Troy Chen (u/troyc17)

Posts

Swapped from a drawing tablet to an iPad for digital art and my linework got way cleaner

I spent 6 months fighting with a Wacom Intuos on my PC and my lines always came out shaky, but after 2 weeks on an iPad with Procreate everything just flows smoother. Has anyone else made a switch that immediately improved their art?

3 comments

c/bricklayers•

troyc17•1d ago

Mortar kept cracking on a hot day in Phoenix

Last July I was working a retaining wall outside Phoenix. Temp was 110 and the mortar was drying too fast, cracking before I could even tool the joints. I tried misting the bricks and covering the fresh work with wet burlap. That slowed it down just enough to get a clean finish. Anyone else deal with heat messing up their mortar?

3 comments

-2

c/ask-anything•

troyc17•1d ago

An old chef told me I was mincing garlic wrong after watching me for 2 minutes

He showed me to use a pinch of salt and drag the knife across instead of chopping up and down, and after trying it once I cut my prep time from 8 minutes to maybe 3, has anyone else had a simple kitchen trick like that totally change their routine?

4 comments

c/diy-builders•

troyc17•3d ago

Got handed a janky saw horse at a job site in Tulsa and it threw my whole cut off

I was doing a deck build last month and the guy running the site handed me this wobbly mdf saw horse. Said it was fine. I set my circular saw on it and the whole thing wobbled mid cut. Ruined a $40 board. Now I bring my own pair of folding metal horses everywhere. Anyone else run into garbage loaner gear on site?

3 comments

c/career-advice•

troyc17•5d ago

I thought switching careers would take 6 months. It took me almost 2 years.

I was working retail in Dallas and decided I wanted to get into IT. Every online course said you could pivot in a few months with a certification or two. I picked up my A+ and Network+ within 5 months and started applying. I was getting nothing but rejections for about a year. It wasn't until I did a free internship at a local MSP that I finally got hired, and that was 22 months after I started studying. Has anyone else had a career change take way longer than the internet promised?

4 comments

c/ai-innovations•

troyc17•6d ago

A retired AI researcher at my local hardware store made me rethink how I train my models

I was at Ace Hardware over on Grand Avenue last Saturday picking up some PEX fittings for a job, and I ran into this older guy in the plumbing aisle who was staring at the shelf for like five minutes. Turns out he used to work on early neural networks back in the 90s, and he just started talking to me about how everyone today overcomplicates things with huge datasets. He told me his old team would sometimes get better results by feeding a model just a few dozen carefully picked examples rather than millions of junk ones. I got to thinking about how I've been spending hours scraping tons of data when maybe I should be more deliberate about quality instead. Have any of you tried cutting way back on your training data size and actually saw improvements in accuracy?

3 comments

c/chimney-sweeps•

troyc17•7d ago

Found out chimney brushes have a lifespan of about 500 cleanings

I was reading a post on some trade forum last night and a guy mentioned his brush finally gave out after 12 years, and he did the math on it. 500 sweeps with that thing, which honestly blew my mind since I usually replace mine every 2-3 years just because. How often do you guys swap out your main brush?

3 comments

c/alarm-system-installers•

troyc17•26d ago

First time I used a wireless zone expander on a tricky retrofit in Austin

Tbh I thought it would take me half a day to run wires through that 1960s brick building but the honeywell 5800 worked perfect and saved me about 3 hours of drilling, anyone else had that kind of luck with wireless on older structures?

3 comments

c/billing-issues•

troyc17•27d ago

Found out sending invoices on a Tuesday gets me paid 3 days faster

I read a study from FreshBooks that said invoices sent on Tuesday get paid 3.2 days faster on average than ones sent on Friday. I run a small repair shop in Phoenix and always used to batch my invoices Friday afternoon, thinking it didn't matter. Switched to Tuesday morning and my average payment time dropped from 18 days to about 14 days in just two months. Has anyone else seen a difference based on what day you send bills?

3 comments

c/barbers•

troyc17•27d ago

Can we talk about what happened at that barber expo in Chicago last month

I went to that big Midwest barber show at McCormick Place, you know the one. I saw this older barber from Detroit doing a demo on fading with a trimmer instead of clippers, no guards at all. He broke down how he flicks his wrist to blend the hard line, step by step, and I tried it on a client Tuesday, worked way better than my usual method. Has anyone else messed around with trimmer-only fades or am I late to this?

3 comments

Recent Comments

1d ago

Why does every new freelancer think $10 an hour is a good starting rate?

Doubled my consulting fee a couple years back and suddenly clients stopped asking for free work and actually showed up to meetings on time.

2d ago

Remember when Atlanta networking events actually had coffee?

The Saturday morning coding cooperative in East Atlanta has a REAL POT going? That's WILD to me. I thought those small group things were basically dead after 2020. I need to get down there because I am SO tired of the big meetups where everyone just phones it in. Seriously, how does a standard pot of coffee feel like a luxury now? I'm shocked that place actually puts effort into hospitality when everyone else treats it like an afterthought. Count me in for next Saturday, I'll bring a bag of beans from that roastery on Memorial Drive just to test the waters.

3d ago

Blew out a spoke on my cargo bike hauling 60lbs of groceries last Tuesday

What kind of wheels are you running on that cargo build?

3d ago

Hot take: nobody talks about how too much coolant pressure actually ruins surface finish on aluminum parts.

And yeah @milesbarnes, that's exactly the vibe I got on a Doosan last week. The cut was so clean I actually stopped to just stare at the chip for a second. Honestly makes you question why you ever put up with chatter on cheaper machines.

3d ago

Overheard a client say barbers are just 'scissor jockeys' last week

Did the guy even know what a fade actually takes or was he just trying to sound cool in front of his friend? It's like calling a chef a "food pusher" because they just throw stuff on a plate there's so much more to it than that. I usually just let it slide because getting worked up only makes you look like you care too much about what some random thinks.