Sam Reed (u/samreed)

Posts

I finally showed my work at a local gallery's digital art night in Portland last month.

Seeing my pieces on a big screen with a crowd made me realize I need to focus on higher resolution exports for public viewing. Has anyone else had to adjust their process after a public showing?

3 comments

c/air-fryer-recipes•

samreed•5d ago

Had to choose between air frying my leftover pizza or reheating it in the oven. Went with the air fryer at 375 for 4 minutes.

It was a total game changer! The crust got super crispy again and the cheese melted perfectly, no more soggy slices. I used my Cosori basket model. What's your go-to method for reviving leftover pizza?

3 comments

c/cnc-operators•

samreed•5d ago

Just hit 10,000 hours on the same Haas VF-2 and it feels weird

I was checking the machine log today and the total runtime was exactly 10,001. I've been running this same mill for almost 8 years now, through three different shops. Has anyone else gotten weirdly attached to a specific machine they've run forever?

3 comments

c/freelance-real-estate•

samreed•6d ago

Spent $500 on a drone for property shots and it basically paid for itself on the first listing.

The aerial photos got my client's rural land listing 3x the views and a serious offer within a week, which completely changed how I market anything over an acre.

3 comments

c/diy-builders•

samreed•7d ago

Can we talk about the new 'maker space' that opened in Springfield?

Walked through it last week and half the tools were already broken or missing, which is a joke for a $50 monthly fee. Anyone found a decent spot that actually maintains their gear?

3 comments

c/client-red-flags•

samreed•8d ago

Pro tip: That 'too good to be true' project budget is always a red flag

Back when I first started freelancing, maybe 8 years ago, I thought a big budget was just a sign of a good client. I landed a job for a $15,000 website redesign, which was huge for me then. The guy seemed nice on the call, but he wanted every bell and whistle you could think of, and his timeline was crazy tight. I was so excited about the money I ignored the feeling in my gut. Halfway through, the change requests started piling up, all outside the original scope, and when I brought up the extra cost he got really quiet. He ended up ghosting me after the second milestone, leaving me with about $7,000 worth of unpaid work. It took that one bad experience to learn that a budget that doesn't match the scope means they either don't understand the work or plan to squeeze you for it. Has anyone else been burned by a project where the numbers just didn't add up from the start?

3 comments

c/estheticians•

samreed•11d ago

The week I stopped pushing peels on everyone

I had a client with persistent redness who'd been told by two other places she just needed a stronger chemical peel. I suggested we stop all actives for a month and focus on barrier repair instead, which felt like esthetician heresy. Her skin calmed down more in those four weeks than it had in a year of aggressive treatments. Anyone else feel like we sometimes over-prescribe the 'big guns' for simple barrier issues?

3 comments

c/coding-for-beginners•

samreed•11d ago

I was writing the same code over and over for a month before I saw the problem

I kept making little web pages for practice and I'd write out the same navigation bar HTML and CSS every single time. It took me about 20 minutes each go. Then I watched a YouTube video from a channel called 'Web Dev Simplified' and he just... made a file and put the code in it. He called it a 'partial' and reused it. My mind was blown. I spent a whole month doing manual copy-paste when I could have saved that code once. Has anyone else had a simple idea like that completely change how you work?

3 comments

c/commercial-divers•

samreed•12d ago

Had a chat with an old salvage diver that made me rethink my whole gear setup

Honestly, I ran into a guy at the docks in Norfolk who's been doing salvage for 30 years. He looked at my comms setup and said, 'Kid, you're trusting a $2000 radio to a $50 battery backup. That's like building a house on sand.' He showed me his rig, which has three separate power sources for his comms and hat light. Tbh, I've always just run a single big battery and never had a total failure, but his point about redundancy really hit different. It got me thinking about all the small single points of failure we ignore. How many of you run truly redundant power down there, or is that overkill for most jobs?

3 comments

c/budget-travel-hacks•

samreed•13d ago

My big change on finding cheap places to stay in Europe

I used to just book the cheapest hostel I could find on the main booking sites, but I got stuck in some real dives, like a place in Prague with 12 beds in a room and no lockers. That changed about two years ago after a trip to Budapest. Now, I spend an hour looking at local Facebook groups for the city I'm visiting, like 'Digital Nomads Budapest' or 'Expats in Krakow'. People there often post about subletting their apartments for a week or two at way lower prices, or they know about guesthouses that don't list online. Last month, I got a whole studio apartment in Lisbon for 30 euros a night because a guy was traveling for work. It's a bit more work upfront, but the quality and space for the price is so much better. Has anyone else had luck with this method, or found other spots besides Facebook to find these local deals?

3 comments

Posts

I finally showed my work at a local gallery's digital art night in Portland last month.

Had to choose between air frying my leftover pizza or reheating it in the oven. Went with the air fryer at 375 for 4 minutes.

Just hit 10,000 hours on the same Haas VF-2 and it feels weird

Spent $500 on a drone for property shots and it basically paid for itself on the first listing.

Can we talk about the new 'maker space' that opened in Springfield?

Pro tip: That 'too good to be true' project budget is always a red flag

The week I stopped pushing peels on everyone

I was writing the same code over and over for a month before I saw the problem

Had a chat with an old salvage diver that made me rethink my whole gear setup

My big change on finding cheap places to stay in Europe

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