Just installed this solar panel today, using the Jackery 5000plus official panel. If it works well, I'll add another one. I can also control charging during off-peak hours through The app-driven TOU scheduling, because the off-peak electricity price where I live is about one-third of the normal price.
Question for the folks actually running metal AM, not just reading about it.
When you look at different metal powders for laser / e‑beam systems, what turned out to matter the most in the real world,, particle size distribution, flowability, O₂ pickup, or just how forgiving the alloy is to process? i see a lot of marketing around spherical, high purity powder, but not as many details on what actually made a difference on the machine and in post processing.
i’ve been browsing a few metal 3D printing powder catalogs to get a feel for what alloys and spec ranges are common in production, for example: https://www.samaterials.com/405-3d-printing-powder.html curious what you’ve learned the hard way about powder selection and what you’d tell someone speccing a new process today.
heading into summer so most of us are done using the fireplace, but i’m starting to think ahead to fall so i don’t get stuck when it gets cold again. figured i’d ask what everyone here actually checks before firing up a gas fireplace after it sat all summer. here’s what i’ve picked up after having mine serviced a few times: thermocouple / thermopile – if your pilot won’t stay lit, this has been the culprit almost every time. tech checks the millivolts in like 2 minutes and you know if it’s weak. burner ports – spiders and random debris love to clog these over the off-season. dirty burn = more yellow/orange flame instead of clean blue, and that’s when you start thinking about CO and soot. gas valve + flex line – older flex lines crack or wear, especially if they were cheap to begin with. worth at least a visual check or having a tech look at it. firebox + glass – the glass on sealed units can get hairline cracks you don’t see until someone points them out. if yours is 10+ years old, it’s worth having someone really look it over once. flue / cap – even for gas, the vent needs to be clear. birds, wasps, random junk in the cap are way more common than i expected. we had a company called 1st Choice come out last fall, tech’s name was jeff (former navy). zero upsell pressure, he walked me through everything and found a weak thermocouple that would’ve died mid-winter. glad we caught it early. do you guys do this kind of off-season check, or do you just wait until fall and hope it lights? curious what your checklists look like.
Looking at my admin invoice from last quarter and I genuinely can't tell where fund administration ends and where my CPA's job begins. The line items overlap by like 40%. Both are charging me for "accounting review." Both want to look at the books. Both want to talk about distributions. Why am I paying twice?
Maybe this is on me for not understanding the category but I read the contract twice and it doesn't really clear it up. From what I can piece together, fund administration is supposed to cover the partnership-level stuff. Capital accounts, investor statements, wire ops, KYC, the sub docs, and then K-1 prep and partnership tax filing if it's bundled. My CPA's job is more on my personal side and the fund's underlying portfolio companies if I'm taking advisory shares. But the admin keeps doing things that feel like CPA work and the CPA keeps doing things that feel like admin work and the bill is wild.
Has anyone else figured out how to draw this line cleanly, or am I just supposed to accept the redundancy and pay both? Starting to think the answer is to find an admin where partnership tax and K-1s are genuinely in the base instead of bolted on, so there's no overlap zone, but maybe that's wishful thinking.
I spend a lot of time reading stuff online, but I also like keeping an eye on the market. The constant switching between tabs was getting annoying.
Tried using InvestFellow: Real-Time Stocks + AI Insights™ recently and it just shows prices and movers on the side while I browse. Pretty simple idea, but surprisingly useful.
Do you guys use dashboards, apps, or just keep refreshing charts?
After JEE Main Session 1, I got 96.2 percentile.
And honestly, I was shattered.
Not because 96 is bad, but because I genuinely thought I was capable of much more. I had worked hard, sacrificed a lot, and still felt like I was standing nowhere. Every day I kept opening YouTube searching things like “how to improve percentile”, “BITSAT strategy”, “can I still make a comeback”, and it felt like everyone else had life figured out except me.
Some people told me to focus only on Advanced. Some said BITSAT is random and impossible. Others said speed matters more than concepts. I got so many opinions that I became completely confused.
Then I started giving mocks seriously.
Slowly, my scores improved. More importantly, my mindset improved. I learned how not to panic, how to skip intelligently, how not to get emotionally attached to questions. Eventually my JEE percentile improved to 99.4, and that phase completely changed my confidence.
But then came BITSAT.
And bro, I was NOT properly prepared for BITSAT specifically.
I didn’t know what bonus questions were. I didn’t know the actual paper level. I had no idea whether the exam would feel easier than JEE or ten times harder.
In the last few days before the exam, I started attempting myPAT papers. And if you’ve done them, you know how brutal they feel. The level honestly scared me. I genuinely started feeling underprepared again.
Then I entered the actual BITSAT exam hall.
And within the first few questions, something hit me.
The paper was not impossible.
Yes, there were tricky questions. Yes, speed mattered. But it wasn’t some alien exam made for geniuses. The patterns were familiar. Physics was mostly formula application and clarity. Chemistry had many direct and NCERT based questions. Math required smart selection more than olympiad level solving.
And suddenly all those mocks, all those mistakes, all that stress started helping me.
I realized something very important that day:
Most people lose to the fear of BITSAT before even entering the exam hall.
The exam is absolutely beatable if your concepts are decent and you stay calm.
Also one thing nobody tells you properly, BITSAT has patterns. Topics like Current Electricity, Thermodynamics, Electrostatics, Chemical Bonding, Mole Concept, Circles, Vectors, Probability, Calculus etc appear again and again. The exam rewards clarity and speed much more than crazy advanced level intelligence.
And the bonus questions completely change the psychology of the paper. Once you know they exist, time management becomes a huge factor.
So if you’re reading this right now feeling scared, underprepared, burnt out, or convinced everyone else is ahead of you, listen carefully:
You are probably much closer than you think.
96 percentile me would never believe that a few months later I would walk into BITSAT scared ad walk out feeling confident.
P.S I am also a mentor at crackIT, I understand that having mock tests that help you reach your dream score is life changing, if you get the testseries im probably going to be one of the mentors in the community.
I just touched down in Xi'an. The iconic red neon of the Xi'an station. Found a 24-hour Lanzhou noodle spot. Five bowls for our group. A great way to start the trip definitely.
I will share an update once I am done about my experience to this area….