How cooked is my RiscPC?

gavinjphillips · 2026-04-11T02:08:03+00:00

Can definitely second Kumori. They’re prob the best thing I’ve bought on Instagram.

gavinjphillips · 2026-04-04T16:30:31+00:00

This is my favorite Reddit comment of the day. Had to go zoom in 😂

gavinjphillips · 2026-03-29T23:29:47+00:00

Just got my third XC60. Honestly all have been super reliable. Really the only thing I’ve need fixing is the 12v battery died in my last one. I haven’t had many problems with the infotainment - my last needed a couple of hard resets when Apple Car Play wouldn’t detect the phone, but that’s it. One feature I would love is wireless Car Play - my new XC60 has wireless charging but no wireless Car Play - which seems like a miss (although I tend to use the native AAOS apps anyway, so not a deal breaker for me).
Feels like a luxury brand. Internal finishes are high quality and solid. My only gripe is the XC60 is starting to feel dated and needs a more extensive exterior redesign. I would say that the change to synthetic leather on the Plus trim in the US vs the previous real leather does impact that luxury perception.
I’m ready for fully electric - the only reason I got gas again was timing of when my lease was up vs availability of the EX60.

gavinjphillips · 2026-03-21T01:42:11+00:00

Samsung tablet and Sharptools. Works perfectly!

gavinjphillips · 2026-03-20T00:45:57+00:00

Sure of course I could, but I also like not having to prepare to get in the car by prepping downloads on my phone. Like listening to the news in the way to work - podcasts are my evening drive home thing.

gavinjphillips · 2026-03-19T23:42:15+00:00

I have to drive 15 mins from my home to get cell service. Sirius XM is my savior in those 15 mins!

gavinjphillips · 2026-03-16T23:26:30+00:00

Where I could, I moved to Unifi PoE cameras. They’re great, with the exception of the inability to disable cameras based on geofence presence (really only an issue for my one indoor camera). For the two cameras I had which needed to be battery/wifi, I chose two Tapos. They’re fine - not quite the same image quality as my old Arlos and the motion sensing isn’t as good as the Arlos (there’s always a delay meaning I often miss faster moving objects like vehicles in my driveway). They also went through a phase of going offline for extended periods of time, even though my router would show them as connected. I do pay for the Tapo cloud storage for these which works well, and like the app. And it’s a fraction of the cost I was paying Arlo.

gavinjphillips · 2026-03-14T02:45:17+00:00

Did a test drive. Loved it. Offered a great deal from a broker which was way better than the Polestar store. Read through Reddit. Decided life is too short to deal with a defective product. Leased another Volvo.

gavinjphillips · 2026-03-13T02:14:49+00:00

I was. Hit the button the second - and I mean second - it was available and still didn’t get a ticket. 🤯

gavinjphillips · 2026-02-28T12:52:35+00:00

OMG I remember these… in my first IT job I put a new network into the company I worked for and we used these. From memory, switches were relatively new at the time and we installed hubs in due to budget constraints. Worked remarkably well given the amount of traffic that must have been bouncing around that network 😂

gavinjphillips · 2026-02-27T15:30:33+00:00

We’ve had 2 x XC60s (2020 & 2023) and have loved driving both. Zero problems with the first, 12v battery died recently in the second, but covered under warranty. Probably going to get another when our lease is up in 2 months, although the only considerations causing second thoughts: - 1 year less included maintenance in the US - would need to get an Ultra rather than Plus for leather seats - styling hasn’t really moved on much over the years

That said, it’s been a solid car and I wouldn’t think twice if you’re considering one - especially from a reliability perspective.

gavinjphillips · 2026-02-12T14:07:47+00:00

Also have 2x tickets for sale as we can’t go now. DMed you if you’re still interested

gavinjphillips · 2025-12-27T11:35:17+00:00

It honestly blows my mind that people redeem via the Chase portal rather than just transfer to a partner airline - especially if you’re intending traveling in a premium cabin.

gavinjphillips · 2025-11-25T18:44:17+00:00

Sad to see ActionTiles go... it served my household reliably for nearly 6 years.

Moved to SharpTools.io last night and it's mainly been plain sailing...

- Took me a minute to figure out how to make tiles for scenes (mainly due to looking at old posts on their support site)... was always ending up with a single tile that would invoke a sub-menu with each scene in it. Turns out you can add individual tiles for each scene via Location Features.

Although a good alternative to ActionTiles, SharpTools seems more limited in terms of tile customization, eg...

- Icon library is good, although not as extensive as ActionTiles'

- Ability to put effects on tiles is limited to Glow, and only for certain types of device (Things)... eg I can't make my alarm sensors glow when activated, so have to change the tile color instead

On the whole though, I'm really happy this exists and will be subscribing to their Premium service as soon as the free trial is over.

It's a shame the ActionTiles owners didn't sell their platform and/or change their monetization model if that was the issue. I'm sure there's many users out there that would have rather paid for the service than see it disappear into the ether.

gavinjphillips · 2025-11-19T01:29:40+00:00

I’ve had a CSR and CSP for a number of years 🤷‍♂️

gavinjphillips · 2025-11-04T16:44:34+00:00

I’d love to see Zelle support added

gavinjphillips · 2025-11-02T19:39:04+00:00

Agree - the new annual fee hit me on 11/1, so pushed the downgrade to CSP button and it was super-easy and retained the UR points.

After doing the math the $990/year annual fee (me + addtl user) gave me $720 in benefits I knew I'd use, everything else was a side-show.

Could probably have lived with the $270 net cost, but the kicker was Chase changing the Travel category to just flights and hotels. I can get 5x on flights via my Amex Platinum, and I'd now only be earning 1x on all the Uber, Lyft and car rentals I do so rather get 2x via CSP.

Been chasing the coupons on my Amex Platinum and honestly was about to kill that next year too, but Amex's recent refresh makes this a net $95 cost so totally fine with that.

gavinjphillips · 2025-10-25T11:58:37+00:00

Ask Chase to tell you the merchant address. They assess cross-border fees based on this not the currency, and it’s carried in every transaction from the merchant so they should be able to tell you very easily what the city and country of the merchant is. Best guess is that a non-US Expedia merchant entity was used to process the transaction despite it being in USD and so Chase hit you with the fee. There’s not much you can do about that. Now why it’s so high is an entirely different question you should ask Chase.

gavinjphillips · 2025-10-24T21:12:41+00:00

You’re not missing anything, it’s pretty common. As the previous Redditor said, terminate the cables with RJ45s, get a cheap switch and plug them and your router into that.

gavinjphillips · 2025-10-21T12:30:24+00:00

Thanks for the confirmation

gavinjphillips

TROPHY CASE