u/Herrowgayboi

I love riding my bike and I plan to ride more regularly like to work on the good days, but man, even when I go "practice" riding late at night and have even a single car coming from behind me, I'm always holding my breathe.

I've watched some youtube videos about riding in traffic and some things I've picked up are:

1. Always stay in gear (incase you need to ride away)
2. Pick a side of the lane and not stay dead center
3. Flash the rear brake light to grab the drivers attention until they come to a full stop
4. If there's a car behind you while coming up to a light, try to slow down much a bit earlier so you have space to accelerate away if needed

While these techniques work, I've also been thinking about:

1. Getting a brake light that strobes (not sure about legalities)

2. LEDs for my turn signal without doing a LED relay so my turn signals hyperflash

Any thoughts?

Been riding for years, but recently officially licensed to ride in the US. Have been eyeing a Honda Grom just to run short errands and putt around town with. I've done my research but looking at the used market, it has me left with quite a few questions especially since this will be the first time I buy the bike used.

1. Is the 5th gear on the 3rd gen grom's really worth the effort to find/pay for? I'm getting mixed answers on this, between it makes it so much nicer to ride and it not making much of a difference.

2. Insanely low mileage. Something that sketches me out is the insanely low mileage groms on marketplace. We're talking sub 500 for even 2nd gen groms. Are the odo's easy to swap or is something else going on?

3. What is considered high mileage on these things? It almost feels like high mileage on these things is after 2-3k miles, since that's where the value of them usually tank. But then you go on youtube and find out about a 70k mile grom...

4. What are important things to check for when buying used?

5. What is the update on the emissions recall? I get mixed answers between the fixes are going through, to dealers will not even sell them yet because there isn't a fix yet. Haven't called every motorcycle dealer near me, but the ones that do sell groms that I've called so far state that they can't sell them yet with no updates.

Thanks!

For context: I’ve been riding OHV on and off for about 5 years, ridden mopeds extensively abroad and do downhill mountain biking, so I wasn't coming in completely new to riding, but wanted to start riding on the streets so I opted the route of the CMSP course.

The good:

Even with some level of riding experience, I did learn quite a few things that felt like it would really help improve with riding, such as turning my head more to help with turns, or keeping my clutch covered or breaking away from the habit of 2 finger braking (that i'm used to with mountain biking) and going to 4 finger braking for hard stops. Overall, it was great being called out for some bad riding habits.

The bad/nits:

- Instructors are mixed. Day 1, our instructors were AMAZING. They basically dumbed down everything so you could understand techniques in lemans terms and made it super easy to ask questions. Day 2, we had a different instructor and that guy basically expected you to basically be a seasoned rider and get quite mad at you for minor mistakes. Asking questions just lead to rhetorical answers

- E-class pricing - there's two types of courses. The in class version or the self-learning version. I honestly wish the self-learning version was cheaper. That said, pricing seems steep, but it's not terrible. You get 8 hours of riding training, a motorcycle with a tank of gas, and the ability to get the DMV riding test written off.

- No bicycle prerequisite - Props to people wanting to learn to ride, but there was 1 specific student who had never ridden a bicycle. They struggled to even keep balance.

The ugly: The passing rate and basically, signing off on someones death.

The passing standard blew my mind. Even by day 2 and the actual test, some people couldn't use the brakes, clutch, and even had a hard time balancing on the bike. Especially for the offset slalom test. Multiple individuals put their footdown, which I thought was a fail if done multiple times? Further more, one student even went over their bars slamming the front brake too hard for the stopping test, and the student who had never ridden a bike fell to their side going too slow.

Furthermore, there were 2 very young individuals who from the start of the weekend were bragging about how they already got a "race bike" waiting for them at home and just taking this course to be able to race with their friends. 1 of which was the one who went over the bars, and the other barely could figure out the clutch. The instructors were aware of this because they told them to take it baby steps at a time, but they clearly didn't care. Whatever the case may be, I hope these two individuals don't hurt themselves.

With that, maybe the class I signed up for was too lenient or maybe this is just how things are, but it's quite crazy to me that you can pass this easily.

Would I take the class again? Oh, absolutely.

TL;DR: Take the class even if you have some riding experience. The pricing seems steep, but it's honestly not that bad and you may learn a thing or two.

We have 2 cars, 1 of which basically lives outside on the driveway because the other uses the garage to charge overnight. While I do have a 2 car garage, it's barely wide enough for both cars to fit comfortably.

Now that summer time is coming around, I've been contemplating buying a car cover to reduce uv damage on the paint, but seems there are also risks associated with the covers damaging the paint.. With that, I have thought about installing a sun shade, but it seems my city has ordinances against installing a cover in the front yard.

For a car driven this infrequently, is a cover actually the best option or what have you guys done about this?

We bought a house years ago, and I was never particularly a fan of the network system... Well, I should say, their non-existent network system. All they had was a single co-ax line going into the closest room to the telephone pole. That room, had a coax outlet on the corner closest to the telephone pole, which i'm pretty certain they used this corner to place their modem and router. No surprise since it was an older couple who owned the property before us.

Now, the problem today is that even with a modern router, in the opposite corners of the house, the wifi is very weak. With that, I'm planning to take on this next project by installing a full network system, but I had some questions about this.

1. The current coax cable comes from the telephone pole, to the roof of the house. Then a coax line is then routed down the corner of the house all the way down to the location of the coax outlet, about 1ft off the ground. Are there any problems with shortening this and just have the coax line be fed directly into the attic?
   1. If the coax line can be done into the attic, what would be the proper way to route the cabling? Coax cable box on the exterior? Coax through wall, then Coax splitter in attic mounted to stud?
2. There is a utility closet that is quite centered within the house that has very easy access to the attic. Planning to install an in-wall network enclosure for all the Cat6e cabling, modem and router, then just place my NAS right in front of it.
   1. What concerns should I be aware of before even starting to setup the network closet? Granted this closet has zero outlets, so I am planning to add a new electrical line from the sub-panel for 2 new outlets. 1 for an in-wall network enclosure, and the other to power my NAS

Thanks!

Used to use Mac OS X for my daily needs since I needed it for school, but now that I am given a Macbook for work, I am just using my Windows machine as my home setup. Having said that, I have TB's of photos in Apple Photos, which has been super helpful for organizing photos, creating albums, and searching through photos with a quickness.

However, for Window's, I'm not seeing a software similar to Photos, that allows me to do that with ease. From what it seems talking with photographers I know, they just use folders to with descriptive names to quickly reference what that album contains. Sounds like it works for photoshoots, but for the daily photos where you have maybe a handful it sounds quite tedious to 1) create a folder for it and most importantly 2) remember where that photo is much later down the line.

That makes me wonder - how do you store your photos and easily manage/view them?

I'm curious if anyone knows or has had experience getting their tires warrantied by the manufacturer through America's tire and has done their own tire rotations?

From what it seems like America's tire wants to do the rotation themselves so they can have a history of rotating the tires at a specific mileage, but it also feels that when it comes to tire warranty by the manufacturer, what really matters is whether the tread depth across all four wheels are the same.

I asked because booking appointment with a few America's tires near us, seems quite pointless as it can take up to 2 hours just to get our tires rotated not including the time to travel to the branch. On the flip side, I can rotate my tires in under 15minutes at home.

Would anyone happen to know?

I’m a Senior SWE at a FAANG, and I’ve reached a point where I feel a bit pigeonholed. My earlier career was true full-stack, but over the last 5 years, I’ve been heavily focused on the front-end with some backend work from time to time.

While I love the front end, I’ve never lost my interest in the backend. I’ve been trying to "dabble" back into our services and infrastructure, but the reality of working in a large org as a Sr Eng is that you're pigeonhole'd into the area of where you grew in, in this case the front end. I feel like I’m losing my edge on the server side, while also hitting a point with the front end where UI work isn't as exciting as some backend challenges.

I’m starting to think the only way to truly reset my trajectory is to jump ship and interview specifically for a backend role...

Has anyone else been in a similar situation?

If you left companies, did you find that interviewers were skeptical of your skills for a backend role despite your Senior title on the front end?

Looking for any advice or similar experiences. Thanks!