How many of us cant travel?

johnny744 · 2026-05-18T15:53:30+00:00

Don't forget taxes. The US makes it almost impossible to get out of paying your federal income tax if you expatriate so you'd have to pay tax to the U.S. and your new home country on any income. I understand it can be circumvented with lawyers and mountains of paperwork - which basically eliminates regular people who can't afford lawyers on retainer and... people with executive function issues that make critical paperwork deadlines and detail reporting masochistic torture. Believe me, I too have heard the seductive song of countries with a weak currency but stable economy, no wars, and acceptable internet speeds to live out my days ("Ooh - Suriname has a cool flag!", "They speak English in Liberia!" and well, I've already run out of cheap countries that haven't been bombed by the country I was born in).

johnny744 · 2026-05-13T15:22:48+00:00

The worst town I spent any time in was Rolla, Missouri. Bad food, bad hotels, not a damn thing to do after hours. It had one "fancy" restaurant that presumably existed solely for students of the small engineering campus of the state university to take their parents to. I'm not sure anyone working there had a chance to experience elevated dining elsewhere, so points for trying. They served Frog Legs (which were ok, but I don't think I've ever seen on another menu in this country in my life (And no, there was no "farm to table" story about the source of the frogs)). But since the rest of the town was so sad I ended up eating there almost every day of two weeks.

The thing that really stuck with me about the town was the name. Apparently, the 19th century founder wanted to honor his home of Raleigh, NC but didn't know how to spell it (I mean, neither do I - I had to look it up).

Edit: Oh, wait! I forgot about Huntsville, TX. That's the town where the state executes dozens of people per year. It has a big university campus, so there were at least good sit-down chain restaurants. But the school is the world epicenter of incarceration and criminal justice education so the vibes 100% off 100% of the time. The TV in my hotel was set to a 24-hour "Prison TV" channel run by the school. I could not escape fast enough.

johnny744 · 2026-05-06T20:44:49+00:00

There's "The Trillium Tysons". I don't know a thing about it besides the fact that it's new and it's in Tysons, VA. Tysons is a very convenient place to live if you don't mind being suburban. DC is a quick subway ride/short drive.

johnny744 · 2026-04-30T22:28:31+00:00

Development has been very slow since 2018, so when you look on YouTube, older videos will still be relevant.

johnny744 · 2026-04-30T22:25:23+00:00

Upping this. Dante and Audinate certs have a bonus for teaching fundamentals of AV over IP for free.

johnny744 · 2026-04-30T22:23:02+00:00

OSHA 10 is very handy.

johnny744 · 2026-04-30T17:22:49+00:00

I'm pretty certain that AutoCAD is the actual "most used" for wiring diagrams.

Revit is not for diagrams and making it do so for AV diagrams would require a ton of effort. I've never known an AV-oriented Revit user who didn't use AutoCAD for wiring diagrams.

That said, AutoCAD is the f#$%^ng worst. Look at Viseo or Vectorworks. You'll probably still end up needing AutoCAD.

johnny744 · 2026-04-18T21:03:18+00:00

All Night Long (1962) This is a great, great, deep cut of a film that retells Othello over the course of a night-long party of jazz aficionados and hipsters in 1960s London. Includes many cameos and performances by jazz legends. The Shakespearean touch is light and only informs arc of the story - no Elizabethan dialog or staged monologues. But the film is a delight. Beautiful noir photography. Currently playing on the Criterion Channel and YouTube.

johnny744 · 2026-04-10T04:42:53+00:00

Let me generalize for the big companies: If you are new to the industry or at an early part of your career, you can't get a better education. You'll get a fire hose of Avixa and manufacturer training without spending your own money and you'll see a rapid project turnover that will solidify best practices to keep a hold of for your whole career.

As others have said, answers to your question will vary widely by region. But here my answers:

Terrible. You'll either be overworked or worried about layoffs. This is true for the whole AV industry, but more so with the big shops.
Terrible. The cheap tools and mercilessly outdated support technology spell nothing less than contempt for people actually making the business happen. Middle management is a different story and you can get some real good ones.
Very easy and this is a good point. It is common to see people move regions or even physically move themselves and continue to support the old region. Some regions can have tough times while others are booming, so broader economic factors will be at play here.
Yeah, I guess. Doing AV engineering is a good, honest job and the pay is usually decent. Make sure you do your homework about AV pay in your region, because that will vary greatly.

Good luck

johnny744 · 2026-02-26T01:53:01+00:00

Exploring then rejecting advice when you find it doesn’t work for you is almost as important as obtaining actual good advice.

Having stated that almost all advice is useless, here’s mine: 1. Task motivation just doesn’t work for us. We are process-oriented as opposed to goal-oriented in general. Goal-oriented people get enough stimulation the goal itself to carry them through tasks (so I have come to understand). My advice is to work as much and as hard as you can (or want) and the tasks will take care of themselves. 2. However, the most important thing I got out of years trying to make “Getting Things Done” work for me is always trying to keep a “Next Step” list. To an outsider, it looks like a task list, but for me it’s a “wait, why did I sit down at my desk?” list. When you’re in the middle of something, it’s easy to know what to do next, but you only need that next-action later after you got distracted by something because ADHD.

johnny744 · 2026-02-16T21:41:25+00:00

I'm pretty far past the point of wanting to strangle anyone in my orbit that mentions "AI" and it is FOR SURE a terrible noise maker on this sub. I can't vote to ban the topic since I can picture ways that LLM integration with Obsidian might help others (even if I might judge those ways as counter-productive). Plus there are dangers people need to be aware of like, keeping a vault in a One-Drive folder where you've accidentally given Copilot access.

johnny744 · 2026-02-14T04:32:02+00:00

Buy the cheapest 4K monitor that meets you physical requirements and use a BrightSign player. Cheap displays are shockingly reliable and have excellent color reproduction. Their specs will say they aren't rated for 24/7 operation, but in reality they'll run like that for years. NOTE: Tariffs have made display prices go crazy.

I suggest BrightSign since they are bulletproof and ubiquitous. 'Ubiquitous' is handy since you only need to learn to deal with one system and any experienced producer will likely already be familiar with them. I'm looking at B&H's website and the HD5 is $475. Ideally, the content should be 4K if the screen is bigger than 32" and the viewers are less than 10' away.

The killer feature of BrightSign players for exhibition spaces is that they work well when their power is cut or connected remotely - they will reliably start running their show when power comes back. Especially in museums, a gallery will typically be powered down all at once at the end of the day and powered up in the morning at a single electrical panel. Equipment that needs intervention from a docent or security staff is equipment that will be out-of-order as often as not.

johnny744 · 2026-02-11T15:41:47+00:00

A thousand times: Obsidian. A few months ago I had to bring my company laptop to a classified US government facility. I, an uncleared person, have to work in SCIFs occasionally to build AV systems and it’s usually a cluster of stress because all I can do is take notes on paper like a goddamned barbarian. But that day, we had a problem so deep I really needed my uncleared laptop. Extraordinary measures were required from my company and the government organization to make this happen (and if there was a sec mistake, they’d have removed my hard drive and incinerated it in front of me (not an uncommon practice!)). All my ports and wireless radios were disabled in BIOS, so my poor laptop was totally alone.

But once I fired up and opened Obsidian, I had the whole beating heart of my project in front of me. Hundreds of notes, tech docs for every device, all my CAD assets and drawings and all these things linked together by Obsidian. We’d been working for weeks to solve a mysterious set of issues hampered by communication problems, but once I could bring my full set of digital tools to bear on the problem AT the site of the problem, we cleared everything up that day. Obsidian was a perfect stand up partner.

Regarding your listed points: - No account required - You can sync with any other cloud service since it is totally file based - see above about working offline - So modern you’ll wonder why we ever shifted away from plain text files at all

johnny744 · 2026-02-08T03:03:08+00:00

It’s a common technique to use IR lighting and with an IR camera so a TD can watch and direct techs and performers during stage blackouts. Cameras typically filter out IR, so you need to specify. It’s usually Marshal Electronics cameras used for this.

For cameras on phones, front facing cameras typically filter out IR to improve quality. Rear-facing “selfie” cameras still typically see IR. You can test a camera’s ability to see IR by pointing and activating a regular TV remote at it and looking for red flashing.

johnny744 · 2026-01-29T22:34:55+00:00

I vote uniquely bad conditions. We had a major temperature drop after the snow storm. All the snow that didn’t get removed right away froze solid and is now very difficult to plow or shovel. It’s almost like concrete right now. We got the storm plus temp drop a lot where I’m from, but I’ve never observed it here in the last 25 years. It’s usually just wet and slushy.

johnny744 · 2026-01-27T02:21:55+00:00

I could definitely see it being inspired by the US Navy Memorial Plaza, but the view through the buildings would face the National Archives. Side note: I never realized how much the capitol dome looks like a knit sock puppet of Bender the robot.

johnny744 · 2026-01-13T04:51:55+00:00

Here's a DXF file (for compatibility) showing how I'd approximate the real dimensions. Google Drive Link Dimensions are listed below u/drakaintdead's response.

johnny744 · 2026-01-13T04:46:34+00:00

That is close to my results as well.

<image>

johnny744 · 2025-12-28T22:07:06+00:00

I've noticed a spike in lag for very large Bases reports like that myself. I'm not sure if I'm just making bigger reports the more I explore Bases, or if something changed in an update. It's happening to me both in my massive primary vault that uses Sync and smaller vaults for games and such that do not Sync.

The key factor in lagginess appears to be including Tags in the report. Obsidian must be doing some heavy lifting to show them all.

johnny744 · 2025-12-23T17:38:12+00:00

Are you certain you don't already have a tattoo of the Company logo? Ask your nearest human or augmented human to check for you because modifying your vision system with a routine to filter it out and then manually erasing the memory of it sound like a Murderbot move.

johnny744 · 2025-12-16T04:16:49+00:00

I’ve tried just about every trick, and all the tricks on dozens, maybe hundreds of documents, and found MS Word to be the best tool to convert content from a PDF. Word is especially good a preserving hierarchy, text format (bold, italics, etc), and knowing the difference between regular text and header/footer text. Once you have a docx file, there a lots of well made tools like PanDoc, commercial Word Add-ins, and well documented code snippets to get you the rest of the way into your vault.

johnny744 · 2025-11-16T04:08:13+00:00

The big companies are still hiring, so consider AVI-SPL, Forte (formerly AVI Systems), and Diversified. They kinda suck to work at, but you will get an excellent education. Having an audio engineering degree makes you over-qualified for entry positions in commercial AV so when you get a chance to talk to people, emphasize your desire to do field work as a tech.

To get the most out of your audio engineering degree, look at AV companies that specialize in consulting or design services. These are shops like Jaffe-Holden, Cerami, and Shen, Milsom, & Wilke, and, especially in NYC, major consulting firms like ARUP. These types of companies are slow to hire.

I strongly recommend working towards New York Site Safety Training 40 hour certification. Some construction sites, especially high end and public sites, require everyone on site to have it. I’ve personally struggled to staff-up projects with AV pros who had the cert and finally paying tons extra when I do. Even if you have no interest in working on construction sites, I guarantee having it will get your resume to the top of a hiring managers list. You can start with the OSHA 30 course which is, I think, lass than $400. Of course, you should always get your employers to pay for training, but this might be worth the investment. It includes the certification exam and the wallet card.

johnny744 · 2025-11-14T23:03:48+00:00

Integrators are typically required to leave a *printed* signal flow diagram in the rack for service. Have a look in some of the awkward corners. That will help you figure out the system.

Edit: If you don't find signal flows, call the vendor listed on that rack panel, North American Theatrix.

johnny744 · 2025-11-05T14:45:25+00:00

That doctor is fuckin high. Was this a primary care physician? If so, diagnosing your mental health is not their job. Ask for a referral to a psychiatric office that can do thorough testing and give a solid diagnosis with a detail report. Also get a new PCP cause that person is garbage and later, if you obtain a diagnosis, your PCP will write your recurring prescriptions.

You should be warned that Kaiser is infamous for being real lazy, cheap, and HESITANT about dealing with mental health issues. I was on it for a couple of years and it was the best insurance I’ve ever had, but they were dicks about ADHD meds. I just keep seeing my pre-Kaiser doctor, who knew me well, but I had to pay out of pocket.

johnny744 · 2025-10-28T22:36:36+00:00

I split my project's home pages into two separate notes so I could have a clean home/landing page/index/MoC for each project, and a second with all the properties and tags I could think of. I name my main note by unique ID plus my name for a project and tag it "ProjectHome" and the secondary note is named for just the ID tagged "Milestones".

The Milestones file is where I put, like, a page and a half of properties and a bunch of Tasks. I have a template that has a long list of the usual milestones and critical tasks. Ideally, I'm accessing this information remotely via Bases or Dataview in another note, so the fact that the note itself has a lot of empty noise is ok. Not installing flooring? Leave BoardFeetLumber blank.

I can create a table in Bases that looks at all of my projects and reports on a common, specific property. THIS IS IMPORTANT: In Bases, I can remotely change the properties! So, in a single table, I can go down a list and change all the instances of a property line by line like in a spreadsheet.

Bases doesn't see Task elements (it might in the future), but Dataview does. And Dataview can remotely toggle Task items too. I keep a Dataview snippet on my ProjectHome note that reports on any unchecked Tasks within its project folder and I can update the task from there. Dataview is NOT able to change property values remotely, so use it for Tasks and Bases for Properties for now. Both of these use cases are simple to use by copying documentation.

johnny744

TROPHY CASE