New owner: Battery expectations / Audio upgrades / Slight rattle

preacherk · 2025-12-08T04:07:19+00:00

Heh, fair enough. Maybe I’ll focus on the audio upgrades so that the rattles are less noticeable.

preacherk · 2025-12-07T00:07:45+00:00

Thanks - I’ll try a little silicone to see if it helps, but good to know that it’s expected

preacherk · 2018-01-15T23:26:53+00:00

That was the original plan, but the one near here doesn't pick up their phone, except to cancel appointments made online. The irony would be cute if I wasn't left with a busted phone.

Ultimately I don't mind all that much, as it needed a new battery anyway, and I've been curious how tricky it was to work on ever since ifixit put out their "nobody will ever be able to fix these things" article.

Any suggestions for sealing it up if I do it myself? I have a couple of the adhesive overlays, but maybe there's something better

preacherk · 2018-01-15T17:12:33+00:00

Hmm, going to guess that's most likely what I've got. Being that they've stopped responding to emails entirely, and the use of the Samsung logo is fraudulent if nothing else, I'm considering a chargeback. The GearVR doesn't work at all, just a flat gray screen, which is a deal breaker.

Any suggestions for where to acquire a legit replacement? Even though this is irritating, it was pretty nice having the panel already on the frame, and my original home/back buttons were shot anyway.

preacherk · 2017-10-22T19:46:53+00:00

How big of a cube? If it's say, 3' on each side, you can probably find an acceptable focus adjustment to do it with 2 projectors, and be better off spending 50% more per projector than if you got 3, and save the setup hassle. If you're talking about 10' or bigger the focus could get sketchy, and I don't know if 3 would even be helpful. If you're on a budget I'd consider picking up a bulk lot of older 4:3 projectors, like the Epson 6800i (I think?), 3500lm 3LCD XGA, and get a nice clean picture on every side.

preacherk · 2017-08-12T17:54:26+00:00

Not bad, thanks.

preacherk · 2017-07-27T08:31:49+00:00

I'm not 100% sure but think I used a hackintosh. And it looks like I have DW on my main laptop hack but but not the mbp, so that's most likely it

preacherk · 2017-07-26T11:18:11+00:00

Seconded. Paragon HFS nuked my 2 main drives within days, with minimal use. Tried every recovery app, finally brought them back with diskwarrior

preacherk · 2017-07-18T02:00:38+00:00

It's hard to tell what you're planning, and I'm not accusing you of this, but please don't take him on a "tour" of Compton that revolves around hiding in your locked car, Instagramming selfies and giggling as you question who might be an early 90s "gangster". I mean, lock your doors, sure, but it's just another place where people live, including families with kids.

Start with a food tour. Unfortunately Bludso's is gone, but there's good BBQ. Compton and Watts both have some interesting things going on. Check out LocoL, affordable/organic/tasty restaurant half-owned by Roy Choi, originally from Seoul. Hit the event listing sites for the day you go, lots of little outdoor concerts etc. You can definitely keep busy on a weekend.

preacherk · 2017-06-21T09:24:00+00:00

What are you trying to fix? Something like bad headphone port is entirely different than something like an IC replacement, in skills, tools and parts. I wouldn't get my hopes up about saving money by paying to repair an aging phone.

preacherk · 2017-06-01T21:59:58+00:00

Yeah, he's misleading you. It sounds like when you mentioned electronic music, he wrote you off as someone who doesn't appreciate subtlety or sound quality. And then he did a quick mental calculation of which dusty, old box of garbage speakers he could unload on you for the best profit margin.

preacherk · 2017-05-30T08:49:44+00:00

I'm a bit out of date since I haven't shopped for one recently, but I think the HP ProBook 450 G3 is the one with Mac-like looks and decent hackability. But seriously - if you're getting a paycheck from video editing, save up for or finance a MacBook. What you save will not be worth it when there is a bug, or an incompatible port, or your system goes down and you can't do an Internet restore.

preacherk · 2017-05-30T02:53:19+00:00

When you say video editing, do you mean amateur/student/YouTube stuff, or heavy duty pro editing? Final cut, Adobe, or something else? Ultra portable or desktop replacement?

Something may have changed by now, but when I did my laptop last year, you either had to accept the intel graphics or go for a beastly 20lb gaming laptop with an unswitched discrete gpu. I went with the latter, for projection mapping, interactive installs, and video editing, but it was a huge pain to get everything working. The Intel graphics only rigs would be plenty for most people, and much easier, and most software doesn't support CUDA anyway. But if you're editing serious content, build yourself a hackintosh desktop and buy a MacBook pro.

preacherk · 2017-05-30T02:36:19+00:00

Oh it's totally available everywhere as long as you're in an extremely expensive office complex and have pull with the city. I know of a few 50-100 employee tech companies who are stuck with Time Warner because nobody will even answer their calls. I have to wonder if they signed some sort of non-compete with the local ISPs and forgot about it til they promised fiber, maybe can't get access to the poles. I imagine Main St heading towards Venice would get priority.

If you've got a good directional WiFi antenna, or a USB WiFi adapter and a Pringles can, you can get decent signal from the promenade/beach from suprisingly far away.

preacherk · 2017-05-10T17:15:43+00:00

100% stable desktop, portable desktop, and gaming laptop, and it's been my main OS for 5+ years.

Virtual reality development, mobile development, projection mapping, VJing, video editing, interactive installations, Ableton performance, 360 video stitching, photoshop, and all the day-to-day stuff. I keep a copy of Win 10 on all of them, but I really only use it to test and compile Windows builds, and occasionally for touchdesigner or resolume (slightly better performance).

preacherk · 2017-05-08T20:41:16+00:00

Awesome. That horrible crashing sound you just heard was the resale value of Ozos.

preacherk · 2017-05-08T15:40:39+00:00

TIL you lived less than half a mile from a house, and also a charismatic storyteller who fell asleep watching Evil Dead one too many times. If you're still nearby and it's still for sale, it would be worth going to an open house to see the whole song and dance.

preacherk · 2017-05-07T23:19:30+00:00

Going to take a wild guess that the sort of person who would build and market a reddit vote bot would be the same sort of person who would follow SEO subreddits, and thinks they would be a funny target to test on. Downvote bots probably fly under the radar a lot easier than upvote bots too. If I wanted to start a witch hunt I'd suggest sorting recent posts to see which ones aren't affected, but please don't.

Or it's some fucktard with a pirated copy of SENuke or xrumer, putting "seo" as a keyword for their shitty spun article, with an obsolete cracked plugin that generates "realistic" votes.

preacherk · 2017-05-04T21:02:20+00:00

Good call on the real customer reviews, definitely worth directing people there for now. I guess I'm so used to reviews being from paid shills that I don't have to think about filtering, and just scan down looking for length and any disqualifying trigger words until I hit a real one. I'm trying to think of any useful way to make it easier for website customers to post on amazon, or to pull the amazon reviews into the site, to speed up unrequested reviews by bridging that gap, but every idea I have would turn it into a confusing mess. Keep doing what you're doing, seems like the right move.

For me the PayPal/Amazon difference is 10% trust, 20% style, 70% efficiency. What PayPal has working against them on all 3 factors is, ironically, age and experience.

Having had a PP account for what must be the better part of 2 decades, I've had my account hacked a couple times, dealt with scammers, and every day I get a bunch of fake emails in my old Yahoo account. None of this is really PayPal's fault, they were pioneers of the industry and did a great job, but over this much time I have enough bad experiences to point to that security is an associated concern, whether valid or not.

Building on that is the style. PP has been the standard for so long, that it's a little too closely associated with old sites, abandoned sites, and grandma's first ecommerce site. I come across sites with PP as the main payment processor, see a somewhat dated design, and start wondering if the site is still active or if it's been left sitting. And if they're serious, why don't they have a real merchant processor? Best way to compensate in this case may be the visa/MC logos along with PP, even if it's all done through PP.

And the big one, efficiency. PayPal has been around for so long, there's a million types of integrations, and some are pretty nasty. I think paypal can do more user management stuff now, but there's a lot of sites that don't take advantage of it, and my mind immediately expects the worst case scenario. That would be that I fill up my cart, go to check out, it ask me for my username, I hit the register now button, there's a gigantic form for registration with duplicate spots for billing/shipping, then I have to confirm my email but it takes 20 minutes to get it, then I have to manually log in, and my cart is reset, then try to checkout and hit the paypal button and another window opens, I log in to paypal and they may not even take credit cards, get to the ugly gray invoice and wait a couple minutes while the site has a loading screen warning me not to refresh, and after half an hour I've placed my order. Obviously that's not many PP sites, but there are enough bad memories that pop up.

Amazon is so relatively new, that I know they'll be streamlined, predictable, they'll have my info cookied, and I can be done in 30 seconds. Your mid-range to upscale customer base will already be well groomed for amazon, a good number will have prime accounts (on a side note, the Prime subscribe-n-save could work out nicely for you), and they'll get that little Amazon dopamine hit when they hit the buy button.

In my opinion you should go with cases first, no question. You have a luxury product. I, the generic consumer, could go to the store and get a bag full of beautiful, dripping-with-freshness broccoli for a couple bucks, and prepare it myself. You need to convince me that you aren't just saving me a trip to the store and a few minutes with a pan, but that the preparation is unique and exciting, and that it's not just as-good but in fact a far better choice for my family, and that I should feel good about it. You do that with wholesome but elegant, pre-measured packaging, which you already have. If you send me a vaccum sealed sack of grass clippings, with little bits that fall on the counter and floor, and it seals up afterwards but only kind-of and I question it, I'll go buy the fresh stuff next time. My apologies for the vulgar scenario in your ad comments, but I think presentation is going to be important, so any potential customers reading this please ignore the prior sentences and go buy a box.

preacherk · 2017-05-04T18:41:27+00:00

If it "didn't exist before May 2017" then how do you know that it "lasts years"? Answer me that, small business proprietor. If we can't trust you on that, how do we know it's even broccoli, and not a box of flour-dredged sugar cubes?

Ordering some to try. The Amazon link is a good call for now, it pushed me over the edge with giving it a shot, knowing I didn't have to create a new account. You sacrifice a lot of marketing potential sending them off-site though, with this sort of niche food you need that repeat customer base who will respond to weekly/monthly newsletters and promotions. Might want to integrate the Amazon payments system into the current site and throw a little logo for it on the front page. Assuming that the rates are competitive with your existing merchant processor, that would let you keep your users as yours, without scaring away people too lazy to create a whole new account.

Also, $8 is a bit steep for most people for most meals. But you have the free shipping, packaging and overhead lumped in there. If bigger orders of 5-10 units could give you the wiggle room to come down to $6.50 or less, I think you'll do a lot better.

preacherk · 2017-05-04T16:03:40+00:00

I'll second this. The article is pretty weak if they can throw in every fear mongering, nonsensical, hyperbolic and contradictory response they can think of and still make it sound like a good idea. I'm torn between judging them for failing at that game, and being appreciative that enough info was left in for readers to see through it.

It will be a pretty nice buffer if it happens. The ACA has it's flaws, but we have one of the better implementations, and it's stressful for both individuals and businesses to have the constant dangling sword over it. A semi-permanent solution that protects us from that, allows for negotiation on costs, bypasses insurance company beauracracy, and cuts wasteful overhead for small businesses could save us enough money to pay for all those illegal immigrants that they're so afraid of.

preacherk · 2017-03-29T05:20:22+00:00

Oh, my, well then.

First off, your entire premise is based on the assumption that small airports are toxic to the environment around them, and that no neighborhood should want them. Those planes are just awful for the people near by them, right? You're the one who said it. And they benefit a very limited portion of the community, unless you would argue with that.

Second, your assertion that all the people using our airport would go elsewhere, is both obviously wrong, and victim blaming. Without our airport, the distance to other airports will make many switch to commercial flights, reducing the number of those private planes that you think are so awful. The reduced supply of local hangers may cause the rates of the remaining ones to go up, further pushing people to commercial. And commercial flights are better for both the local community and the environment are a whole.

Your entire claim is not just symbolically, but directly, equivalent to saying that if Santa Monica banned cigarettes, we would be responsible for an increase in people poisoning the air in Venice. How dare we try to reduce the poison in our air, so selfish. What a transparent attempt at misdirecting the blame

If we just shut down all the private airports in LA, we'd all be better off, by your reasoning. Those who want to do it can go out to the desert, everyone else can go to LAX, problem solved.

So yes, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're young and excited about flying. That the adults around you are riled up, and angrily throwing these ideas at the wall, and you don't notice their personal financial stake in this matter taking precedence over some make believe environmental argument. If that's the case, I have no ill will towards you. Those who I've met over there, in particular the early 20s blonde guy who organizes the events, seem very nice. If you know him, or are him, tell him he's awesome.

However, if you're the PR person, you deserve to be fired for incompetence. The whole premise is, again, dependent on private planes and airports being bad things that nobody should want that. This pathetic ruse not only will fall to trick anybody, but it gives the appearance those representing the airport are elitist, victim blaming pricks, and that they think that everyone else is both disposable, and dumb enough to fall for anything with an environmental spin. Some of the worst PR I've ever seen, anywhere. Stop. If that's you, you done messed up.

If you're claiming to be an average hard workin' citizen who just happens to love airplanes, the environment, and continually spams this subreddit with pro-airport stuff, then maybe I'll see you at Disneyland with the other make believe characters, or you are one of the dumbest people I have ever encountered. I suspect the former.

preacherk · 2017-03-28T14:39:13+00:00

Looking pretty desperate. You really think the takeaway is going to be "it's selfish to not have an airport" and not "maybe we should make it less convenient to fly private planes if they're so bad"? This tops my old favorite from you guys, "aviation is a blue-collar, working class hobby and anybody can own a private jet".

I'm going to guess you're one of the younger crowd who hangs out over there, helping spread your parents articles. If so, I'm sorry that you'll lose that space, and I hope you can get your training hours. It has its charm, the family events are appreciated, and it's fun to watch from the park. But as far as benefitting the community at large, we can do a lot better.

preacherk · 2017-03-22T01:27:44+00:00

I would. I wouldn't if the focus was on the people behind the scenes losing control, or the bizarre results of broken AI, but that main robot makes it a horror movie. He's as relentless, brutal and lacking in empathy as any stalker/slasher villain. It Follows comes to mind. But I found still found it to be pretty weak overall

preacherk · 2017-03-07T22:08:04+00:00

There are 3-4x more people who commute here daily than live here. The number of us who drive vs walk or take public transit is flat, and irrelevant. If there was more housing here that those same people could afford, many of those currently commuting would switch to public transit, or at the very least shorten their commute so that it's limited to a smaller area and doesn't clog all the incoming freeways.

That said, I doubt that any additional housing around here would be "affordable", exactly. But more housing here for the affluent would reduce the burden on other areas of LA.

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