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3d ago
inHostel in Barcelona double charged me and the manager just shrugged
Honestly that oxygen thing is probably coming next with these places. I got double charged at a motel in Texas once and the guy tried to tell me it was a "system error" that would take two weeks to fix. I just asked him to print me a receipt showing both charges right in front of him and then I called my bank on the spot. The guy looked so uncomfortable he actually offered to refund it in cash from the register just to get me off the phone. These places bank on you being too tired or busy to fight it.
4d ago
inFound a trick for fishing wire through old sagging walls
Paperclips work great for sticking in most reset buttons on electronics.
4d ago
inSpent 6 years using a standard ratchet strap until a guy in Nashville showed me his cam buckle system
Buddy of mine hauled gear for local bands for years using nothing but knots and basic straps. First time he borrowed my cam buckles he called me that night and said he felt like he'd been doing everything wrong for a decade. Pretty funny seeing a grown man get that hyped about hardware.
5d ago
inVent: That customer who argued with me for 15 minutes about a $30 capacitor replacement
Kelly Rivera nailed it. Not like Amazon Prime is gonna show up with a soldering iron and a multimeter. I had a guy once pull up the same capacitor on his phone and wave it in my face while I was explaining the burn marks on his board. Told him I'd do it for the $8 if he brought me the TV with the old part already out and the board ready to go. He didn't come back. Some folks just see the number on a screen and think that's the whole story, forget about the desk space, the solder wick, the flux, and the hour of your life you ain't getting back. My buddy in Tampa does this full time and he says he's taken to quoting parts and labor separately upfront just to avoid the argument entirely, maybe try that next time.
6d ago
inDebate: Should astrophotography editing be limited to basic color correction?
Start by telling them to save that processed image as a 16-bit TIFF before they do anything else. I ran into the same nonsense a few years ago when I posted my Rosette Nebula shot from a Bortle 6 backyard. Someone told me it wasn't "real" because I used a dual narrowband filter and did gradient reduction in Photoshop. I just linked them to the raw stacked file and the final image side by side. That usually shuts them up. Or better yet, invite them over for a live session next clear night and let them watch you spend four hours guiding and dithering subframes.