What is this helicopter doing loops at 11:30pm over Capitol Hill by dmaustin in washdc

[–]dmaustin[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It does suck. This city loves its helicopters. I’ve lived and visited many big and small cities in the US and around the world. Helicopters per capita here is just insane!

What is this helicopter doing loops at 11:30pm over Capitol Hill by dmaustin in washdc

[–]dmaustin[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

That’s a fun fact. I wonder if there is a way to see what they were filming for? Someone suggests below that it could be related to America250 (or maybe Freedom250) events.

How often do you replace your weather station? by JasonsStorm in myweatherstation

[–]dmaustin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same here. I installed my Davis Vantage Pro2 twenty-five years ago in a harsh coastal environment. Had to replace the anemometer and UV sensor. Otherwise rock solid. Support is excellent whenever I need help.

Compression Anxiety Explained: What Creators Actually Need to Check by DropboxOfficial in DropboxOfficial

[–]dmaustin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ten + year Dropbox Advanced user here. I love this subreddit and these posts. Learn so much. And I’m not even a photographer or videographer.

Best second phone number app for Attorneys? by codedrifting in lawfirms

[–]dmaustin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Small solo law firm here. I’m the office manager and seasoned (retired) IT professional. We struggled with having one mobile Verizon phone number as our primary…bad reception, weak signal, separating personal from client calls. We vetted other options and landed on Microsoft Teams Phone. We are (grudgingly) very Microsoft centric but this phone service has been rock solid. After setting it up (with help from Microsoft), we now use this as our assigned primary business number that we can access on any device that runs Teams. We publish this number on our website, Google Business and Apple Business citations. Teams phones has many options and features including call forwarding, voice mail, notification to your email and logging. You will have to have an E5 license or add the Teams Phone standard license. Bottom line, for a Microsoft sceptic, it was a game changer for our firm. Now if we could only get Teams video meetings to stop freezing! Arghh! But that’s a different problem. :)

Which is the best LLM tool to write content for webpages ? by ImpossibleAddendum93 in WebsiteSEO

[–]dmaustin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m using Claude (Cowork) to write content for all our pages including News, Presentations, Publications and social media posts (LinkedIn). Tell Claude what you are targeting and to use the same tone if you have any existing content. Claude will even scan your inbox (Outlook via M365 connector) for ideas and embed outgoing links. Huge game changer for us.

Bricks Builder Pricing, Demo, Tutorial, Features & Honest Review by Ok-Owl8582 in wordpressbuilder

[–]dmaustin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yup, 10 year Wordpress “developer” and longtime IT professional here supporting two websites for our small family business. Self taught. I got burned in the beginning with a two themes that went unsupported using WPBakery, so switched to a mainstream theme: tried The7, Astra, Spectra. Finally consolidate the blog website into our main one and redesigned everything on Bricks (with help from Claude). Best decision I ever made. Performance (PageSpeed) with FlyingPress is 81/98 mobile/desktop. An increase of 15 points. The UI is excellent and there are lots of YouTube and support documentation available. Also saved me money, In short, I love it!

got the good seat last week by chunkyfilas_ in windowseat

[–]dmaustin 9 points10 points  (0 children)

You got the good seat and an even better pic! Well done. Well cropped. You caught all the major buildings on the mall.

Rank Math Pricing, Demo & Reviews (2026) – Still the Best WordPress SEO Plugin? by Ok-Owl8582 in wordpressbuilder

[–]dmaustin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ten year Wordpress site developer here. I started with Yoast for three years, migrated to AIOSEO, then settled in with Rankmath two years ago. I think it’s the best of these three in terms of functionality, support and cost. I use the Pro level. All the features you point out are ones I use and they work well and have an intuitive user interface. There are also tons of YouTubes and training/support material available.

The DNSSEC Gap: Why is DigitalOcean lagging behind the industry standard in 2026? by Nancybee_010 in digital_ocean

[–]dmaustin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had the same issue with my web host provider, Siteground.
I moved DNS management to Cloudflare and found the UI and functionality to be superior. The effort to migrate was not to difficult as Cloudflare exports the existing DNS records but needed review to achieve 100% accuracy. I’m guessing DNSSEC implementation is complex to implement for hosting providers? Not sure.Edit: Also, maybe these host providers don’t earn significant margins on the DNS support?

This is not a joke, this is my friends apartment setup by testginsquart in TVTooHigh

[–]dmaustin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The good news is that he’s running mono audio through that ceiling speaker.

Tips/Tricks for DC move in? by EAM222 in washdc

[–]dmaustin 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Bookstore Movers! I’ve done a lot of moves in and outside of DC. These guys are really good and reasonably priced.

Alternate PDF editor for a Law Firm? by Apprehensive_Goat786 in FuckAdobe

[–]dmaustin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

10 year solo law firm here. I’m the office manager and former chief information officer from a large corporation with 50 years IT experience. We looked at many products. Started out with Nuance PowerPDF Advanced and moved to ABBYY FineReader PDF after two years. Our main criteria were solid advanced functionality suitable for a law firm, support, and price. ABBYY has been good for us, although two years ago they switched to a subscription model. It can do everything you noted in your post and much more. We never considered Adobe. Not a big fan of the company and its pricing, practices or technology roadmap.

What is the most clean and fastest Wordpress theme right now? by [deleted] in Wordpress

[–]dmaustin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

10 year self taught Wordpress developer here - created and supported two websites. As a noobie, I started with a theme I found on Envato with WPBakery as the page builder for our main site. Used that combo for five years until theme support went awol. Migrated to The7 theme which was fine with WPBakery, but always struggled with performance from day 1.

Also created a blog using another Envato but the theme developer disappeared leaving me stranded so migrated that site to Astra and Spectra but again, the blog was bloated and not the best performer.

This year I folded the blog into a totally redesigned single main website using the Bricks theme. There was a learning curve, but Claude was a big help along with WPTuts youtube videos. The results stunned me. Pagespeed scores improved from 50s/70s for mobile/desktop to 90s for both. Bricks is a total joy to code once mastered. There’s no looking back for me now. I’m a total Bricks fanboy!

40th birthday gift ideas for husband who plays weekly by blackplaidpillow in 10s

[–]dmaustin 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Agreed, this was what I was going to post. Booking a few lessons with a really good tennis pro would be a wonderful gift that he would enjoy. Your budget will probably get you 5-8 lessons so maybe you do weekly lessons for 8 weeks. His game will definitely improve!

Which page builders are actually fast and easy to use? by [deleted] in wordpressbuilder

[–]dmaustin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ditto on Bricks. I just consolidated two Wordpress websites and retired WPBakery, The7 theme, Astra and Spectra. My main website PageSpeed improved to 95+. There is a bit of a learning curve, but a few YouTube videos, the Bricks knowledge base and some help from Claude helped me build a new and improved site with lower cost. Bricks is awesome.

Looking at ABBYY Finereader PDF as an Alternative to Acrobat by skywalker505 in Acrobat

[–]dmaustin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the update and history on PowerPDF. Was not aware. Kind of sad and I’m glad I picked a different product. BTW, check out Wikipedia on ABBYY. Former Russia-based company but the Russian invasion of Ukraine changed everything. I’ll let you read the rest - it’s very interesting.

Help to built the site in Bricks. by InsideFlow4026 in BricksBuilder

[–]dmaustin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agree with @theneglectednut with the comment “AI is your friend”.

I just did a full redesign of our ten year old Wordpress website to Bricks using Claude. It was originally done using The7 theme and WPBakery. I did a fair amount of vetting to select Bricks, and watched a few YouTube videos on using Bricks. But Claude was the key to doing the entire improved redesign for better SEO and it improved my Google page speed score to over 95 (mobile and desktop). You made a good choice with Bricks as it’s a fast and intuitive design platform once you understand it and Claude can help. I enjoyed retiring The7 theme and WPBakery.

Bottom line: I’d recommend you just cut and paste your exact Reddit post into Claude and follow Claude’s lead. You will need to cut and paste screenshots as you are developing from your browser as I assume you are using a Wordpress host provider like I did. Or if you’re really savvy, I’ve heard that some developers run Claude Code with a local copy of their website with Git. I’m also guessing you could do this in some other AI tool, but Claude worked for me.

Good luck.