Did anyone score any interesting deals during Cyber Monday? The processor I picked out for my lab system build actually went up in price :eek:
Just bought a new Toyota... has autonomous driving and got a good end of year deal.
Don't hate because it's a chics car :)) It does 55+mpg
I've got no room to talk smack about chicks cars.. been driving a Hyundai Elantra for the last seven years.
Not too bad, at least it's reliable
Playstation 4 Pro "for the kids" :mrgreen:
Looking to get a new Toyota, waiting till mid december when folks are REALLY wanting to make their numbers for the year and fighting for the #1 spot.
Yea I was impatient and panicking a bit about replacing the car I am presently driving (with all the issues). I was looking at getting a crappy runaround car like a hyundai getz, to basically get me to and from work only. The thing is here, cars dont have a mandatory yearly inspection and cheap cars are not that cheap.. The hyundai getz was $2500 and I was not confident it would last 6 months. Compared with 2nd hand cars in England, I could spend $800 and get an excellent well-looked-after car that will last a couple of years with absolutely ZERO maintenance on it (I mean no oil change, no brakes nothing) just check oil is at the right level and there is water in the coolant as usual... At the end of the 2 years (max!), take it to the scrap and collect $200 in scrap and buy another.
I was looking at this earlier today https://comma.ai/ -> basically, autonomous driving for the Toyota. Dont think it works in the "land down under" though. The Toyota I have bought has some of this already built in (stop/start/steering and emergency braking).
Good luck with your purchase. Arm yourself before you go to the dealer by looking for the car you want online. And when they give you the price you can say hang on... :) You probably already know this. Make sure to get the android/apple car play and the long warranty included :D
my wife tells me she thinks she wants a Land Rover, ::)
then she sees the price...
I'm picking out a new personal laptop. Old one is now 6.5 years old and I have some big games to play...
Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk
I plan on finding getting a good price on-line, then emailing all the dealers close to me, and getting them to bid against one another.
dlots - im keen to know how that goes! :)
I'll let you know :-D
My dealer (the 2nd one I saw and whom I've signed the contract) contacted me yesterday asking if I would like to accept a different colour as he can't yet secure the black over pearl white. He said other dealers dont want to let their cars go.
So I thought that maybe the first dealer I went to and discussed the car is holding out for me going back there. I think next time the first dealer calls me I should just say I bought a Kia. 🙈 Caused myself a little problemette.
Well, can you wait for the car, or do you need to start looking for something different? Or does the color matter to you?
Myself, I don't want a black or white car, as it's too easy to see dirt on those finishes. I like gray or brown. :D
dark cars are hot, dark interiors are hot. dark cars with dark interiors are hotter. If you live in one of those climates.
Meanwhile, I gots my new laptop. Time to start copying music files to it, already got my games on it.
Quote from: ristau5741 on December 14, 2019, 07:18:41 AM
dark cars are hot, dark interiors are hot. dark cars with dark interiors are hotter. If you live in one of those climates.
You speak the tru tru.
Land Rovers are sweet but last I recall only the high end and luxury models are available to the US market. Therefore $$$
One of my co-workers bought the new Ford Ranger XLT through Military Autosource and had it imported duty free to Bahrain. It's the only US-spec Ford Ranger on the island. Pretty cool.
Quote from: deanwebb on December 16, 2019, 02:37:30 PM
Meanwhile, I gots my new laptop. Time to start copying music files to it, already got my games on it.
I wants new puter too.
This is the build I am eyeballing for my "lab machine/Vidya-game destroyer" https://pcpartpicker.com/list/fygqsk (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/fygqsk)
My year end goal is to have everything together to start building my lab in January. Super excited about that. I need a desk and monitors too.. and a keyboard.. all of this is going to add up. "It's an investment"
Quote from: ristau5741 on December 14, 2019, 07:18:41 AM
dark cars are hot, dark interiors are hot. dark cars with dark interiors are hotter. If you live in one of those climates.
It was over 40c in Perth last week/this week (104F). Some guy put some meat in the car wrapped in foil and cooked it. It looked nasty but was cooked :mrgreen: He had an oven thermostat and it was getting pretty hot. He tried with 2 cars, blue one and black one. Black was mucho scorchio
Car situation - confirmed building one in January and I'll get a loan car until I pick it up in February. But he said it's coming with red accented bucket seats (compared with all black bucket seats). Not sure if I like them, they're an optional extra
Yeah, this PC I got is for my lab only in the sense that it's another Windows endpoint for me to manage. :smug:
It plays Cities:Skylines at a nice, high frame rate, which is what I want it to do. :)
Ended up getting a LE Plus highlander V6 AWD, trailer hitch, luggage rack with cross bars 0 down 0% interest for ~$35K
Quote from: dlots on December 30, 2019, 06:09:40 PM
Ended up getting a LE Plus highlander V6 AWD, trailer hitch, luggage rack with cross bars 0 down 0% interest for ~$35K
Sounds nice, but what color is it? :problem?:
Black inside and out. I didn't want it cause it gets so hot... but it was what they had.
Quote from: dlots on December 31, 2019, 04:45:59 PM
Black inside and out. I didn't want it cause it gets so hot... but it was what they had.
Just move to Northern Canada. Perfect car for that climate.
Quote from: dlots on December 30, 2019, 06:09:40 PM
Ended up getting a LE Plus highlander V6 AWD, trailer hitch, luggage rack with cross bars 0 down 0% interest for ~$35K
Nice! Black on black also nice. Does it have car play? If not - the dealer may be able to install it. The Toyota I bought comes with it, but only since a few months ago - all the reviews I watched were giving negatives about not having car play, but Toyota will retrofit in the previous models for a few hundred.
Quote from: deanwebb on December 18, 2019, 10:39:06 AM
It plays Cities:Skylines at a nice, high frame rate, which is what I want it to do. :)
I want to play this game, but I havent tried it because I think it's one of those games that I would need to pour in many 10's of hours of frustration before it got good - how is it for you?
Cities:Skylines is major fun for me. I've been playing it now for 2 years and it's a game I keep going back to because I can play it like a "city painter" with pretty buildings from the Workshop, unlimited cash, and just doing stuff that I like to do with cities. The heart of the game is in transportation and distribution chains, so those are lots of fun to figure out and fine-tune for the city I work on.
The learning curve was pretty much playing tutorials, watching YouTube how-tos and reading guides in the Workshop. Then, a lot of practice. When I start on a map, I may quit around 100K people because I just don't like where the city is headed. But if I break through that barrier with a sound city plan, then I can go for it and build out a really nice looking town. The good news is that the game itself is experimental and open-ended, so you can choose your own victory conditions. Mine is usually, "I want it to look pretty, but I also want it to work properly." So I make sure that the traffic flows well around my tall buildings and historic landmarks.
The best part is the modding community. Loads of assets and mods that really make the game. Once you get started, you can load up some really cool stuff. For traffic, there's a mod that allows you to change the default lane assignments so you can do proper freeway merges, urban roundabouts, and things like that. I look at it as specialized local programming for all the AI-driven cars in the game - and this also gives me some insight into how all-AI cars might operate as I watch them tailgate and shift 2 or 3 lanes all at once on a freeway.
It's definitely a great game for the road, as some times you're too tired to think and you just want to load up the first-person view mod and walk around your town as a virtual tourist. Very relaxing because you're looking over stuff you made. I also get a kick out of adding buildings in the game from places I've been to as a sort of memoir. It's worth investing the time in it, and I'm happy to help. Technically, the roads in the game *are* a network, so they'd be on-topic for this board. :smug:
Nice - it sounds like art.
Some time back I watched some videos on youtube about the game. It prompted me to get an old copy of sim city and play that for a bit but maybe I should have gone all-in to your game. I had "sim earth" on an old pentium 1 laptop years ago where I used to play old old games - Sierra made some cool games where you were a cop called Sonny and you had to type what you wanted. Was really difficult :)
C:S definitely has the edge on SimCity, no question in my mind. There are some die-hard SC people out there that will protest otherwise, but I have so much more flexibility with my city in C:S, I'm hooked for life. I've got all the DLC for the game and over 2300 different workshop assets, so... yeah... it's pretty awesome fun.
Quote from: deanwebb on January 03, 2020, 05:39:27 PM
C:S definitely has the edge on SimCity, no question in my mind. There are some die-hard SC people out there that will protest otherwise, but I have so much more flexibility with my city in C:S, I'm hooked for life. I've got all the DLC for the game and over 2300 different workshop assets, so... yeah... it's pretty awesome fun.
Last time I played it there were issues with the traffic algorithm. Cars would not utilize expanded roads and jam traffic into one or two lanes.
C:S patch notes: Increased the "max-paths" value in OSPF to route traffic over all links.
Only half joking. The underlying Dijkstra Algorithm is actually used for lots of stuff like that. UPS uses it in their hubs to route packages on conveyor belts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm
This is why I'm using TM:PE, or Traffic Manager: President Edition. I can specify where traffic can't change lanes, keep it from changing more than one lane (this makes me dread AI cars that decide to cross 3 lanes of traffic all in one go because the algo says it's time to get out of the speed lane and take that exit), and also specify turn only and thru lanes. This can also prevent cars taking the freeway exit just to take the onramp to the SAME DAMN FREEWAY!!! AGGGGH!!! or from using a street interchange instead of a freeway interchange to change direction on the highway. It also helps a lot with controlling merging traffic from onramps or freeway interchanges.
Quote from: Otanx on January 16, 2020, 10:21:13 AM
C:S patch notes: Increased the "max-paths" value in OSPF to route traffic over all links.
Only half joking. The underlying Dijkstra Algorithm is actually used for lots of stuff like that. UPS uses it in their hubs to route packages on conveyor belts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm
Wow, didn't know about it! :)
I get a little bit excited when I hear about Nyquist Theorem being used in other places.
Quote from: Dieselboy on January 16, 2020, 08:28:24 PM
Quote from: Otanx on January 16, 2020, 10:21:13 AM
C:S patch notes: Increased the "max-paths" value in OSPF to route traffic over all links.
Only half joking. The underlying Dijkstra Algorithm is actually used for lots of stuff like that. UPS uses it in their hubs to route packages on conveyor belts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm
Wow, didn't know about it! :)
I get a little bit excited when I hear about Nyquist Theorem being used in other places.
Seriously, C:S with Traffic Manager is gangs of fun for networkers... you're looking at the cars and trucks like packets and you want to maintain throughput and all.
We should re-name this thread to "Cool Stuff I Bought Recently"
I got a new credit card that awards me frequent flyer points for every $ I spend. So now I have all my utilities and expenses coming off that one card so I am awarded for expenses that I can't get out of. And free travel insurance and business lounge access. Dont know why I didn't do this years ago... 🙈
Quote from: Dieselboy on January 21, 2020, 02:08:51 AM
I got a new credit card that awards me frequent flyer points for every $ I spend. So now I have all my utilities and expenses coming off that one card so I am awarded for expenses that I can't get out of. And free travel insurance and business lounge access. Dont know why I didn't do this years ago... 🙈
I *did* do this years ago. :smug:
Yep, get 2% cash back on my credit card. Every bill I can gets put on this. Also use it for every purchase. Some places will not let you use a credit card. My mortgage must be a bank account, or check. My car payment (when I had one) was the same way. My big win was when we bought our last car the dealer let us put the down payment on the credit card. That was an easy $200 cash back. Water, power, trash, internet, etc. etc. etc.
I think everyone should do this if you have the control to pay it off every month.
-Otanx
Yea - I have come across "we dont accept credit cards" when I tried to pay my rent. There is a 3rd party that accept credit card payment and then they pay the rent. 1.5% charge though, has got me thinking how I can go about setting up my own company to do this and charge myself lesser fees. The company I am using here is called "rental rewards".
I've put a $1000 down on the car which I am waiting for but it's only a holding credit - I can have it refunded to me when I pick the car up. I am planning to have it refunded back to the card which I used at the time and then they can take the same amount from the new card. easy points if it works.
I get why they do it. They don't want to pay the extra fee the credit card company is charging. Especially on stuff like loans where they are already close on margins. I looked at rental rewards, but it looks like .au only. Need to do more research to see if there is something similar for the US.
On your holding credit you might want to have them refund it to you as a check, and pay the credit card from that. If you have them refund it back to the card they may also cancel any rewards from that. If you handle it yourself the card company does not know it was refunded.
Also anyone interested should look into "churning", and "manufactured spending". Mainly it covers ways to get rewards without actually spending the money. You can't do it anymore, but my favorite was the US Mint let you buy dollar coins from their website, using a credit card, with free shipping for face value. So people were buying 10s of thousands of dollars of coins. Getting points, and then depositing the coins back in the bank to pay the credit card bill. Rinse and repeat.
-Otanx
Yea I get that.. I'm not getting something for free, someone is paying.
Sheet! I always seem to miss on on the good stuff :XD:
The credit card I have at the moment is giving me 120,000 bonus qantas points (airline points) and I'm heavily investing in these points for various reasons. However, now they are spreading the points over 6 months rather than giving them to you when you sign up. So I am getting 20,000 per month for 6 months as long as I spend $1500. Most cards are like this now. The one that isn't, has a $1200 annual fee.
The best I could do credit card wise is a 3x points for travel Visa card. Since I am living overseas absolutely everything I put on my card gets 3x points! So I just pay for everything with it (except rent :() and pay it off whenever I get paid. I don't get miles but I can use the points for flights and what have you. In the last 6 months I have accumulated a massive amount of points.
We've already got a loyalty program thread... I'll just say that I've been working on my AA card of late and already have mad stacks of points with Marriott and Hilton.