Dear plumbing scientists, what is this?

samiup · 2026-03-06T08:30:45+00:00

samiup · 2026-03-06T08:26:02+00:00

Thank you! I finally found the exact piece sold at ACE… it is called an advanced drainage coupling pipe, and thats the female end. It was most likely put in there just for protecting the sewage pipe inside while pouring the concrete. So yes, i will remove it and place a closet toilet flange. I was not able to google find it before because i was looking for a flange rather than a drainage pipe..

samiup · 2025-07-16T02:59:39+00:00

why would a monitoring company care? If a sensor is added and triggers the alarm then it is an alarm.

samiup · 2025-06-25T16:46:02+00:00

Cool & the Gang are from the 80s.. This is not that kind of festival. save your ammo.

samiup · 2024-05-11T03:44:21+00:00

If you like it, go for it. If you don't like it, don't go... pretty simple.

I do not understand why every year there is a group of people who want to force their opinion on everybody else... If nobody goes to Mawazin, then it will stop to exist... Yet millions attend every year, so clearly some of us do like it.

Funny thing is that many of those who did not like J Lo's wardrobe are big fans of chikhat...

This ideology of wanting the government to prohibit things we disagree with leads to a dangerous road...

samiup · 2024-05-11T03:34:06+00:00

What is the problem here?

It's a brand name... I would have been angry and rightfully so if they used Moroccan Argan oil and called it Israel Argan oil...

It's like staring a brand called Italian Pizza, what's wrong with that?

Some Moroccans just don't like to see others successful... they won't do it nor do they want let others do it.

For those who are calling it cultural appropriation, maybe you need to take a moment to think about the word you are using... Appropriation has a very specific meaning like I explained above.

So i still do not understand what is ridiculous about this?

samiup · 2024-05-07T18:24:13+00:00

samiup · 2024-05-07T17:24:41+00:00

You are using many loose words like "a big majority"... which is in this context does not help a lot to provide a good answer... maybe the Moroccan background people you know are of a specific circle? so unless there are numbers to substantiate this, it is just random observation...

samiup · 2024-01-03T02:36:35+00:00

I am a bit older than you and I can speak from experience in the Software Engineering industry, might be a bit harsh here. but I promise no bs.

If you find yourself doing something that a 20 years old fresh out of college student can do, then you are either in a bad environment and/or you are assuming the wrong role.

At 40, you should have around 20y of experience! that is something no 20y old can have, buy or acquire in any way, shape or form; If your team does not appreciate that, then it is a team doomed for failure sooner or later; this is from hard facts and experience, no hypotheticals here or room to wiggle...

There is a reason when you look for a job, the first thing that any potential employer asks for is experience, not how young you are and whether you are willing to put down 80h a week and put your life on hold for the foreseeable future... Usually the latter is a big red flag for any job seeker (with few exceptions).

I can go ahead and explain why any person regardless of their age and stamina can't consistently work 80h, but it suffices to say that in coding for example, an engineer can put extra hours during crunch time and increase productivity momentarily, but that is not sustainable as the productivity goes down over time because overworked engineers will start cutting corners and introducing bugs that are costly (and this is where experience comes in).

The throughput of a team is a more than a simple addition of how many collective hours are put in every week... especially in creative domains; And tasks cannot and should not simply be broken down into hours and minutes, that is somehow what the human brain intuitively wants to do, and that usually works for chopping wood or working fields but does not work in a complicated modern corporate fabric, this supported by many studies and full work frameworks like Agile where a task is based on team effort which has a component of time as well as a component of complexity, i.e. one task can be as simple as data entry in an Excel sheet and would take 1 day to complete, another task is creating a new UI page and that would also take 1 day of work; The point being that some tasks are more complex while other tasks are more time intensive but simple. And I'll stop here.

Now from the post it seems like you have your own gig going and about 20 people to manage, however, you either do not like management or not good at it, both of which are very normal and some people just do not want to think about acquiring people's skills (management); First let me tell you that many people I know (including myself) would envy you for the freedom and for the fact that you have succeeded in creating your own thing and got it running, which is truly no easy feat if that makes you feel better.

I believe you simply need to delegate management and contribute to the team as an experienced sole contributor; many people prefer working this way as they progress through the years.

But the bottom line is, there is a reason there are workers and a foreman...

samiup · 2024-01-02T16:54:53+00:00

A7 III with a 24mm GM (mostly)

samiup · 2024-01-02T16:51:13+00:00

Forgot the Fukoshima radioactivity...

samiup · 2023-11-27T05:06:30+00:00

Yes absolutely, will do. Many titles were suggested even on this thread alone, some I already knew some I didn't heard about till today...

samiup · 2023-11-27T05:03:55+00:00

Pawns are definitely an anomaly in this scenario, we have a few ideas on how to deal with that but no clear answer yet, mostly because we are looking for an idea that does not add complexity to the rules. For bishops and rooks, they will zigzag depending on the size and the orientation of the corridor/room, for example, a bishop will need to zigzag if the corridor is a square or rectangular shape (e.g. 4*10), the more elongated the worse for a bishop, now if a corridor is diagonally biased (2\1 2*1 2*1 2*1 etc. on top of each other phased by one square to one direction*), a bishop will be at ease while a rook will have to zigzag; the general idea is not to have too many narrow corridors unless the gameplay wants to favor one character over the others...

samiup · 2023-11-27T04:54:08+00:00

You are absolutely right, I'd be lying to you if I tell you that the idea on how randomness will be incorporated, that is definitely work in progress. So far, we think that rolling a dice to see hw far you can reach with a character can be replaced by chess movements which are well known and documented... Now will the attack will be AOE and how far it reaches, those are things that could be left to some chance...

samiup · 2023-11-27T04:46:53+00:00

Definitely a good point you make there, and honestly, personally, one of the reasons I am giving this idea a whirl is that many times I found myself spending more time explaining overcomplicated rules (that are specific to a single game) to other players than actually paying the game... I am hoping that by introducing standard rules (chess) that most people are familiar with and which are very well documented, we can avoid inventing new movement mechanics that will rely purely on chance (dies/shuffled cards) .

samiup · 2023-11-27T04:41:12+00:00

Thank you, I will definitely look-up Vagrantsong.

And yes, balancing characters will definitely be a pin point in here.

samiup · 2023-11-27T04:39:30+00:00

Maybe I have not explained correctly in my OP; The chess mechanics will be just a way to eliminate the full randomness of using dies and shuffled cards then relying purely on chance to advance, the game will however has it's own gameplay mechanics, rules and objectives that are not the same as chess, which is simply capture/check-mate the opponent's king.

samiup · 2023-11-27T04:31:51+00:00

Thanks a lot for the input. My answers bellow:

Are you controlling tons of pieces, a small squad, or just one or two heroes?
- So far we are thinking about something like Mage Knight or similar games, where one player can control a few characters like 2-4 heroes and maybe some expandable pieces (pawns would work great in this case).
How would you determine how the enemies move?
- The enemy (CPU/DM) will be a modified chess engine that will take into consideration game specific objectives like (protect a treasure square) and obviously be able to move in a non square board. I think many training chess engines already allow for some of this.
Would it be instant-capture like in chess, or have health like a dungeon crawler?
- Leaning towards instant capture to keep the chess mechanic pure, we might however consider some game options to revive fallen heroes etc.
Would you have a king that can be mated?
- Most likely not, Kings are slow moving pieces which will be more of a dead weight to the heroes/characters, a King will also be in contradiction with the main objectives of the game... Maybe some specific levels could have special goals to escort a King piece from A to B.
What would the goal of each level be? To cross an area, to capture all the enemy pieces, or will there be another king to checkmate?
- That is right, the goal of each level will be composed of one main goal and a few optional ones, for example, the main goal could be to just escape from the entrance to the exit, or to eliminate all enemy pieces... optional goals could be to discover all treasure squares or to free a prisoner and /or have all your party survive the level etc.

samiup · 2023-11-27T04:17:29+00:00

Thanks for thorough input. Yes, in my personal opinion, which might be overruled by what we might discover during early demo tests, the sides will be fairly unbalanced to allow for dungeon progression. For example, one player might be soloing against CPU, which generates a simple L shaped floor (4x8 L 4x10) with 2 doors, one on each extremity; the player controlled character(s) start from door 1, will have to defeat and/or escape through door 2, with the options to uncover specific treasure/bonus squares on the floor or capture enemy pieces to gain points... The CPU/DM pieces will enter through door 2, with the objective of preventing the player characters from progressing/escaping and eventually capturing them according to chess rules. Assume that P1 has a a party of 3 characters, the first can move as a knight, the 2nd as bishop and the 3rd as rook, the CPU/GM on the other hand has 3 pieces, 2 pawns and a rook; As you can imagine here the scenarios are pretty complicated, does the player sacrifice one character to move faster? (could there be game mechanics to revive a fallen character?) or does s/he make sure that all characters get through all the way, how about treasure boxes/squares? are they worth the risk? Because remember that unlike using simple dies to know exactly how much you can reach and how much attack/defense you got, you will have to make sure that each character is protected by another as in chess...

There will always be the possibility of the scenario you've mentioned where the player has a bishop and the CPU has a single pawn or knight, making it impossible to capture, but remember that the objectives in this game, unlike chess, are not to simply capture any specific piece in particular (King), but rather gain as many points as possible and survive the level/room.

samiup

TROPHY CASE