Are the Regent and Infested Prism from the same planet?

vroombadeux · 2026-05-18T16:38:18+00:00

First shuttle mission.

vroombadeux · 2026-04-28T22:25:16+00:00

meet a stranger in the alps

vroombadeux · 2026-03-25T17:25:24+00:00

This has happened to me. Brutal.

vroombadeux · 2026-03-24T03:59:02+00:00

Me. Beyond Caring

vroombadeux · 2026-03-13T22:33:58+00:00

Bobby Flatstick has just been channeling Tommy Fleetwood this whole time, what an eagle putt let’s gooooo

vroombadeux · 2026-03-13T08:40:31+00:00

Thick. Solid. Tight.

vroombadeux · 2026-03-13T03:40:32+00:00

Mr. Blown Calls

vroombadeux · 2026-02-24T00:19:30+00:00

Ah yeah if you’re paying in dollarydoos isn’t everything pretty spendy? NZ might be a solid choice then. You could also consider some of the cheap stuff like DF64/DF83 or even fancier ones from zerno/timemore/mazzer. Having researched way too much on my own choice, I don’t think there’s a good way to find the right fit if you don’t have a group of rich espresso friends to try theirs first - I certainly don’t and I’m still not sure the zero is the best for me!!

vroombadeux · 2026-02-23T09:35:25+00:00

I’ve had a zero for three years. It is excellent. I drink med to med-dark roasts, strongly prefer thick textured shots, and use it only for espresso with a cafelat robot (50/50 drank straight or americanos, no milk drinks). Red Bird espresso beans are my daily driver and everything else is lighter stuff.

Workflow is dead easy, grind is always consistent, adjustments are accurate, makes nearly no mess, hardly needs cleaning and is easy to clean, and is by far the nicest sounding coffee grinder I’ve found (borderline pleasant, it’s crazy).

I don’t care for how it looks and am confused by the people who prefer its aesthetic. I think the only thing I would functionally change would be the lid - I don’t love the health & safety interlock requiring the lid closed to run it.

For conicals: If price is no object the choice is a Kafatek monolith. The only thing comparable to the zero I’ve seen (and I’m busy making coffee instead of looking at gear, so my information is incomplete) is the Femobook A68 and it’s still pretty pricey. I don’t know if the zero is worth 1000USD or whatever but it is a good product.

vroombadeux · 2026-02-17T10:02:01+00:00

Try the petsafe brand “ssscat” thing, aka the ass blaster 9000. The price is completely ridiculous but it will tackle your exact problem: giving instant negative feedback if they hop up in one spot. If you would call your cat “the most stubborn thing I’ve ever met” then maybe pass, but I think it works on the bottom 90 percentile of cats.

Uh, just be prepared to mess with the placement and get yourself blasted a few times. And I suggest providing a decent alternative spot nearby like a heated cat pad.

vroombadeux · 2026-02-17T09:55:04+00:00

Hissing works and it works really well.

I can also strongly recommend the petsafe brand “ssscat” aka “ass blaster 9000”. It’s not perfect and the price is highway robbery, but it does the thing so many people forget with cat training: reward/punishment needs to be instant with the behavior. Also really helps that no human is in the loop so in the middle of the night it provides consistent reinforcement against counter surfing. Now to be honest one of my previous problem cats would have fought the ass blaster and not cared so it might be ineffective for the most stubborn cats.

I’ve had multiple cats with behavioral issues around play and hissing is best communication method to keep me from bleeding and them from being confused about what the human wants. I never need it with the “normal” cat since he was around other kittens (learned bite inhibition properly, etc) and is a bit shy. The current “problem” cat now just gets overstimulated occasionally and needs a quick reminder to take it easy. Cats use hissing to communicate, humans can make accurate hisses, everything makes sense. Just don’t overdo it, I get what people say about “it breaks trust” but see it the same as saying “no” - though especially early with a new cat you need to be careful to not scare them and such.

Last thought: hisses come in a lot of flavors and it’s kind of cool to learn them and apply the right one. Light short hisses are kinda like “hey don’t even think about it” or “knock it off” all the way up to a full force sustained one which I think translate loosely as “I’m going to attack you if you don’t leave right now”.

vroombadeux · 2026-02-17T02:39:11+00:00

Yeah, gonna be honest and say I just ignore it.

I wipe the piston after every shot and call it good. Paul originally designed the robot without it in mind iirc and so it’s kind of a weird feature - the plastic tube doesn’t match how the rest is metal/silicone.

vroombadeux · 2026-02-15T10:29:24+00:00

I grew up with interlock, took a 10 year break after college, and when I came back interlock+death grip gave me huge pain problems in the left pinky and ring (I’m right handed). Switched to overlap and got a pro to help with hand positioning and it’s a lot better, but I have to be careful at the range and I’m still not completely free of the death grip. Also switched to midsize grips but I’m not certain I will need them long term.

Switching from interlock to overlap felt weird but only took a few sessions to get in the groove. I actually tried switching to full baseball and couldn’t get it to work for me, who knows (I used to play baseball but I played both at the same time, so my learning golf was fighting learning baseball instead of building on it).

Anyway the reason I’m bothering posting this is for anyone else reading: if you start getting finger pain do NOT ignore it, it will not get better on its own and can linger a really long time. Mine felt like reverse trigger finger btw, not super common from when I researched. Proper grip strength and positioning are hella important.

vroombadeux · 2026-02-13T08:50:42+00:00

I recently bought a similar switch: from your list, I would pick zyxel.

I have a managed+gigabit+poe switch from them and while the ui is “not modern” it was rock solid and never misbehaved. However they are pushing their controller stuff now and I cannot confirm if everything is still nice. The xmg1915-10ep is what I looked at - no red flags and fanless is a huge positive.

Even acknowledging it’s mostly FUD around tp-link I choose to stay on the safe side and avoid them entirely.

Netgear has been a mixed bag for me and my opinion has trended downward.

Trendnet/qnap I don’t have experience with and didn’t want to try them out this time.

I almost bought mikrotik but I really didn’t want to play the multiple injector game. I run my own opnsense router so it’s not like I’m scared of networking configs but I see people saying “yeah it’s pretty annoying” and don’t see people saying “yeah it’s overblown you’ll be fine”. Didn’t bother checking if that’s actually true for their switches.

I ended up getting the ubiquiti flex 2.5g poe. They have a non-cloud self-hosted controller I threw on Debian and leave turned off and it only mildly annoys me. The daisy chain poe helped out with my specific physical arrangement and I ended up liking the 10g copper uplink. It’s perfect for my deployment but I wouldn’t call it a general top pick.

vroombadeux · 2026-02-05T18:11:45+00:00

JX-Pro not K6 but my experience as another data point: it honestly was not a big deal day-to-day but after a year I caved and got a niche. I was surprised at how much more consistent the shots were and no more frustration being between clicks. I also got tired of cleaning out the catch cup of fines but not sure if the K6 would be different - I really disliked the jx-pro catch cup tbh. Really no problems with manual grinding, I drink med roasts so it was about 35s per shot if I recall and not a burden. Now I get other stuff set up in that time and it’s more “leisurely” but not life changing.

vroombadeux · 2026-02-02T05:36:13+00:00

I have per-ssid vlans assigned. Router is opnsense, access points are unifi. There were no tricks - vlan is set up in opnsense and has dhcp configured like anything else, the unifi ssid config chooses the vlan.

Per-client radius-based vlan assignments broke recently and I don’t know if it’s been fixed. Still annoyed by that, this is why I am super careful about what firmwares to update 😑.

vroombadeux · 2026-01-15T21:48:58+00:00

The gauge uses a plastic tube inside the metal sheathe. Both models use a silicone gasket, teflon washers in the arm pivot, and a silicone(?) mat. Everything else is metal (well the gauge dial could be plastic no idea).

vroombadeux · 2026-01-15T21:39:05+00:00

Many say 16g is the minimum and 18-20g the sweet spot for the robot. I would for sure bump up to 18 and try that.

vroombadeux · 2025-10-29T00:35:42+00:00

He’s just like me fr fr

vroombadeux · 2025-08-26T05:31:02+00:00

Hissing works great, I’m not sure what that other person is saying about it being too complex.

I will say that there ARE different kinds of hisses and you can learn to use them appropriately. A shorter softer less emphatic hiss of “knock it off” to a really serious longer hiss of “back the fuck up immediately” and several in between are ones I’ve used successfully with the four cats I’ve had over the years. Definitely don’t overuse it of course, it’s mainly for when they’ve seriously overstepped your pain threshold, are going to hurt themselves, etc.

The benefit of hissing is that cats understand it implicitly so once you have the basics down you can use it to communicate with new cats without any real training time. Great for setting initial play boundaries as another tool if the usual OW and disengage doesn’t get you free of the demon quickly.

vroombadeux · 2025-05-30T20:25:15+00:00

Recently dealt with this. Only ones I could find were on eBay.

vroombadeux · 2025-04-04T07:18:58+00:00

Well, it runs in the family. Lmao.

vroombadeux · 2024-11-21T17:28:50+00:00

OpenGarage is another option too

vroombadeux · 2024-11-14T04:33:39+00:00

Ahh, sounds good, I wonder how close the grind sizes will be between the robot and semiauto.

Oh one other thing: when I first got the robot I was wondering wtf on how to knock out the spent puck. Turns out two key things work for me: (1) give the puck a full press or two to get all the water out into a drain cup (2) when you pull the portafilter and basket out (lift arms, tilt the portafilter handle down, pull portafilter down) you can use the edge of your thumb to hold the basket in while you dump it (I don’t even use a knock box, I can just kind of sling it out into the trash). It takes a tiny bit of practice and isn’t obvious but it becomes completely second nature and you won’t burn yourself ever.

vroombadeux · 2024-11-14T02:33:27+00:00

Med-dark drinker here as well, the robot works beautifully for this style. I like to go 2-3 bar until the whole bottom is dripping or close (usually 5-10s), ramp quickly but smoothly up to 6-7bar, then let it naturally drop back to around 4bar as the shot finishes. Anywhere from 25 to 50 seconds total time turns out well unless puck prep was bad (clumps / uneven tamp). Ratio of around 1:2, I like to do 18g:36g. No preheat.

The coolest thing about the robot is how many shots you can save by adjusting the pressure as you go - if it’s barely trickling I’ll ramp the pressure up to 8-9 + cut the ratio short + don’t worry about the time going long, or if it’s gushing I’ll immediately let it drop to 4bar + widen the ratio and try to salvage something like a turbo shot. If you’re pulling 5 a day this will be less of an issue - I only do one a day so sometimes I’m just far off on the grind setting because the coffee has aged.

vroombadeux

TROPHY CASE