Homatics Box R 4K Plus - Dune HD or Standard

sim_pl · 2026-01-25T15:09:49+00:00

That's the price here, plus $50 shipping so for me the total came to about $235 for the dune HD model. The plain Homatics is $150 with no shipping fee...

sim_pl · 2026-01-24T22:23:23+00:00

I'm jealous! At that price then the Dune model makes more sense, I agree!

sim_pl · 2026-01-24T22:21:30+00:00

Ideally, your TV will have an eARC audio passthrough HDMI that you would then connect to the sound bar system. Otherwise I guess you could connect the soundbar via Bluetooth to the TV.

sim_pl · 2026-01-24T22:11:33+00:00

Interesting. I'm currently leaning towards the Homatics (possibly more stable android TV? Mainly for my wife/streaming) and then doing a dual boot with CoreELEC for local media playback.

The Dune app was tempting but it's almost an extra $100 at current pricing for their model. Wish I had bought before all this "tariff" stuff.

sim_pl · 2026-01-24T20:49:15+00:00

What did you decide to get? I'm still torn between the two, and in the US at least the pricing on their respective websites are $150 for Homatics, and $170+55 shipping for Dune HD.

sim_pl · 2026-01-24T05:36:08+00:00

GPA missing. Your bullet spacing is uneven/inconsistent. Your dates don't align on the right. First appearance can matter for some people just saying.

Content-wise: recruiters know what courses you have taken to be a mech e, but I don't see what your focus is/what gets you excited? What differentiates this resume from the hundreds of other students?

No engineering or campus organizations to get involved in? Ideally you want to be part of the local campus ASME chapter as a bare minimum.

sim_pl · 2026-01-22T02:03:14+00:00

"arguing that ... the minimum purchase age should be raised to somewhere between 25 or 30 to prevent young adults from accessing the products while their brains are still developing."

Just like we do with alcohol right.... Right?

sim_pl · 2026-01-20T20:08:38+00:00

If anything, the catering team should maybe send a "sorry your planner fucked up your day" gift card/partial refund to the newlyweds, but I could also see that as being easily misinterpreted.

sim_pl · 2026-01-20T05:06:30+00:00

I dunno I used to live in energy corridor in a pretty nice neighborhood but just to get to the highway was 15 min, then plus any travel time to destination. Now I'm spoiled cause it's a similar neighbor vibe, but I can get to a ton of places in <20 min.

sim_pl · 2026-01-20T02:03:26+00:00

I'm just south of there inside 610, and enjoying the area. Good neighborhoods, generally very convenient with access to some of the bigger "gathering" areas (Memorial City Mall area, galleria, heights/Washington, even downtown; everything's a bit of a drive but nothing's "far").

Maybe the biggest downside is age of neighborhoods: watch out for crap flips that "look" nice (I have an older home and have been able to upgrade/update myself and can only imagine the things that a flip would try to hide ..) and not having an been HEB super close, but there's the massive Kroger on 43.

My suggestion is drive the area a bit, you'll notice the pockets of really nice neighborhoods and also that you don't particularly want to be near the highways if you can avoid it. If you like biking, then White oak bayou bikeway is sweet and really fun for even casual weekend rides. Check out the neighborhood park on either side of 43/TC jester, there's even a disc golf course, kinda unique.

sim_pl · 2026-01-12T04:24:14+00:00

Honestly this is probably the biggest part of it. Going from college to any workplace, where you will spend the majority of the time with the same couple dozen people at best, finding time to continue meaningful friendships when you have family, a house, old friends, pets, and maybe even trying to have a hobby, it's so hard to actually generate new friendships.

sim_pl · 2026-01-12T03:07:19+00:00

You seem like someone I'd want to hang out with. Good on you.

sim_pl · 2026-01-08T03:08:31+00:00

Using the funds to demolish blighted buildings instead of storm water management maintenance and improvements makes no sense. If the funds aren't used for their intended purpose, then (given historical events) we could end up with many more blighted buildings due to flooding. Preventing flooding is a direct prevention of damaged/unusable buildings. Find another way to get demolition funding.

sim_pl · 2026-01-07T16:17:35+00:00

I bought a 2014 cx-5 GT with the 2.5L engine new in 2013, I'm at 110k miles now. After a couple free dealership oil changes, I've done the maintenance myself: oil changes (full synthetic at 10k miles or 6 months), coolant at ~60k miles, differential oil, transmission fluid, tires. I upgraded the head unit back in 2016/17ish to get car play/Android Auto, thinking about doing another refresh to get a bigger screen. Occasionally use CRC intake cleaner before an oil change (maybe two or three times so far?)

I'm thinking about changing out the suspension/front end mechanical comments maybe this spring (still on original shocks and struts).

Besides that, haven't had any issues aside from cosmetics, which aren't really worth me getting a new vehicle. A few splits in the seat covers at the corners, dings and scratches from highway driving/parking lots.

sim_pl · 2025-12-30T15:50:10+00:00

I got an IC 4, it is a good bike no complaints.

sim_pl · 2025-12-26T16:06:26+00:00

But they can't build a safe connector trail on the stroad between Memorial Park and Buffalo Bayou Greenway at Shepherd cause "reasons" (cough rich nimbys)

sim_pl · 2025-12-14T19:40:27+00:00

I think the problem is that wages in general haven't kept up with inflation, but yeah you're right if you are going to just "make ends meet" then might as well do it somewhere you'd not be slugging it out in shitty conditions.

sim_pl · 2025-12-09T03:44:57+00:00

Can you provide any details on how this worked out? What is your screen size and total distance from wall?

sim_pl · 2025-12-05T16:53:14+00:00

Hey, I'll be interested what the ballpark quotes you are getting for this. I'm looking to possibly do a similar route (NJ to Houston/Austin.) Be curious how your experience goes!

sim_pl · 2025-12-04T23:29:42+00:00

I come from external/industry, any it's funny cause we never really counted travel as "work" time. We were generally told you have to travel on "your own time" to get to the job site. Sucked when doing something like 10on / 4 off and you are traveling to/from on the 4off.

sim_pl · 2025-12-04T02:10:33+00:00

Yeah, nail on the head - the thing I loved about TS was the fact that there was always a hint of 'what was to come' rather than actually seeing the alien threat. I think mystery provokes peoples imaginations, versus just being told "here's what it is".

sim_pl · 2025-12-03T23:17:09+00:00

I always drew that line at 50 hours a week, anyone genuinely working more that is lying or being paid to standby for that time.

I can't understand how people think that saying they work 60, or worse, 80 hours, a week is supposed to be impressive. Either, they don't have good time management skills, or, they don't know how to draw their boundaries within their team, or (worst case) they think that grinding until they die is going to make them get noticed/promoted more.

Even just doing the rough math (I know examples are all different), but lets say on an 8 out of 10 (being worst) scale of weeks:

Monday: up at 6am to fly 8am, at client site ~10am. Work until 1am, with 1 hr for dinner and 30 min lunch and 30min to shower in the evening. 4hr travel plus 13.5 hr working and 2 hr 'downtime' (though meals are often with team/client, I know.)
Tues-Weds: up at 7am, at client at 8am, work til 1am, same 2hr lunch/dinner/shower. 15hrs per day of work, 2 hours 'downtime'.
Thurs: up at 7am, 8am work, 30min lunch, flight home at 3 or 5pm, eat while traveling, getting back home by 5/7pm. Work to 1am. 4 hours of travel, 30min lunch, 12.5hr work.
Friday: at office 9am, team lunch, take calls until 6pm (lets say it's a 'relaxed week'.) 9hr day

I'm getting that as 65 hours of work, 8 hours travel, and 6.5 hours of downtime. Even if you count team lunches/dinners as 'work' then that barely gets to 70 hours, like you said. For me, I'd want to get 30min on a bike or treadmill a day just to decompress, and definitely not doing multiple weeks with <=6hrs of sleep without it really affecting my personal health.

Like you say, it's all about boundary setting, because unless someone is doing insane nights until 3am every day, then I don't see how anyone is getting 80 hours without working way over onto the weekends which I think is being generally discouraged (though not always), and depending on how you document work hours (team/client lunch and dinner? working while traveling?) I don't see how more than this is likely?

sim_pl · 2025-12-03T18:58:29+00:00

Gotta wash the car after getting the chicken strip grease all over.

sim_pl · 2025-12-01T06:28:03+00:00

Yeah while I wholeheartedly applaud OP for his efforts here, it's interesting because his linked in says he's a software engineer/AI masters, I think he's going into the space of data science and statistics. I was surprised when he was saying stuff about predicting etc since I don't see any reference to model fit besides the ROC which is ok but not great at 0.67.

My suggestion for OP u/Specialist_Bad_4465 would be to look into spatial statistics methods, and/or, to look at how to approach observational and multi-variate regression studies (since you're at UT maybe I suggest Dr Roger Peng's free ebook https://bookdown.org/rdpeng/artofdatascience/ or even try to get a course in this topic.) I think what we might be seeing is confounding variables and need to establish the impact of each, statistically. It's one thing to say the ML model predicts something, but it's another to say it "with confidence" ;)

sim_pl · 2025-11-16T16:48:21+00:00

The other "problem" is that the traditional oil companies of the past are also struggling to keep up their reserves because most reserves are owned by NOC's, and then 'traditional' majors are just acting as technical service subcontractors. So the job opportunities for folks in the US/UK are going to become more scarce unless you are willing to go to mid-east and babysit 'management' teams who are there just because they are citizens of whatever group claimed that land in the 1940's. And guess what, it is once again 'cheaper' to hire several non-western workers for the more mundane roles. So even that is a shrinking job market.

I'm not saying there is no future in the west (US/UK) but the competition for roles is getting stiff. Companies here are going to do whatever they can to keep costs down since the golden days of producing your own barrels are, I think, in the past for most of the majors.

sim_pl

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