u/Chole_Wunt

Just picked up the final bit to my Honzo: Mezzer Pro fork. Im very, very exited to put it on and finally complete my favorite bike.

Just wondering what travel to set it up with. The ESD ships with 150mm, but Ive read a lot of people push that to 160mm. Many even 170mm.

170mm is too much for me I think... Maybe. I could be convinced. But I think its down to keeping the 150mm or going up to 160mm.

Ive been running 150mm RXF36 for a while and it was fine that way. I wouldnt mind the bike being a little slacker. But its also my climbing and fitness bike. So idk. I know its not much of a difference.

Perfect shape. Lowers just serviced. Air spring excess grease cleaned up and has the bushings burnished so it is exceptionally plush. Matt black. Steer is cut to 7 5/8 inches. 29/27"

$400+shipping. Shipping should be about $30 in the USA.

Wondering if there is any clever solutions for these two things.

First: I cant stand the ceiling so close to the bed it feels like im sleeping in coffin. I need to be able to fully sit up and have at least 2 ft above that.

Second: I need to be able to conveniently store 2 MTBs inside the van. Fully assembled. I was thinking of attaching them to the inside of the back doors and moving the bed forward to make a small room back there. Any other ideas?

Currently have a Crosstrek and love it. Unfortunately Subaru corporate is messing me about on the warranty after a bit problem. I refuse to drive something from a company that has fucked me over. Its infuriating because up until this, I was planning on only driving subarus for the foreseeable future. My wife, brother, parents, neighbor, and two friends were going to get one this year as well because Im the "car guy" and i hyped mine so much. So now Subaru has lost like 7 sales because they cant return emails and have implemented to shockingly rude warranty process that just fucks customers over.

What I want to keep about the subaru: Reliability (allegedly). The excellent AWD, especially in the snow. Hatchback utility. Safety. Good MPG would be nice, but its not a deal breaker. I know Im going to have to compromise on something.

Toyota is over-hyped and obscenely expensive for what it is. Im not spending $70k on a 4runner..... get out.

I have room in the budget for anything, including reasonable luxury, as long as there is value there.

Currently have a Honzo ESD. LOVE it, but is a unit at 34lbs. It still climbs amazing and slays the downhill.

Im going to start XC racing and am tempted to just use the ESD, but I know Im going to get killed with the weight. I dont want to give up the geo though. I raced my XC goober buddy down with him on his full-sus XC bike and just killed him on my Honzo. Might be the tires too, idk.

So my thinking is to get a lighter HT that still has a 63 degree HTA. Would love something in the 28lb range. Im not really worried about being the absolute fastest. Just having fun and racing the way I want to race. No lycra and no gel.

Was thinking about this the other day. How I learned as a kid to not brag about helping people, doing good things, etc. Just do them and move on because its what good people do.

Now the internet is FULL of fake good deeds. Everything is a skit. The "People saving ocean animals" and "People saving dogs" vids are staged where they put the animals in peril, then save them. The fact that I dont see ANY acts of kindness in real life anymore leads me to believe its all fake. I cant awkwardly get in someones way at the grocery store anymore without being told to fuck off.

Theres a front-page thing on reddit right now where a dude helps a old lady out of a face-down puddle situation. And the first thing in my head is "why is this dude recording? Thats probably his granny who he convinced to lay down in the puddle."

Im just burnt out and tired of all the bullshit.

I am really hoping to get some evidence-based info out of this, but doubtful it exists.

I am an advanced intermediate who started in my late-30s, now in my early 40s. Progressing and have a season pass to the bike park. Ive progressed to single-black tech being very casual and am now into the double blacks, so consequences are increasing a bit. Im still being very methodical to riding and havent had any big crashes. I take injuries and risk seriously and subscribe to the "crashes are preventable" mindset (not interested in arguing this, thanks).

Im really stuck on how much protection is appropriate for bike park laps and what is just excessive coverage marketed to paranoid people. Im perfectly happy to be pragmatic, but draping myself in 10lbs of plastic does diminish the whole experience and this stuff is expensive.

My decision right now is between the following. Im just using Leatt as an example because I like them: All are body protectors with the undershirts.

1. Leatt realflex: CE1 soft cest and back. minimal coverage. Minimalist soft shoulders and elbows.

2. Leatt 4.5 EVO: CE2 chest and back with kidney belt. Soft elbows (thicker and bigger than realflex) hard-plastic shoulders.

3. Leatt 5.5 EVO (1lb over 4.5 in weight): CE2 chest and back. Additional hard-plastic side rib protection and har-plastic elbows.

4. Full armor coverage. Just for contrast because I cant be this encumbered. But Ive seen these at the bike park. Plastic plates covering the entire upper body and arms. Is there a function to this level of coverage?

My main thing: I recently crashed in extremely minimalist pads (leatt airflex knee and elbow). Knee when right into a rock, elbows into hard-packed dirt. The hardening effect of the soft-pads (D30 type stuff) material must have done its thing because I walked away without a scratch on my knees. I could not believe how effective just the minimalist pads were. It really made me wonder if the annoying hard-plastic CE2 knees im wearing in the bike park are overkill. If there is any point at all to them. And that has bled into the rest of the protection Im wearing as well.

Is something like the realflex enough? Is there any real reason to go more than that? What about the 4.5 vs the 5.5 with the additional hard-plastic elbows and rib protection? Any tangible benefits to that? I cant see myself hitting the sides of my ribs vs front and back in the crashes, but Im pretty ignorant to what actually gets hurt in a crash. What about just a back protector and forgo the chest all together?

Laying here sleepless on our third night camping. All 3 nights. 3 separate groups of loud assholes. Playing music. Drunk. Banging on things. Til 1am or later.

Camp host is useless. Talks to these people the day after. But a new set comes in the next day and does the same thing.

Is this just a thing now? I have not seen this amount of blatant disrespect for others ever. Now it’s every time I go camping.

My future wife and I are both bargain hunters and both think spending a ton on a ring is silly. But, we both want something nice, as in quality.

Right now looking at a deal at Kay, but know there are probably other options out there.

Budget would be good at $2-3k (less is better). Pear shaped diamond. Lab grown FOR SURE. She has the stock finger size. idk what else matters here.

Looking at downhill bikes. I really love Rocky Mountain bikes in general, but the Slayer is not a high-pivot with the idler pully.

Other one im looking at is a Santa Cruz V10. Love the color. Also not high-pivot.

The only one Im looking at with the separate pulley is the Pivot phoenix but $$$$$$$$

I have a fast-growing account that now up in the tens of millions of views range. I have surpassed all of FB's monetization requirements several times over. Every time I hit one, the goal posts suddenly change.

Ive contacted them about it and get the same vague BS about "Criteria is constantly changing" and all this other nonsense about algorithms.

My account is liberal-leaning content only. Things criticizing the GOP. At this point Im guessing FB is actively discriminating against accounts doing content like this due to FB leadership's political loyalties. Is there any other cases of this or evidence?

Im not going to stop until my account gets banned, which Im guessing is the next step since my followers and views are now on an exponential ramp.

I have a fast-growing account that now up in the tens of millions of views range. I have surpassed all of FB's monetization requirements several times over. Every time I hit one, the goal posts suddenly change.

Ive contacted them about it and get the same vague BS about "Criteria is constantly changing" and all this other nonsense about algorithms.

My account is liberal-leaning content only. Things criticizing the GOP. At this point Im guessing FB is actively discriminating against accounts doing content like this due to FB leadership's political loyalties. Is there any other cases of this or evidence?

Im not going to stop until my account gets banned, which Im guessing is the next step since my followers and views are now on an exponential ramp.

Ive been trying to get my new fork dialed in and am now wondering the proper way to measure fork sag. Do you dismount the bike and then immediately measure? Or do you add a step of pulling the fork to its most extended position first to take up the negative chamber slack?

Asking because everyone says sag=% of total travel. But at the same time, no guide or instruction manual says to pull up on the fork to get it to its fully extended position.

All my forks have about 5% of this slack in them. So if I dont pull up, my sag is 20% at the manufacturer recommended pressure. If I do pull up, its 25%. And this counts for about 7PSI in the main air chamber. So its a meaningful difference.

Switched to a Mezzer Pro from a Fox 38 Factory Grip2 a few months ago. So far loving it and it feels great.

One thing Ive noticed is the Mezzer just does not use full-travel like the fox did. Im only using 75% or so on the exact same trails and intensity that was bottoming out the fox.

Both forks were burnished. Sitting at 25% sag. 2 Tokens in the fox. IRT to the middle pressure (not the +10 for DH).

I get that the Mezzer is much more damper driven than the fox, so Im wondering if its just that. The fox was diving through its travel and the Mezzer is supporting more.

Im 220lbs. Riding black/double black bike part chunk.

All that being said, I have no complaints on the mezzer. If its not going to use full travel except in the biggest of hits, so be it. Still a great fork as is.

So any thoughts? Was wondering if Im doing something wrong or if this is just how these forks tend to be.

Im an experienced engineer and used NX extensively. Also SolidWorks to a high skill level.

I use a Mac at home for reasons and Im not getting into windows for this.

Im looking to design a few products at home. 3D print them. And eventually (hopefully) go into production. It would be smaller injection molded parts and small CNC mill and lathe parts.

Some sort of structural simulation would be great, but I know thats asking a lot.

Something free would be great, but I have a budget (buried treasure) for paid software if there are no decent free options.

I might a short rope for gym-only lead use. Used it maybe 4 times before unexpectedly moving. My new gym had super tall walls that were too tall for the short rope. So it sat in a reusable bag til now. Been like 7 years. Stored in air conditioning.

Now I have a gym where I can use it again. Is it fine? Realistically how long would a rope last? Fine to use it again until it wears out?

This one really got me: First, I absolutely despise overblown HR departments that have been enabled to manage the "culture" and performance review structure of a company. Totally misplaced area of expertise. HR needs to do their paperwork and STFU.

Im a manager of a team of 30 subject matter experts. There are customer facing people on this team. I set goals for about half of my team that essentially read, "Take your time with customers. Be polite. Be kind. Show customers they are a priority. Help customers solve problems and feel good about themselves." I did this because I observed a huge portion of my team deprioritizing customer interactions, treating them like a burden, for their quantitative goals and acting more or less inhuman. So I set a very human goal to give them permission to engage with customers more and show that human level engagement is a culture the company endorses. Judgement on if this goal is accomplished is 100% up to my discretion, as an experienced manager who is engaged with my team.

A month later, I get called into HR. Start getting lectured about SMART goals and how this doesnt qualify and how its against company policy. So I asked them if its important to be polite to customers... of course they said yes. If they believe that that behavior drives sales and business success. Again yes. So then I ask them how they would like to "measure politeness". They just said its not measurable so it cant be a goal..... Okay. I told them I will qualitatively make a judgement call and give everyone a 1-5 based on my observations over the next year, but Im not removing the goal.

This ended up getting escalated to the VP level. VP suggested we implement an AI to observe EVERY SINGLE CALL AND EMAIL and give it an objective politeness score. HR LOVED this.

So then I had to remind the VP and HR that having an AI on phone calls would be documenting literally everything in the company explicitly. This company has a 3 month email retention policy SPECIFICALLY to delete long-term evidence on liability cases. This got the VP to backtrack that proposal. But now HR has it in their head that they need an AI something to review people now and are writing proposals. Maybe I should remind them that the AI will take their jobs in 6 months because they are just paper pushers.

The original issue of this goal not being measurable has been forgotten about. No resolutions at all. HR is now preoccupied with justifying an exorbitantly expensive AI employee review process. They think they are going to be HR heros......

Like what ever happened to some basic common sense...... "I saw you being nice to a customer, good job. You helped them with their problem and they are now happy and are buying more product. Here is a bonus for increasing sales".

FFS. People have lost their humanity and any common sense.

This was a mass-internal email from $1B+ company in the finance world.... direct from the CEO to everyone in the company. It was a VERY long rant about how great AI is. Like a 9-10 paragraph essay. The person showing it to me claims it was hand-written, and Im embarrassed for her for believing that.

The climax was a paragraph saying "The only thing that matters in this company and in the entire tech industry is how good you are with Claude code" followed by bunch of bullshit on how that is the only metric people at his company are going to be reviewed on.

I thought it was absolutely shocking that his sole performance based metric was "How good you are with claude code".... not shipping protect. Not meeting customer needs. Not closing out tickets. Just AI. Thats it. And its right there in writing. In an email this idiot is proud of.

This company has also been laying off tons of people for not meeting this single performance metric.

Absolutely psychotic. Leaders are supposed to be stoic, clear headed thinkers and our current economic landscape is just saturated with these easily-influenced, detached, ADHD motherfuckers with raging fomo. Its embarrassing.

My take away is I cant believe how these CEOs are getting sucked into this scam. The AI companies are going to get all these shitty leaders to structure their companies around their shitty products, paying a fortune in usage tokens, then really start constricting the money flow when the companies cant recover after laying everyone off. EZPZ hostile business trap to fall into..... fucking nuts these idiots are not seeing the financial exposure they are opening themselves up to.

This was a mass-internal email from $1B+ company in the finance world.... direct from the CEO to everyone in the company. It was a VERY long rant about how great AI is. Like a 9-10 paragraph essay. The person showing it to me claims it was hand-written, and Im embarrassed for her for believing that.

The climax was a paragraph saying "The only thing that matters in this company and in the entire tech industry is how good you are with Claude code" followed by bunch of bullshit on how that is the only metric people at his company are going to be reviewed on.

I thought it was absolutely shocking that his sole performance based metric was "How good you are with claude code".... not shipping protect. Not meeting customer needs. Not closing out tickets. Just AI. Thats it. And its right there in writing. In an email this idiot is proud of.

This company has also been laying off tons of people for not meeting this single performance metric.

Absolutely psychotic. Leaders are supposed to be stoic, clear headed thinkers and our current economic landscape is just saturated with these easily-influenced, detached, ADHD motherfuckers with raging fomo. Its embarrassing.