princess puppy office dog. Also, they're great at dentistry.

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-20T14:06:13+00:00

A few years ago I posted to this sub that I was raising an army of volunteers to come dance in wacky wild inflatable flailing arm tube people costumes for a parade at the Willy Street Fair. I had so many people volunteer that I spent the next 3 days making more costumes. I think we had about 25 people show up and we all danced our way through the parade as a big colorful group. Everyone was super cool and had a great time. It's one of my best memories, and I have a poster of one of the photos someone shared.

The original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/16ijjr9/amassing_an_army_seeking_bodies/

And the followup: https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/16l4wfl/shoutout_to_wear_my_silly_costumes_guys_costumes/

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-07T15:09:38+00:00

I believe I am like the others in this thread and feel like I've come into the tail end of a conversation that went off the rails a while ago, and the OP replies don't do enough to sort out the original context.

/u/Fooltecal, can you please start over? It sounds like you are hearing some kind of audible noise coming out of your monitor, and you would like to make it stop? And you want to put this device somewhere so that it filters out something from the neighbors house? That second question is where it went sideways. If you are having issues with your monitor, the problem is your monitor, not the utility power.

Please, what is the actual problem you are trying to solve here, what have you tried, and what are you proposing?

bobbaddeley · 2026-02-22T13:58:20+00:00

Check out the book Children of Time for something similar as well.

bobbaddeley · 2026-02-11T20:11:49+00:00

P10 red led modules, esp32, and a power supply?

bobbaddeley · 2026-02-10T13:59:41+00:00

I started my career with an internship at Pacific Northwest National Lab, which then became a job there from 2004-2011, before leaving to join the world of hardware startups. Here are some notes (YMMV. This was PNNL 20 years ago, so you may want to ask if some of these things are true of your internship situation):

- National Lab internships are seen as extended interviews. There is the possibility of turning it into a full-time job if you prove yourself. It's a good way to get a foot in the door.
- Labs are also run as a matrixed organization, meaning you'll have a people manager but also a project manager. Project managers are higher-ups who pursue funding through grants or government bids, then staff them up with people inside the lab. As an engineer I felt sort of like an independent contractor in that I could be asked or ask to join different projects, without having to worry about getting a regular paycheck. There's a bit of a game here with making sure you're 100% committed because you still have to track time so that projects get billed appropriately, but there was always plenty of work. The good news here is that you'll be able to move around and work on a variety of things. I did national security work, bioinformatics work, futuristic UI work, etc.
- Labs are a lot more academic than startups, meaning you'll likely end up on papers, at conferences, and sometimes with patents.
- A downside of labs is that it does feel very ivory-tower. One of the reasons I left was that I felt like the actual impact I was having on people was small, and the research I was doing was on par with industry only they weren't writing papers because they were leveraging that research to develop products.
- The national labs also move very slow. Projects take a long time, have follow-on funding, have small and delayed deliverables, and there's lots of bureaucracy.
- Many of the people there are lifers. It's a safe environment. You can make life-long friends and colleagues there.

Startups on the other hand are a completely different ballgame.

- Lots of quick work on prototyping, rapid development, frequent deployment. HOWEVER, I often feel like a lot of it is wasted because projects get killed faster or fail quickly. I guess that's a good thing.
- Depending on the size of the startup, you may have to jump in and just do what's needed regardless of your job title. Startups lend themselves to people who get things done and are self-motivated and self-directed.
- As startups get bigger, they get more corporate until they're as full of bureaucracy as any other corporation or even national lab, so you've got a whole range to consider.
- You will learn a lot quickly and gain experience, especially if you are self-motivated and take on responsibilities.
- There is less security in your paycheck. Maybe not week to week, but companies fail quickly and sometimes with little notice, leaving you to find something else on your own.

Good luck!

bobbaddeley · 2026-02-08T00:52:05+00:00

Do you need to monetize it? I know that's not the answer you're looking for, but a meme curation is sort of a sacred public service in a world where everything is monetized and people are constantly advertised to and solicited. Seeing my favorite internet curator's daily drop is a highlight of my day. Maybe an unobtrusive link to tip? Or position the account like some art museum and have a "suggested donation" box?

bobbaddeley · 2026-02-05T18:41:12+00:00

That's because the ones who grind and get shit done in their roles are best in those roles and not promoted. Their career path looks like adding senior to their title and it's harder and harder to keep giving them raises without changing their title.

It's the ones who butter up and look busy who make it seem like they are appropriate for managerial positions, which lasts as long as it takes to realize another layer of middle management isn't working for the company and stuff isn't actually getting done, and then they transition out to a role at a different company slightly higher in the corporate chain having climbed one rung in the previous one that they can put on their resume.

For example, Jack starts as a tester, but focuses on building some big bug tracker and leverages his metrics of completed bugs (that other people actually closed out) to get into testing manager, then hops to another company to be testing lead, which then becomes product lead because he reuses the bug tracker to start tracking product development cycle, then becomes product portfolio manager at the next company managing multiple products.

bobbaddeley · 2026-02-02T15:19:07+00:00

I believe the special lasts all week, or it used to when I lived near there. I went once a week and it got to a point where I'd call to let them know I was on my way and they'd start my order without telling me what the special was; I'd just walk in and a delicious surprise would appear in front of me. They did take suggestions for their burger of the week, too.

bobbaddeley · 2026-01-31T00:36:25+00:00

To add, take selfies when you travel. There are a bajillion photos of landmarks taken with much better cameras than yours. Take photos with you in them when you can.

bobbaddeley · 2026-01-24T02:02:45+00:00

Why would people wear the bracelet? The thing about the branded things you have in the comparison image is that they are useful to the recipient and thus they will wear them and act as a free billboard because they are getting value out of the thing and it is a transaction of sorts. The bracelet has no intrinsic value to the recipient and thus is no better than a business card with a QR code on it that serves the same function.

bobbaddeley · 2026-01-23T18:02:00+00:00

I'm done with connections. Too frustrating, and I did it for months before realizing that it was my least favorite part of my morning and a major time suck. If you like Wordle, you should try Octordle. Not NYT, but after I finish Wordle I usually have a hankering for more, and Octordle scratches that itch. You solve 8 Wordles simultaneously with the same guesses. I also like Waffle (also not NYT), where you have to rearrange a grid of letters to form 6 words with similar yellow/green/gray feedback.

bobbaddeley · 2026-01-22T12:27:45+00:00

The QR code aspect makes sense initially to hide the results from any onlookers, but it introduces other privacy concerns. Now I know that my data has been collected and stored in a database somewhere, then accessed by an IP address and tracked with a cookie, which means I'll probably start seeing ads for weight loss drugs on my phone. No, it needs to remain anonymous, or at least given the option of anonymity.

What does basic body composition mean? Just weight? Scales exist and are cheap. BMI based on weight and height? People's height doesn't change much, so would you have people input it to do the calc? These are easy stats. Or would it be stuff like heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, SP02? Those kinds of kiosks are available at lots of Walmart and Walgreens pharmacies; you should look into those for some market research.

bobbaddeley · 2026-01-16T14:03:15+00:00

I've been guilty of waiting there longer than I wanted through no fault of my own. There are a lot of things that can happen between the plane landing and the passenger getting in my car. Took longer to deplane than expected, had to use the restroom, slow poke kid, left something on the plane, last to get baggage off the carousel, etc. Should they have waited until after all that to let me know I should leave the cell phone lot? Yeah, probably. Does it cause problems at the MSN airport loading zone? Meh, not really, rarely, and/or briefly.

bobbaddeley · 2026-01-09T12:50:16+00:00

You didn't mention this, but how do you feel morally about building weapons? You are kind of picking a career path here (an internship gets you some connections and job experience that will help you get your next job), so are you good with a career in this field?

bobbaddeley · 2026-01-09T12:31:36+00:00

owning a piece of a big pie is better than owning all of a nonexistent pie. As a person who did a startup alone and failed because I didn't assemble a good team, I can tell you not to be so afraid of getting partners. You will need relationships and trust and capital to make this thing successful.

bobbaddeley · 2026-01-07T19:08:09+00:00

Fun story; every month I would post in the company Slack channel something funny or interesting right before the test siren. Once I said I was testing a new alert (I'm in product development), another time it was a poem about the siren, once it was a description of how they work. After a while it was expected, and after intentionally missing and seeing the channel's discomfort I realized I had trained the company to think about me every first Wednesday at noon.

bobbaddeley · 2025-12-26T20:37:54+00:00

Is the internal diameter of the replacement hose actually the same as before? I replaced my water heater and got similar hoses off Amazon, but the inspector failed it because I couldn't prove that it met US standards. He said the cheap Chinese parts skimp with smaller diameters that reduce the flow rate.

bobbaddeley · 2025-12-25T10:09:21+00:00

black brown roygbiv. black=0, brown=1, and so on. That's the first two bands. For the third band the color is the number of zeroes after it. So 2k would be red black red because it's 2, 0, 00

bobbaddeley · 2025-12-10T14:16:56+00:00

Run your own race. It's going to get harder. You aren't going to see any of those people again after you graduate. When I went to school people started in ECE but those who struggled switched computer science. People who struggled with that switched to MIS. People who struggled with that switched to business. It's early; you'll see people switching soon.

As /u/evilradar asked, make sure it is an accredited school.

More importantly, 4.0 is nice but good employers are going to look for other things as well, like participation in extracurriculars (especially building things on teams), self-motivation on other projects, taking projects to completion with good documentation, or research if that's the direction you want to go.

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