admin – Page 3 – Dishers.com

January 17, 2016December 9, 2016

Cruise 2016 (Oasis of the seas)

This year Claudine and I decided we needed our own vacation. So just like 5 years ago we booked a cruise. This time on the Oasis of the seas, Royal Caribbean’s largest ship to date. (At the time I’m writing this the Oasis class is still the largest ship, there is dispute over which one of the ships is actually the largest, it might be the Allure).

This blog post will be about the highlights of our cruise, it’s not going to be a review of the cruise or the ship. That will come later. The short review is simply this:

We love cruising, we love the all inclusive nature, with the opportunity to see multiple ports of call, good food, good atmosphere, add in the rocking of the boat and it’s the best sleep you’ll ever get.

This cruise was not without its challenges. In short, it is unlikely we’ll ever cruise on the Oasis again. We might try the Allure, but not the Oasis. This has nothing to do with cruising itself, but Royal dropped the ball more than a few times on this trip. We heard from plenty of other passengers including a few that had previously sailed the Oasis and other Oasis class ships that this was below their normal expectations for service and quality. It is unclear to me if this is a company wide issue or if it’s an issue with this ship. In the past we found our trip on the Freedom of the seas to be a 10 out of 10, the same ship (Indy) was more like an 8 out of 10 with respect to service/entertainment. Using the same scale, the Oasis probably only scores a 6.5-7, and that’s not ‘awesome’. Still at the end of the day, you’re on a cruise ship!, and it was still hella fun, and still an outstanding value. Details on this will come later.

We booked our 7 night, Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Oasis of the seas through Costco. Including flights from Cincy to Fort Lauderdale we were all in for a little less than $3000 USD ($2400 for the cruise/$600 air fare). This was an upper ‘superior view balcony stateroom’. I’m sure this isn’t the ‘ultimate deal’ but it was in our minds a pretty good deal.

Continue reading “Cruise 2016 (Oasis of the seas)”

December 29, 2015June 8, 2017

Tuft and Needle–Mattress Review

First, I’m not a mattress expert or a traditionally trained sleep specialist. Although if sleeping were an Olympic sport, I could probably pretty easily make it into the regionals.

I know how to sleep.

We recently ordered a Tuft and Needle Foam Mattress after reading a review on Bestmattress-brand.org and when I posted that via Facebook folks said they wanted to know what if we liked it.

So here goes.

A good mattress should last between 8 and 10 years. According to the Internet. Just google it and that’s the answer you’ll find so I’m using that.

We’ve had multiple mattresses during what’s so far is a 26 year marriage. Admittedly in the beginning we had cheap ones. We had a water bed when we first got married (Don’t judge me, it was the 80’s). Then a cheap King mattress set, and at one point we got a new foam mattress from the in-laws who didn’t like it or found it to soft or something. I can’t remember the details.

But what I do know and can easily recall is our last mattress. We decided it was time we had a ‘good mattress’ and we bought that in 2008 from the Original Mattress Factory. They are, or were highly recommended in our area. At the time we purchased a Orthopedic Luxury Firm Mattress.

Continue reading “Tuft and Needle–Mattress Review”

July 22, 2015July 22, 2015

Naze32 Tri-Copter from rcexplorer.se

It’s been a while since I’ve done anything with my “Drones” or rather my multi-rotors. I got pretty darn frustrated with the APM line of flight controllers as well as the PixHawk so I put it all down for a while and am slowly getting back in.

A few months ago I stumbled across a Tri-Copter frame with a Naze32 built in. The two things I’ve liked most about this hobby, the Naze flight controller, and a tri-copter.

So dumped a TBS Discovery frame with DJI Flight controller on ebay and ordered one up.

It took almost a week to get here from Sweden and I assembled it today with left over parts I had had laying around. 16A ESCs (probably too small), and 3 of my eMax 2213 935kv 2212 Motors.

Ideally, you can run all the cords inside the carbon fiber arms, but I had trouble getting stuff to fit, these carbon fiber arms are literally 1/2 as thick as the wood arms of my simple copter. I also was at a loss for longer cables for the controller so I ran everything outside for now. I’ll address that when I get new ESCs.

So basically, no, it’s not as clean as I’d like.

$137 for the tricopter-v3-kit, with Power Distribution board and Naze32 board is a pretty good deal. I ended up buying some spare arms and a few other bits because I know I’m going to crash, including the server that David sells and recommends.

I already had: 3x Motors, 3x ESC’s, 3x Props, and a Spektrum Receiver, as well as the bits to make the power cord for the battery.

All in all it took about 4 hours from start to finish. A bit longer because I did a lot of stuff twice trying to figure out how to extend things and what not.

David, the guy at RCExplorer who put this together has a couple GREAT Videos to walk you through the assembly. Admittedly, setting up Naze isn’t easy for a noob. But David makes it almost bullet proof to get off the ground. I flew it for about 3 batteries today tuning it, and it flies GREAT. Can’t wait to strap the GoPro to it and add some lights for orientation.

There is a purpose built firmware for this board, and an optimized version for tri-copters in general on a standard naze32 using cleanflight (instead of baseflight) and David gets you started with all the right settings. His walkthrough video is very, very thorough.

Updated with some video of the first 2 camera enabled flights.

June 3, 2015July 6, 2016

The Kings Island Meal Deal

For the 2015 Season, we once again have Season Passes to the great Kings Island Amusement park. Yep the whole family.

Working directly across the street from it for the last 10 years I’ve only been a handful of times. We had season passes 18+ years ago when we lived in Landen but not since.

Anyway, turns out they have this “All Season Meal Plan” which you can add to your season pass. It’s $90 plus tax and you can eat every 4 hours, so basically 2x per day if you’re there all day. Last year I’m told it had a 2 hour wait period, but they moved that to 4 hours this year.

So what do you get?

At almost every restaurant, or food place, they have combo deals that are on the ”Meal Plan”. It basically includes an entre of some sort and a side, usually chips or fries.

A burger and fries, a wrap and fries/chips, pizza and bread sticks, chicken fingers and fries. You get the idea. Of course no beverage is included. You can’t include that when a 20oz of something is $4 retail.

Along the same lines *most* of these combo deals are $14-$15 each. That’s right, two slices of Larosa’s pizza with bread sticks $15.00. Buddy is turning in his grave. Though those combo’s usually do include a drink I think.

So basically, for lunch, I hop on over to KI, and grab a meal. I can get in an out of there in 40 minutes most days. Sometimes less, and even ride a ride or two if the lines are short.

It’s early in the game but I’ve been there over 15 times at the time this blog post so I’ve already gotten my money back and the season’s just starting.

Here’s an example of some of the food items:
(These are actual meals that I obtained, your results may vary, it seems the staff is not really well trained on what you get and what you don’t in a lot of places).

Skyline 3-Way and Cheese Coney:

Not the healthiest, but likely the best value in the park.

Larosa’s Pizza

2 Slices and some breadsticks

The Reds Club (formerly Montgomery Inn) in River town has some pretty good food:

Their Buffalo Chicken Wrap is one of the better meals. Yes, that’s bacon on my burger, which isn’t part of the deal but if you ask nicely… The Buffalo Chicken Salad cannot be beat, provided you get the crispy chicken. The grilled chicken is suspect.

Chicken Shack Chicken Wrap:

What’s good here is you get to pick what’s in your wrap.

Hank’s Burrito Shack:

Hank’s is a Chipotle knock off. Truth is, it’s just plain horrible. The chicken is not good, the beef is really really bad, and none of it has any flavor.
Technically you’re only supposed to get a Burrito, or Burrito Bowl, or some Taco’s, but those also come with a side of chips and salsa. The best bet is what you see above the taco salad, which my buddies got all year last year. While I have eaten it a few times this year, we’ve been told it’s not on the meal plan. I don’t get it, it’s the same thing a burrito only the tortilla is deep fried, and not very well I might add.

So we’ll see. I can’t find my photos of the burrito bowl. I’ve had that twice and if I never had it again I’d be OK with that.

Then again I’d rather eat that then the craptastic food at the Potato Works:

What you see above there is some form of Chicken tender, that’s of lesser quality than a chicken-nugget from McDonalds. Maybe it’s the gluten free aspect that makes these so horrible, but the alleged chicken inside them wasn’t clearly recognizable as chicken. On that same day my buddy opted for the corn dog meal deal and it was equally bad.

Also missing photos are:
Chick-fil-A, you can get a regular Chick-fil-A sandwich and large fry. Yes their waffle cut fries. This isn’t a horrible deal, but it’s not a lot of food.

There is a Panda Express in the fest-haus. Which isn’t completely horrible it just depends on how fresh the food is and who’s serving. The orange chicken is pretty plain, and the king pao is fairly spicy. But the sides, the egg rolls, and Crab Rangoon’s without crab are pretty nasty.

You can get a 6” Subway sandwich too. But what we’ve learned so far is that you really need to stay away from the meals that are labor intensive. Building a 6” sub is hard for a lot of people and the line there isn’t worth the wait.

So I plan to post updates throughout the season. The plan is to try and eat as healthy as is reasonable. Chicken Salads, stuff like that when possible. But a burger and/or pizza will get in there from time to time. Thankfully the servings aren’t all that large and you end up walking quite a bit to get in and out of the joint. Literally a mile in and out on a good day.

At last check, I’ve eaten there 32 times. Money well spent. We were told recently by an employee there that the average person only uses the meal plan 2.5 times. (@ $90, that works out to $36 a meal for what could be a $14 meal). We’re just doing our part to keep them from making obscene profits Smile

May 10, 2015August 9, 2015

DIY PS4 Scuf Controller Mod

First if you don’t know what a Scuf controller is, check out their site: ScufGaming.com Basically they mod a controller by moving some buttons to the back. This essentially allows you to press X, O, Triangle or Square without the need to remove your thumb from the aim stick. Greatly speeding things up in games like Call of Duty, where there is lots of jumping, or if you use O for your knife button, not having to take your thumb off the stick to knife someone.

So, why would you make your own?

Well, I bought a scuf controller, and for me it sucks. I know a lot of guys swear by them but I cannot, for the life of me invoke the buttons they put on the back, they are too stiff, even with the paddles. Also the darn thing costs $225, or at least it cost me and that was the cheapest way to get all the options. One thing it does have is remappable buttons, something that this mod doesn’t have. A basic scuff which is what this mod gives you is $123.90 and a 7-11 day wait.

Of course they can also install options like taller sticks. You want a taller stick on the right for more aiming range of motion. That’s how I ordered mine and the fine folks at Scuf installed them backwards. (Meaning my left one was taller). They did offer to fix it but that would have been ~2 weeks to get fixed with round trip slow shipping so they can bite me.

Enter KontrolFreaks… I simply put one on the right stick to fix my problem.

Update While the KontrolFreaks did sort of solve my problem, I eventually ended up opening up the controller and putting a stock stick on the left. Tall on the left and super-tall on the right just didn’t work for me. Also, those knuckle heads put a tamper proof screw in your PS4 when they mod it. They don’t want you to take it apart, so you’ll need to hit that screw with a dremmel and make it a flat screw so you can remove it. If you’re like me and savaging parts from other broken controllers you’ll have a replacement screw.

So if you already have a $60 PS4 controller for roughly $10 for KontrolFreaks (shop around), and $4 for a couple switches, about an hour of your time, you can have a scuf too.

Get ready, here we go.

First, watch a youtube video on how to take your controller apart, I’m not going to explain that here. 4 Screws (don’t lose them) and a plastic spudge thing and you’re in like flynn. Separate the two halves, disconnect the charging connector (allowing you to take the back off the top). Take the battery out and you’ll be set.

While you’re on Youtube watch a couple vids on doing this mod. You better know how to solder, this is not the time or place to learn. The solder points on this board are fickin small. I’m good at it and it still caused me issues.

Get your stuff in order, these are the buttons I used from Radio Shack:

They are only $99 online at Radio Shack right now. Here: http://www.radioshack.com/spst-0-5-amp-momentary-switch-2-pack/2751571.html#

Second, locate the pads you need to scrub off the material to solder too. I had this motherboard and used this picture from somewhere on the web.:

In my world, I’m adding buttons for X and O, so the orange and blue dots are the one’s I’ll scrape the green circuit board cover off and solder too.

I’ll drill holes in the bottom and put the switches in (removing the rumble packs).

I drilled the holes in the bottom shell, using my best guess at location. I’d actually like them higher and will try that on the next mod. I used a drill bit just a tad smaller than the switches and actually screwed the switches into the plastic. Then hot glued them so they’d be reinforced.

Then carefully scraped my pads and soldered wires to the board in the right spots. I had some leads from arduino projects so I used color coded wires. You’ll pick up the grounds from the bottom.

Then before putting soldering the leads to the switches I temp installed it and plugged it in to my PC to test it.

Windows 7, type ‘usb con’ and choose ‘Set up a USB game Controller’, plug it into your PC and you can check the bottons.

Button Two lighting up is ‘X’.

My first shot had O shorted out so I had to remove it and resolder it and re-test. It is a small PITA.

Once tested I soldered the wires to the switches, and reassembled it.

Re-tested and was good to go.

Here’s the finished product:

O Button:

Controller Front and Back:

This controller has a butt load of hours on it and is actually quite sloppy around the sticks. I did the mod on this controller first as a test and it works like a champ. I will soon be that drop-shot SOB’s that everyone hates because I can Drop w/o taking my hands off the controller, and don’t have to use tactical layout either so R3 is still melee.

Success.

Update

So after modding this one successfully I thought I’d do another one. FAIL. I bricked a $60 controller. I still might be able to save it but right now X button doesn’t work at all. These solder points are so small, it’s really hard to do. I have found and ordered a couple of these from ebay: Remap Boards. If the link is bad, search for ‘PS4 Remap board’. This is a nifty ribon cable like board that goes between the main board and daughter board, and hijacks the connections giving you a reasonable pad to solder too. Also, most of my newer controllers have a JDM-020 main board and there’s no published pin out for those and it sure isn’t obvious. So this is required. mYaJ_ihpx9qVHb84AxheQFQ YMMV…