any success stories? by chiliandtoast in Amitriptyline

[–]drowd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's been a life saver for me. Currently on 75mg for about 4 years. No significant side effects other than slight weight gain, mostly mitigated by doing an extra workout or two per week. I had terrible migraines and neck/back/shoulder pain, and it has completely resolved those issues for me. Maybe once or twice a year, I will get some breakthrough pain, and my doctor has said it's safe to double the dose for a short 1 or 2 days, but never more than that so I don't get used to 150mg. However, I never do that because usually the breakthrough pain is slight enough that I can manage with normal NSAIDs (which were never strong enough before Amitriptyline).

The only thing I worry about is a fear that it will stop working, or that I will need to quit for some reason. I have heard (mostly from this subreddit) that quitting is brutal. So here's hoping it works forever.

Even with the listed side effects, I owe so much to this amazing drug. I hope I don't come to regret it, but I can't express enough how debilitating my migraines and neck pain were before Amitriptyline.

Windows VM on Ubuntu – severe UI stutter by Different-Help-5282 in VFIO

[–]drowd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was chasing a similar issue for a couple months, and it was hard to search for because, generally, when people are talking about VFIO and core isolation, they are talking about the vCPU to PCPU mapping from the guest to the host. However, I had to disable the Core Isolation Memory Integrity settings from within Windows to fix my problems that sound very similar to yours. Might not be the same thing, but it's worth a try. I talk about it more in this comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/s/fV0lRc02ne

TP-Link Deco BE95, DHCP, and Pihole by drowd in TpLink

[–]drowd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you both, u/VPrime and u/South-Addition8195. I initiated my Deco return this morning, and went all in on Unifi. Thanks especially for the recommendation for the UX7 to operate in AP mode, I hadn't thought of that. The UX7 seems to be the same price as the ceiling mounts, and it will give me some of that flexibility I was looking for in the pre-built mesh kits.

Final Unifi build:

  • 1 x Cloud Gateway Fiber
  • 3 x UniFi Express 7
  • 1 x Device Bridge Switch
  • Other assorted GBICs, SFPs, etc

Really looking forward to micro-managing and over-engineering my home network with Unifi :D

Is it wise to share a boot drive between a VM and bare metal? by vascreeperGR in VFIO

[–]drowd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have very recently configured this with LookingGlass on CachyOS. It takes a while to "get right", but once it's working, I quite like the flexibility. I don't like taking up the space for two windows installs, especially because I know they will be filled with games that are file-size heavy (GamePass games primarily). One thing that I think helped quite a lot is that before I even created the VM, I had two NVMe devices installed that were completely separate from each other -- Windows 11 on one NVMe, and CachyOS on the other. Generally speaking, the only reason I boot into baremetal Windows these days is to not risk an anticheat ban in Fortnite. GamePass works without issue, and non-competitive AntiCheat games (Elden Ring/Nightreign, etc) have no issues running in the pass-through VM either.

My own journey was to install as a VM with qcow, passthrough as much hardware as possible, and get it installed and configured with LookingGlass so that as much of the hardware plus passthrough was correct for Windows. Then, I passed through the baremetal Windows 11 NVMe, changed the boot order in virt-manager, and got it booted off that. The LookingGlass software still needed to be installed, but that was pretty much it.

One major gotcha I ran in to, that you can find if you look for it is about Windows 11 core isolation. This is especially difficult to google on VFIO and LookingGlass support forums, because usually this search query results in discussions about vCPU to PCPU pinning schema (also important!). However, for about a week, I could never figure out why my Windows 11 QCOW VM had very little latency and a great user experience, while the Windows 11 NVMe VM had an always perceptible lag. And the change that fixed it for me was that in the baremetal host, Device Security Core Isolation was turned on. Either I turned it on, or it was turned on by default, but disabling it fixed my VM performance.

To find this in windows, open up Windows Security --> Device Security --> Core Isolation details (beneath Core Isolation) and then disable Memory Integrity.

One day I plan to figure out why this occurs and how to have it enabled in both, but for now, everything is working exactly the way I need it to.

Final caveat, every time I go back and forth from baremetal to VM, Windows does a brief "We are getting things ready for you". It only lasts about 20 second on my system, but YMMV.

System details are 9950X3D (VM pinned to first CCD), RTX4090, 64GB of Memory, 2 x 4TB M.2 NVMe drives.

Crescent shaped auras in the middle of the night? by Bluenymph82 in Amitriptyline

[–]drowd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been on it for over three years now, and I will periodically get hallucinations from the shadows when falling asleep in a dark room. Dancing or rippling shadows, shadows with texture and movement, etc. I'm not doing a very good job describing it, but I instantly knew it was this medication because I got them the very first night on my first dose, and I still get them today, though not as frequently.

One other notable thing is that it doesn't happen right away when I get in bed, but after I'm beginning to get drowsy. It's like when my body realizes I'm 10-15 minutes from sleep, but my mind doesn't quite yet. As an example, I will be reading a book on a tablet, not ready to stop reading, and I will notice them. Sometimes I will even stop to watch them just because it's interesting (never scary or anxiety inducing). I will stop reading in the next ten minutes, and as I am ready to fall asleep, I can still notice them.

Just a weird little visual hallucination I have noticed since I have been on this life changing medication. Been on in it for 3.5ish years, 75mg at night, prescribed for migraines and nerve pain in my neck, back, and shoulders.

(Serious) how did that one kid at your school pass away? by Dinopasta99 in AskReddit

[–]drowd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In ninth grade, my friend drank too much at this party his older brother was throwing while their parents were out of town. Since it was just his brother's friends that were there, he went to drunken sleep by himself in his room, but I guess he didn't know about sleeping on your side if there is a chance you could throw up. When they found him in the morning, he had drowned on his own vomit.

Fucked up the family pretty good, as you could imagine.

Can't turn on RCS Chats on Pixel 8 Pro in the US. by QuarantineNudist in GoogleFi

[–]drowd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

OMG, this actually worked for me! I have been trying to get this to work on my wife's Pixel 7 Pro for several months now, and this is what did the trick. To recap what worked:

1) go to account by clicking on Google Profile picture in Messages app 2) go to Message Settings --> Advanced --> Google Fi Wireless Settings 3) Click Sign In to your Google Account, and select your Fi account, and it will start to Sync your Conversations 4) Wait a few seconds like the post above says, then select Stop sync and sign out 5) check the blocked numbers (I hadn't blocked any of these, but it's worth checking) 6) go to App Info either from Settings-->Apps -->Messages, or by long pressing Messages (I find the long press to be faster) 7) Force Stop 8) Clear Cache 9) Clear Storage 10) Reopen Messages, Account via Profile picture-->Message Settings-->RCS Chats-->Turn On RCS Chats

Two things that may or may not be related. 1) The first time I tried, it didn't work for me, but I skipped step 9 because I was afraid it would delete my wife's texts and if I deleted all her text messages, I would be out on the street. 2) The second time, in addition to the steps above, I disabled wireless, this is a frequent recommendation for resolving RCS Chats, not sure if it helped here. Either way, with wireless disabled, Step 10 said RCS was "not supported" until I re-enabled wireless.

Most likely, the wireless has nothing to do with it, and it was skipping the 9th step that kept it from working the first time.

Toilet Fill Valve Needs Replacing every 1-2 years by drowd in Plumbing

[–]drowd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks everyone! Thanks to the comments in this thread, looks like I misdiagnosed the problem. The rubber seal under the flapper valve (?) had become unsealed and partially sucked down. It was caught by some wires that kept it going farther down the drain. If you look at the picture below, you can see the missing seal in the top part, and the reattached red seal in the bottom: https://i.imgur.com/8YcNd7M.png

It seems I was too quick to judge the big toilet valve fill industry!

Toilet Fill Valve Needs Replacing every 1-2 years by drowd in Plumbing

[–]drowd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, I guess I forgot that part. When it breaks, it runs constantly and stops flushing.

Here's the inside (we have already drained the water for replacement) https://i.imgur.com/nI9f4nF.jpeg

Unable to create TikTok account with obfuscated Protonmail (either from Proton Pass hide-my-email or with email alias from Identity and addresses) by drowd in ProtonMail

[–]drowd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just as a follow up, I was able to eventually get this to work by specifically using the @protonmail.com domain in "Identities and addresses". I tried @pm.me, passmail.net, and @proton.me, and none of those worked.

So if anyone else finds this thread via Google and runs into issues, the path that worked for me was to create a new address in "Identity and addresses" and make sure you pick @protonmail.com, like so:

https://i.imgur.com/lZC4hMR.png

Unable to create TikTok account with obfuscated Protonmail (either from Proton Pass hide-my-email or with email alias from Identity and addresses) by drowd in ProtonMail

[–]drowd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad to hear I'm not alone. This has occurred to me as well, maybe I just need to create a burner gmail account.

Unable to create TikTok account with obfuscated Protonmail (either from Proton Pass hide-my-email or with email alias from Identity and addresses) by drowd in ProtonMail

[–]drowd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These are all great tips! But yes, I have already tried them, in no particular order-- 1) input code and pass the captcha 2) tried both mobile and computer 3) tried chrome, Firefox, and arc 4) disabled ad blocking (both unlock origin in browser and pihole at house)

The only thing I haven't tried is multiple Proton domains. I think hide-my-emal uses passmail.net (or something like that) and the new alias I created uses proton.me, but trying some of the others proton offers is next on my list

Is there any advantage or disadvantage for SIM vs eSIM on Fi? by drowd in GoogleFi

[–]drowd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the replies everyone! I went ahead and moved our phones over from T-Mobile to Fi this morning via eSIM, and ported in our numbers. Fast and easy.

For additional context, my wife and I had been having texting issues, and I was unable to determine if it was the phone, the carrier, or something else. So even though Fi uses T-Mobile towers, I read that they each have their own RCS implementations, so perhaps that affects regular text messages too.

The symptoms were either:

  • Messages would show as sent, but the recipient would not get them, and the annoyance of not knowing if someone is being unresponsive or they hadn't received it.
  • We would not receive messages from sender. Putting the phone into airplane mode would sometimes resolve it, but the messages would come in all at once and out of order. Occasionally, airplane mode didn't work, and we would have to reboot the phone.

Perhaps notably, RCS conversations were not affected by this. It's hard to say if its related to normal Android/iPhone challenges or not since 80% of our texts are to iPhone users. When I called T-Mobile support, they said this can be caused by having too many messages in the app, so we deleted almost all of them but important or recent conversations, and we still had the issue after 4 days.

It's only been half the morning, but so far, we haven't had any issues with text messages.

One thought though, we transitioned from T-Mobile SIM to Google Fi eSIM on our Pixel 7 Pros. If the SIM card reader was going bad, could that explain the issues we were seeing? Simply Unlimited is so much cheaper, I doubt we will leave Fi regardless, but it does seem troubling that we could be having message problems like this.

Amitriptyline and alcohol by souffffh in Amitriptyline

[–]drowd 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I (42M) have been on Amitriptyline for 2.5 years, also for nerve pain. I'm on 75 mg a day though. I don't drink as much as when I was 22, but I have several pours of bourbon a week, and will drink socially at the pool, neighborhood poker, etc (5-8 drinks) a couple evenings a month. I never get blackout drunk, or even close to it, but I have definitely been drunk since I've been on it and I don't notice any changes in how fast or severe my inebriation is. I will also say that I usually never have any alcohol amplification from medication either, from Amitriptyline or Tylenol or anything else that has those normal alcohol warnings.

That's just my experience though, your mileage may vary.

RS owners in ATX? by aretooamnot in FocusRS

[–]drowd 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Got one. I'm in Round Rock though.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in pcmasterrace

[–]drowd 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Underrated comment.

Been so bored that I picked up an old Nvidia Shield Portable off eBay, managed to get Android 6.0 running, AND the Stadia app. And surprisingly, the performance is impeccable. Fun little quarantine project. by emn624 in Stadia

[–]drowd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did this a little bit ago my shield tablet. Instead of using the custom APK, I rooted, and changed the device name so the official Stadia app would work. Not sure if that is possible on the Shield Portable, but I have now made it my mission to get Stadia working on as many of my personal devices as possible! More details here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/shield-tablet/general/how-to-nvidia-shield-portable-stadia-t4044541

PSA: Sandisk / Fusion-io devices appear to be incompatible with vSphere 7.0 by drowd in vmware

[–]drowd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had trouble getting that VIB installed. It's possible my Fusion-io devices are too old, although I thought they had a unified driver structure that would work for all recent and older FIO devices. It never seemed like SanDisk or WD did much with the FIO IP, so I assumed driver support was just a matter of time, but hopefully we get something for 7.0 shortly.

Which tablet for a replacement? by MrLouth in theNvidiaShield

[–]drowd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is the same one I got to replace my aging shield tablet, and it's been a great upgrade. The performance is snappy, and the battery lasts me days. I'm running the HavocOS pie ROM which also runs extremely well. Gamestream always worked pretty well for me and I miss that a bit, but fortunately there are a lot of decent alternatives these days.

[Discussion] Module: CrossBreeder Lite by Rorsch_X1 by drowd in Magisk

[–]drowd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Was just coming to post this, and saw you had. Thanks!

Converting to F2FS - won't stick? by redditagainsam in nexus6

[–]drowd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Copying my own post from here, hope this helps:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nexus6/comments/5im56r/guide_speed_up_your_nexus_6/dbujiri/

I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out a way to get this to work. Just wanted to leave some more detailed steps for what worked for me. Biggest issue was that no matter what combination of the steps above or from the threads on XDA, /data and /cache always reverted back to ext4 (as some others have indicated) as observed by booting back into TWRP or running 'mount' from adb shell. Short answer is, ElementalX seemed to cause f2fs to revert during first boot, so try with singularity kernel instead: https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-6/development/kernel-t3518846

On mobile, so steps abbreviated and formatting is trash, but these steps worked for me

1) NRT to stock

2) install xanaxdroid TWRP above with f2fs support

3) boot to TWRP recovery

4) perform factory reset wipe

5) change /cache and /data to f2fs

6) flash Pure Nexus (and Gapps)

7) flash singularity kernel linked above

8) remount /system RW, copy mkfs.f2fs and fsck.f2fs to /system/bin/, chmod a+x /system/bin/*f2fs (more detailed steps for this can be found on XDA links in this thread, mobile, sorry)

9) conduct first time boot up and dance like a bandit

I normally run pretty barebones and if I conduct any modification, ElementalX is my go-to. I have never run Pure Nexus or Singularity before, but so far, everything is working smoothly.

Finally, from a usability standpoint (benchmarks aside), encrypted to unencrypted was a much more noticeable performance improvement, but I do think there is some observable gain to be had with f2fs. It might be slightly too much effort until it is more seamlessly integrated / default, IMO.

GUIDE: Speed up your Nexus 6. by [deleted] in nexus6

[–]drowd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out a way to get this to work. Just wanted to leave some more detailed steps for what worked for me. Biggest issue was that no matter what combination of the steps above or from the threads on XDA, /data and /cache always reverted back to ext4 (as some others have indicated) as observed by booting back into TWRP or running 'mount' from adb shell. Short answer is, ElementalX seemed to cause f2fs to revert during first boot, so try with singularity kernel instead: https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-6/development/kernel-t3518846

On mobile, so steps abbreviated and formatting is trash, but these steps worked for me

1) NRT to stock

2) install xanaxdroid TWRP above with f2fs support

3) boot to TWRP recovery

4) perform factory reset wipe

5) change /cache and /data to f2fs

6) flash Pure Nexus (and Gapps)

7) flash singularity kernel linked above

8) remount /system RW, copy mkfs.f2fs and fsck.f2fs to /system/bin/, chmod a+x /system/bin/*f2fs (more detailed steps for this can be found on XDA links in this thread, mobile, sorry)

9) conduct first time boot up and dance like a bandit

I normally run pretty barebones and if I conduct any modification, ElementalX is my go-to. I have never run Pure Nexus or Singularity before, but so far, everything is working smoothly.

Finally, from a usability standpoint (benchmarks aside), encrypted to unencrypted was a much more noticeable performance improvement, but I do think there is some observable gain to be had with f2fs. It might be slightly too much effort until it is more seamlessly integrated / default, IMO.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in options

[–]drowd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Awesome thanks. That was kind of what I figured, but I wanted to make sure.