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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • I’m in the process of remaking my “Doom Pumpkin” for Halloween as well. If connects to my HomeAssistant setup and has four 12v car horns, a speaker to play audio, LED’s for eyes, a big red arcade button for a nose, motion sensors in front and back to interact with kids (it tells them it farts fireballs if they walk behind it) and an anti theft mode where if it’s picked up the horns start going off. Press the button and a random sequence of horns will go off. It also will randomly set a horn off if it hasn’t been touched in a while. And when it senses someone in front it will taunt them to press the button. Since it’s built in to HomeAssistant I can set when certain functions work and for a couple days before Halloween it will be outside taunting the neighborhood during the day.

    The first version was a couple horns powered by an arduino uno and would just randomly activate 2 horns in different ways. The new one added two more horns (one is a little beep beep forklift horn, the other is an oooogah horn) to go with the high tone and low tone car horn.



  • I’m carrying an S26 Ultra and wouldn’t mind if it was 3 times thicker. I regularly carry a Tab S8+ around when I am going to the store so I can look things up or take down ideas.

    I also had one of the Motorola bag phones in the mid 90’s as my emergency car phone.

    Would I carry around a bag phone today… probably not. I haven’t really spoken on the phone since April and it’s been about 2 years since anyone other than my other half has called me but I was tired of the junk calls so I turned off receiving calls from any number not in my contacts list.


  • I had a kid I met when I was homeless for a while. He was a regular fixture in my life and a ton of fun to be around. But about 5 years later he had his wife and a girlfriend pregnant at the same time. He already had two children with the wife (and when the first one came along when they were dating I had told him “Don’t get her pregnant”), couldn’t hold a steady job, possibly had other iligitimate children, and was living in a crappy nasty motel but he had a game console (can’t remember if it was a PS3 or Xbox 360) and a TV to game on so he didn’t care.

    I told him I couldn’t have that in my life anymore, every time something went wrong he would do something stupid. Last I heard the girlfriend was going to move back to get family in Florida, he ended up going who knows where for a while then ended up back in town for a little bit around the time I was moving away. The wife had family there so is likely still in town. I kinda Facebook stalked him a couple months ago (through my other half as I don’t actually use Facebook) and found he is likely living in Georgia and working for a traveling carnival.

    He was probably the last person I knew and called a friend. It’s been a little over 15 years.



  • I would touch the tip of my finger to my buddy’s nose and say, “Beep.” He would give me a look. I would do it again and he would do a little lip snarl. Do it again and it would get bigger. Eventually he would “snap” at my finger. He wasn’t doing it to hurt, I barely felt it, was just his little way of saying, “I got ya.”

    He would also bark at women when they would sneeze.

    He would also play with a rock in the kiddie pool.

    https://youtube.com/shorts/hfnP4Kb6xbk?is=7D8SSsgEWEr2ttbU

    Lost him to cancer 2 years ago. He was the only thing that kept me going when my wife passed in 2019.


  • Never used VyOS so can’t help there. I do use OpnSense, TP-Link Omada EAP-650’s (with an isolated vLAN for the guest network) multiple vLAN’s for cameras, iot, management, Trusted devices, and DMZ, along with Wireguard for remote access and since my ISP only gives me an IPv4 address I use a Wireguard tunnel to Route64 for IPv6 connectivity, a cellular connection for backup internet connectivity, CrowdSec, Intrusion Detection, Caddy, and UnboundDNS.

    I used multiple different Router OS’ since around 2005 and settled on OpnSense years ago. I stick around because there is rarely an issue and the reporting system makes it easy to visually spot issues.


  • First, you need to verify whether you actually have a public IP or if your ISP has you stuck behind CG-NAT, because that dictates your options.

    ​If you’re behind CG-NAT, ​Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared): This is usually the easiest path if you are mostly trying to access web-based services (HTTP/HTTPS) on your server. Your home server initiates the outbound connection to Cloudflare, so CG-NAT doesn’t matter. You just set up a domain (or subdomains) for each service you want to reach. If you need full network-level or SSH access rather than just web apps, check out ZeroTier.

    ​If you have a direct public IP (even a dynamic one), you can run a reverse proxy like Caddy paired with a free DDNS provider like DuckDNS or FreeDNS. One nice thing about Caddy is that it handles getting and renewing real, valid Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates automatically, so you don’t have to deal with manual or self-signed certs at all.

    ​Dealing with the WireGuard block, if your country’s ISP is using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to identify and drop WireGuard traffic, traditional VPNs like OpenVPN might get blocked pretty quickly too. If you still want a true VPN setup, look into AmneziaWG (it’s a fork of WireGuard specifically modified to scramble packet signatures and bypass DPI) or obfuscated proxy protocols like V2Ray / Xray or Shadowsocks.


  • ​I watched the original RDA version as a kid. It probably had a bigger impact on my morals than my mother did (which a lot of people should be thankful for).

    ​Later in life, I realized some of his improvised tricks were complete TV logic or exaggerated for safety reasons, but a surprising number of those basic principles actually hold up in a pinch. I’ve noticed a few things where my own politics diverge from the show’s commentary over the years, but overall, it was a great series. A huge reason I got into Stargate SG-1 later on was simply because I loved RDA in MacGyver.

    ​As for the reboot, I made it about three minutes in before shutting it off. They had a scene with people blathering on about tech, and literally nothing they said made a lick of sense. It felt like watching 90s “Hackers” tropes forced into a modern setting. The writers clearly had zero clue how actual technology works - which you could get away with in in the 80’s and 90’s, but comes across as lazy and cringe-inducing today.


  • Hardee’s: The Big Roast Beef Sandwich. One of the few nice memories as a kid. None where I’ve lived for a long while. Finally went on a trip where there was a Hardee’s and it’s no longer there. The BBQ sauce made it amazing. Now it’s just Carl’s JR with a different name.

    Taco John’s: The Super Potato Ole… got it again on a trip years later, it’s cheap crap now. Again none where I’ve been living.

    I’ve looked on Google maps a few times at the house where I was most of my childhood and it’s turned into a dump. Satellite view shows one area where it actually looks like trash has been piled up in one area and there are multiple broken down vehicles.



  • No major formal education. Did a DOS class at a local Community College back in the day, only did it for the certificate and made my high school pay for it. I already knew how to do everything they were walking me through anyway, I only showed up a couple days per week to drop stuff off.

    The instructor made a big deal one of the last days. He stood near this whiteboard and said, “I’m ashamed, I’m appalled, out of everyone in this class, a high school student has the highest grade.”

    I didn’t have the heart to tell him I learned DOS from the DOS Manual when I was 15. I learned how to do some very basic graphic programming and such when I was in elementary school on an Apple II.

    I have worked as a network tech and pc repair tech for a WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) helped shoot 2.4Ghz WiFi connections up to 8.5 miles and shot a connection 7.6 miles myself. Most of the network troubleshooting was running multiple ping’s to different equipment to watch for issues. Learned on the job how to weatherproof connections using electrical tape and butyl rubber tape. It’s also where I learned how to crimp cables from the installer we had.

    Most of the job was cleaning up and checking CPE’s that came in from previous installs, configuring the CPE’s for upcoming installations, and dealing with the phones. The owner was working for another company in IT about 3 hours away. I eventually quit when I was stuck trying to train a new installer and needed help with an issue, the owner quit answering the phone.

    I later managed an in house ISP for an apartment building that was converted from a hotel built in the 50’s. I brought in 4 different connections, one from a small local WISP using the building as a tower 6Mbps, two AT&T 3Mbps DSL lines, and a cable modem 6Mbps. And provided internet for about 30 apartments using HPNA. Tried getting the owner to change some things but he was off the thought that if it works don’t fix it. Most people only got between 750Kbps to 1Mbps due to line quality and the technology.



  • First off (if you are in the US) this isn’t just up to state law it’s a violation of federal law.

    Under the FTC’s Eyeglass Rule (and Contact Lens Rule), eye care providers are legally mandated to release a copy of your prescription immediately upon completion of the exam, whether you ask for it or not, and before attempting to sell you eyewear. They cannot withhold it or force you to buy frames from them first.

    If your prescription is still valid (under a year old), call or visit the office and politely but firmly let the front desk or office manager know that withholding a valid prescription violates the FTC Eyeglass Rule, and ask for a printed or emailed copy immediately. Mentioning the FTC usually gets corporate staff to fix the issue real fast without needing to drag the new OD into a formal state board complaint.

    If the prescription is expired or nearly expired, save yourself the headache, go to an independent practice for a fresh exam, and leave a detailed review online explaining how the corporate office handles patient records.