Our community showed Hocus Pocus, so we put an air mattress in the bed of the Lightning and loaded it up with blankets and pillows. Pretty great way to kick off October.
A couple months ago I posted the portable Xbox setup I built into a Pelican case for work travel.
Well, I finally got the perfect opportunity to try it on a plane. Empty row to myself, outlet right next to the seat, figured I had to at least try… No dice
As soon as I plugged the Xbox in, the light on the seat outlet went out. Unplugged it and the light came right back on. I guess it’ll just have to live as my setup for long layovers, downtime out on the range, or back in the hotel room.
Still had to get the obligatory picture at 35,000ft
I’ve been giving this some thought, and I agree. From here on out, I’ll be supporting nonprofits and strictly buying Rolex.
In fact, I may need to reconsider my other charitable contributions. I really want to focus my giving where my heart is
I’ve slowly been putting together a small setup for basic work on my own watches. Nothing resembling a real watchmaker’s bench, but the little Husky toolbox has turned out to be perfect for keeping everything organized and gives me a decent work surface when I need it.
Today’s job was replacing the bezel click spring on my 16610. The bezel had gotten stiff and then started rotating freely without clicking. When I removed the bezel, I found that the click spring had fractured. I replaced it with a WatchMaterial 317-16800 aftermarket spring, and everything is back to clicking and rotating properly.
There’s something extremely satisfying about being able to take care of the simple stuff yourself.
Watches, left to right:
TAG Heuer Formula 1 Gulf Edition — CAZ101N.FC8243
The TAG F1 was an impulse buy. I’m really into F1 and loved the Gulf livery on the McLarens. I bought it five days after my daughter was born, so now I feel like I can’t sell it. Also, it’s worth considerably less than I paid for it soooo… it’s staying. For now.
Gevril First Edition — A0111R
The Gevril was gifted to me by my mother-in-law before our wedding. It belonged to my late father-in-law, and I wore it in my wedding… both times. Thanks COVID!
Autodromo Group B Series 2 — BP-005
The Autodromo Group B is, to this day, the only watch I’ve ever gotten unsolicited compliments on. Both happened at work, and one was from a female colleague… so it’s definitely a keeper.
Christopher Ward C60 Elite 1000 — C60.42ADD3.T0KK0.HR
I bought the CW Elite 1000 because I have a thing for titanium. Also, 1000m of water resistance makes my dick a little hard.
Omega Seamaster Professional Titanium — 2231.50.00
The Seamaster spent years as my everyday watch. I absolutely love the fit, size, and thinness of this thing.
Rolex Submariner — 16610
The Submariner is the newest addition and my first Rolex. It’s a birth-year 16610 that felt like a pretty fitting watch to pick up after turning 30.
Omega Speedmaster Professional — 311.30.42.30.01.005
The Speedmaster has probably become the watch I associate most with myself. It was my grail watch for the longest time, and when I got the signing bonus from my first job, I immediately used it to buy one.
A few weeks ago I posted here asking for advice on my wife’s 30th birthday gift and whether I should surprise her with a Love bracelet or take her to the boutique and let her be part of the experience.
I ended up taking the advice from this sub and brought her to Cartier. I called ahead and made an appointment, and Jose at Cartier Scottsdale was amazing. As soon as we arrived, he took us back to a private room where he already had several different Love bracelets ready for her to try on.
We made a day out of it, she got to try everything on and make sure the sizing was right, and I’m really glad we did. I originally thought the small Love would be the one for her, but the medium looked fantastic on her and that’s what she chose.
Since today is officially her 30th birthday, I figured I’d come back with an update and a family photo of her Cartier collection:
• Tank — ref. 1600
• Love ring, small — yellow gold
• Juste un Clou ring, small — yellow gold
• Love bracelet, medium — yellow gold
She’s accumulated these over the years for different occasions, so I love that each one has its own story. The Love bracelet feels like a pretty fitting addition for 30.
Thanks again to everyone who gave me advice on the original post!
A very clean birth-year 16610 came up for sale, and that was all the convincing I needed.
It felt like the perfect way to kick off my 30s. I’ve seen people call the 16610 neo-vintage, and others just call it straight vintage… personally, I think we’re both still pretty young.
Looking forward to putting a lot of miles on this one.
I’m planning to get my wife a Cartier Love bracelet (small model, yellow gold) for her 30th birthday. She already has a Cartier Tank, Love ring, and the nail ring, so this feels like the perfect addition to her collection.
The closest Cartier boutique is a few hours away, so I’m trying to decide the best way to do this.
For those who have purchased from Cartier as a gift, is there anything you wish you had known beforehand?
Would you recommend surprising her by taking her to the boutique so she can choose the size and have the full Cartier experience, or buying it ahead of time so she has something to unwrap on her birthday?
Also, any tips specific to the small Love bracelet? Anything about sizing, daily wear, or anything else I should know?
I threw this together in about a day between work trips because I wanted something better to do than sit around and scroll on my phone in airports. Built into a Pelican iM2200. The monitor is mounted in the lid, the Xbox is mounted in the inside the pelican, and the whole thing runs off a single power cord. I grabbed the 15.6” monitor on Prime Day for like $40, which kind of kicked off the whole build.
Took it through TSA today and they didn’t even make me open the case. Still need to add a proper controller mount and a few other things like an external power bulkhead, but for now v1 works.
I’ve been calling it B.O.X. (Basically Only an Xbox), but I’m open to better names.
Only complaint so far is the airport outlets. If you look at the plug funny, it falls out.
Since I’m carrying it on, it won’t get real luggage tags, so I decided to start sticking my checked-bag claim stickers on it instead to track how many flights it survives.
I’m a solo indie developer and just submitted my first iOS app to the App Store. The app is called Per Diem Tracker Pro. It’s a niche utility app for business travelers / government contractors to track per diem reimbursements. It includes:
- Automatic official U.S. GSA per diem rate lookup
- International per diem support using State Dept rates
- Daily M&IE calculations
- Lodging allowance tracking
- Receipt attachments
- Trip-based reimbursement budgeting
I built this because I travel for work frequently and genuinely could not find an app that handled this workflow well, so I made my own.
Apple rejected it under Guideline 4.3(a) — Spam.
Their exact reasoning:
“We noticed the app shares a similar binary, metadata, and/or concept as apps submitted to the App Store by other developers, with only minor differences.”
That’s basically it. No similar app examples. No copied asset examples. No problematic metadata called out. No specific functionality concerns. No actionable anything. Just: “It seems similar.”
I’m honestly struggling with how I’m supposed to even respond to that. If you’re going to block months of someone’s work and accuse their app of being spam, shouldn’t you be able to explain what specifically triggered that conclusion?
Even more frustrating: they reviewed it on an iPad Air M3, even though my Expo config explicitly has supportsTablet: false, so the app is iPhone-only. I’m not saying the iPad caused the rejection. I’m saying it feels like yet another sign that the review process may be a lot less rigorous than Apple wants developers to believe.
I can accept rejection if the reasoning is solid. What drives me insane is lazy or vague reasoning. If the app is spam, fine… prove it. Instead I got what feels like a spam rejection message accusing my app of being spam. The irony is almost funny.
At this point I honestly don’t even know if they meaningfully opened the app or just skimmed the title, screenshots, and description and decided, “another expense tracker.”
Has anyone here dealt with this?
Are 4.3 rejections often false positives?
Has anyone successfully appealed?
Is there any way to get a real human explanation instead of canned App Review responses?
My team and I currently use a Pelican 1607 full of tools (including a lot of custom tools) that we ship out to field/test sites. We also ship larger electrical equipment in Pelicans as well.
The Pelicans have been great from a durability standpoint. We really never worry about whether the equipment will survive shipping.
The one thing I don’t like is organization. At the end of the day it’s basically just a giant bin full of tools, cables, adapters, etc. and you end up digging through layers of stuff to find what you need.
I use Packout at home/in my garage and really like the modularity and organization. It seems like it would solve a lot of our issues:
- better organization
- faster setup/teardown on-site
- easier inventory control
- less digging for tools
BUT, our gear gets shipped around constantly and handled by FedEx/freight, sometimes pretty roughly. I’m hesitant to fully commit to Packout if it won’t hold up long-term in that environment. Especially after seeing videos like this:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/15nWVZb57jM/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Curious what other field service/travel guys are using:
- Full Packout?
- Pelican with custom inserts?
- Tool rolls/pouches?
- Some kind of hybrid setup?
Would especially love to see photos from people who’ve used these systems in real-world shipping/travel environments.