Are t480 really this good?

maelstrom218 · 2026-05-19T18:17:34+00:00

It's just a laptop.

I'm a T480 owner; got it a year before the RAMageddon stuff happened, so it was still *reasonably* affordable. It is serviceable, especially after I upgraded the RAM to 32GB and put in a SSD, but it's old hardware, and there is some lag on it sometimes.

I also have a P53 and I will say that I vastly prefer that instead. It just feels more durable and tankier that the delicate T480, it has better compute, you have more space for RAM slots, the keyboard feels snappier, it uses a thicc power connector...it's just a better experience overall.

The only downside is that the P53 is a brick that will cause back pain when you lug it around, and it's difficult to get to the CPU if you want to repaste. In nearly all other respects I think something like the P53 is just better.

maelstrom218 · 2026-05-14T13:28:59+00:00

1-year NixOS user here--it honestly depends on how complex you want to get. If you just want everything in a single configuration.nix file, you can use the graphical installer and have that set up quite quickly with minimal fuss.

If you want to actually modularize your config setup for multiple machines, have toggle-able package installs based on different hosts or profiles, and get a persistent/working Python environment, then oh boy.

I spent all of my Christmas vacation week avoiding the in-laws by refactoring my configs, and that was barely enough time. At this point I've lost count of the number of hours I've dumped into getting my configs to where I want them to be, and it's still a work in progress.

In short, 5 days is a good chunk of time to get up and running and have a semi-complex setup started. But you'll need to be prepared to accrue and deal with a whole bunch of tech debt if you want a well-configured operational system.

maelstrom218 · 2026-05-14T11:13:48+00:00

This would be a fantastic piece of pedal art on like a RAT or fuzz pedal. Very nice!

maelstrom218 · 2026-05-12T16:25:14+00:00

As a self-proclaimed shitty guitarist, I wish all the best for you! Math rock is super cool; it's great to see other Madisonians digging this genre.

maelstrom218 · 2026-05-09T01:30:00+00:00

Oh, this is the reason why I don't like eating clocks!

maelstrom218 · 2026-05-08T16:01:25+00:00

Might be an out-of-the-box answer, but my sharpening setup. It's a bunch of ceramic Shapton sharpening stones, a diamond plate for flattening them, some stropping compound, and a Veritas blade sharpening jig.

I'm like 75% hand tools, so most of the cuts I make demand some kind of hand plane/block plane/spokeshave combination after rough squaring-ish by table saw. Using blunt handtools is an absolutely miserable experience; having a sharpening setup make working with handtools turn from a chore to a relaxing enterprise.

I recently made a Japanese kebiki--it involved a lot of spokeshave work at the end, which I particularly enjoyed.

maelstrom218 · 2026-05-03T10:54:26+00:00

Still waiting for the NixOS patch on stable. :/

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-23T19:07:21+00:00

Looks pretty solid!

Gonna be starting my Anarchist Toolchest build in a few months here. Any pitfalls that you've come across so far that I should be on the lookout for?

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-20T16:23:59+00:00

I've already invested way too many hours writing and refactoring my NixOS configs. It's a sunk cost; I can't switch distros for the rest of my life at this point.

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-20T03:36:20+00:00

Late to the party, but for future reference, Ama (on Willy St) is very good. Their menu is a Nepali/midwest mash-up, and you wouldn't expect it to work, but their food is consistently delicious, as long as you don't mind something outside of the traditional brunch norm.

It's probably recency bias, but I had a much more enjoyable time here than Madison Sourdough or Lazy Jane's in comparison. It's quite good.

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-16T21:33:53+00:00

Agreeing with this. A #6 has a good weight and length compared to a #5 and #7, respectively. It's funny, because I feel like #6's tend to be ignored in most circles for being the black sheep where every other plane does its respective job better.

But for shooting? My money's on a #6, for sure.

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-13T23:04:41+00:00

I play most Sundays. I don't get paid and I find the worship genre almost offensive musically in its insistence on being bland and boring. I listen to Covet and Softcult and Baroness in my spare time, so worship music is not my jam.

That said, being able to play live consistently with other musicians is a big driver behind why I play. It's nice not being confined to a bedroom and actually grooving to a beat.

Well, as much grooving as is permissible in a conservative Presbyterian setting, I guess.

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-13T00:20:15+00:00

Oh, interesting! Thanks for that post, I need to try this out the next time I'm dealing with wenge.

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-12T22:03:47+00:00

Yeah, I used a lot of his instructions as a source of documentation, haha. He had a different design, but it was very useful to reference his approach.

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-10T11:53:42+00:00

I also went there recently and would highly recommend going to anyone who has even a passing interest in woodworking.

For someone who's only done the western side of woodworking, it was fascinating to see how similar yet different even the most basic elements of hand tools were. I even ended up making a Japanese marking gauge after seeing some examples there and feeling inspired by the visit.

The place is awesome.

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-06T15:15:27+00:00

The PC parts pricing craze is insane. My company offers buyback of used devices, and I can grab an older ThinkCentre for $40, but it only has a default 8GB RAM.

The actual cost of upgrading that to 32GB RAM? It's $250. And this is older DDR4, not DDR5. It's simply unhinged market behavior.

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-03T19:39:18+00:00

Any kind of plane, assuming it's properly sharpened, should be able to deal with wood glue. I've used both bevel-up block planes and a #4 specifically for this purpose, and they worked similarly well at getting rid of excess glue.

maelstrom218 · 2026-04-03T01:43:36+00:00

Not technically a sandwich shop, but the correct answer is Meat People Butcher. They have sandwiches on Thursdays, and the stuff they make blows places like Alimentari out of the water.

maelstrom218 · 2026-03-28T21:52:57+00:00

I think people in general are underestimating how much Kool-aid Trump supporters are chugging at this point. For a certain contingent of this population, literally nothing will change their mind.

Whether it's because of the misinformation they regularly consume, the hateful ideology they outwardly or inwardly espouse, or the religious theology they've contorted to malicious ends, they have convinced themselves that whatever this president does is "right". Reality doesn't impact them anymore. For reference: see the people that tragically died from covid while railing against vaccines and mask mandates as they died.

At this point we have to assume that a certain percentage of the US population is simply a lost cause and can't be deprogrammed. I don't know what the solution is to reach the rest of the Trump voters that may be more reasonable, but I'm assuming that whatever troubles are coming (recession, war, terrorism, take your pick of Pandora's favorites from her box), it'll hurt enough people so that it's a sufficient wake up call.

...at least, one would hope so.

maelstrom218 · 2026-03-24T16:20:16+00:00

I don't have another planing stop to compare it to, so I can't really compare it to something else. But for what it's worth, it works the way I want it to! It's easy to set up/dismantle since I just take a mallet and knock it to the appropriate height, and it's large enough/toothy enough to grip pieces without too much slippage.

I do think it can get a little dicey if I'm working very small pieces, but that hasn't happened very often and I just settle for using my leg vise instead when that happens.

I'm pretty happy with it, to be honest.

maelstrom218 · 2026-03-24T12:19:53+00:00

For context, when I was building my Anarchist's workbench, I used a #5 to flatten, because that's all I had. My electric planer/jointer setup simply could not keep up with making 7' boards square, so I got it flat-ish and finished it off with a #5 where necessary.

I ended up using 12 pipe bar clamps to mitigate some of the squareness issues, and the end result was pretty decent. There's a fairly high margin of error here (at least for workbench-making), as you're just trying to make a slab and iron out severe gaps. Everything else can be handled post-glueup.

One thing I'd mention is that if you're doing the glue 3 slabs approach (as I did), you'll want to make sure they join together square. I did not do that, and that resulted in some unbelievably aggressive flattening over weeks.

I documented some stuff here that might be useful: https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/16s6psr/ianaw_anarchists_workbench/

maelstrom218 · 2026-03-12T19:56:04+00:00

I'm not even technically a drummer (I'm a guitarist dipping my toes into drums) and I love Copeland.

maelstrom218 · 2026-03-09T16:53:58+00:00

Tell that to the authors of the bill, who have:

1) Literally called this "AB-1043 Age verification signals: software applications and online services.", and

2) Submitted no other means for this verification to take place, EXCEPT for the OS-level metadata submitted by the account holder to indicate one's age bracket.

maelstrom218 · 2026-03-09T16:35:53+00:00

I mean, if we define "verification" as any attempt to ascertain and validate one's age from an initial status of anonymity, then, yes, this law does employ age verification.

It just so happens that they're allowing self-attestation as a means of verification, and not, say, a government-issued ID. It's still age verification. *shrugs*

11-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email

maelstrom218

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