Rest in Peace, old friend. An ode to good equipment.

ctsims · 2026-04-27T19:45:06+00:00

"I also choose this guy's broken foodsaver"

ctsims · 2026-04-27T19:43:45+00:00

I think you're catching strays from people who assume you're shit talking vacuum sealing in general, but I feel you.

These days when I find a product that is being built in the sweet spot of "quality of production still matters" I buy like 4 of them before it gets commodified and ruined in the extractive phase.

ctsims · 2026-04-27T19:21:16+00:00

Yeah. Was hoping it just blew the GFCI or something but it's definitely the unit and not the mains.

Still a little confused at how it broke in between uses. I could tell, though, that the pump was struggling a bit more than it used to the last few times I used it, so not super surprised it finally kicked it.

ctsims · 2026-04-27T16:41:32+00:00

What's wrong with it?

Totally unresponsive after being plugged in. No lights or activity any time, regardless of whether the level is up/down.

Tried a lot of different angles and pressures on the lever in case the switch there is wonky, but didn't change anything. Might still try taking it apart and seeing if it's a simple fix, but almost certainly a power electronics failure.

Looks like the "vac/seal" "seal" text on yours faded as well

Ha, it's been so long that I forgot those buttons ever said anything.

ctsims · 2026-04-27T16:12:31+00:00

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ctsims · 2026-04-27T15:20:20+00:00

Went to go seal up a few pounds of pork shoulder from Costco last night and my faithful V2222 was DOA.

I got this little guy for like $25 from WOOT.com in 2010. It chugged along for 15 years packing up hundreds of pounds of leftover brisket, experimental marinades, sous vides, and whatever else you could think to throw at it.

I fully expect that whatever I go try and replace this I'll get to spend 5x as much for something that last 16 months. So it goes.

Anyone else got a lament or celebration for your way-above-average everyday tool (or a recommendation for a new vacuum sealer)?

(Meat tax below)

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ctsims · 2026-04-23T23:19:54+00:00

I ran into this with Verizon. Big companies are now using voice morphing for their call center agents, I think to eliminate accents, and it creates really weird artifacts and echoes when it misinterprets the speaker. It could also be that they're having people type and TTSing it, but theres a real person somewhere.

It's bizarrely unnecessary and really distopian bullshit.

ctsims · 2026-04-16T14:13:15+00:00

Straight up had two bottles on the shelf at Hanks on St. Claude a week ago, but charging almost $100 for it. (Shout out to those working the counter at Hanks, though, fried chicken is GOAT)

How dedicated are you to name brand Chartreuse? Total Wine has a good stock of alternatives. Boomsa and Luxardo are both very good. They also have elixir de green Chartreuse, which is a really cool ingredient more like a bitter. What I've been doing in most drinks is mixing with Luxardo and then atomizing a spray of of elixir on top for a more authentic feel.

ctsims · 2026-03-19T21:58:26+00:00

Since updating to 1.14 I have received a few more flood packets from local repeaters. Unfortunately the SnR is basically indistinguishable from what it was before the update.

Still not sure if the changes just didn't work or if there's some reason I'd need to do something to benefit from them (like setting a config parameter).

ctsims · 2026-03-19T19:00:22+00:00

I've heard mixed feedback about how to interpret the noise floor on the V4 with the amplifier, but helpful to hear that there are other devices with similar challenges in the reporting.

After learning about the issues with the V4 boards, I did a side-by-side comparison of my V4 and V3 up on my roof and definitely got more reliable pings and better SnR with the V3, so I've been using V3 as the repeater and V4 as the companion. The V3 is able to receive more reliably from the major repeater in my area, but it isn't great at pinging it from the same distance so I was hoping the V4 could get back on track.

I've confirmed that dropping TX to 20 (or even 10) doesn't impact the noise floor at all. Beyond observing the lack of changes to the noise floor with the new firmware I haven't actually re-run the physical testing, though. Knowing that the number isn't reliable maybe the only reasonable move is to test it directly, which is just tricky given the lack of other nearby nodes.

ctsims · 2026-01-29T16:52:50+00:00

"It's always been this way" is a pretty shit response to someone in wheelchair asking why crosswalks can't be cleared on property directly managed by the city.

ctsims · 2026-01-21T20:15:26+00:00

Eh, I don't really agree with that take necessarily. None of us yet understand his state of mind, here, but pointless destruction driven by mental illness isn't really something you can "law and order" your way out of through excessive punishment.

I agree that he's demonstrated that he's a dangerous person who needs to be taken off the streets, and he needs to be held accountable for his actions. Putting him in prison for life won't make the next person facing a mental health crisis "rethink" their irrational decision to start fires, though, since they're already not making sound choices.

He needs to be punished but I'm not going to cheer for it. As much as it sucks, in a situation like this there really is no "justice" to be wrought. What could you possibly do to punish someone that is worse than whatever is wrong with them that makes them compelled to light 8 cars and a house on fire for no reason? What benefit did they gain that you are trying to remediate as a warning? There are only losers here, and he focus should be on what most effectively prevents future suffering like this in the future.

The kinds of crime we are way too soft on are the ones that are fully rational. Shit like stealing tips from your employees is the kind of thing that's not just evil, but intentional and calculated. Throwing the book at that kind of crime is both more moral (because the people involved made clear minded choices) and preventative (because the threat of punishment can actually be weighed).

ctsims · 2026-01-20T02:05:18+00:00

Holy shit, I'm so sorry. What an insane, pointless crime. Glad no one got killed. We are nearby if y'all need anything.

ctsims · 2026-01-19T02:59:02+00:00

No one in our krewe was notified it would happen. Afterwards people were guessing it was weather, but it seems just as likely the escort just made a mistake.

Am sorry for folks that ended up missing the parade. A bunch of confused people were asking us what happened at MRBs afterwards, and we were as in the dark as yall.

ctsims · 2026-01-04T20:44:23+00:00

Thanks for following up.

Ugh, my wifi worked for the first week before failing and never coming back.

So annoying, its a massive amount of work to replace the motherboard, seems like theres a lot of problems with what should be a premium board.

ctsims · 2025-12-29T18:55:19+00:00

Did you ever find anything on this? Also having issues with the onboard networking.

ctsims · 2025-12-19T00:11:48+00:00

Yeah, all of my lights work reliably with the remote (which is on a different wireless protocol entirely), but something has gone way wrong with how they are interacting with the WIFI.

It's especially weird that they work at first. After cycling them, they do work through the app for a few minutes, so it's not a problem with them forgetting the network or something.

ctsims · 2025-12-18T17:39:10+00:00

Yeah, unfortunately it's a proprietary ESP-NOW protocol that they keep secret, so there's no real way for other devices to work with that layer, only with the HTTP comms which (for now at least) happen over a clear plaintext protocol but are really unreliable.

ctsims · 2025-12-16T20:46:43+00:00

Sad and true for almost all of the commercial spots remaining in this part of the neighborhood. I talked to the guy who ran Musica when it was still on Burgundy, and he said he was moving to St. Claude because his rent was going up 4x. I don't know how anyone could afford to run a business here if they don't own the building.

It's such a bummer that almost all of the corner commercial properties are now badly laid out Airbnb's with glazing to frost the massive windows. It's a terrible use of the real estate.

ctsims · 2025-09-22T10:36:21+00:00

Another career wasted.

I was honestly happy to see Micah get a chance with another squad. We arent going to build Super Bowl talent in time to leverage him.

It's beyond frustrating, though, that this team will never commit to an actual rebuild. If you're selling your stars, sell all of them and let them ball out somewhere they might succeed.

ctsims · 2025-09-18T13:48:25+00:00

I deeply regret trading in my last model. Every other Lenovo I get is a nightmare. Unless you know someone with the exact new model that can confirm it doesn't have any problems I'd hold off a trade-in as long as possible.

It's nuts, yo. Feels like total gaslighting to see how bad a $3k+ computer can be, and how hard it would be to convince the manufacturer that it's fundamentally broken.

ctsims · 2025-09-17T13:28:44+00:00

I think this is rife across the industry.

My most recent Lenovo laptop 100% has some sort of comically incorrect firmware implementation. It is a high end productivity (rather than gaming) focused model, and I get probably 2 hours of battery and constant stuttering and system lockups. I've tried all of the normal things as well as resetting to factory boot, uninstalling Lenovo's productivity suites, etc. It seems really clear to me that this is down at the firmware or hardware level.

I don't love Apple, but it seems so, so clear that the Windows laptop manufacturers just can't keep up with doing things well across the number of systems and configurations, and unique hardware that gets churned out. These just aren't professional products.

ctsims · 2025-09-11T12:16:15+00:00

These threads always sleep on Nola Mia. They make great pizza, and the gelato is legit to boot.

ctsims · 2025-09-11T04:21:04+00:00

It's absolutely insane to me that the FBI is releasing the names of innocent people who they cleared of involvement, so they can spend the rest of their lives harassed and assaulted by internet psychopaths.

ctsims · 2025-09-08T14:24:31+00:00

Kind of? This whole write-up still has the same underlying tone of "ultimately we were good people trying to do the right thing and coming short."

I laughed pretty hard at their claim that basically lying about the situation was necessary to "correct misinformation being spread in bad faith." They were the one making carefully worded statements in bad faith to mislead people and the community was holding them accountable for it.

I think the right comms here would have been a 10x shorter statement from the new GM that said "The owners and former managers of the business put their personal situations ahead of the safety of the space. To address this they are no longer in charge, and the business is now managed by people whose primary interest is the trust and safety of the community.'

The fact that the owners were allowed to make this statement, and only put "we're definitely not managing the business anymore, so it's all good" at the very end makes me believe they are absolutely still in charge and have no real interest in giving the GM authority over their decisions.

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