jcoby

> - AT&T was completely down for us but Verizon and its MVNOs were up

It really depended on where you were. In my area everything was down. Literally and figuratively. The only utility that worked was gas.

T-Mobile was the first to come back up but it took weeks. I could occasionally get one bar of LTE if I climbed to the top of the hill but even then I could only send or receive about 1 SMS every few minutes.

Once I was able to get out of the neighborhood I could drive 5 miles away and get cell service and spotty data on Verizon.

NPR's updates were our most reliable way to get information on what was happening.

> - Fill up your vehicle’s fuel or battery before any big storm, we spent a lot of time siphoning and otherwise consolidating fuel to get ourselves and neighbors out of town, particularly because we didn’t know how far we’d have to go to find a gas station with electricity

Having supplies on hand and being patient worked out for us. We waited until 40 was clear and were able to head to the Triad for supplies and gas. In the mean time the neighborhood got together and cut up downed trees and filled in the missing road so it was easier to get in and out of the neighborhood.

> What software today do people recommend as an alternative to Sketchup?

onshape (web; free to use unless you want to protect your designs) and fusion (autodesk; free license available) are both really popular right now. they work differently than sketchup. i never really made friends with sketchup but the parametric modeling system used in fusion and onshape clicked with me and i really enjoy using them.

> But in the age of internet streaming, wouldn't rural areas still have access to stream public radio?

Sometimes streaming isn't an option. When Helene hit WNC we lost power, cell, internet, and water all at the same time. The local NPR stations were the only ones broadcasting updates on a regular cadence so we could learn what in the world was going on. And we're not far from downtown Asheville.

Some extremely rural areas only have spotty internet or no internet or cell at all and public radio is the only thing they have.

> All pilots are limited to 200hp or less

One of the more arbitrary and kinda pointless rules. Someone flying a 160 knot 200 hp Piper Arrow with a controllable prop and retractable gear doesn’t need the endorsement. Someone flying a 90 knot fixed gear fixed prop biplane with a 205 hp engine does.

It’s pretty much “use more right rudder”. Although most aircraft with over 200 hp have a constant speed prop so you learn to use manifold pressure and engine speed to set power.

I went from a 145 hp plane to a 235 hp one with about 30 min of instruction during a BFR.

> The only thing I don’t fully understand is them differentiating between 59 kts for a sport pilot, and 61 kts for a light sport aircraft. It feels a little arbitrary to draw those lines differently.

The NPRM document explains it somewhere around page 200. It’s important to note that it’s 59 knots CAS clean vs 61 knots CAS dirty.

The argument seems to be that a sport pilot is operating with less training and less oversight and so if something goes wrong and they can’t get the aircraft fully configured for landing they’ll still be able to operate and touch down at 59 vs whatever the clean stall speed would be for an aircraft with a dirty stall speed of 61 knots. That margin could be fairly large (10 knots or more) and the difference in energy between 59 and 71 knots is massive.

> "DB" already means 25 pins, so well, it's quite hard to both have 25 and 9 pins at the same time.

No, it doesn't. All of the D-Subs are readily available in high density versions:

  DA-15 | DA-26
  DB-25 | DB-44
  DC-37 | DC-62
  DD-50 | DD-78
  DE-9 | DE-15

The high density versions are commonly used in aerospace applications. Garmin is pretty fond of them.

There are also double density connectors putting 52 pins in a DB housing and whopping 100 connectors in the DD housing.

Squirrels kept trying to get my squirrel proof bird feeder and then they’d get mad and chew on the furniture when they couldn’t get the seed. And they’d poop in the rails because they’re squirrels.

I smeared some Last Dab on the bird feeder support and cayenne on the furniture and railings and haven’t seen a squirrel since.

If you are seeing 301s logged on your end that is your site redirecting to another one.

There isn’t a way to see what a referring site did to do the redirect (301 or 302 or even a js redirect) in your logs. All you’ll see is (potentially) the Referer http header.

I had the exact same experience when I tried to contribute last week. I had to jump between multiple sessions and browsers and eventually managed to log in after about 30 minutes of trying. There is no indication of what is going right or wrong. Once you're in the UI changes very little as well so it's quite easy to miss that you've managed to log in.

Once I was logged in I spent another 45 minutes trying to find a document to transcribe. Every single one I found or was given from a challenge had either already been transcribed or was a typewritten document or manifest that the OCR had already done an OK job with. I reviewed a few documents for accuracy, closed the browser, and never went back.

It's a shame it's so hard to use. I really was hoping for something I could pop open for 15-30 minutes a day as a break from work and contribute to instead of doing a crossword or watching a video.

Drawshave or drawknife and adz.

The drawknife is the safer of the two by far. It’s fairly hard to cut yourself when your whole body is moving the same direction. Similar to using a paring knife in your palm facing your thumb.

The adz however you just have to have good aim or pay the consequences!

Take a look at php-fpm. It works with all the major servers and let’s them do what they do best and offloads the php requests to php when needed. It also has better caching and overall performance than mod_php since it’s a long running daemon.

> They lack a bunch of emissions control equipment like fuel injection, catalytic converters, and the like.

Yeah unfortunately the weight and size of those systems is prohibitive for most light aircraft. Plus catalytic converters and oxygen sensors for closed loop efi can’t be used with leaded fuel.

> They are 60's or maybe 80's car engines that are still made since nobody in GA wants to pay for better ones.

The Lycoming and continental engines in most of the fleet were certified in the early 50s. A few were in the early 60s. That means they were designed in the 40s and 50s!

The S54 absolutely had rod bearing issues. There was a recall on the 2001-2003.5 M3s to replace them and BMW switched to 60w oil as part of the remediation. They’re still having issues to this day.

The S54 is also notorious for VANOS issues and cam drive failures. I had to replace the solenoid pack on mine but elected to not upgrade the drive while I was in there.