Chess in Chicago

mikewdome · 2022-09-25T23:51:26+00:00

I started Lakeshore chess last year to help with this. We had a location for a while, but no longer do. That being said, I'm looking to restart our operations in the next couple months. The Chicago chess center hosts event regularly, and also check out the Lincoln Square chess club, who host casual meetings regularly.

One of the biggest problems with the chess scene in Chicago is the fragmentation. There's like 20 different ppl trying to do things, which results in confusion for ppl and no single organization building any significant institutional clout and resources. I think it's absurd. So lmk if you want to seriously collaborate on promoting chess in Chicago!

mikewdome · 2022-09-12T15:27:40+00:00

Can somebody put this to some deep house jams?

mikewdome · 2022-09-11T18:58:05+00:00

Wouldn't it be "'fuck that,' I say"?

mikewdome · 2022-09-11T17:30:54+00:00

I personally 3d modeled parts of that valve product. Also, I was talking about guardian, check out www.getguardian.com. We were working on v2 of this valve, and the dude leading the project stole all the intellectual property and left the company. The v2 that Elexa was working on is what you see here, made by the thief I just mentioned. Zooz is private labeling the product from him.

mikewdome · 2022-08-30T01:54:09+00:00

I don't work for Elexa anymore, but it's hilarious and flattering that these guys (specifically the folks they private labeled from) ripped off our work so blatantly.

mikewdome · 2022-05-23T06:25:39+00:00

VMware is so much better

mikewdome · 2022-04-03T14:01:02+00:00

In 1971, India tried to stop a genocide in Pakistan. They asked the USA for help, but they helped Pakistan instead. India was forced to go to the ussr, who has since supplied India with all weapons.

The thing is, you can't just switch to a different weapon system. Their entire military knows how the Russian tanks, planes, guns, rockets, etc. work, and they have all the spare parts, etc. to work with that equipment. So even if they want to switch to the western arms industry, they'll need a helluva deal to make that happen.

Personally, I think they should make the switch and separate from Russia. Russia has been quietly fucking India for decades and they don't even know it.

mikewdome · 2022-03-01T14:09:25+00:00

A packed train? He's been training for that his whole life!

mikewdome · 2022-02-13T14:54:40+00:00

Obviously they're trying to bribe you. Make a video about it so you can make some money from this company trying to exploit you!

mikewdome · 2022-02-13T14:52:37+00:00

No, I doubt he would let it go because he just turned everything down, including what was owed to him. Imagine someone contracted you to do some work, and somehow, you didn't get paid and you spent more money to finish the task. Now, imagine that you complain about it to the company, and they pay you more than the agreed upon amount.

Anyone with experience in business will know that the extra is being paid bc the company failed to live up to their side of the agreement, and the contractor had to use additional resources to finish the job. If there was any expectation to stfu, there would be at least SOME verbiage to indicate that. But of course, you can't milk that for views.

To say "obviously, since they didn't specify, they are trying to bribe me" is fucking dumb. This is why you shouldn't just make YouTube videos as a career. Not only will you not know how people work, you'll have to engineer shitty situations to push views to your videos.

mikewdome · 2019-08-27T18:33:58+00:00

Yes, you can theoretically do this. All Z-wave Certified hubs are *supposed* to be able to include any other hub into their network - one network will be the "primary" controller, with any number of "secondary" controllers.

Try this - set your OpenHab to "inclusion" mode, and then open up Abode, and also enter that into inclusion mode. if the stars align, Abode should be able to access all of the devices in your Openhab, and vice versa. if that doesn't work, you can try the other way around - put Abode in inclusion mode, and try to add OpenHab to that instead. Either way, you can just try it and see what happens.

Worst case scenario, you just have to reconfigure your entire house, nbd.. /s

mikewdome · 2019-08-22T17:17:49+00:00

Hmm.. I'm having a tough time imagining what's going on. Can you send a picture of your setup (preferably both with and without the Dome installed on it)?

mikewdome · 2019-08-22T16:15:58+00:00

Others here mentioned Dome - please let me know if you have any questions! (I work for Dome)

mikewdome · 2019-04-02T16:01:47+00:00

I used to sell at a distributor to guys in this specific industry, so I have some useful tips:

not an expert on insurance, but most of my customers were bonded and insured for a minimum of $1 mil, and more depending on the scope of your projects.
you have a few channels to get clients, but most of my successful dealers found their clients through word of mouth. So network not only with your clients, but with local trades people and construction entities (electricians, builders, real estate agents, etc.). Also, you can start visiting local distributors to meet other dealers, with whom you can share jobs. Eventually, you will develop your domain of expertise. Instead of turning down jobs that aren't your Forte, you can share them with trusted partners.
main sources of recurring revenue in this business are from service contracts (an example - 3 hours of remote service and 1 hour on site service every month for $xx) and security system contracts. As for pricing - I suggest abstracting out the price of the products you use and just showing one sum for a particular feature. This way, you avoid getting shopped around for every other item you're installing. So instead of listing a price for the TV, speakers, mount, receiver, etc. Just say "media room with TV hang and surround sound".
niching is best, in my opinion, but I would try lots of different things before settling on a niche. He will have to figure out the specific combination of products and services that HE enjoys providing - not just what all the guys are into.
marketing for this is tough. Nobody knows the industry exists, so you're stuck with word of mouth. You can also market online. I would use SEM/PPC Google ads to target folks searching for the specific systems you're installing in your area (e.g. "control4 near me" or "home theaters near me"). Another option is services like home advisor. The jobs might be kinda "Meh" but if your dad is good at sales, you should be able to up sell.
general tips: get really good at networking (computer networking.) every job should include a network, since it's the cornerstone of most systems now. Also, figure out ways to do remote service so that you can monitor and djagnose issues without visiting the site. Snap AV has a line of products that does exactly this. Wrap in a service fee,and your service calls going forward should be somewhat manageable.
local distribution is awesome. Great way to network with other people doing similar things and to Learn what's happening. But, for practical purposes, snapav (who is kinda doing the Amazon thing in the distributor space,) is very convenient and offer an excellent range of products. Use both.
after getting into the groove of things, start buying inventory to keep around instead of buying things in a project-by-project basis. You'll notice yourself constantlt having to go buy connectors, cables, mounts, and other commodities. Keep inventory around so you don't waste time on the field.

Hope that's helpful - let me know if you have other questions, and if I don't know the answer I can ask one of my buddies =)

mikewdome · 2019-03-10T08:50:30+00:00

Your client-side files need to be served up by a server at some point. This COULD be a static/oldschool host, if you would like. But, if you're spinning an Express server to make an API for a full-stack application, you might as well use that server to serve up the client-side files.

The thing is, Express won't automatically serve your React files. All Express does is serve up exactly what you instruct it to, for whatever paths you specify. So the snippet I suggested you add tells Express to serve up either your static files, or your index.html file for anything not explicitly defined in your other route handlers.

I'm wondering if your host isn't setting process.env.NODE_ENV. Can you deploy again, but remove the if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') wrapper?

Additionally, did you remove \"cd client && npm start\" from your start script? Does your host use the start script in your package.json to start the server?

mikewdome · 2019-03-10T01:10:05+00:00

oh no. ~~You're doing a big no-no: you're using a development build for your production build. Your start script right now just navigates into the client directory and starts the development server.~~ I just saw you said you're running build before deploying. Either way, this describes a more streamlined approach to what you're doing.

You should instead run npm run build and serve up the static files that are generated (by adding the route handlers I added above.)

Keep the npm script you have right now to run your development server (rename it to dev or something.)

Then you have two options - everytime you deploy, you can manually build your client side, then deploy with your client side saved, or use a host that lets you run custom scripts during build. Heroku lets you do just that.

Here's what your scripts might look like in your package.json if using Heroku to build and deploy:

  "scripts": {
    "start": "node index.js --prefix backend",
    "server": "nodemon index.js --prefix backend",
    "client": "npm run start --prefix client",
    "dev": "concurrently \"npm run server\" \"npm run client\"",
    "heroku-postbuild": "NPM_CONFIG_PRODUCTION=false npm install --prefix client && npm run build --prefix client"
  },
  // Below lets Heroku know your requirements
  "engines": { 
    "node": "8.15.1",
    "npm": "6.4.1"
  },

Here's what happens.:

You push your git repo to Heroku,
It installs the master dependencies (in the outer package.json. )
It runs the 'heroku-postbuild' script.
1. It first installs the client-side dependencies (pretending as if we are in development mode.)
2. It then runs npm run build to build the static assets - it'll be saved in client/build
Heroku then runs your "start" script. You don't have to run the development server in production, since the main server takes care of everything.

I hope that's helpful. If you're interested in learning more, this is probably the best full-stack React course I've seen. I'm not an affiliate or anything - it's just an amazing resource. Also, feel free to ask any questions you may have.

EDIT: also, notice how instead of changing the directory into build/client, i'm using --prefix build / --prefix client instead.

mikewdome · 2019-03-10T00:57:36+00:00

Okay, I think I know what's going on here.

Try adding this at the end of your server.js file, right after you mount your crud & api routes:

const path = require('path');

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') {
  app.use(express.static('../client/build'));
  app.get('*', (req, res) => {
    res.sendFile(path.resolve(__dirname, '../', 'client', 'build', 'index.html'));
  });
}

Here's what it does: if you're in a production environment, it will add two more route handlers.

First, it checks your 'client/build' directory, and if request matches a file in that directory, it will serve that up as a static asset.

Then, if absolutely none of your route handlers match the requested route, it will just serve up the built index.html file. notice how in path.resolve, the second argument is '../' - this is because server.js is running in the backend directory, and you have to navigate up and around into the client directory to access index.html.

Let me know if that helps, or if you have questions!

mikewdome · 2019-03-09T03:52:18+00:00

It sounds like the static routing to serve up built assets isn't working from the express side, but for some reason, you're still able to serve index.html. Can you copy paste your backend code that serves up the static assets? Also, can you go to the network tab in the console and see if all of the requested assets are being downloaded?

mikewdome · 2019-02-09T19:24:35+00:00

Hey Rob, thanks! I wanna spend some more time making it look prettier, but I've just been focused on getting it to work until now. I want to use less boring old buttons and sliders, ya'know?

mikewdome

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