u/Faceless_213

My situation (with small rant): I write SQL, VBA, and occasionally Python. I graduated in 2008 and probably haven't used C# in 10 years! Anyway, someone abruptly left and very few people know anything about what was being done here. I asked my supervisor, but he seemed disinterested in helping me (I think he thinks he's "helping me understand the code more" by not explaining anything at all). Or maybe its the culture here because my peers just shrugged and was like "idk. You'll figure it out." WHAT??

My problem: We use Amazon StarRez to pull files from a bucket then it does things and inserts the data in those files into our database. I have no clue what's going on! I was told to not worry about pulling from the bucket because I won't have access and instead put the files on the c drive. Fine.... Then what?? I put in like 30 break points and I have no clue what I'm looking for here! I wouldn't expect anyone here to know much about StarRez. I just mention it because that's what we use. BUT, I would expect someone to have some sense of where to start in general. I already threw in like 30 break points, but it stops because its looking for a file in the bucket that I can't access anyway.

I am freaking out because why am i doing programming?? And, yeah, I did it way back in the day, but someone was around to guide me! Now, its just like "lol... you'll figure it out!"

I've been playing around with ai and had some fun stories I wanted to tell using people. Obviously, I can use historical figures. I'm pretty sure I could also use modern celebrities too (not sure though). But, what about just random people? Say I had a picture of some random dude on the internet and I wanted to make him look silly? Does that open me up to legal action?

Now, keep in mind, the idea is complete satire. Think of something like South Park. When you see someone on there, you clearly know its not the real person lol. You know its a cartoon. They would have ridiculous outfits and be put in clearly fake (impossible) scenarios.

I just want to understand how safe doing something like this is.

I have a very specific vision for some characters I'd like to make. When I try to make them on ChatGPT, they tend to turn out pretty good. BUT, when I do the same thing with ComfyUI, it misses so many details! Flux.2 Klien 4b, if that helps.

Basically, I want to upload a picture of myself. I want it to keep my facial features (because then its not me!). This includes my distinct facial hair. I then want to put a very specific mask and costume. The costume will have a very simple design on its chest. All in an animated style.

Usually, it can get the art style right and most of the costume. The mask never seems right. And, then it either screws up the facial hair or the emblem on his chest. Its like I'm 90% of the way there! Are there techniques I can do to get all this stuff right? Like, can I string multiple nodes together? I think my prompt writing skills are pretty good on Grok and ChatGPT, but maybe I need to do something different with ComfyUI? Are there other things I should know?

Right now, its pretty simple. Load image -> edit image -> preview image. That's it.

Edit: I also used LongCat, but it is significantly worse. It doesn't listen to my clothing description (it keeps making my shirt white or the color of in my original image, rather than the colors I indicate in the prompt)

My buddy recorded a standup special. Three different angles... then, the guy who was supposed to edit it just kinda ghosted him. I edited videos in the past and thought it would be easy enough to do this for my buddy (and a few $$$ lol).

The project will use OpenShot (I'm a big open source kind of guy). It will be 45-60 minutes long. And, the idea is to switch between camera angles for effect. I think 90% of this is straight forward. I'm more concerned about the things you only learn through experience. Any tips or advice that you wish someone gave you when you did your first big project?

Whether that is advice is about putting credits on the screen. Or maybe how frequently it makes sense to switch angles (there will be a few obvious points because he did screw up and it would be nice to hide that with clever edits). Obviously, i don't want to stay stagnant... but, I also don't want to bounce from angle to angle so much that it gets nauseating.

Country US

Budget $2.5k, but flexible

Are you open to refurbs/used options? No

Screen size Any

Weight limit Any

Purpose AI development. Videos, music, images. Maybe some gaming, but primarily AI development.

Form factor regular laptop

Intended usage ComfyUI and various AI models. Maybe I'll play Rocket League, but its not a priority

Desired battery life Irrelevant. I tend to stay plugged in most of the time

Please list, in order of most important to least important, the priority between Size, Weight, Performance, Battery life Performance. Size is a distant second place. I don't care about weight or battery life.

Info/Requirements Cooling. Even if I just get a cooling pad, I feel like running this laptop for AI is going to create a lot of heat. I want to make sure I don't overheat my laptop!

Requirements:

• At least 16GB VRAM, though, I feel 32GB would be better considering I want to aggressively generate AI.

• System RAM? requirements say 32GB, but I bet 64GB would make more sense

• Storage? Honestly, I want a MINIMIUM of 2TB. The models could take up 1/2 TB just by itself.

I live in an old Pennsylvania town where a lot of homes are decades old. In fact, mine is easily over 100 years old. An old neighbor recently gave me a picture of my house from the 1970s hahaha. Here's a breakdown of what I'm looking at:

• My house is listed on most sites at about $100k. I owe $20k on it (3.5% mortgage). Because of lot of things all going wrong recently, I drained all my savings. I won't have access to any real amounts of money for another year or two as I rebuild that emergency fund.

• I spent $15k on electrical last year. it still had old fuse boxes in it!

• I spent a few grand on repairing the basement entrance a few months ago.

• My clumsy roommate leaned against the shower wall and now the tiling caved in and some even fell off. As mentioned above, I had other emergencies, so I don't have the money to fix this. I taped the whole wall with plastic and waterproof tape. I know that's not the best solution, but the only one i have right now. Honestly, it still has carpeting on the bathroom floor from when I bought it! In other words: the bathroom is in need of a complete makeover.

• two big holes in the hallway. That's just from life happening in a house for 15ish years.

• There's the paint job that a former roommate did for me: they did it for free... they just stopped halfway so I now have multiple places where its clear they did half the work.

• Most importantly, there is black mold in the house. I run a hepa filter in my room and vacuum and try to keep the air circulating, but there are areas where you can see the mold (air conditioners, bathroom, and attic, mostly). This is the biggest reason I'm looking to do something! I think this is giving me health problems!

Anyway, I just don't know if its worth maintaining this house. I'm not a fancy guy, I just need a place to live. I don't care if its a modular home or a trailer or whatever I just don't want a new OLD house lol. Nor do I want to go back to renting (why tf are rents 4x my mortgage for less space??). My first thought was "I have a decent amount of property, maybe I can just have a contractor come in and make a bunch of changes. Then, looked into the zoning. Basically, any structures would now have to be x feet from my neighbor... but, my foundation/basement is right up against the property line. If I try to make any changes, I could run into a whole bunch of compliance issues.

So, yeah, I kinda want out, but I don't know what to do. It was way different 15 years ago. I didn't need to sell my existing apartment when I bought this house lol. I also feel scammed because my real estate agent was also the seller's agent. Not cool. And, I know two more agents. Good friends... but, one is TERRIBLE with money so I don't trust him to help me navigate this and the other friend is a people pleaser who will likely tell me what he thinks I want to hear.