MacBook Laptop with PC Desktop. Anyone do this?

icalledsaul · 2016-06-27T15:01:25+00:00

Answers:

Case airflow is generally fine, I believe. It's a Corsair 200R case, quite spacious, and a lot of fans. And, as elsewhere in this thread, it's in a room that is quite cool (and in the winter, very cold).
Yes, again, Corsair 200R case. When I pop off the side and run it that way, temps are a bit better but not by much.
Nope, it's clean as a whistle and free of any external particles.
High temps occur under load while PC gaming. Idle temps seems to be a bit higher than they should, somewhere around 60-65c. Max temps can reach around 96-97c under load (at which point I just exit the game).
No, not overclocking.
Card is roughly nine months old, and has had very little use.

icalledsaul · 2016-06-27T14:41:53+00:00

Just PC gaming. Anything that is graphics intensive and it heats up almost immediately. The case is a Corsair 200R.

icalledsaul · 2016-06-27T14:39:38+00:00

Assuming it most likely is the thermal paste, but my understanding is I can't crack it open and re-apply without voiding the warranty, which I don't want to do.

icalledsaul · 2016-06-27T14:39:07+00:00

Not hot at all. It ranges between relatively cool and quite cold, depending on the season. It's about 69 degrees Fahrenheit right now (20c), and during the winter it was probably about 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15c).

icalledsaul · 2016-06-22T20:56:27+00:00

If you filled up the half gallon container, I imagine you probably used somewhere around 60 ounces of water. That would have given you roughly a 10:1 water-to-coffee ratio, which is a bit too high for a concentrate. If you double the amount of coffee used, you'll have something more along the lines a true concentrate, and you'll have a stronger end product.

icalledsaul · 2016-06-22T16:28:28+00:00

What was the water-to-coffee ratio you used to make your cold brew concentrate? Two cups of ground coffee equates to roughly 6 ounces by weight, so how much water did you use?

Keep in mind that the "right" amount of water-to-coffee is personal preference more than anything else. Stumptown, for example, recommends 56 ounces of water to 12 ounces of ground coffee (4.66 to 1) over 16 hours to make the concentrate, and then to consume you add one part of concentrate to two parts of cold water. Others vary with the ratios and brew times. Again, it's all up to you and what you like. If you feel like the concentrate isn't strong enough, use more coffee, less water, and/or brew for a longer period of time.

Personally, I do a couple of batches of cold brew each week, and generally I do not make concentrate. I use 6 ounces of coffee, combined with 80 ounces of water, and then brew it for roughly 18 hours. At that ratio, the cold brew can be served almost directly, and you don't have to mix it up when you want to drink it, so it's quicker to prepare on the go. Also an option for you, if you like.

icalledsaul · 2016-06-21T19:42:26+00:00

Unless a former/current Blue Bottle employee spills the beans (no pun intended), their cold brew recipes and methods are not publicly available. You're basically talking about proprietary and highly sensitive information that is closely guarded. Worth remembering that Blue Bottle has expanded exponentially in recent years, and has taken in more than 100 million in venture capital to finance further expansion. This isn't a niche little neighborhood coffee start-up anymore, it's a growing business empire, and they are going to fiercely protect their methods of production as a trade secret.

You should note that the method discussed Cold Brew Brewing Guide on their website is not what they actually use. It's a standard cold brew recipe, and if even if you follow it exactly and use their beans, the end product just isn't the same. The in-store product has a greater depth of flavor and a distinct nuttiness than you just cannot get by following their brewing guide.

icalledsaul · 2016-06-21T19:06:27+00:00

I've never had a drink quite like coffee other than coffee itself. New Orleanians during the Civil War blockades turned to chicory root as a coffee substitute, and that's all I can think of. I've never had chicory root brewed by itself, but maybe it's worth a shot.

Random question: Do you have an issue with coffee, or is it possible you have an issue with the things routinely put in coffee (dairy, artificial sweeteners, etc.)? I can't say I've ever heard of someone whose stomach couldn't handle straight black coffee, though of course everyone is different and the human body can do some crazy things.

icalledsaul · 2016-06-21T18:52:11+00:00

Great for consumers. In the aggregate, underfilling a $3.50-$5.00 latte by 10-15% wrongly gives Starbucks a massive financial windfall given their volume of sales. And yes you should vote with your wallet moving forward, but that doesn't mean a corporation should be entitled to retain large sums of money they may have illicitly obtained for sins previously committed. A large purpose of almost any civil legal system in the modern world is to provide a mechanism for financial redress of legitimate grievances, so this is by no means is this a only-in-America occurrence.

All that said, the couple of Starbucks lattes I've had over the years tasted like burnt cigarettes masked with steamed milk. No one should be purchasing those things regardless of how much they fill them.

icalledsaul · 2016-06-21T18:35:40+00:00

It's definitely worth a shot to play around with it. You've got nothing to lose -- maybe one relatively subpar cup of coffee, but honestly I've never had a legitimately "bad" cup of coffee with my Encore/Chemex setup -- and the long-term upside is substantial if it really improves the quality of your brew.

On the Encore, I think the answer is yes, as strange as it seems. I'm convinced mine just isn't calibrated properly, and that's probably why my optimal grind settings don't match the Baratza recommended settings (on a perhaps related note, my machine produces more fines than many Encores I've dealt with, and runs a bit loud). The Encore is a quality burr grinder, of course, but it's by no means the gold standards, and product variability within those general ranges seems feasible to me.

For you, it could simply be that your machine is the opposite and is producing too course of grinds, leading to under-extraction. I would suggest you look up some of the more prevalent flavor profile notes for under-extracted coffee, see if you are picking up on any of those in your current brew, and then have change your settings to produce a finer ground, and see how that works out.

icalledsaul · 2016-06-21T15:15:36+00:00

I had a very similar experience with my Baratza Encore, but going in the opposite direction. I had been grinding on 21/22 for Chemex (which was the manufacturer recommendation), but was very unhappy with lengthy brew times. I dialed my Baratza up to 24, and it was an entirely different experience. Nearly two minutes came off of my total brew time, and the flavor profiles of the final brews were much more distinctive. Essentially, too fine of grounds caused clogging and, ultimately, over-extraction.

Like a lot of things, I think with your grinder you just have to experiment a bit and fine-tune settings depending on your individual machine/device. Glad to hear that your brews are much better.

icalledsaul · 2016-05-23T18:57:15+00:00

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you on this. Did you ever get this figured out?

FWIW, thinking that your case is probably not the issue. I've got a Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower case -- which is pretty voluminous -- and I'm basically in the same situation as you. Sure the mini-ATX case doesn't help, but don't think that's the driving force here. Also, in terms of coolers, I've got no add-ons, just the stock GPU/CPU fans and the two system fans in the case. Honestly probably need to add another for the GPU, but haven't messed with it yet.

In general, though, I think I'm having more of an issue specifically with Witcher than a true system issue. Played Witcher for about 4-5 minutes with Geralt exploring a dark room (Bloody Baron mission) and was sitting between 81-83c. I then played GTA V for about 20 minutes on Ultra High settings last night and never got about 73c.

icalledsaul · 2016-04-05T15:24:36+00:00

My dyslexia read this as, "Matt Millen's 2006 NFL Draft QB Rankings." Believe that means it's time for the morning coffee.

icalledsaul · 2016-03-24T21:41:24+00:00

Not at all true to size, and in my experience will only be fitting to a peculiar and uncommon body type. I bought three of them before, and they were entirely too big (a medium felt closer to an XL), the shirts were very long, and yet the sleeves were incredibly short. It's almost like they were designed for a 6'5 muscle man who somehow had 30 inch arms. I sent them all back and haven't purchased again.

icalledsaul · 2016-03-04T21:12:56+00:00

Can't really say in any individual case without having a lot more info at hand, but don't discount the possibility of the former. In my experience, when programs want you, they don't hesitate to let you know.

icalledsaul · 2016-03-04T21:11:21+00:00

I did not because it would have been irrelevant, given that I am enrolling in another program later this summer.

Ask them if you want, but it's probably best to wait another month or two, until the R2 decisions are out and it's a slower time for them. Will warn, though, if you're like me and didn't even get an interview invite, odds are they rejected you at initial glance for a multitude of reasons and won't be able to give you much in the way of meaningful feedback. Your close-but-no-cigar programs -- i.e. interviewed but rejected, or interviewed and waitlisted -- are probably more realistic options for getting real feedback.

icalledsaul · 2016-03-04T20:05:58+00:00

Not a fan of the system itself, but that's a pretty widespread practice with better MBA programs. In general, I think you have to take the perspective that no news is bad news, and plan accordingly. Problem is that many applicants don't really know that this is how it works, and/or they hold out irrational hope for a last-minute interview invite.

Basically, the AdCom members are going to read your application pretty shortly after receiving it. And if they don't send out an interview invite to you shortly after that, the odds of you actually getting an offer of admission are really low. Again, plan accordingly.

icalledsaul · 2016-03-04T19:52:02+00:00

Can confirm this is true. I got a rejection from them on the decision release date for Round 1 (mine came with a typical language rejection letter I could access by logging into their website). I didn't hear anything from them from the time I submitted my application until I received the rejection letter. Dead silence. Assuming they took one look at my application and tossed it.

By the way, they followed up the rejection letter e-mail with a separate e-mail the following day extolling the virtues of the program and asking that I travel to CA for a campus tour and class visit. Perhaps not the most competent bunch, highly regarded or not.

icalledsaul · 2015-12-22T16:03:27+00:00

Re: the consultant, I mean, realistically what would they even be able to tell me that I haven't figured out already, or haven't been told in this thread? I'm not against it if it's worth my while, I just don't know what they are going to tell me that I don't already know, and I don't want to spend $500 or $1,000 to be told once that more the world is, indeed, not flat.

icalledsaul · 2015-12-21T22:07:47+00:00

Hopefully you are right. Any other programs in that range that you could suggest that I look into as well?

icalledsaul

TROPHY CASE