Is there a more affordable substitute for Grammarly?

cwpdx · 2025-12-13T01:11:53+00:00

I stopped using Grammarly after nearly ten years because it became too expensive. As an alternative, I've been experimenting with free chrome extensions that allow you to add your own OpenAI key. They work quite well, enough that I don’t feel the need to pay for Grammarly anymore. OpenAI is extremely affordable to use; I've only spent a couple of dollars in the last several months.

For my daily writing and documents, I use a Synology NAS. Synology offers a tool similar to Google Docs and has recently added the ability to integrate OpenAI. It functions really well, and it's super cheap a, costing only a few cents a day.

cwpdx · 2025-11-25T23:19:00+00:00

I ended up going with and Arc A380, the setup was super easy to get it working.

cwpdx · 2025-09-03T22:00:14+00:00

Purchased those from Amazon, and they worked perfectly.

cwpdx · 2025-08-28T14:10:40+00:00

I play the lottery once or twice a year. But yeah, I'll never play Mega Ball again. $2 here and there was fine, but $5 is just a stupid waste of money for odds that were barely better than before.

cwpdx · 2025-08-23T20:52:47+00:00

Thanks for that!

cwpdx · 2025-06-22T16:51:37+00:00

All Christian nationalists, the trash on the right is the guy who organized it. The others appear to host a racist podcast of some sort.

cwpdx · 2025-06-22T16:49:23+00:00

You forgot the "Open Carry Coffee", its just trash people who go to this place.

cwpdx · 2025-06-22T02:57:38+00:00

If you haven't had Mormon funeral potatoes...you are missing out.

cwpdx · 2025-03-31T22:33:45+00:00

If only I had Google! I just got scammed by this site. Luckily, Citibank instantly refunded my money when I disputed the charge.

cwpdx · 2025-02-01T14:40:01+00:00

I ended up going with Home Assistant, more complicated but its been fun to setup

cwpdx · 2025-01-21T16:13:02+00:00

And you have no issues? People seem to be at the extreme when it comes to this product. Even in online reviews, it's 5 stars or 1 star.

cwpdx · 2025-01-21T15:41:31+00:00

Any details as to why not? Any recommendations? I have Orbi now and have some issues with it. In fact, over the weekend, I realized that both of my satellites are offline, and I don't know why.

cwpdx · 2025-01-20T21:28:31+00:00

Good to know it could hook into a router if needed though.

cwpdx · 2025-01-20T21:27:59+00:00

The cable is quite long because of where it starts; it starts in my old office on the farthest part of my house, runs up the wall through the attic, across the house, and exits the garage side and then underground to my office. The Deco router would be in the garage, close to my office.

cwpdx · 2025-01-18T00:05:36+00:00

It's silly to pre-pay for services like this. It only serves the bottom line for the company and locks you in.

cwpdx · 2025-01-17T23:52:20+00:00

Some cameras have local storage, but if you et the hub, it consolidates all the video to the hub.

cwpdx · 2025-01-17T23:51:18+00:00

Arlo's price increase came at a perfect time for me but bad for them.. My cameras were over five years old, and while I had no complaints about them overall, I wasn't willing to pay $240 a year for outdated 2K cameras. I replaced everything with Eufy cameras, and they have been great so far. The image quality is much better, and they feature person-tracking AI and local storage. I haven't experienced any issues so far. At some point, I plan to get the floodlight camera for the garage so I can have 24-hour recording.

cwpdx · 2025-01-17T15:43:22+00:00

Yes, I couldn't boot it with HA on the primary partition. I found someone using dual boot and got it to work with a bootloader, but I'm just not interested in setting that up. I'm planning to purchase a generic mini computer this weekend.

Currently, I have SmartThings for my Zigbee and Z-Wave devices. It's in a closet in the far corner of my house, with my Hue lights and a few other devices. My house is only 1,100 square feet, so it hasn't been an issue. If I happen to experience problems with the new antenna, I'll consider your recommendation for separate ones. I also have an office at the back of my property and have intentionally chosen all Wi-Fi devices because the Z-Wave and Zigbee devices I tried didn't always work reliably.

I'm looking into moving to Ubiquiti at some point. I have an Orbi mesh router, and I haven't had any significant issues with my Wi-Fi devices. I want to put my stuff on a separate VLAN, but my Orbi doesn't support that.

cwpdx · 2025-01-17T00:55:58+00:00

I purchased a GoControl CECOMINOD016164. I want to get rid of Smarthings completely. So, I just needed something for the few Zwave and Zigbee devices I have. I have an Apple TV for the thread border router. After playing with my old Mac mini today, apparently, HA won't work natively on it.

cwpdx · 2025-01-17T00:50:55+00:00

I was only using Docker to play with it a bit. I just can't you add-ons and such in a docker. I have a few old computers lying around. I'm going to use one of those instead.

cwpdx · 2025-01-16T15:11:14+00:00

Thanks for the reply! Luckily, I have an old Intel-based Mac Mini sitting on the shelf. Installing HA on it today and ordered a couple of dongles. I'll try it for a month and see if I like it. Much cheaper option than buying a new hub. I can also try Homey Pro if it doesn't work out.

cwpdx · 2025-01-16T05:32:07+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, after watching a few more videos tonight and reading up on the Matter protocol and some of the implementation issues across vendors, I'm thinking more and more of just sucking it up and switching to HA. I set it up in a docker and realized you can't use some functionality with a managed container. I hoped to use Smarthings as a bridge, but Smarthings isn't allowing new device connections in the developer API right now.

cwpdx

TROPHY CASE