Apparently I said “Joe Dirt” sometime earlier in my life and my wish came true.

Every other post being “Promoted” bullshit, the slow-ass web UI, my former favorite app no longer working, and the bloated and track-y first party app. I was never a fan of “old reddit UI” , so that wasn’t a crutch like it was for others.

The “Cuatro Leches” is like the jackasses on The Price is Right who, seeing you’ve bid $500, bids $501.

They should be. I have never seen them anywhere in my neck of the woods, but I did find a vape juice that’s “Tres Leches” flavored. It’s pretty amazing.

I remember the individual was frustrated because without the app, you couldn’t modify anything on the device…which seems very bad.

Sadly, that’s how this one is but the defaults are sane enough that you could get by without it. I didn’t buy it for the features that need the cloud service, so if those are unavailable, that was fine for my use case. The consolation is that configuring it can all be done with just the app over Bluetooth.

I’m hoping someone reverse engineers the Bluetooth protocol. I did a HCI dump while it was connecting and streaming data, but I can’t make the slightest bit of sense of it.

Literally that one, but I have the Gen 2 version.

Smartphone is not necessarily required, but if you want to change any of the settings (AC charge rate, maximum discharge depth, etc), you’ll need to use the app. You can use the app to connect to it via bluetooth directly. That said, it’s possible to use it without any app at all with the default settings and it works fine.

The app tries to steer you toward making an Anker account and connecting the unit to wifi (some features like WeatherGuard, time of use charging, etc require that) but you can use it without an account and connect locally via bluetooth. That’s how I do it, so no issues with a cloud connection as it’s not even using it. Though I did complain to support about how the app treats that use case as a second-class citizen. (When you open the app, it always lands you on the signup/login page and you have to click “Skip” in tiny text at the bottom to use the app locally via BT). The app also nags you that Google Play Services is required but it works fine without it.

I do use the app for remote monitoring and once to set the max discharge depth from 1% to 15% but otherwise it works fine standalone. The only thing making me slightly consider setting up the cloud connection is the HomeAssistant integration; there’s a module to tie it into HA, but it uses the cloud API rather than connecting over bluetooth :(

Locally, there’s nothing (not even scammers). I got 4x200 watt panels from Amazon and am using those with an Anker Solix C1000.

For the expansion in the spring, I’m probably going to order more of the same PV panels. For the combo inverter/charger, I’m looking at the ones from SungoldPower currently as well as a few others. Battery is still in the research phase, but the inverter can auto switch between solar and utility without the battery.

The wiring I can handle but will probably have an electrician do the wiring from my main breaker to the subpanel that’s fed from the solar inverter (grid tie is too caught up in expensive red tape to bother with here).

Not really an event, but I installed a small trial solar setup (800W with 1 kWh battery) this past autumn that I am quite pleased with (despite the utter lack of sun since November).

In the spring, I’m planning to expand that to something like a ~7 KW solar array, 10 KW inverter/charger, and hopefully around 16 kWh of battery.

Screw you, AEP and my rate nearly doubling year over year

“I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the side”

If I couldn’t pull out because some little Urkel car did that, I’d be pissed. Pissed enough to call a buddy to help me pick it up and move it onto the sidewalk. 😅

I also thought all TV shows were live and the actors took breaks during the commercials.

If I remember correctly, the theory was that a heavy hit of adrenaline can lock a memory in for life

So the next time someone gives me directions, I’ll jab myself with my EpiPen to see if I actually remember them. lol. Science!

I don’t disagree, but prioritize to what people need to know in daily use instead of burying the lede in a sea of boilerplate.

I’m old, so I remember product info/safety labels before they turned into this. If you need gloves for something, step 1 was usually “Put on gloves”.

Exactly. And cut that in half if you’ve consumed any alcohol in the last ~12-24 hours.

That’s the kind of information that should be front and center without having to search the tiny text in the whole label.

TBF, you can read just about anything in Walken’s voice and it sounds like a disinterested threat lol.

These ah, boots, are made for Walken
And that’s just what they’ll do because
Some day…these boots…
Are gonna walk all over you.

(Does a little dance because it’s Christopher Walken and he dances in every movie he’s in. Look it up.)

I got the other one once someone explained it to me, lol. I just didn’t make the Macy Gray connection at first.

Ugh, I’m not optimistic enough to dispute that. Surely there must be a sane middle ground between unregulated free-for-all and forcing people to read through a whole MSDS just to see if they should take 1 or 2.

Safety regulations are written in blood, but warning labels seem to be written in stupidity and litigiousness.

Ah, yeah. That makes more sense. I’m right on the line between Gen X and Millennial so my mind went to the Nancy Sinatra song