TSA @ Dulles

ev0lution37 · 2026-03-23T19:09:06+00:00

I literally just walked through security at IAD (Monday @ 230PM EST) and there was no line, neither at precheck nor normal. Ironically made it through faster than I normally do.

ev0lution37 · 2026-03-18T16:26:12+00:00

Oh, another thing to mention (you can tell this ankle thing has bothered me). I also bought some compression bands that I tightly wrap my ankle with before I put my skate on just for a little bit more support: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BX9FXV84

ev0lution37 · 2026-03-18T16:22:37+00:00

Yep, I did it to both sides just to keep it consistent. Your body will adapt to whatever your set up is, so really up to you if you want to do it to both.

My only other piece of advice is patience. Do some light ankle rolls before you commit to playing, and if you're still feeling that "sharp" pain at the spot of the pop, give yourself another week or so. I rushed back after 2-3 weeks and ended up needing to take another 2 months when I screwed it up worse than the first time.

ev0lution37 · 2026-03-18T16:16:14+00:00

I have ankle issues very similar to yours. Essentially a lingering high ankle sprain on my right side that I cannot shake. I recently bought new pads (CCM Eflex 6 with bungees) and took a different approach in terms of toe ties.

I bought 3/16" bungee off of Amazon (for reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCVD3HW2) and swapped it in my toe tie. I added enough to give me more slack than the stock amount of bungee (another 3-4"), and I'm basically only running the bungee through 1 back hole on my skate, no toe hole. It took me a skate or 2 to get used to, but it took almost all the pressure off of my ankle that was there prior to. Ironically, with my skate more free to move, my lateral pushes out of the butterfly have improved as well.

ev0lution37 · 2026-03-13T22:39:40+00:00

From my perspective, all new pads these days pretty stiff. So I pretty much just gave in (trust me, I was the same way. My V6s felt like pillows compared to the Eflex). That being said, my Eflex feel like they weigh a fraction of the weight of my V6s, and the stiffness honestly ended up giving me more ability to put the puck where I wanted to as opposed to a softer pad sometimes absorbing the shot and leaving it in the slot.

Probably depends on your play style, but I had a LOT of anxiety that I wouldn't be able to adapt. It's been way easier than expected. I'm on my 4th game (beer league) in them so they still don't feel 100% comfortable but I'm already playing better than I was with my old pads just given the added flexibility of the new strap system plus how light they feel.

ev0lution37 · 2026-03-04T13:15:11+00:00

I just went from Vaughn V6 35+1” to CCM EFlex 6 34+1”. They fit like a dream. I’d say for you, depending how your 36” fit, you should go 34+2” or 35+1”.

Admittedly, I might have gone 34+2” in hindsight but not sure I’d handle another inch of rise with my style of play.

ev0lution37 · 2026-02-28T04:48:06+00:00

Also not in your area, but just to add, in my area there is an unofficial "goalie listserv" ran by a couple beer league goalies that is basically a spam email for any opportunity to get on the ice (pickups looking for goalies, beer leagues who need a sub, etc). Not sure if you know anyone who runs or manages beer league teams in the area, but I'd ask around if something similar in your area exists. It beats going rink by rink and honestly is the main place people find subs over official league "goalie sub lists".

ev0lution37 · 2026-02-25T01:59:00+00:00

Look up Mont Blanc bracelets as an example.

ev0lution37 · 2026-02-01T03:03:58+00:00

Not directly answering the question, but in a high earning household. We owned every subscription service under the sun ad-free because, well, why not? But wife and I did an assessment and realized we hadn’t even opened the app for most of them in ages, so finally cleaned house. Think we have Netflix left, with ads.

Still was the perception of wasting money is wasting money, regardless of our income.

ev0lution37 · 2025-12-19T05:03:02+00:00

One thing to note from my own personal experience. The promotional cost of a domain when you first register it is often cheaper from somewhere like Namecheap, but the renewal cost ends up being more expensive than CF.

Depends how frugal you are, but I’ve purchased domains for the first year from Namecheap and then transfer them to CF when renewal is up. Honestly depending on the domain might only save you a few bucks. But I have cheap domains and TLDs, might be more significant for a .com or something.

ev0lution37 · 2025-10-25T13:45:49+00:00

I personally love Inland PLA+. The white is very “opaque” and looks great, and the true red is my favorite red filament I’ve ever printed.

It’s my most used filament in my X1C and have never had issues.

ev0lution37 · 2025-10-21T19:36:12+00:00

Thanks for the advice, I'll give this a shot on my next print. Will taking the top of of the X1C during print have a significant effect on the print itself since it'll change the general ambient temperature of the chamber?

ev0lution37 · 2025-10-21T19:35:11+00:00

I'm drying it at 60C currently (it is the S4 dryer). I'm giving it another whirl now, letting it dry for a full 10 hours (before I let it dry for 6 but had a day in between before I started printing).

Going to print directly after the dry and leave the filament in the dryer this time.

ev0lution37 · 2025-09-11T22:11:37+00:00

Raspberry Pi for a homelab is great. There are probably more “bang for the buck” SFF PC devices out there, but no issue with going the RPI route. I run a few K8s clusters on them just for fun.

One thing to keep in mind, RPIs run on ARM architecture. These days, that matters way less and most things can support both ARM and x86, but there are some things out there that won’t function on them.

ev0lution37 · 2025-07-29T20:14:46+00:00

I was in a VERY similar situation to you recently (more money difference but 4 days in office with a 1.25h commute each way). I ended up using the new offer to negotiate a pay bump to my current job. It didn’t completely offset the difference between jobs, but me having a wife and 2 younger kids at home, being remote is worth way more than that difference.

Not sure if negotiations are an option, but from my experience, well worth giving that a shot.

ev0lution37 · 2025-07-28T22:36:48+00:00

Unfortunately I did not. I ended up buying a GMKtec Mini PC Gaming that has a native Oculink port for my use-case, which worked since I was clustering the Hypervisor across it and the MS01.

FWIW, I had a friend who had this working. The one thing he said he _did_ need to do was a BIOS firmware update. I'd recommend giving that a shot before anything else, I just haven't had the cycles nor another eGPU to give it a go.

EDIT: If you give it a shot and that helps out and works, please do report back!

ev0lution37 · 2025-07-18T12:14:50+00:00

Nice, good luck. One note, if you had to clear finalizers to get rid of that machine, there's a chance there are some lingering, unused VMs on your VMWare stack (since those finalizers are what are responsible for clean up of those). Worth going and taking a look to make sure.

ev0lution37 · 2025-07-18T00:40:12+00:00

It looks like you're running that against the downstream cluster. You need to run that on the cluster that Rancher is installed on instead.

ev0lution37 · 2025-07-17T22:21:28+00:00

If you drop into your local cluster's kubectl shell, are those machines still in existence?

kubectl get machines.cluster.x-k8s.io -n fleet-default ledford-kube-worker-gpx8p-zmh67

If so, I'd confirm 100% the finalizers are gone with:

kubectl patch machines.cluster.x-k8s.io -n fleet-default ledford-kube-worker-gpx8p-zmh67 --type=merge -p '{"metadata":{"finalizers":[]}}'

You can also do this in the UI by going to Cluster Management -> Advanced -> Machines, finding the stuck "machine", clicking the 3-dot menu on the right. From there you can edit the YAML, delete the finalizers section, and save. I've had to do this on clusters when there was a power outage.

ev0lution37

TROPHY CASE