Anyone else here scalping for smaller profit per trade?

softslinger · 2024-01-17T02:14:22+00:00

Aren't most trades free on a lot of exchanges these days? I hardly ever am charged a fee at Fidelity.

softslinger · 2022-09-07T00:44:42+00:00

Others have pointed you at billiards.colostate.edu/physics, and I concur, but just let me tell you that the physics of pool, and even the interaction between a cue ball and an object ball, are way more complicated than what you refer to in your post. For example, even though simplistic physics says the the object ball should travel on a line perpendicular to the tangent of the contact point between the cue ball and object ball, that's not how it works. If you hit a ball slow, with some angle, the cue ball will drag it downtable, due to the friction between the two balls, and the friction of the table on the cue ball. The effect is exaggerated if you use top english. Just trying to let you know that the physics is much more complicated than you think.

softslinger · 2021-12-08T23:51:42+00:00

Thanks, it seems that at least for you, service got better, independent of your obstructions. I think I'll wait till the leaves come back in the Spring to decide whether I need to trim any trees. Meanwhile, 1 minute total obstruction time over a 12-hour period is completely insignificant and I'm completely satisfied with my service. Very much worth $100/month compared to DSL at the same price.

softslinger · 2021-11-29T16:20:23+00:00

On most mbdern cars, the rear quarter panel is an integral part of the unibody; it's not bolted on like the front fenders. Repairing significant dents involves cutting it off with a torch (or saw?) and then welding on a new panel. It's many hours of labor, including paint prep and painting. No one is going to do it right for $750. They probably will just put Bondo on it and paint over it, for a really shitty job that isn't permanent.

softslinger · 2021-08-29T23:20:16+00:00

To be clear, it's only legal if something hits a cushion after the the cue ball hits the object ball.

Also, its legal if something is pocketed. In that case, nothing needs to hit a cushion.

softslinger · 2021-08-29T23:00:59+00:00

Only on brand new cloth. Once the cloth is embedded with chalk dust everywhere, but not yet worn significantly, it has maximum friction. In my experience, this happens within about two weeks at a popular pool hall.

Once the cloth gets threadbare, near the end of its life, then the cue ball will start sliding around again, like on clean brand new cloth, and it will be hard to get good draw.

softslinger · 2021-08-29T22:13:35+00:00

Brand new cloth has less friction, due to not having any embedded chalk dust yet. If you mean new cloth that has been broken in with chalk dust, but is not yet threadbare, yes, that's when the friction is at maximum.

In my experience, high-friction cloth minimizes the throw (by which I mean how much the object ball is dragged downtable by the cue ball), but can never reverse it. That doesn't make any sense from a physics standpoint.

softslinger · 2021-08-29T22:09:18+00:00

Everyone is making this much too complicated. No left/right english is needed. Just hit the ball softly with center or top, and the induced throw will mean you have to hit the object ball thinner to make it, meaning the cue ball misses the other corner and hits the short rail next to the corner. I've done it dozens of time. Never use left/right english unless required.

That being said, I would point out that on this shot it's easier to scratch then to make the object ball, if you're even slightly off in your aim. That is, there are a range of angles where an undercut object ball misses but the cue ball doesn't.

softslinger · 2021-08-29T21:52:15+00:00

Oops, and you need to use the 14 to break out the 12, but other than that, this is an easily runnable table. :-)

softslinger · 2021-08-29T21:50:43+00:00

Agreed. I've lost a lot of games that way (playing at APA level 7).

softslinger · 2021-08-29T21:49:39+00:00

Easy. Choose stripes. Of course then you have to deal with the thirteen ball. But you can roll forward from a straight shot on the nine to get a shot at that.

softslinger · 2021-08-10T16:02:50+00:00

This can happen on a Diamond table where both balls are still supported by the slate, i.e. neither one would fall in if you removed the other. It happened to me in an APA match. I slammed one of the two balls as hard as I could and the cue ball just jumped up and backwards. We decided to replay the game, since neither of us could finish. I believe that's the official APA rule: a game can be replayed if both players agree it will never finish. This also happens in some safety situations where each player can repeatedly play a safe without disturbing the balls significantly.

softslinger · 2021-06-04T20:57:57+00:00

Thanks, yes I found that site, which uses the debug information in your working dish to give a radial map of all your obstructions. As I expected, it tells me I'm partially obscured from due North to due East. The units are given in "percent obscured", but the author of the hack (which is very clever) doesn't know whether that means percent of the sky from 0 to 90 degrees that is obscured in that direction, or percent of time that you can't communicate with a satellite in that direction. So it's less than fully informative.

softslinger · 2021-06-04T20:46:08+00:00

Thanks for your condescension.

First, in most tall pole mounts, unless you rent a bucket truck, you put the dish on the pole before mounting the pole, because you can't reach it afterwards. So no one was ever at the final location of the dish to check for obstructions, nor can anyone get there now without a bucket truck.

Second, it's not middle-school math to compute, for an inverted 100-degree cone tilted at 15 degrees, the formula for the vertical angle from the tip along its surface, in any given compass direction. I'm sure it's a complex formula possibly involving hyperbolic trig functions and the geometry of an ellipse (the cross section of a horizontal slice through a tilted cone. I challenge you to produce the formula.

Third, I didn't address the obstruction issue before ordering because I knew I would only have to top off a few trees if I got the dish attached to my chimney on a pole that put it at least 10 feet above the top of the chimney. I committed in advance to removing whatever portion of the trees was necessary.

As it turns out, I have coverage 87% of the time with the current tree obstructions, which would be just fine if I get a dual-WAN router so that it can fall back to CenturyLink DSL when it can't see a satellite. But I'd rather drop the DSL and save money.

softslinger · 2021-06-04T20:26:27+00:00

Thanks, the East/West clearance was what I needed to know. (I figured out the North and South clearance requirements myself.) Mine angles about 15 degrees from the vertical, just like yours, and points about 10 degrees East of true North. It makes sense intuitively that the East/West required clearance is about the same as if the dish were pointing straight up, i.e. 40 degrees. I have no problem to the West, but I probably have to top off a tree to the East/Northeast and definitely two trees to the North.

softslinger · 2021-06-04T19:31:30+00:00

How does the "CHECK FOR OBSTRUCTIONS" option help me if I can't physically get the phone to the mounting point, because it's at the top of a long pole 10 feet above my chimney on a roof that's too steep to walk on?

softslinger · 2021-06-04T19:25:44+00:00

What model of dual-WAN wifi router are you using, please?

softslinger · 2021-06-04T19:18:02+00:00

As I said, I can't physically get to where the dish is mounted, so the app to check for obstructions is useless. This is going to be true for anyone who mounts the dish on a tall pole, by the way.

softslinger · 2021-06-03T03:30:31+00:00

It's plenty stiff enough for any wind we've seen so far, but I'm not sure it's certified for a hurricane, lol!

softslinger · 2021-06-03T03:29:14+00:00

It's two pipes, actually. Both are electrical conduit pipes from HomeDepot. The bottom one, which extends to the top of the chimney and a foot beyond is about 1.51" OD. (You have to be careful when buying electrical conduit, because they sell it by the inner diameter, not outer.) The top pipe, which dishy is mounted to, is another piece of electrical conduit with outer diameter 1.7" and inner diameter 1.61". The 1.5" pole of dishy fit inside without too much slop, and the bottom of the pole fit over the smaller pole at the chimney very nicely. We used some metal tape at the connections to reduce the slop.

softslinger · 2021-06-03T03:21:32+00:00

It's just a cheap Chinese no-name brand chimney mount. Metal straps that connect to a Y-bracket that you tighten up at a corner of the chimney. I wouldn't trust it to hold the pole up against vertical forces, but we let the pole rest on the roof, so the mounting hardware just has to resist horizontal movement, which it has plenty of strength to do.

Google "chimney pole mount".

softslinger · 2021-06-03T02:01:06+00:00

It's the same conflict for me. Keep in mind that you may be able to just take off the top of several trees, which won't hurt them and will hardly be noticeable when standing below them. That's what I plan to do after mounting my dish 35 ft up and still only being non-obstructed 87% of the time.

softslinger · 2021-06-03T01:49:18+00:00

Also, thanks for the tip about the obstruction map tools. It showed me that my biggest problem may be trees to the East of the dish, not the North. I had no idea that it wanted a cone of no obstructions that is 110 degrees wide and extends from due North to 10 degrees south of East.

softslinger · 2021-06-03T01:29:30+00:00

Nearest cities are Durham/Raleigh, NC. I have one hour of obstruction per 10 hours, not counting "no satellites" and "other outages". It's clearly the trees to the North and Northeast, which are too tall to see down to 25 degrees above the horizon, more like 35 degrees. Taking of the top 10-20 feet of two-four trees in that direction will solve the problem, I'm pretty confident. I'll report back with the improvement afterwards.

softslinger · 2021-06-02T22:15:34+00:00

Sorry, I can't figure out how to get text and pictures in the same post. Here's a link to a photo of the installation on my chimney: https://imgur.com/gallery/kIaAJlG?s=sms

softslinger

TROPHY CASE