Solar-powered decorative night lights

by   •   General
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

A very long time ago, my dad bought some lights that were on sale at our local hardware store. There was a 100% rebate offer on the lights, so he figured that there wasn’t really a reason not to get them, as they would effectively cost the price of a stamp and a little bit of time.

When he brought them home, he realized that they didn’t work, and he figured that they were on sale for 100% off through rebate because they were broken. He obviously didn’t really mind, seeing as they were essentially free, so he kept them around to use as day decorations.

Then, one day, he randomly decided to open them up and found out that there was a protective sticker over the solar panel. He removed the sticker, set them out again, and magically, they lit up the same night.

We’ve had these lights for a few years now. Last night, I was out late and decided to snap some photos of them.

Solar-powered decorative night lights

Solar-powered decorative night lights

They look pretty nice at night, seeing as they actually light up now.

 

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parade champeon nomber 1st plaec

by   •   General
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

A few weeks ago, I posted about my martial arts academy building a float for the upcoming Independence Day parades.

I figured that progress updates might get a little boring if I just posted them without a twist, so I decided to turn my photo today into a doge meme.

While we were out there, we also saw two birds fighting in a death match. They were literally flapping around like crazy, clawing at each other.

I tried to get close to take a photo of them, but as I got near, they gradually took their fight away from me. So, unfortunately, I had to use the zoom on my phone’s camera (which isn’t that great) to get a pho­to.

 

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The climb is complete – Heroes of the Storm Hero League Rank 1

by   •   Heroes of the Storm
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I’m proud to announce that, through my commitment to climbing the Hero League ranked ladder on Heroes of the Storm in the past two weeks, I have reached my goal and hit Rank 1 today.

It seems like once you reach Rank 1, you go off a different point system, where you can collect up to 1,000 points. The point progress bar also disappears, so you’ll have to hover over your rank in order to see how many points you have left until you max out.

I’m eager to set my new goal at 1,000 points into Rank 1, but I’m also a little hesitant, as I don’t want to overwork myself.

As you might have suspected, I tend to get burnt out pretty easily, especially if I’m doing something by myself, and I don’t want this same thing to happen to Heroes of the Storm. Because of all the dedication and focus I’ve been putting into this, as well as the fact that I am solo queueing all my games, I feel as if it’s even more susceptible to burning me out.

So, for now, I’m going to mix in some different games into my schedule for a little while as I cool down from Heroes of the Storm, and only play it casually for a bit. From there, I’ll decide if I’ll go for the ultimate goal of 1,000 points before the Grandmaster system gets introduced (the gold border that was asset-farmed from a recent patch).

 

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My martial arts academy is making a dragon parade float

by   •   General
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

The United States’ Independence Day is coming up in a little over a month, and parades are starting late next month.

The martial arts academy where I occasionally train and teach is building a float for this year’s parades. I re­member hearing that they placed second or third in the parade competition last year, and it seems like they’re taking it up a notch and trying to win first place this year.

The owner and CEO of the academy is building the float himself, with the help of other staff and students. He came to visit me next door yesterday afternoon (we have neighboring businesses) so I could check out his progress.

He already has a bunch of pieces cut out, and he still has a bunch of panels of wood left for the rest of the design.

He was hard at work the entire day; when I went to visit him again late at night, after I had closed my family’s business, he had a lot more pieces cut out, and had already started putting some parts together.

I personally don’t really have much of a passion for sculpting, so I don’t really go out of my way to experience it. As a result, this is particularly novel and interesting to me to see the process behind some­thing like this being built.

I’ll try and keep up with their progress on designing the parade float, and post progress photos here for those of you who might also be interested.

 

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My HotS NA-to-EU ping is lower than my LoL NA-to-NA ping

by   •   Heroes of the Storm, League of Legends
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Earlier today, Blizzard announced that globalization was enabled for Heroes of the Storm.

Until now, Heroes of the Storm was region-specific. If you got a key, you had to make sure you got a prop­er NA or EU key for your account.

Now, with globalization, every account can play on any server, and multiple regional accounts can be bound to a single Battle.net log-in.

I decided to test out this change by logging in to the European Heroes of the Storm server. I finished some of the starting tutorials, then hopped in a Cooperative game.

My ping was actually impressively low, compared to my expectations, and I tweeted about it:

I hovered around 132 ms when I played on the EU server. When I play League of Legends on the NA ser­ver, my ping often sits around the 140s.

Everyone says that their connection to the League of Legends servers are fine, and they blame it on my Internet, but it’s sort of hard to believe when stuff like this happens … lol

 

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ally ell eahell at the eahore

by   •   Highlights
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

A few weeks ago, Ed let me know that the S key on his keyboard had broken. This is how he informed me of his tragedy:

He ended up going to a keyboard key website and ordering the letter S for his particular brand and model of laptop.

This is where the story gets juicy.

Apparently, the company from which he ordered his replacement key couldn’t fulfill his order, and sent him this message:

Hello,

The “S” key is currently out of stock for your laptop model. Unfortunately, this part is also very rare and we are not able to acquire it for you at this time. The good news is we do have several options:

1. If you have the original key cap, we can send you the hinges (plastic clips) and rubber cup that fit underneath the key. With these pieces you will be able to fix your keyboard.

2. If you don’t have the key cap, we can remove a random key from the keyboard and place a professional keyboard key sticker of the letter “S” on the key cap. This way, it will look very close to the original.

3. We can sell you a brand new complete keyboard for $78 shipped.

Please let us know how you wish to proceed, so we could further assist you.

This was (literally) a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a genius plan I had come up with. I instructed Ed to respond with the following email:

Hi,

I would like to go with option 2, but without the ticker (I know where my key is, o a blank key is fine). o, pleae end me a blank key cap, hinge, and rubber cup.

Thank,

Ed

After literally laughing non-stop at my own joke for a few minutes, I finally calmed down enough to hear that Ed had followed through with my wishes. He let me know that he had copied, pasted, and sent that exact email back to the laptop key replacement company.

I found out today that Ed had finally received his key in the mail. Apparently they didn’t have any blank key caps, so they sent him a random one instead, which ended up being “Q.”

He tried to install it himself, but he had some problems because the original laptop manufacturer had glued the rubber dome on the base of the keyboard and made key replacement nearly impossible.

He called me over for help, so I went over to his house and installed the key for him.

So now, when something sad happens to Ed, he has two Q keys so he can QQ more effectively.

 

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