u/AgentG91

I got a call today from an unknown number in the outskirts of my city (US) that says I won a contest giving feedback from the bottom of a receipt for Walmart / Sam’s Club type places. I’ll admit, I don’t usually do that, but it’s possible I did it once giving some very real feedback. It was a call with a long hold after I said hello, so that gave me pause.

They said I won one of three prizes. A big smart tv, a vacation with hotel stay for 2 adults and 2 kids, or $5k cash. I would have to go to their office to do a scratch card to find out which prize I won.

It wasn’t a good time for me to take the call, so I asked them to reach out later or email me and they said they would call back tomorrow. But before they do, I wanted to check if this is a known scam and if I’m wasting my time on it. I can always ask questions tomorrow when they call to validate it.

Edit: thanks all. I’ll save my time and sanity and ignore the call tomorrow

I’m looking for scanner options to scan the inside of a drum furnace (50” diameter, 125” tall) while it’s cold to measure the lining wear. This would be scanned while it’s cold.

One question I have for this community on the data processing side is how quickly one can turn this scan into a workable model to get ID measurements and volume and maybe even color map for irregular wear. Is that something that can reasonably be done in an hour or so? Or does it take a lot of work to convert a scan point cloud into a workable model? I was working with someone at my company who has a quote from a scanning service partner of theirs that’s basically $1000/scan meaning $52,000 per year effectively. So I’m looking for ways to save money by putting the scanning work into the engineer’s hands and not just hand money to the service provider.

Happy to answer any questions. Thanks!

What do you have for trim spacing, mower spacing, wheel speed and blade speed? Personally, I want the thing to be finished as fast as possible because it already takes ages to do a 0.3 acre lawn, but maybe it doesn’t cut as well because it’s going too fast? What has worked for you?

I have a Ferrex 822721 20v Trimmer Edger that I had for less than a summer. When I went to use it this summer, the battery is fully charged but the trimmer starts and cuts out after less than a second. Nothing I do will get it to go for even a second again. Sometimes I can give it a safety thump and get it to go again, but that’s rare.

I’ve spoken with their customer service and they want me to pay $50 to ship it back to them to do an analysis and then replace it. Sod that. This thing isn’t worth that much. I’d love to figure out how to fix it myself, but I’m kind of an idiot.

Happy to do some analysis of my own, though my equipment is light.

My son has been in learn to skate for a couple months now and while it’s been good, I want to get out on the ice with him more to do some more practice. He learns better with teachers than he does parents, so it’s always difficult to get him to commit to instruction with me.

That said, he has A LOT of fun going out and just doing what he’s good at and I’d like to do it more often. If I just let him go out and have fun (without practicing the things he could use improvement on), will he still improve? I want him to improve to the point that he can skate properly (currently just marching and gliding), but I also want him to enjoy his time on the ice.

Did people who taught themself to skate figure out the transition from marching to skating on their own? Is it age more than experience in that case?