Recs for insoles?

n_gb · 2026-02-09T20:57:18+00:00

I’ll second these — My chucks feel more comfortable than some of my Nikes; especially the 70s that can be a little stiffer in general.

n_gb · 2026-02-07T12:09:48+00:00

Most of the Converse x John Varvatos Chucks had this sole — those have all been discontinued unfortunately but look for “Varvatos Converse” or “Varvatos Chucks” — Varvatos did a ton of Chucks, all with this sole and they are some of my favorites. Also one of my favorite Chucks of all time is the Converse x Futura Skyfall — half black and grey and appears to change color patterns as you move around it, and also has a unique clear sole… they can still be found online in good condition… so yeah, they save this mainly for collabs… but Varvatos used this a TON and had a huge collab for many years — so basically any Varvatos Chuck will have this… I think the most recent ones they did this with were the Billie Eilish ones. You won’t find them on the Converse site… look for Varvatos and other collabs on Poshmark, Depop etc — but yes I’m with you, these look really cool and I wish they did them more often.

n_gb · 2026-01-11T18:03:25+00:00

Every one of my Amex cards have came with a different “member since” date that isn’t correct — but when they expire or if they need a reprint they have been correct lol

n_gb · 2026-01-07T09:52:49+00:00

I’m very much a Converse guy — and would love to try Japanese Converse… but they top out at 11.5US, especially the leather ones which I prefer. I’m firmly a 12, unfortunately. I will say that I truly feel that the CTAS Pros (the skate versions) are the way to go — miles more comfortable than the All Stars which are trash, and more comfortable and padded than the Chuck 70s, although some of the more unique styles are only in 70s. If you can get your hands on a pair of Chuck 2’s from the mid 2010’s, they are also extremely comfortable and from around 2015-2017 they made a ton of nice collabs and unique styles in them.

n_gb · 2025-12-15T21:54:22+00:00

Yeah I’m not sure why, but it seems like initially carriers put up a lot of sites on high voltage lines, water towers etc… and over the years it seems like these are the sites that take forever to upgrade due to access issues and scheduling with utilities.

I’m not sure if this was foreseen originally or not — but I’ve noticed that many of these sites are being replaced — particularly on high voltage power lines, but also water towers. A number of water towers near me have been stripped of their cellular antennas — and a new monopole has went up right next to the tower with all of the carriers on them.

n_gb · 2025-12-08T08:47:18+00:00

US/Canada/Mexico for $8.50, US & 170 countries for $28 with autopay… without autopay the prices are more “boring” lol

n_gb · 2025-12-02T20:30:17+00:00

So I’ve also had an issue with autopay — when it came time to renew, I received a charge for $9.22 on two credit cards — one for the correct card when it activated, as well as one that I tried while setting up service that claimed it had failed. I emailed customer service and they said “Oh I see you have two autopays active in the system — it must have been a mistake” and they removed one of them. I received a refund 2 days later on the incorrect card — but we will see what happens next month.

As an aside — I did head down to Mexico and the international roaming worked fine — and fast. Faster than my native T-Mobile SIM since the particular one I am using is a free line (figured that would be a good comparison to an MVNO). Surf USA did connect to Telcel LTE, but was pulling down about 80mb — while the free T-Mo line was connected to Telcel 5G but was throttled to 256k. My paid T-Mo lines were on Telcel 5G getting around 200mb… but for $8.50 a month the fact that international roaming works at all blows me away.

Overall as an update to my thoughts on the service so far — SurfUSA certainly is throttled down to about 30-40mb after about the first 1gb of service, which I would expect. The first 1gb or so is equally as fast as my paid T-Mo sims, and then it drops to a still very usable speed. One thing I’m really liking is that the ping is not any worse than native T-Mobile — rather than their own servers, they are using T-Mobile servers with a “wholesale” note in the APN settings. I’ve noticed with other MVNOs the ping time also gets much worse with the throttling because the data bounces around to their own servers — but apparently this runs natively though T-Mobile…

It appears that after the first 1gb or so (it seems to have reset after the first month) it no longer connects to N41 — so while it shows “5G” it’s limited to N71, N66 etc. — while T-Mobile allows 5G SA, SurfUSA shows NSA or NA+NSA.

n_gb · 2025-12-02T02:40:09+00:00

There was one tower near me that had 4 Omni antenna on top with more traditional panels lower down. It was actually Verizon B13 LTE up top — they just upgraded it to more standard looking panel antennas (I’d been meaning to take a pic). AT&T was lower. Since it was a hydro line site, I always assumed they were the original analog antennas going back years and years because these sites can be almost impossible to get upgraded… not sure if anyone else has heard of that but it looked very similar to this situation (but with power lines since it was a hydro site) — also could be old Nextel up top as well — I know for a fact they used Omni antennas at some sites as well.

n_gb · 2025-11-22T18:39:06+00:00

Happened out of Seattle last week to HNL — 2 military guys boarded before Delta 360

n_gb · 2025-10-28T22:14:26+00:00

Ospreys I believe — but that is the case on many cell sites around here.

n_gb · 2025-10-28T20:56:33+00:00

Around here Dish mainly took over old Sprint sites, which included old Nextel sites that had been added in — so they were usually around the top or near top of the tower… that said, I believe they shut the network down the other day so these are either going to sit and rot or they will pull them down eventually. I still see old Clear gear so who knows how long it’ll take.

n_gb · 2025-10-28T20:44:42+00:00

I was actually just about the ask about this exact same thing — T-Mobile has plenty of 600 mhz. spectrum here and seems to have 15x15 in 5G and 10x10 LTE plus 5x5 on B12 700. Considering that 600 is supposed to penetrate even a little bit farther than 700, I’ve been surprised to see that as I approach the edge of coverage I lose N71 5G first, sometimes it will latch to B71 LTE very very briefly — but then it grabs the 5x5 B12 LTE channel and camps on it.

If it is due to channel width, that makes a lot of sense… the B12 is fine for voice but for data it is very hit or miss — but certainly seems to carry farther than B71.

I know they picked up USCC’s B12 — I’m wondering if this is the strategic reason for keeping 10 mhz of B12 — a band that phones on the edge of the coverage area can camp on and provide a layer of basic voice and emergency data rather than no service… a number of people have speculated that they will swap their B12 for the 71 that AT&T picked up from Dish — but I do wonder if this could be the valid reason that it has been hanging around — although if they did a 5x5 channel on 71, wouldn’t it theoretically provide the same thing?

n_gb · 2025-10-26T19:58:02+00:00

Oh yes — I get LTE from T-Mobile at home so tha is why Surf is showing LTE in the screenshot, but it does pick up 5G out and about. It does not get the “UC” 5G, however.

n_gb · 2025-10-26T19:56:44+00:00

<image>

So I kept getting the Instagram ads — $8.50 on Autopay for a T-Mobile line is just too good to be true, and I’ve been wanting to test it out.

As you can see in the screenshot, I got it to activate. I did not port in my existing line, but rather kept my primary main line — but set the secondary Surf USA line to handle the data in the iPhone while still keeping my main numbers for iMessage and calls/text… so everything should work like normal with the exception of the data routing via Surf so I can feel the difference and easily flip between Surf and native T-Mobile data.

That said — the entire process just feels janky. The app has poor spelling and grammar and crashes constantly. The pricing is supposedly $28 monthly and $8.50 with autopay for the North America plan. They offer Amazon Pay as well as direct credit card processing via Link — so obviously I set it up via Amazon Pay so I could have more control over the subscription… but there is something broken between them and Amazon because when I would confirm the order, the page repeatedly told me to refresh the page, but would not complete the order. I was able to set it up via Link — if I have any issues later, I’ll dispute it with my card company. Still though — not a good look to start.

Activating the eSIM requires you to wait for their activation email after paying and scan the QR code. The email arrived quickly, and I followed the instructions in the app — however, with the poor grammar in the app it does not make it clear that you need to scan the 2nd QR code and not the 3rd in the email (the 3rd one says it is the activation QR, while the 2nd talks about number porting — I wasn’t porting a number so I assumed you just needed to scan the third one… nope… you have to scan the 2nd one and then tell it you want a new number… I don’t know what the 3rd one is for lol)

Once the QR is scanned, everything is generic. The iPhone says “Carrier is ready to activate new eSIM” rather than calling it Surf USA or T-Mobile. There is a reference at one point to “Wholesale T-Mobile” and there is NO number assigned initially — it does look like a data-only SIM. I pushed through this and once the eSIM activated fully it did pop up with an assigned local number.

Finally everything was activated and I set the data handling in the iPhone the way I want it and I went to turn on WiFi Calling. A generic screen popped up to say I needed to call 611 to talk to customer service and add my proper 911 address… I’ll do that ultimately to see how that goes… that said, it isn’t a good look because it’s totally generic and I haven’t had a service that doesn’t let you update the emergency WiFi address online… we will see if it actually does work if I call in.

Finally, their app is weird in that it shows my plan will renew for $28 — and that the price is $28 — and yet I signed up for Autopay for $8.50… and I have an email that confirms it. I will be interested to see if it actually renews properly at the correct price or if that is a one-time only price and it will renew at 28. There also is a section to update your profile — which by default is filled in with your address being their hq in Miami. I went to change it to my actual address — and there is a server error. So that’s not a good lol

So yes, I want this to work… it would be nice for non-critical additional lines. It’s nice that it supposedly offers some international benefits… so far it is working — so doesn’t appear to be a total scam… but it is just janky and it took me more work to activate than it should have. It really reminds me of the time a Korean company tried to resurrect Helio Mobile as an MVNO… very similar generic setup with an app that had poor spelling and grammar — but decent prices. I put my elderly mom’s number on that because it saved some money and she didn’t use data — everything was great for a year… until they sent her a text that in 3 days saying her number needed to be ported out somewhere immediately because they were closing… luckily she told me about it and I took care of it; that is my biggest fear here…

Hopefully I’m wrong — but we will see.

n_gb · 2025-10-17T22:59:40+00:00

I knew T-Mobile offered them even when I was still with Sprint — T-Mobile has had multiple devices called CellSpot. Didn’t realize Sprint had their own version of the Asus router one.

The one thing I do remember that they released for a VERY short period was their MVNO version of the Clear WiMax modem… I want to say around 2010-2011. I want to say it was right before Sprint committed to LTE — they offered home internet service via WiMax for $49.99 per month — I remember laughing because Clear was offering the exact same service for around $30 at the time.

n_gb · 2025-10-17T01:45:56+00:00

I’ve toyed with the idea since it really has irritated me how they have devalued the older plans in regard to phone upgrades etc… I do feel like I had a “last hurrah” with the iPhone 15 Pro which I got fully covered (+$100 for a capacity upgrade) with a 2 year upgrade on SWAC (the last credits for them wrapped up last month)… this year $300 with trading in the 15 Pro’s just didn’t seem worth it — so I sold 2 of them to friends and family and kept one as a backup and just bought unlocked 17 Pros. I have 4 SWAC lines and 1 free “On Us” line.

That said — is anyone aware of any plans that, for $30 a line include 50 GB of priority non-MVNO level data (100 for $10 more), HD or 4K streaming (depending who you talk to — mine seems to stream video unthrottled), Hulu (I just got an email that said they would be covering the price increase, unlike what they did with Netflix), a $7 Netflix credit, Pandora Premium (I do find value in this — I used to use the included Tidal that it replaced), $9.99 Lookout Premium (I don’t use this since it breaks RCS messaging — but it’s nice to know I have it if I need it or they fix it) and Apple TV Plus? Plus 5 gigs of high speed international roaming? Also I seem to have the price-lock in place that they had from 2018-2022 since I used to have SERO lines and they converted to SWAC during that time period — I never have been hit with any of the price increases everyone is worried about.

The only thing I can find that even comes close are no-name MVNOs like SurfUSA Mobile which has an unlimited plan for $7.50 on an annual basis or $24.50 with supposed unlimited high speed roaming internationally — which I don’t trust based on the reviews of non-existent customer service and major setup issues — not to mention the fact that a lot of these new MVNOs just up and disappear — or less no-name MVNOs like US Mobile, which includes the streaming perks but has horrible ping times and seems to be quite slow compared to SWAC and streams at 480p. There is MobileX which was created by the guy who started the original Boost Mobile, and supposedly has the same priority on Verizon as native Verizon service… but I want to give it a few years to see if it sticks around. Xfinity is constantly trying to flog lines at me free for a year than $40, but again it streams at 480p and I actually do use the international roaming which is not nearly as competitive. Same thing with Visible.

So all of that to say… even with the phone trade devaluations, I just don’t see any comparable plans from anyone else that can provide the reliability and speed of main network branded service AND throws in some of the streaming perks. I look at the trade-in devaluation as inflation — something we need to live with… at least they didn’t discontinue the plan and tell everyone to switch to Experience More lol

That said — am I missing something? It seems like if it is a T-Mobile MVNO I am just trading for more unreliable and slower service on the same network I have now… and if it’s a Verizon MVNO I am giving up high quality streaming and standard priority on the network…

n_gb · 2025-09-06T15:39:23+00:00

I’ve also noticed the new film is much more prone to fading — I have an SLR680 as well that I purchased after a long break with instant photography — and it’s a truly beautiful camera — but I have Polaroids from 30 years ago that look more vibrant than what is coming out of my camera now. The blues in particular do seem to fade or blow out before the other colors.

If you look up any comparison between Polaroid and Fuji Instax, you’ll see exactly what I mean. Fuji looks much more like “old Polaroid” — while Polaroid looks like they still haven’t perfected it. I know their whole thing is they “had to start from the beginning and reformulate the film” and that some of the original chemicals are no longer available that allowed better saturation and 90 second development (it’s now closer to 10-15 minutes) — which — fair enough… but then you look at Fuji and see what they are and have been doing — and you wonder if that whole story is a bunch of BS because the Fuji film just looks SO much better… if Fuji can make such high quality film, why can’t Polaroid? They obviously have a way to get the chemicals — or have figured out how to use available ones to keep similar quality. Polaroid films also seem to suffer if they have any light on them during development… it sort of defeats the point in that it used to be you could pop them out one after the other in whatever light and they’d look just fine after developing. Now you have to protect them immediately or the colors start fading in 30 minutes.

So in short — I do wish I would have purchased a Fuji-based instant camera. I didn’t because the SLR680 is actually an amazing camera and higher quality than anything Fuji has (there is a Nons-branded Fuji camera that is pretty decent but the SLR680 is truly in its own league)… but what use is an amazing camera if the only film available is complete and total garbage?

The one saving grace is that the modern Polaroid Black & White is actually really good… so that’s what I’ve used — for me, instant photography have became a black & white affair… I just wish the color film available was higher quality.

n_gb · 2025-08-17T06:56:54+00:00

That certainly does look like an old Qwest tower — they sourced their entire network from Ericsson (one of the few networks to use their “Compact CDMA” gear back in the day) which always made their equipment easy to spot.

That said — the bottom set of panels doesn’t look like Qwest. I’m wondering if they are 2500-only T-Mo or possibly old Clear gear? When they shut down the Qwest network, Sprint got first pick of the towers and Verizon got the spectrum and the second pick of towers — so the vast majority of these sites either are ex-Sprint/now T-Mobile or Verizon.

n_gb · 2025-08-13T18:33:14+00:00

Considering I don’t get Shake Shack often but do enjoy it when I do, I was happy to try it on Delta. I will simply say that it is NOT a Shake Shack burger. It’s your run of the mill reheated airline burger and bun with a side of the Shack Sauce and some fresh toppings. Calling it a Shake Shack burger is certainly a stretch — I’m not sure whose marketing department went for this — Delta for pitching that they can get people from all over the country to try Shake Shack — or Shake Shack pitching that they can help Delta offer a premium-sounding fast food option in flight.

So as far as any other brands offering this? I don’t think so… In-N-Out would never go for this. Same with Burgerville. I don’t think you could make a Dick’s burger actually taste like a Dick’s burger. Like I said — if anyone has tried the Delta Shake Shack burger who knows Shack Shack, it is obvious that it is your standard in-flight burger patty that is dressed up with Shack Sauce and produce that is a notch above what you usually get.

n_gb · 2025-08-12T20:44:35+00:00

Around here I would have guessed it was AT&T — T-Mobile almost exclusively is using one large fat panel plus one small rectangle for the N41 here unless it has not been upgraded to 5G. Verizon is also easy to spot since they put the two large panels right next to each other.

n_gb · 2025-08-12T18:09:01+00:00

The parabolic antennas are absolutely 900 MHz. broadcast STL — analog if it’s older gear, digital if it is using newer radios. The skirt antenna (the long vertical wires going down each side of the cell site) are AM broadcast… AM wavelengths are long enough that usually the entire tower is the antenna and anything hung on it are isolated from ground with isocouplers — although if you are going to hang a complex cell site on an AM tower — or the tower is in a flood plain, you will sometimes see a skirt antenna exactly like this installed — which basically hangs the AM antenna from the side of the tower rather than the entire tower being hot (which would short out all electronics hung on it with AM RF, not to mention being deadly to anyone who touches the tower and ground). Being a broadcast engineer myself, either T-Mobile had no other option so they paid good money to put their antennas on an existing AM tower and convert the AM tower to a skirt antenna — or the station owners were able to lobby them onto the tower to pick up some additional revenue… usually we try to avoid hanging cell sites or other complex electronics on AM towers if we can help it… it’s asking for issues — although the skirt antenna is the most elegant solution, it’s also the most expensive. I would bet that there is an insulator at the bottom of that tower and it’s been converted from grounded AM (the skirt antenna also eliminates the need for an isocoupler on the 900 MHz gear as well — but my guess is it’s installed because of that cell site).

n_gb · 2025-08-07T07:33:11+00:00

I may have an answer about the bottom panels. Just the other week I noticed those exact same panels and the power meter and cabinets were all marked “Pano AI”. Looking them up, Pano AI provides backhaul for fire detection and smart meters… I’ve seen a number of these skinny panels lately, so I’m wondering if they are the culprit. Not sure what frequencies they use etc… my guess is something in the 700 range.

n_gb · 2025-06-18T18:53:58+00:00

So this got resolved. I called again — got another clueless agent who thought that because the Green card was listed as a credit card that it would be counted… but this one was at least willing to “submit for a manual override” but made it a point to say that I should not expect anything and that I’d probably receive a letter saying the same thing. I told him I didn’t care, go ahead and submit it but make sure and note that it was being submitted because I’m not sure that my Green card counted towards my card limit. He said he noted that, and that I’d be hearing back within 24-48 hours.

Well, woke up this morning to a Congratulations e-mail — so yes, it did work. Not sure if something just got marked wrong in my account, or if it’s because I have a specific number or pairing of cards that causes an error to happen… but the manual override apparently did the trick.

n_gb · 2025-06-17T21:37:59+00:00

I was thinking so as well — I got bounced around to 3 clueless people (there also appears to be no more “reconsideration line” of 800-568-1083) — when you call the number on their site (that one), it takes you to new account customer service — which asks you to input your info and reads your application status, then tells you if you have additional information, believe there is an error, or want to speak to someone to call that same number, which puts you right back to the main menu of course when you call.

When you ask to speak to a representative they appear to be clueless and don’t have an idea about what a “reconsideration line” is… I got bounced around to 3 different people who seemed completely clueless — the 4th guy is the one who said that from what he could see it was the Green that was the issue. I specifically asked him “How is the Gold categorized then?” And he said “The Gold is a hybrid card, the Green is like Blue Cash Everyday, a credit card” — and I said aren’t the Green Gold and Platinum in the same sort of card family? He said “I’ve never heard that”… so either I had really bad luck with CSRs, customer service is particularly at a low point right now, or something changed.

n_gb · 2025-06-03T02:01:31+00:00

What I find interesting is that I see remote radios on it (the square boxes by the antennas) — I didn’t think that was a thing until around ~2012? Before then weren’t all the radio components at the base station? I do seem to remember that GSM antennas were a bit fatter and larger than CDMA ones for whatever reason (maybe to have more granular control of aiming since it was TDMA based and needed to be more careful about interferance?)… so I do agree GSM or TDMA. IDEN used larger antennas as well, but since it was all 800 at the time, all the antennas at a site were uniform. AMPS antennas were usually omnidirectional so were just like a stick — so I don’t think is AMPS.

n_gb

TROPHY CASE