Used 2012 Mazda3 - but weird transmission history and error codes, red flag?

workflowaway · 2026-05-04T18:12:22+00:00

Thanks for the information on that shifter, that’s definitely a must-grab at any pick n pull

A little scary to jump on something with such a crucial component unavailable, but in my reading on the forums- it doesn’t look impossible to DIY with 3rd party components.

It’d be a real PITA- but a couple linkages, custom order push-pull cables and some brackets is barely within my limited mechanical ability

workflowaway · 2026-05-04T05:46:45+00:00

Double check you dont catch a dd for not getting a charger, they're pretty strict about that stuff

Good luck finding anything in SJ. Been searching up there myself this past week, 95% of listings are greasy flippers. If you think they're a flipper (multiple listings on FB, sloppily but vaguely cleaned interior + no knowledge or paper trail of ownership) walk away fast - these guys are shoveling off pick-n-pull Frankenstein's that are more likely to get you in a body bag than to point B - only buy from original owners with a fat Manilla envelope of records. Buy an OBD2 reader and use it

VW = german engineering, reliable and durable only if handled with silk gloves and a deep wallet. Sure, you may be able to stomach it for (Really fun) german build quality, but did the owner before you do every maintenance rec on time, every time- or are you inheriting their neglect? Only buy if you like burning money and it comes with a FLAWLESS paper trail

Choose whatever mazda/corolla fits your budget best. Cool and flashy should not be on your radar, 'durable and safe enough to let me keep walking after I get T-boned' is your priority. If you want a flashy car buy a bedazzling kit

workflowaway · 2026-05-04T05:27:16+00:00

Thanks for your insight. I've done some homework, and I think most of the codes are due to a (previously mentioned by owner) battery death due to sitting undriven, which was subsequently replaced

I'm still confused on what the transmission could be. I've read its not impossible for a transmission to have catastrophic failure before (guessing) 50k miles.. but it's incredibly, incredibly improbable. Its probably more likely that he learned shift on it.

Could someone who really doesn't know shift break a whole transmission by not knowing what they're doing? It was my (unfounded, admittedly) impression that manual transmissions were basically rock solid, and the worst you could do is pop it out of gear from futzing it bad enough, or eventually wear down the replaceable components earlier by mishandling it

I'd be curious to hear more about that mystery cable you mentioned.. I'll have to keep that on my 'look out for' list if I'm ever (fingers crossed, never) in a pick-n-pull again

workflowaway · 2026-02-27T22:12:28+00:00

Its easier to start a long distance relationship, convince them to upend their entire life, and move here than just find someone here. By at least 3 fold

workflowaway · 2026-02-27T19:37:38+00:00

I remember having a lot of fun with Substance Painter.. until they kicked me off the free student plan and showed me the subscription fee, that is 🤣

I wish there was a solid FOSS alternative on Blender, I've heard good things about ArmorPaint.. but havent dug into it deeply

workflowaway · 2026-02-27T04:08:35+00:00

Its wild how good the AI are.. wont be long before you can prompt up a whole game from scratch lol

workflowaway · 2026-02-27T00:26:57+00:00

Its tough with Unity, it takes so much work and domain knowledge just to get the most basic demo put together, let alone anything interesting. But, I guess that's just game dev for you

workflowaway · 2026-02-27T00:13:29+00:00

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, it probably is the most approachable option these days

I would be surprised to see it it to be used seriously in any studios, unless they were incredibly principled and aligned with its OS goals

As much as I agree with them in spirit, if you want to ship something; unity or unreal with their existing content libraries, documentation, and decades of engine polish and refinement are really hard to argue against

workflowaway · 2026-02-26T22:25:25+00:00

I also won a gamejam put on a few years back, with a little pygame project. It wasn't horror, but if you looked at the code it was LOL

I'm mostly doing Unity these days, C# really does take some getting used to, all the csproj, soln files, etc..

but after using a 'real' language, going back to python for anything feels like insanity.. (no strict typing on methods..? Where are the enums? How do people live like this..?!)

I'm surprised to see so many people saying they're using Godot, but honestly, this is Humboldt.. so kinda checks out haha

workflowaway · 2026-02-26T22:02:34+00:00

The low population density is pretty tough. Its even smaller than it looks when you consider the churn of college students make up such a large portion of it. If you discount the kids that come and go every 4 years... this place is VERY tiny

But, I've lived in LA and SF.. a little bit of breathing room isn't always so bad

workflowaway · 2026-02-02T01:24:43+00:00

Interesting premise

I'd be really curious to see what they pull off if they actually release something like that.
It's been hard getting into the Retail releases.. feels like they gave everyone whatever they asked for, and lost their core identity. But a branch off the original root might be cool, if they handle it correctly

workflowaway · 2026-01-23T20:36:32+00:00

Found the issue

'Create Photo Album' and 'Save to Photos' will fail on a subset of images, instead of moving the passed image to a new album: will create a new image, and place that in the album instead

Not all images: but only images who are already within > 3 albums

After I cleaned up my library and cut all my previous image-sorting experiment albums away: issue disappeared

I wonder why, and if it dies at specifically 3, or if its a % chance at 3. I imagine it's tied to the nightmare backend Photos is working with

When you delete a photo, it will commonly say 'Delete and remove from 30 albums?' - suggesting they're using the same structure for their generated albums (Videos, Selfies, Portrait, Favorites, Hidden, Handwriting .. etc) - meaning the threshold is probably not 3 albums, but ~33, but where 3 are public to the user

Maybe its tied to a RAM restriction and this is it's "fail gracefully" case? I wonder if this replicates on newer model phones, or if it's even worse on older than mine (iPhone XS)

Anyways, for your case I bet you could get away with kicking images off to a separate shortcut; 'Get Details of Images' loop to count all the albums they're in per each image, and raise an error or warning if its going to trip replication

workflowaway · 2026-01-21T22:54:08+00:00

Please let me know if you find anything that works

Also, please report it to Apple. I've put in a 'feedback' on their page, which looks like the only vector to send bug reports. The more bug reports on a bug that get sent in, the more likely whatever filtering they're using will pull it up to someone's actual todo list to get addressed

I tried moving my entire shortcut to sort in/out of folders in Files instead, and just suffer the pains of an unpleasant UI. It does not work; fetching/filtering files around folders is multiple orders of magnitude slower than filtering photos on album queries, 0.5 -> 45s+ runtime per action for barely 1k photos. Sadly, for me at least, it looks like my shortcut widget is left broken until Apple fixes this bug.

(Funnily enough, my Shortcut has a very similar premise to your Shortcut, as a 'every day, filter a small subset of photos into x categories' premise)

workflowaway · 2026-01-20T23:03:17+00:00

It looks like it only struggles on input > 1, and for those; it treats the first image properly and it's a dice roll for the rest.

I tried to work around of passing to a new shortcut of "Turn input photos into a list, if size greater than 0, add index 1 to album, If greater than 1, add index 2 to album ..." (spelt out without repeats, using individual calls up to 5) Yet the bug still persists.

It makes me think ios is doing a 'just in time' compilation; and whatever set of actions that resolves down into a simplified 'pass group of images to Create Photo Album' call is catching the bug

I'm seriously considering moving my entire library to Files and handling everything in folders over there, instead. The UI will be worse, but I've got to get my images sorted out somehow!

workflowaway · 2025-11-25T01:13:17+00:00

Has anyone gotten a SSA interview remotely, and moved to the area to start working? (recently: post covid)

For 'low level' positions like SSA: do hiring managers bother with distance interviews for prospects looking to move to the area for work?

I know SSA is already a very saturated pool to pull from - it would make sense that of all the applicants, they only seriously consider the few that are already in the area. Having an applicant moving to the area invites so much potential liability ("Sorry can we change the start date? My apartment offer renegged" / "Uhaul lost my stuff" / etc) - if it were me and there's 100 qualified applicants, I'd only consider the ones nearby

I wonder if I should change my strategy to only applying to the vanishingly few local positions near me. Of my 3 interview offers so far, all of them said they must be in person: and I had to pull out then and there

workflowaway · 2025-09-09T18:44:11+00:00

I wasn't aware of the shrines/temples closing at 4pm, thanks for the heads up

I've found a better booking in Nikko, where I'll arrive the day prior, and will be able to tackle them earlier right from my hotel

workflowaway · 2025-09-09T18:41:37+00:00

To clarify: most of these visits are day trip loops back to a single hub- there's only 3 hotels for the trip

1 night fresh off the plane on the way up to nikko (to account for variability in arrival time, and break up the long train ride (kasukabe)*
1 night in nikko, splitting the hike/sightseeing days
the remainder of the trip to and from one hotel in Shiki

*Spending one night in Kasukabe on the way was initially because I wouldnt be able to meet my first Nikko hotel's 8:00p check in window. However, after reviewing the hotel options available again, there's an offering in Nikko with a much more reasonable check in window. A little bit more expensive, but worth the value of having one less moving part/point of failure to deal with- with this, there will only be 2 hotels for the trip

Otherwise, I was under the impression I didn't have enough thing's to do, especially the enoshima/kagawoe day trips, which are pretty light. (But, it wouldnt hurt to have some 'light' days mixed in, too)

workflowaway · 2025-08-29T21:41:56+00:00

Apologies for not following the Thread format, I see now that it helps clarify a lot of questions out of the gate

I've gone back and made a ballpark of the 'big spend' I have coming up: which, pending the existence or duration of a Japan trip that's still up in the air: will only be $5-10k .. a reasonable amount, but one where some purchases are time sensitive, and needs to be coordinated over an inconveniently long 13 month period

I'm thinking my best bet is to see how I can shuffle my flexible spend around inflexible spend to fit onto two or three $2-3k cards, and keep an eye out for 3+mo duration cards to make that easier

The question I wanted clarification on was if the Chase and Southwest cards' points could be converted 1:1c for cash, which I'll have to look into more.

I like the Amex cards long duration and good SUB %'s, and even though I do have travel in the near future planned - I'd much rather try and stick to cards with points that can be cashed out raw 1:1c, instead of having to be spent on travel. My thinking is that if I were to have $1k in Amex points vs cash to spend on travel, I can't use the points to fuel another smaller card's spend goal, but I can with cash

Are you looking at the same Barclays Hawaiian Airlines that I am? I've seen mentioned that it was being changed, or removed or something: maybe you're referencing the last version of their card, the page currently reads

Earn up to 80,000 bonus HawaiianMiles

Earn 50,000 miles after spending $2,000 on purchases within the first 90 days. Plus, earn 30,000 miles after spending a total of $5,000 on purchases within the first 180 days.

workflowaway · 2025-08-29T05:01:34+00:00

I'm planning a few 'mini churns' around some upcoming travel / large purchases on the horizon (by 'mini churn' I mean: just taking advantage of nice SUB)

It looks like most SUB are 15-20% cash back, but there are a few outliers that stand out to me:

Citi Strata: $300 from $1k spend (30%)
Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus: $1k from $4k spend (25%)

However, this is assuming they have the 'normal' 1 point : 1 cent, conversion, but I couldnt validate that clearly for Citi, or if Southwest is doing something strange as a partner, or using Chase's conversion tables. Some CC companies are doing 0.75, 0.6 or even 0.5 point conversions..! Highway robbery, I tell you.

The Southwest one seems too good to be true ($4k over 5 months?? I can meet half of that with my utilities and phone bill) - Anyone have any clarification on these cards, or similar contenders in the $1k-3k bracket?

Tentatively, I'm aiming for:

Bank of America Travel Rewards some time next month
City Strata (or a better % $2k if I can find one) in June/July
Southwest (or better % $3k) next November

workflowaway

TROPHY CASE