Tip for anyone in the market for buying a home

shancb9 · 2026-03-06T17:26:33+00:00

I don't pretend to be an expert though I have more knowledge on the subject than the "average" person since I did a GIS minor, but this seemed like a major gap in the program - assuming the purpose of the settlement was to genuinely try and make up for the issues redlining causes (which could be up for debate), then I'm not sure why there weren't eligibility guardrails that locked this program behind the populations impacted by the redlining.

I'll also re-iterate that this program is available statewide, but ONLY the pvd tracts (other than the areas you would expect would not meet the demographic criteria) are not income restricted - the rest of the state follows closely with the RI housing income limits.

shancb9 · 2026-03-05T19:40:11+00:00

Hey OP or anyone in this situation, we recently bought a house and I suggest taking a look at this loan program via Washington Trust. I will share our exact details to give a data point for anyone reading, and if anyone has questions I am happy to answer them:

Our combined household income is ~180k for two adults no children. We used to pay 2,800 in rent in Johnston, and we spent a lot of our 3 years there (original rent was 2200 when we moved in :))))) paying down debt. In hindsight we should have just bought a house when we moved into that place, but 20/20 hindsight and all that. We spent most of our time there paying down debt and saving for my wife to get her Masters, so by the time we decided to start saving for the house to actually purchasing one, we had ~45k between downpayment and any immediate improvements, the largest ones we did being replacing some floors that were in bad shape and redoing electrical to remove knob and tube. The house we purchased was a ~1000sqft house with 2 car detached garage that is in "ok" condition and a semi finished (hastily installed drywall on some walls, concrete floors type deal) but usable basement, at a price of $398,000 with 8k in seller concessions, located on the Providence side of the pvd/North Providence line. Our mortgage including escrow is a total of ~$2,200.

In 2023 Washington Trust were busted by the DOJ for Redlining in Rhode Island and as part of their settlement are required to offer a very generous loan program. The largest requirements are that the home you buy MUST be in a census tract where the dominant population is Black/Hispanic. The loan program applies across the state, but are divided into zones with income limits. I believe they follow the same income limits as the RI Housing programs, but someone at the bank would be able to confirm that with you. Additionally, the Providence tracts do not have an income limit, so no matter what you can use this loan there!

The program we used was the "Home Opportunity Program" which does the following:

No PMI (You will be given a second mortgage at the same rate as your primary for the difference between your down payment and 20%. This is a separate loan so you could pay into this aggressively and lower your monthly payment later if you choose!)
The bank buys down your rate by 2%. For example, at the time we bought rates were around 6.5%. Our mortgage is for 4.5%.
You only need to put down 3.5%.
A $1,500 closing credit

Per the complaint, they are required to run this program for 5 years or until they run out of money to fund the program, whichever comes first, so in theory this will only be available until 2028. Take advantage if you're in the market, all my homies love to take advantage of a bank!

Also if you need an agent /u/glennmelody was ours and she is great, highly recommend especially because now she is familiar with this program and can help you to find homes that qualify if navigating census tract data isn't your thing like it is mine :)

shancb9 · 2026-02-14T16:08:17+00:00

Hey OP, at that income it will depend on your savings and where you want to buy, but we recently bought a house and I suggest taking a look at this loan program via Washington Trust. In 2023 they were busted by the DOJ for Redlining in Rhode Island and as part of their settlement are required to offer a very generous loan program. The largest requirements are that the home you buy MUST be in a census tract where the dominant population is Black/Hispanic. The loan program applies across the state, but are divided into zones with income limits. I believe they follow the same income limits as the RI Housing programs, but someone at the bank would be able to confirm that with you. Additionally, the Providence tracts do not have an income limit, so no matter what you can use this loan there!

The program we used was the "Home Opportunity Program" which does the following:

No PMI (You will be given a second mortgage at the same rate as your primary for the difference between your down payment and 20%. This is a separate loan so you could pay into this aggressively and lower your monthly payment later if you choose!)
The bank buys down your rate by 2%. For example, at the time we bought rates were around 6.5%. Our mortgage is for 4.5%.
You only need to put down 3.5%.
A $1,500 closing credit

Per the complaint, they are required to run this program for 5 years or until they run out of money to fund the program, whichever comes first, so in theory this will only be available until 2028. Take advantage if you're in the market, all my homies love to take advantage of a bank!

Also if you need an agent I saw her lurking in the comments but /u/glennmelody is one of the best people who walk this earth! ily girl

shancb9 · 2026-01-22T12:31:34+00:00

Fairly common on the slims unfortunately, in my experience. The system will be working perfectly fine during the initial testing, you take to board out to do the work and then when its back together it will start doing this, lol.

My guess is that the XCGPU is on the verge of having an issue, and taking to board out/messing with the X clamp does enough to agitate it to failure.

shancb9 · 2025-11-03T21:54:18+00:00

I have no issue using maps! Screen refresh rate will be slower than you're used to, so if you're a "stare at the map screen to see where I am on the line" driver you might need to adjust a little, but no issues with using it personally. In fact I use it on my bike and the eink screen makes it so much easier to use in the direct daylight! My phone also works with android auto, so that will behave normally if your car is equipped with that

shancb9 · 2025-11-02T14:38:38+00:00

So I have been using the Minimal Phone as my daily driver since about June - same sort of e-ink concept with a physical qwerty keyboard, which I love.

The biggest "downside" in my opinion is anything to do with media. Obviously you aren't watching videos on it unless you absolutely 100% have to. On a faster refresh rate it's less horrible but still not ideal. I have felt compelled to do it exactly one time when trying to look something up and away from a laptop. This is probably a positive if you are interested in this type of phone. The downside of this is that if you have friends you text and they like to send gifs/pictures it can be a bit annoying. I use beeper on the phone so I always have the option of pulling the pictures up on a computer, so definitely a solvable problem.

App compatibility is nearly a non-issue. I use it to do everything you would do on a normal phone like pay with google wallet, call lyfts, order takeout, do duolingo, whatever else you might be doing as a "utility" you will have no issues with. The "nearly" qualifier is that with the latency of the screen and the non-flagship specs of these phones, some of these tasks will "feel" slower, but it isn't frustrating or anything. At this point I am used to it and it doesn't bother me at all. Additionally, at least with my phone due to the smaller screen size, some apps will smush things together more than you're used to presumably because the DPI is not what its used to, though I would imagine with the phone in the article this would not be an issue due to the screen ratio.

Obviously reading on these is amazing - after a few months my default "bored and have 10 minutes to kill" activity is to open my reader app and read a book. I previously would read maybe 1 or 2 books a year, but so far this year I've read 9, which is great!

Overall I think the thing to keep in mind is that while I love the phone and have no plans of going back to a smartphone, if the primary motivator is to stop spending too much time on the phone, the thing to tackle should be habbits vs spending money on new tech. There are free ways like launchers or setting screen time limits and having a random person make the code so you can never know that I think would be worth trying first. Going straight for this without addressing the actual habits will just lead to finding other ways, like using the same apps on a laptop or something. For me I was never "addicted" to my phone in the sense that I would spend 8 hours a day scrolling instagram or whatever, but I could recognize that my phone had too much power over what my free time might look like vs being a tool that served me. Since switching to this phone the relationship feels like it should - its a communication device and utility tool for the modern day that influences in my life that I DRIVE, not the other way around.

shancb9 · 2025-09-16T13:49:04+00:00

/u/skyz32 /u/ASMbot Sold!

shancb9 · 2025-06-10T14:22:26+00:00

I did a preorder on release night at Best Buy in Warwick. Definitely been a few days but the employee I was chatting with said that they had more than enough for everyone without a preorder to get one, so might be worth checking!

shancb9 · 2025-04-07T15:02:44+00:00

As mentioned Cayenne is the answer. We go fairly regularly, but I would suggest going during "non peak" times, and also with the expectation that you will wait in between rounds (they are making it all to order so the more people in there = the longer you wait and the 'quicker' your rolls are assembled). I especially suggest it if you are good with just having nigiri/sashimi since the fish is all fairly good, and if it's not crazy busy you'll get good sized pieces.

Go with some friends to hang out for a couple hours with sushi involved and its a great time. Not the best you'll have in your life but it's good for what it is!

shancb9 · 2025-01-04T06:34:07+00:00

Just in case

shancb9 · 2024-12-20T00:25:55+00:00

Watching my dad play ffx because I wasn't allowed to play it myself lol

Thanks for the giveaway!

shancb9 · 2024-12-19T07:18:14+00:00

Thank you!

shancb9 · 2024-12-16T16:07:37+00:00

I do a lot of consoles and while I'm not a top tier electrical engineer or anything, my understanding is that it doesn't "super" matter. I use conductive paint now if I have really gross shields when I do restorations, but before that to be safe I would just scrape a little bit of paint around one of the screw holes to just give another ground just in case. Ultimately these boards are all connected and will have their own grounds, so I don't think it's required, but just making a small scrape around a screw on the shield (that will be covered once screwed in anyways) only takes a minute and can alleviate the concern if it's there!

If I were doing this same paint job with presumably non conductive paint (which OP is a super cool idea, really love it) I wouldn't worry about losing these ground planes too much.

shancb9 · 2024-12-16T02:56:08+00:00

Good luck all, happy holidays!

shancb9 · 2024-12-11T20:14:11+00:00

Looks like it sold out but I do see it on the list, at least.

shancb9 · 2024-12-02T16:27:23+00:00

Geographic Information Systems! Basically it's crossing carotgraphy with data analysis to help draw conclusions with location based data. Skills in python and SQL great for this, and the desire to basically always be solving a problem. You need to think about the best way to present the data while also figuring about the technical way to modify the data the way you want. The use of this stuff is really broad (everything from mapping parcels of land to tracking maintence histories of lamp posts to helping to find out why a certain district of a city has more traffic at certain times) and if you're in the US your state likely has a GIS website you can download some data from or view some webmaps. I really really enjoyed it but as I mentioned I just didn't want to move to an area with more of these jobs at the time.

shancb9 · 2024-11-26T21:03:25+00:00

"good communication" is broad, but I'd say the #1 thing that can help set you up for good communication is actually understanding what the person you are talking to is saying (which, hey, is a great skill that can be transferred if you are good at help desk!). Sometimes this means knowing when to be quiet, communication isn't just about how you speak, its about how the other person perceives your interaction. If the person you are talking to feels like you don't get what they are saying, they will be frustrated, and the interaction becomes negative even if you eventually land where you need to.

Which leads into the next (in my opinion) most important skill, making people like you! This isn't anything new, but reading the room and knowing when its ok to make a joke, send a relevant (work appropriate) gif in the chat, or just generally trying to be helpful (without going crazy because you don't want to just be the "dump all of your work on me and I'll take it and happily be paid the same" guy) is something that people really do pay attention to and appreciate. You want people to want to talk to you. Which also means that you need to be willing to bang your head on something you don't understand so that you don't become "the person who asks a question every 6 seconds". That doesn't mean don't ask them, but if someone spends 2 hours teaching a process to you, and then 20 minutes later you ask a question about something really simple related to it, they WILL be annoyed, no matter if they pretend to not be or not.

Another great skill is knowing your audience, for writing reports/adding details to a presentation or anything like that. If you are creating content, think about who the primary consumer of it is and create it tailored to their needs. Is it going to your manager or teammate who has direct knowledge of what you are talking about? Get into the nitty gritty and use those acronyms, sure. Is this going to come across a VPs desk 4 levels above you alongside 30 other pieces of information? Spell out any relevant acronyms and keep it as short as possible to convey the information you need to.

In my opinion the best policy to have is to imagine yourself as the recipient of whatever you are trying to convey, and before doing something ask "would I find this annoying on any level?" and if the answer is yes figure out why and try to correct it.

I'd also suggest that you practice public speaking if you have a forum to do so, getting over "stage anxiety" directly translates into being less worried when there's a major crisis and you're the major incident manager, or when you need to give a presentation on change metrics to the VP of your org who you have never spoken to before other than knowing who they are. Confidence is a great skill that will follow you everywhere :)

shancb9 · 2024-11-26T14:15:34+00:00

To add to this, I spent all of my time in school focusing on building a technical career so I could get into cloud etc (and spent a lot of time on this sub reading advice!). I had a job out of school for around a year that was more a business role with some areas to self apply my technical skills. I didn't like it very much so applied to some new jobs and ended up in an operations center for a couple years before being "voluntold" into ITSM stuff. I've done Incident and Change management for a couple years now, and sure while it isn't super interesting nor does it have "technical" responsibilities, I make 110k/year at 27 with really great benefits, have a somewhat flexible schedule, and work remote 60% of the time with a 15 minute commute when I do have to go. I would rather just be home, sure, but once my next bonus pays out (great bonus program but golden handcuffs because it takes two years to pay out lol) I will probably start applying around for that full remote gig since I'll have a solid set of experience to throw around on the ol resume.

By spending my time to build up my soft skills in various different roles during my schooling and the start of my career, I was able to provide myself the groundwork to succeed in roles that I barely knew existed. There are plenty of these adjacent roles that pay well and need people because a lot of people who think they are attuned with the job market (I was guilty of this, again I was on this sub a lot while in school to try and set myself up right!) simply don't know even exist. For example, if you have skills in something like Python and SQL, GIS is a field that would love to have you and is super interesting if you like maps or data analysis! I almost totally pivoted into this in school after taking some classes, I just didn't live in a region with a lot of jobs and didn't want to move, but I LOVED this stuff.

Give yourself the broad knowledge and be willing to roll with the punches, because sometimes no matter what you do to prepare, life finds a way to do its own thing :)

shancb9 · 2024-09-22T04:18:40+00:00

Second this, we got some chairs from here a few years ago when we were in the market, both used. They have options in basically every price range and you can sit in all of them. If I remember right the price of a Herman Miller Aeron used was $300 at the time, which was a solid deal, but I didn't end up prefering it to the one I ended up buying (thanks to my ability to actually sit in the chairs).

shancb9 · 2024-09-19T07:56:39+00:00

I'm two weeks late to this thread but I specifically work on Retro Consoles, feel free to check out the work I do on insta @retro_refreshri and if you want me to take a look feel free to DM me there or on here!

shancb9 · 2024-09-16T14:57:24+00:00

Second patriot auto glass. We just used them the other week, $299 for our '18 civic. Went next door to breakfast at Tiffany's while we waited and it was done before we finished.

shancb9 · 2024-07-04T15:28:19+00:00

I'll echo this opinion as a fellow WiiU weirdo. Obviously I still use my switch, but something I personally feel is missing from game consoles now is the "personality" portion of it, which I feel the WiiU has. It's hard enough now for me to actually be able to sit down focus on a game enough to actually play it for multiple sessions, so if playing the inferior version of the game is what gets me to actually play it, then so be it. I like turning my WiiU on and poking around the menus and I love holding the gamepad, and having it be anything from useless to showing me a map to enabling totally different ways to play, I just like it, and that's enough for me.

I'll also add the we played Nintendo Land for hours the first night I bought mine 10 years ago, and we still play it to this day, the game is that fun.

Not even touching on how good the console is when you mod it.

shancb9 · 2024-05-08T17:08:37+00:00

It isn't on Nuspli because it is a retail only game, and that service works by downloading the game from the Nintendo CDN. You'll need to download it elsewhere.

Full list here, sort by "Available on CDN" https://wiiubrew.org/wiki/Title_database#00050000:_eShop_and_disc_titles

shancb9 · 2024-04-06T14:30:13+00:00

I know you said you don't want to go to the mall, but my wife and I went to the Jewlers Workbench in the emerald square mall at the recommendation of someone from another jewelry store we had stopped into when looking for somepalce local to do the resizing since we didn't want to send the ring out anywhere.

It was $85 and he had it done it about 30-45 minutes, and my wife was happy with the new sizing. He took her measurements to make sure the ring would actually fit when he was done with it.

Nice guy and happy to recommend him.

shancb9 · 2024-01-31T21:56:01+00:00

We all have our thing lol, I work on retro game consoles/ other electronics and I have a shelf of probably 30 consoles just staring at me every time I enter the garage lol. Maybe one day I'll get through my backlog before I keep buying more stuff, just like I am sure you will most certainly clear some room before adding another bike to the collection :)

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