ionz149

We used to have delivery of Arrowhead water. It was convenient and they provided a water dispenser. They also would swap out our current dispenser for a new one when we would request a cleaning. Arrowhead is owned by Primo and they consistently kept just not delivering our water. The final straw was when they flaked on us two times in a row with little to no notice both times. We switched to local company and purchased our own water dispenser. Enter the Avalon bottom loading water dispenser.

After six months I had to face the reality that I myself had to clean the damn thing. So I read the manual and the instructions are simple enough but the process itself is a right pain in the ass involving opening up the top part of the dispenser and manually pouring your cleaning solution in. In following the instructions I got stuck on the step that requires you to warm up the water in the tank because there was no bottle attached and the machine kept trying to suck in water when there was none. With no water being sucked up it never got to actually warm up the water so I got stuck. After a swearing for a bit it occurred to me that I should probably just fill the bottle with the cleaning solution so that I could also clean out the lines instead of just the water tanks. I found this approach to be easier since I didn’t need to open up the dispenser and I got to actually clean the lines, which the instructions provided with the dispenser don’t address.

For ease I would wait till your current water bottle is empty then use that empty bottle to aid in the cleaning process.

Here are the steps I took. It required a little more water than I would’ve liked but I was able to use some of it to water my plants.

1. Turn off the water heater if you have it turned on. It will take some time for the water to cool off. I waited like 40 minutes and it was just warm to the touch.
2. Drain the dispenser of any left over water. I did this by dispensing water from all three taps until nothing came out. Then I pulled the drain plug in the back. Be ready with a bucket or something as it will pour out the second you pull the plug. You will need a screwdriver to remove the plug cover.
3. Fill the empty bottle with close to a gallon of your choice of  cleaning solution. For this I used a mix of vinegar and tap water. I kinda eyeballed it but it was roughly a 50/50 mixture. You could probably get by with less vinegar.
4. Place the bottle back in the dispenser and let the machine fill itself with the cleaning solution.
5. Turn on the water heater and turn off the water cooler. I let the water warm up for about 15 minutes.
6. With the water now heated drain the water from the three taps until the bottle is empty.
7. Turn off the hot water and wait for the water to cool and then finish draining the machine by pulling the plug in the back.
8. At this point you can begin flushing the cleaning solution from the dispenser. If you have another empty bottle you can use that, if you don’t give the bottle that previously held the cleaning solution a rinse until you don’t smell vinegar and fill with a gallon or so of water.
9. Place the bottle with water back into the dispenser and let the machine fill itself.
10. Turn the hot water back on and wait for about 15 minutes.
11. With water now heated drain the water from the three taps until the bottle is empty.
12. Taste and sniff the water it to be sure there is no more vinegar left. If you are still getting vinegar run another gallon of water thru it until you aren’t smelling or tasting the vinegar.
13. Once the water is free of any vinegar drain the remaining water from the three taps.
14. Turn off the water heater and wait for the water to cool off.
15. When water has cooled drain the remainder of the water from the back of the machine by pulling the plug.
16. Add a new bottle drinking water and enjoy your clean lines 🙂

 

This domain is now on Porkbun. Currently in the process of transferring all my other domains over to them. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner. Will be switching my hosting provider soon as well because they too are currently charging double what I initially started paying … uhhh … many years ago.

Perhaps it’s because I usually renew a single domain once a year and $24 doesn’t seem too crazy but when you renew two or three domains at a time you’re looking at like $48 – $72 and possibly more if you got a fancy extension. I also am a lazy shit and didn’t want to deal with the thought of transferring domains to a new registrar. I don’t know why I thought it was going to be a pain in the ass but each transfer I’ve done took like 15 minutes to complete. Porkbun pulls in the previously configured nameservers so it was super easy.

It is nice to be able to switch over so quickly and easily and to cut the price of each of my domains down by 50% without compromising the quality of service.

After many years of using GoDaddy as my domain registrar I am making the move over to Porkbun. It’s been forever and I feel like my domain names have all doubled in price over the years. GoDaddy has become kind of annoying. Even while reviewing my DNS settings last night I somehow accidentally managed to enable their AI site builder Airo ?. Anyhow I am transferring this domain first as a trial run.

Longest hiatus ever. I have been unemployed since June. Job market for devs is weird right now.

TLDR …. I fixed it with a Dell D6000 Dock … yes, you have to spend more money to make that pricey ass laptop stfu and work as it was intended to.

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So after many, many years of being very seriously opposed to proprietary operating systems I got a job that supplied me with macbook pro and I was fairly impressed with how nice it was. It had its moments where it would start breathing heavy but I was usually doing something resource intensive when it happened.

So once this covid shit blew up and I had no job or fancy laptop and I was trying to work on my old linux machine. It was doable until I was sent a PSD file and had to try and run Adobe Cloud on a virtual windows machine. In no time I was ready to stab my fucking eyballs with the dullest object I could find.

I suffered thru it for the better part of a week and just said fuck it. I had the money so why not invest in myself. I went out and got me a macbook pro with a black mouse and keyboard. Got a slightly bigger Samsung monitor than I previously had and a fancy dock for all my peripherals. I was able to get it from BestBuy as they were having a sale and the price was slightly better than the student discount from apple.

I picked up all my shit from BestBuy and was happy as clam. That was rather short lived though because only a few minutes after connecting the monitor to the dongle the laptop fans began blowing super hard while using firefox to login into my gmail for the first time and the keyboard on laptop became so hot I could actually not touch it. It wouldn’t have melted my fingers or anything but it was as close as it could be to that without the laptop actually bursting into fucking flames. I removed the monitor and things cooled off and went back to normal.

This was a deal breaker for me because the fact I can connect the laptop to an external monitor is something I rely on in terms of workflow when sitting at a desk. Being a laptop it also provides the added benefit of traveling with me. One could argue that if I wanted a desktop machine I should get a tower or imac but fuck that bullshit I’ve always used a laptop like this and I wasn’t about to pay more money for a “pro” graded item that cant connect to an external monitor without sounding like a small plane about to lift off.

So I hit the google and found a reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/ekh86o/macbook_pro_16_heat_issues_with_external_monitor/) I wish I would’ve seen before I purchased the laptop. In it you will see all the people (save a few apple fanboy trolls) wondering why their fancy as fuck laptop wants to self-immolate.

At one point the laptop got so hot the screen blacked out and gave me kernel panic errors upon restart. I called Apple and they gave no fucks. I returned that macbook and got a new one. I installed iStat so I could monitor temperature and fan speeds. People in the reddit thread claimed many things worked and I tried the following:

1. Moshi – USBC to DP, Samsung and Dell monitor directly into macbook pro
2. USBC to USBC, Samsung and Dell monitor directly into macbook pro
3. Purchased a new Dell UltraSharp monitor – USBC to USBC and USBC to DP, Dell monitor directly into macbook pro
4. Dell D6000 Dock – essentially a more expensive dock with it’s own power supply.

One theme I noticed in peoples efforts was the removal of the dock in the equation. The Moshi cable is a $50 cable. While it did bring the temps down the fans would eventually go nuts. The USBC to USBC cable had pretty much the same results.

Once I deemed the $80 worth of cables to not really help much I decided to try and imitate the setup of a person claiming to have no overheating issues and purchased a Dell UltraSharp monitor. Oddly enough it actually did bring the temps down and kept the fans off for longer using the supplied USBC to USBC cable. The Moshi cable provided same results as the provided USBC cable. The fans turned on after running Illustrator for a few minutes though and while it was an improvement it was not really good enough considering what I paid for the laptop.

I had browsed over a Reddit user claiming a Dell D6000 Dock had made it work for him with two monitors but I wasn’t looking to spend more money at that point. I later saw that some one claimed it also worked for them so after a few days of not knowing what else to do I searched on OfferUp and found a brand new sealed one for a great price. This was actually the last thing I was willing to do to remedy the situation before I gave up and returned everything.

I installed the drivers and plugged everything in and turned the monitor on. I launched a code editor, a browser and Affinity Designer. No fans. Launched Spotify. No fans. Launched Photoshop. Still no fans. Temps went up slightly but nothing crazy.

The Dell D6000 Dock was the solution! The only downside I found is that it only has a single USBC port, but it has two DP ports so not too bad. I am for the most part not doing anything too resource intensive. I use a code editor, terminal, browsers, music and an Adobe or Affinity product.

I’ve only had fans fire up audibly once or twice while in my office during a heat wave and the office was like 80° F. I don’t have an AC and fan was doing nothing so I just disconnected from the monitor and went downstairs where it was cooler and it stopped fanning itself.

All in all I am happy with current setup however it was a bit stressful to have to spend all that money and test everything out all within BestBuy’s return period. Their painless return process was much appreciated.

I think it also worth mentioning that my power bill has been consistently higher since I purchased this laptop. Seems to be drawing a considerable amount of juice because I previously had a Windows tower and a Linux laptop in my office and now I just have a macbook pro.

For now I can dig it. In the future I might be a little more open to trying out a windows machine. It’s pretty fucked up that a company as big as Apple who claims to be some type of higher echelon in hardware is knowingly pedaling faulty hardware and pretending it’s normal. As my first personal experience with Apple it did leave a rather shitty taste in my mouth.

Yep! Updated the theme and stripped out everything and got it down to the basics I need. Made the fonts nice and big. Removed comments, pingbacks, links, widgets, categories, tags, sharethis and a bunch of other plugins. Perhaps the absence of everything besides words and pictures will make it more enticing to use.

It’s almost been two years since my last post! Quick catch up. I quit a job I loved for monetary reasons. I started a new job I eventually grew to hate for great money. In the time I worked there I basically neglected most of my favorite things because I was miserable. Then we all got laid off due to covid and I been re-assessing everything. Set up a decent home office, finished up a few banjos, got a house plant gifted to me, tossed a bunch of old stuff and slowly began creating the new normal from home. I have also sunk *many* hours into Animal Crossing.

I’ve added some photos of some recently finished banjos to the Banjo Gallery. Once I get some boxes to ship I will list on Etsy for sale!

Coming to a head in what is purely a chaos based ballet, change is on the horizon! While I am apprehensive of any change I am excited for something new. Sometimes things happen for a reason. Or better yet fragments of reasons and if you gather them right you get maybe a decent reason.

In other news I have finally adjusted to recreational state laws, business cards are on the way and like 5 banjos almost ready. Los Angeles has the very best fire, can’t lie about these things.

People keep asking, so yeah. Gonna go ahead and leave this here to track how long it takes me 😐

I have added a few new banjos to my instrument gallery as well as a few banjos and art to the etsy store.

I used some of that anxious energy to fix a few things on the site that have been bugging me for years. Nobody will even fucking notice but I will no longer notice so that is good. I have also added a bunch of my banjo builds to the visual page since I’ve been building banjos for the last two years.