ionz149

Longest hiatus ever. I have been unemployed since June. Job market for devs is weird right now.

TLDR …. I fixed it with a Dell D6000 Dock … yes, you have to spend more money to make that pricey ass laptop stfu and work as it was intended to.

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So after many, many years of being very seriously opposed to proprietary operating systems I got a job that supplied me with macbook pro and I was fairly impressed with how nice it was. It had its moments where it would start breathing heavy but I was usually doing something resource intensive when it happened.

So once this covid shit blew up and I had no job or fancy laptop and I was trying to work on my old linux machine. It was doable until I was sent a PSD file and had to try and run Adobe Cloud on a virtual windows machine. In no time I was ready to stab my fucking eyballs with the dullest object I could find.

I suffered thru it for the better part of a week and just said fuck it. I had the money so why not invest in myself. I went out and got me a macbook pro with a black mouse and keyboard. Got a slightly bigger Samsung monitor than I previously had and a fancy dock for all my peripherals. I was able to get it from BestBuy as they were having a sale and the price was slightly better than the student discount from apple.

I picked up all my shit from BestBuy and was happy as clam. That was rather short lived though because only a few minutes after connecting the monitor to the dongle the laptop fans began blowing super hard while using firefox to login into my gmail for the first time and the keyboard on laptop became so hot I could actually not touch it. It wouldn’t have melted my fingers or anything but it was as close as it could be to that without the laptop actually bursting into fucking flames. I removed the monitor and things cooled off and went back to normal.

This was a deal breaker for me because the fact I can connect the laptop to an external monitor is something I rely on in terms of workflow when sitting at a desk. Being a laptop it also provides the added benefit of traveling with me. One could argue that if I wanted a desktop machine I should get a tower or imac but fuck that bullshit I’ve always used a laptop like this and I wasn’t about to pay more money for a “pro” graded item that cant connect to an external monitor without sounding like a small plane about to lift off.

So I hit the google and found a reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/ekh86o/macbook_pro_16_heat_issues_with_external_monitor/) I wish I would’ve seen before I purchased the laptop. In it you will see all the people (save a few apple fanboy trolls) wondering why their fancy as fuck laptop wants to self-immolate.

At one point the laptop got so hot the screen blacked out and gave me kernel panic errors upon restart. I called Apple and they gave no fucks. I returned that macbook and got a new one. I installed iStat so I could monitor temperature and fan speeds. People in the reddit thread claimed many things worked and I tried the following:

1. Moshi – USBC to DP, Samsung and Dell monitor directly into macbook pro
2. USBC to USBC, Samsung and Dell monitor directly into macbook pro
3. Purchased a new Dell UltraSharp monitor – USBC to USBC and USBC to DP, Dell monitor directly into macbook pro
4. Dell D6000 Dock – essentially a more expensive dock with it’s own power supply.

One theme I noticed in peoples efforts was the removal of the dock in the equation. The Moshi cable is a $50 cable. While it did bring the temps down the fans would eventually go nuts. The USBC to USBC cable had pretty much the same results.

Once I deemed the $80 worth of cables to not really help much I decided to try and imitate the setup of a person claiming to have no overheating issues and purchased a Dell UltraSharp monitor. Oddly enough it actually did bring the temps down and kept the fans off for longer using the supplied USBC to USBC cable. The Moshi cable provided same results as the provided USBC cable. The fans turned on after running Illustrator for a few minutes though and while it was an improvement it was not really good enough considering what I paid for the laptop.

I had browsed over a Reddit user claiming a Dell D6000 Dock had made it work for him with two monitors but I wasn’t looking to spend more money at that point. I later saw that some one claimed it also worked for them so after a few days of not knowing what else to do I searched on OfferUp and found a brand new sealed one for a great price. This was actually the last thing I was willing to do to remedy the situation before I gave up and returned everything.

I installed the drivers and plugged everything in and turned the monitor on. I launched a code editor, a browser and Affinity Designer. No fans. Launched Spotify. No fans. Launched Photoshop. Still no fans. Temps went up slightly but nothing crazy.

The Dell D6000 Dock was the solution! The only downside I found is that it only has a single USBC port, but it has two DP ports so not too bad. I am for the most part not doing anything too resource intensive. I use a code editor, terminal, browsers, music and an Adobe or Affinity product.

I’ve only had fans fire up audibly once or twice while in my office during a heat wave and the office was like 80° F. I don’t have an AC and fan was doing nothing so I just disconnected from the monitor and went downstairs where it was cooler and it stopped fanning itself.

All in all I am happy with current setup however it was a bit stressful to have to spend all that money and test everything out all within BestBuy’s return period. Their painless return process was much appreciated.

I think it also worth mentioning that my power bill has been consistently higher since I purchased this laptop. Seems to be drawing a considerable amount of juice because I previously had a Windows tower and a Linux laptop in my office and now I just have a macbook pro.

For now I can dig it. In the future I might be a little more open to trying out a windows machine. It’s pretty fucked up that a company as big as Apple who claims to be some type of higher echelon in hardware is knowingly pedaling faulty hardware and pretending it’s normal. As my first personal experience with Apple it did leave a rather shitty taste in my mouth.

Yep! Updated the theme and stripped out everything and got it down to the basics I need. Made the fonts nice and big. Removed comments, pingbacks, links, widgets, categories, tags, sharethis and a bunch of other plugins. Perhaps the absence of everything besides words and pictures will make it more enticing to use.

It’s almost been two years since my last post! Quick catch up. I quit a job I loved for monetary reasons. I started a new job I eventually grew to hate for great money. In the time I worked there I basically neglected most of my favorite things because I was miserable. Then we all got laid off due to covid and I been re-assessing everything. Set up a decent home office, finished up a few banjos, got a house plant gifted to me, tossed a bunch of old stuff and slowly began creating the new normal from home. I have also sunk *many* hours into Animal Crossing.

I’ve added some photos of some recently finished banjos to the Banjo Gallery. Once I get some boxes to ship I will list on Etsy for sale!

Coming to a head in what is purely a chaos based ballet, change is on the horizon! While I am apprehensive of any change I am excited for something new. Sometimes things happen for a reason. Or better yet fragments of reasons and if you gather them right you get maybe a decent reason.

In other news I have finally adjusted to recreational state laws, business cards are on the way and like 5 banjos almost ready. Los Angeles has the very best fire, can’t lie about these things.

People keep asking, so yeah. Gonna go ahead and leave this here to track how long it takes me 😐

I have added a few new banjos to my instrument gallery as well as a few banjos and art to the etsy store.

I used some of that anxious energy to fix a few things on the site that have been bugging me for years. Nobody will even fucking notice but I will no longer notice so that is good. I have also added a bunch of my banjo builds to the visual page since I’ve been building banjos for the last two years.

The big bad AMFM has been taken out of its misery and laid to rest. What started out as a glimmer in th eye of some kid and his friend in high school and ultimately ended up being an endeavor I took on alone was a great learning experience and gave me a lot of insight into what it must be like for my previous and current employers who run their own businesses and pay me to work there. It was fun but very demanding and I felt I gave it all I could.

So yesterday I was heading out to work and I saw the cutest little fluffy baby bird in our courtyard. I had made a point to move out of it’s way so it wouldn’t fly away like all birds usually do and I noticed it just kinda stood there and looked adorable.

Upon my return from work I come into the courtyard and the lil bird bird was still just jumping around and walking all over the place making lil birdie chirps. I began to wonder if something was up with it. I don’t know shit about birds and assumed he had gone for a test flight and failed. I filled a growler cap with water and put it outside. It began to get dark and I was wondering how it would fare against the night time. I kept going outside and watching the lil bird jump around. I began to plot on how to make a temporary bird shelter for a tiny flightless bird. Then I thought seek temporary shelter in my beard young birdie you are welcome here 😛

Naturally as any good thought begins to occur there is another one behind it with a big ass knife. What if just like two days of hanging out in my beard or in a make shift tiny flightless bird shelter turn him into a social outcast amongst his bird people? While this all started in some effort to save a birdie what is it I am really trying to do here?

I don’t wanna see a lil fluffy dead birdie on my way to work tomorrow morning. So naturally I attempt to alter the course of nature. Two birds with one stone. Save a bird AND feel great about doing it (I SAVED A BIRD!)

So I thought to my self… you really don’t want that cute fluffy baby bird blood on your hands do you? Are you gonna piss away a chance to help an innocent fluffy birdie? Would saving him sentence him to a life time of social isolation? Does one fuck with baby bird? Does one fuck with nature?

Google search for what to do with baby birds out of nest and away I go. Crash course on baby birds. Shortly it became clear to me that the answer is NO. Do not fuck with baby bird. His mom is nearby and that bird is learning shit. I decided I felt okay with that and decided that this planet probably has a better idea of what’s going on than I do and if that lil bird is meant to go then it’s meant to go.

It was a nice series of thoughts with a sweet conclusion. Some people just save the damn bird. I have an internal battle and decide to do nothing. These ideas cause me to see my place in the world from a greater view point. There is a lot of crazy shit going on right now all over the world and it’s really easy to ignore because once you pay attention it becomes a lot to take in. Humans tend to disrupt stuff. Sometimes out of malice other times with the best intentions. There are many forces at work and even though I complain and express frustration often I am incredibly grateful for each and every second spent complaining and expressing frustration. Death is weird, life is weird, birds are weird. Shit is mad weird yo!

I must admit I came out this morning and looked for a cute fluffy dead bird X_X

Edit – I left for work today and stood there quietly searching all over and I heard a lil shuffling of leaves. Out came the lil birdie! Already a lil taller and less fat than yesterday haha. So cool 😀