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    jminer

    @jminer

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    GameNight PNWOPPOs Overland Scheduled Posts Dev Photography Automation Curators

    Best posts made by jminer

    • One Million Posts of OPPO!!!!

      We've reached a million posts and comments on this little website we call home!!!!!

      In not quite 2.5 years we've had a hell of a ride, here's some notable stats and posts over this time.

      Note: this post was composed and scheduled last night but I very much expect to hit 1,000,000 posts sometime on Thursday so this may be slightly before or after that epic milestone

      Most Liked Post
      The credit for this one goes to our favorite spacecrab @Dr-Zoidberg and his journey of buying a dream car. This came in with 151 updoots!

      Most Commented Post
      This one is our beloved Tinies from 2022 that's put together by the one and only @Chariotoflove with a whopping 644 comments! It's also a close second for most liked post.

      Most Page Views
      The top few are here mostly things that google for whatever likes and pumps a bunch of views at as through search but the top one is from @User and is about an Audi crash in Germany.

      Top Tag
      This one surprised me as I expected the top tag to be Hour Rule, it's main user is the always excellent @pip-bip but the top tag is tumbler which if you'd asked me I would have told you was a platform that no longer existed!

      Top Poster
      This poster who's made the most individual posts on the hyphen is the inimitable @pip-bip (second mention here!) with 21,041 posts to his name (this will probably be higher when this post goes live). Thank you @pip-bip for keeping the lights on while the rest of us are wasting time sleeping!

      Most Upvoted Poster
      This place goes to @ttyymmnn who has constantly impressed us with his aviation knowledge and excellent prose. 51,731 times over the course of the hyphen people have updooted his prose. I imagine he'd also have the longest post, but I'd need to build a DB query to tell me that and I have not done that yet.

      Most Likes Per Post
      This is a ratio of upvotes/posts. I put a filter for a minimum of 100 posts from a given user to be eligible and the user with the most updoots per post is @Trekkster__T with an astonishing 978 updoots for 108 posts! Their shit is popular!

      I'm going to give an honorable mention here to our much beloved @Miss-Mercedes because if I put the filter at 1,000 posts instead of 100 she just edges @CB with 5,754 updoots for 1,269 posts!

      Top Search
      The top phrase typed into the search bar at the top of the page is 'Cool Minivan' which has been typed in 553 times!
      This can't be anything other than a result of @COOLMINIVAN.......NOBODY's name change and the sweet, sweet things he's done over the years with my second-favorite vehicle bodystyle.

      Storage Used
      The oppo engine has cranked away and is filled with 482,007 uploaded photos and GIFs which takes up 384.2 GB of space!

      Further Reading When you have time I'd recommend perusing opposite-lock.com/top as the top stack there is well worth reads. Some are triumphant, some sorrowful, some inspiring and others downright entertaining but they capture the essence of what we do here very well. I can't promise you won't cry reading through any post you've missed (you probably will) but it'll be worth it!

      In Summary This has been a hell of a journey my friends, there almost isn't a day that I don't spend time here learning things, making friends and just downright enjoying it. I can't believe we're still here and kicking strong after nearly being knifed to death but every day you all keep showing up and kicking ass! Keep making this place awesome and don't forget to invite your cool friends!

      If you've stuck with me so far let us all know below what your favorite memory related to Oppo over the years!

      PS - I wanted to add pictures to each relevant and part but I already spent like 90 minutes typing it up so that's not gonna happen tonight

      PPS - this thing ain't free to run. If you're able to, you can either buy merch here or donate directly here through paypal to fund operations

      posted in Oppositelock hyphen data hells yeah
      jminer
      jminer
    • Much Delayed Hyphen Financial Update

      The back half of '22 got a bit crazy for me with a busy new job and some health issues so I haven't prioritized hyphen updates or technical work to it like I wanted to. I'm drawing some new boundaries with work and reprioritizing things for '23 so I hope that all gets better this year.

      At any rate here's a financial update for the back half of 2022!

      Total numbers from June through December 2022

      Recurring Donations
      $1,253.71 from an average of 26 users/month

      One time Donations
      $1251.73 from 29 total users

      Merch
      $371.56 from t-shirts, hats and shit (Thanks @derp!)
      $125.75 from stickers and keychains (Thanks @KITT222!)

      Costs
      AWS: $2,208.92
      Email: $42
      Domain Renewal: $24

      Resulting in a net positive of $727.83 over the last 7 months of the year.

      Hosting costs are trending upward with both our storage needs increasing and increased bandwidth/traffic. In June it was ~$300/month and in December is was ~$325/month.

      I'm in process of moving the dev site from AWS to my garage which will lower our hosting costs a small amount.

      Donations have stayed relatively consistent with donations up and down from month to month but averaging a bit over costs. We've got a bit more than 18 months running costs in the bank which leaves us in a great place financially and a bit of room to do things with it too.

      As always if you want to buy some sweet oppo kit and support the site head over to oppomerch.com or if you'd rather give directly through PayPal do that here.

      Thanks everybody for keeping OPPO awesome - it's still hard to believe that the site's a little over 2 years old and going strong! The generosity of the community continues to blow me away.

      posted in Oppositelock hyphen financial update
      jminer
      jminer
    • Hyphen Updates and Q2 2023 Financials

      Hi OPPO,

      It's been a busy summer personally as well as professionally so I've had less time than I'd like to spend working on things for the site. I wanted to put together an update on a number of key things happening anyway to let everybody know we're still working on shit.

      Spam control updates:
      We implemented a new user quarantine system where until a user has gotten an updoot their posts will not go live until a @Curators approves them. This has been rather successful in keeping spam out of the feed. Especially since we're getting like 10+ spam users a day recently. We'll then semi-regularly go in and purge the spam users

      So when a new user creates an account, when they make their first post a curator will review it and either approve or reject it. If the user is spam we'll ban the user and delete the post without you ever seeing it. If it's a valid user we'll approve the post and add an updoot which will allow them to post unfettered moving forward.

      AWS costs:
      AWS costs have been trending upward, a small amount is storage usage but the majority is increased bandwidth usage.

      Here's the last 6 months
      6a3b8d5d-8b46-454d-9287-dc6e0e8393bc-image.png
      Our EC2 compute has remained consistent as there hasn't been much change in usage there other than a small increase in storage every now and again.

      I have a few ideas in process to change our base load of EC2 cost, there isn't a ton we can do but some. The idea of moving our dev instance to my garage worked out pretty meh - comcast did not like me hosting something here so they started changing my IP a ton and did other fuckery. I have a local dev instance for when I want to get really nasty but the AWS dev instance is going to stay in AWS.

      For those that care about the Compute/Storage breakdown cost, here's the August to date data.

      ad45f241-da04-4ef5-bae4-61e5300f5732-image.png

      Unregistered and Bot Traffic:
      We've seen a notable spike in unregistered traffic to the site in the last few months. I think this is in part the cause of the increased AWS bandwidth charges. I've got some ideas on how we can limit bot scraping and hopefully bring this back down while not impacting search engine rankings.

      We also see some posts that google just loves and it drives a lot of random-assed content to us which mostly results in one-time views for people that never come back. I've contemplated putting a simple banner ad on the page for non-logged in users to help pay for this load. Haven't decided on this yet, more in the wait and see how big a problem this stays before I do anything about it. Zero plans now (or anytime soon) for ads for logged in users, we're going to have to hit very different sustained usage patterns for that to happen in the forum.

      For reference here's what the increase in unregistered and bot traffic looks like from May 1 through Today

      dd264aa0-bda2-465b-a93a-a562b6912c64-image.png

      At some point I'll put together a more detailed traffic post with a bunch of data. The new GA4 analytics sucks though and you have to basically build every report from scratch and I hate it so I've been putting this off.

      Affiliate Links:
      In an attempt to generate some revenue for the site that doesn't come out of people's pockets in the form of donation/merch or by showing ads I've been toying with the idea of some light amazon affiliate linking. Nothing spammy by any means but more like an occasional link in usual content and posts where the site would get a couple percent if you bought things. We'll see how this goes, I've been noodling with the idea of converting amazon links people post to affiliate links but haven't worked out the mechanics of that yet.

      Upcoming Updates:
      There's a big nodeBB update to 3.X (we're running 2.8.5) which has been a notable overhaul in both looks and underlying functionality and features. I'm still working through what this looks like for us. Right now I'd put it at 95% of our current functionality I have working and look/feel at closer to 80%. There will be changes to the site when it comes time to roll out, but change isn't always bad.

      Some time this fall I'll start circulating this to select users to solicit feedback and make further adjustments.

      Q2 2023 Financials:
      I put this at the bottom so you don't panic. We're in fine shape financially and have runway for ~18 months if we never got another dime from anybody. All of the above information was included to gives some background on our increased costs and plans for the future of a sustainable oppo.

      Also as an aside here I'm working through the process of incorporating the site as the updated US tax code would tag all of this as income to me personally which would require taxes be paid on it and all sorts of other fun stuff.

      Recurring donations: $538.85 total from 23 people/month
      One time donations: $419.75 total from 12 individual donations

      AWS Cost: $1156.58
      Email Cost: $18

      Yes, we ran a small budget shortfall over Q2 - we'll be fine.

      Summary:
      Everything is going pretty damn well. We've now been living here for more than 2.5 years and it feels like we're still going strong as we close out summer. The above thoughts and ideas are geared around making this community sustainable and planning for it to hang around for many more years. Keep being awesome, sharing adventures, hanging out and invite your cool friends to come hang out too!

      If you have any questions, concerns or thoughts about any of the above (or anything else for that matter) feel free to say them below, reach out to me via email at oppo@opposite-lock.com, DM here or on discord (my handle is also jminer there).

      Thanks for being the best damn corner of the internet everyone - keep it up!!!

      ps - credit to @way2blu for the thumbnail gif

      posted in Oppositelock hyphen financial update hyphen
      jminer
      jminer
    • Hell Yeah!!! [Personal Triumph Post!]

      NEW JOB TIME!!!!

      For the last 18 months I've been working for Company A that has been subcontracting me full-time to Company B. Company B is a giant tech company out here. The pay is good at my current job but the benefits are lousy: terrible health insurance, poor 401k match, terrible PTO and so on. The job itself is interesting but I only get to see a small part of the system as a sub and influence it even less.

      Right about 6 weeks ago a director of a different department at Company B reached out and asked if I'd be interested in a full time role at Company B as the Technical Lead of their Physical Security Systems Administration team. I talked it over with the Boss (as we'd been contemplating a move to Germany in the next year) and decided to put my hat in the ring. It's an opportunity that was just too good to pass up.

      This was followed with about 10 interviews over several weeks which is always a stressful as hell process then the recruiter pushing back a decision on it a couple weeks which stressed me the hell out.

      Then officially today, I've gotten and signed the offer!!!!!!!

      The details of the job are likely boring as hell for most of you so I won't go into them but I am excited as hell!!!

      I am taking a week off between leaving my current role and starting a new one so I'll take a couple overnight adventures to decompress before starting. This does mean I'm now a maybe for @CarsOfFortLangley's PNW meet as I'll be in the new role barely a month by then.

      To also make it a car related celebration here's a plumbed up analog oil gauge that says the ranger's engine isn't about to explode!

      PXL_20220401_214218474.jpg

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • The Death of DriveTribe - A call to Action

      So folks, a very sad day has come. The end of DriveTribe. They announced today that the site will be shutting down at the end of the month.

      DriveTribe was a pretty cool place for automotive enthusiasts of all stripes to get together and interact. They were also really supportive of this community in particular. I talked with their CEO when G/O was shutting us down and while he wanted us to have a presence on his site he also thought it was important for a unique community to have it's own place like the hyphen and he even kicked us some cashola to cover costs. I am truly saddened that another enthusiast platform has been killed by facebook and a lack of ad revenue, the world is a shittier place because of this!

      So today I call out to all our members that have spent time on DriveTribe to pop back over there and invite the communities that you've been a part of to join us here. Everybody is welcome and with 14 months and going strong here, I can't promise we'll be around forever but we're not going away anytime soon.

      If you're new to Oppo from DriveTribe, welcome! We're glad to have you, say hi, introduce yourself. Oppo is a pretty special place, enjoy it. You'll find content on overlanding, aircraft history, restoration, diecast modification and so many other things it'll keep you entertained. If you're new pop over to Best of Oppo and take a look at some of our users post we like to highlight.

      A housekeeping note, we're entirely user-supported through merch and donations so we run no ads. We like it this way and plan to keep it for the foreseeable future. The site is also built and maintained by users so we're a truly independent site, exempt from the whims of large media corporations.

      If you're the owner/spokesman of a large community that wants your own sub-forum here with it's own mods and rules, let me know and I'm happy to oblige.

      There is really only one main rule here, Don't be a dick.

      PS - our poll engine sucks but we don't usually use them as prevalently as they were pushed on DriveTribe.

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • Weekend Adventures and Buying of a Thing!

      So Oppo I had a good weekend.

      Last Thursday afternoon I flew from Oakland to Seattle on Southwest. The pre-check line was short and the flight left on time. The plane was also pleasantly lightly populated and the ticket was only $124.

      c3ef5035-963a-4d90-9951-03f5c921bee6-PXL_20230427_203716457.jpg
      No neighbors - hell yeah!

      Friday afternoon I met up with oppo @Sam-Blockhan @Roadkilled @MidEngine @Dr-Zoidberg and @TheBarber plus his lovely Fiancé Annie. We had dinner and chatted a bunch which was genuinely enjoyable but I only see @Sam-Blockhan made a post about it - so go read his. His pictures are better then mine too. Here's a shitty picture I took of our cars though. Side-note here: @AestheticsInMotion is a bastard who stood us up at this meet!

      9d5a724c-37e9-4b46-b800-45b62d35b9de-PXL_20230429_010910974.jpg

      Then the meet dispersed and at this point I wrote a check, signed some paperwork and took the keys to an 07 Honda Pilot from @TheBarber and drove him and Annie south to their house. So at this point I now own a pilot with a ton of miles (220k) but that has been lovingly worked over by the masterful @TheBarber.

      It's now about 830pm on Friday and I fill up the car and keep heading south.

      546c528c-f1b7-4fc4-b005-3d696ee1056e-PXL_20230429_032924060.jpg
      First picture of the car in my ownership

      The plan for Friday is to drive a couple hours south and sleep at a rest-stop and then spend a decent chunk of Saturday exploring and doing things outside. I stop for the night about 1130 at a rest-stop outside Millersburg Oregon.

      I get up and start moving again about 7am and hit a Fred Meyers nearby to grab some supplies for the day. I flew with the basics (ground pad, sleeping bag, change of clothes) but I needed food, something to start a fire with and so on.

      While driving through Oregon on I-5 I came upon Humvees towing what appeared to be artillery of some sort which is not something I expected to encounter that day.

      ebb466f3-cb38-4eea-b133-23ac9ba40f3e-PXL_20230429_153749826.jpg

      I then cutover at hwy 58 to get to 97 and stopped at a pretty place or two along the way.

      48ab53ef-d553-42fb-92c9-124af2819baa-PXL_20230429_175813680.jpg

      My goal for the day was to camp at Jackson F Kimball state recreation site which was a recommendation from CaptainLila over on the PNW discord. The area was stunning and quiet and would have been an excellent place to camp with views of crater lake in the distance and a small river/creek but unfortunately I was there probably a week too early.

      023a3a06-0b7c-48cf-802c-0fb2a4718beb-image.png

      Down at the end of that of that was about a foot of snow that no one had broken yet this season. That's definitely more snow than I wanted to tackle in the Pilot, especially with the shitty tires on it and it's unknown to me performance.

      Yes I bought a car with beat-up old tires on it. It's not Barb's fault - he tried to convince me to buy nicer tires for it and he'd have them installed. I'm not fully decided on my plans for it so I didn't want to drop substantial coin on tires yet.

      From here I'm not entirely sure where I'm going yet so I stop in Klamath Falls and to figure out what I wanted to do next. Logistically it was a little tough as while it's been warm and a lot of formerly closed spaces should be open it hasn't been warm for long which means the Forest Service Rangers haven't been out to open gates and mark opened campgrounds. I landed on Orr Lake Campground in Klamath National Forest which I'm hoping to be a nice place to spend some time.

      The drive to the campground was pretty with a couple diversions down gravel roads that I came across. Here's where we hit some @Overland #content!

      5d62356d-33dc-47a9-8bd3-3a62800a70ca-PXL_20230429_222534958.jpg a5d27f5d-e633-4c8e-a8b8-307f994be1cf-PXL_20230429_223553497.jpg

      Getting closer to the campground I came across a rather old wooden bridge. When I showed my wife this photo she asked 'Did you drive over that?!' to which I replies 'Yes, probably 10 times'

      45ce85bd-26f7-4e0b-98ac-730323f29d00-PXL_20230429_224024369.jpg

      I was greeted with a small set of 5 sites next to the lake with no services besides a pit toilet. The view from lakeside was fantastic!

      4afa3298-422c-4273-9760-3f284f158192-PXL_20230429_225116992.jpg
      That's Mt Shasta in the distance

      At this point I'm now planning on spending the night here, all spots but one are open but I decided the PB&J I picked up in the morning wasn't going to do for dinner. So I headed 45 minutes into Weed, CA for supplies.

      While in Weed I though - hmmm, I liked that spot but do I want to drive 45 minutes further from home for the night or look for something closer/a little south of me. I checked the forestry service app and it noted an open campground on the way up Mt Shasta which was only 20 minutes away from my current location

      The app lied - snow was still piled up rather deep there and the campground was very closed.

      1db2d4d2-4bc2-44e1-b9d7-b1c7d3f23d73-PXL_20230430_002144394.jpg

      So I headed back to the original site with a couple diversions down forestry service roads to explore the area, test the Pilot and look for a maybe better spot to camp.

      12d9b160-0f61-428d-881e-6cbc85f41860-PXL_20230430_012110850.jpg
      This was a strong contender for a spot

      00760f5c-842d-43e7-b669-ed75d8800d6a-PXL_20230430_013240846.jpg 6955a40e-393c-4297-96c8-926cab19c656-PXL_20230430_013518296.jpg 8b904b01-29d1-4824-b03a-083951440e02-PXL_20230430_014113056.jpg feca0797-3b1b-4401-aaab-db8888b3f1a8-PXL_20230430_015526320.jpg 910f8062-50ff-45e6-8f58-47acab7b970d-PXL_20230430_021309848.jpg

      Then google maps tried to take me through here to get back to the campground - it was marked closed on the forestry service map but not on google.

      fc34ce2c-35cd-4162-a951-c5054db6938b-PXL_20230430_013959373.jpg

      So now it's nearing Dusk and I'm back at the campground. A couple other campers had moved in but I still had a lovely spot about 20 steps from the lake.

      I started up a fire and went and sat by the lake for quite a time just taking in the changing colors and sounds of the frogs, insects and birds.


      I'm going to come back and play this one often - it was lovely

      Then I got back and cooked the porterhouse I picked up in Weed over the fire and cracked open a cider.

      0c0b8ae7-ac38-4aa5-840f-0f551258aa23-PXL_20230430_030508351.jpg

      Now as I'm eating dinner I'm taking in the lovely sunset views

      e63bf8ab-947c-403d-8c3c-340a402db7f6-image.png
      24fc8139-0cf2-489a-a636-cab589ea66e2-image.png
      b640ecc1-62aa-4412-bf18-1e7ac6d74cce-image.png

      At this point it's dark but I'm not ready to go to bed so I sit by the fire and my phone grabs a tiny bit of reception so I check in with my wife and Discord pings me to make sure I'm still alive (thanks for caring!)

      bfa501b9-7867-4438-b776-e8c25b9bb9a0-image.png

      After the sun goes away completely so does the reception and once it gets completely dark I wander down the lake to a larger dock and also find some more camp spaces that fit RVs - I wouldn't want to take an RV down the roads that got me here but at least 3 other people did.

      So I wander out onto the dock and turn off my headlamp and just sit there listening to the frogs, watching bats swoop around and eat bugs and hearing the fish hit the water to grab dinner. I probably sat like this for 20 minutes just taking it all in. This was extremely relaxing for me.

      I go back to the site and sit by the fire a bit more and when it dies down I climb into the Pilot and go to sleep.

      Picture of the site/view/my chariot in the morning

      4b89d7ad-1811-495a-86ad-6ac68d23fe3b-image.png

      In the morning I decide to hit Pluto Caves which is a semi-collapsed Lava Tube. I spent not enough time playing around here. I did not have the appropriate gear for this and was alone so I didn't go too far into a cavern.

      df599bf6-923e-4388-8775-92d636bc3800-PXL_20230430_153852072.jpg
      d819074f-3411-4e4b-815f-cfea69c76432-PXL_20230430_155613608.jpg 575538e7-aea5-4d0d-b67f-dd3b9ef03d32-PXL_20230430_155849210.jpg aa9053ae-e8f1-499a-ad30-b352662071f3-PXL_20230430_160836492.jpg f22fae5c-de98-410a-9272-a5ae0437a862-PXL_20230430_161052093.jpg ab6028a1-3b51-45ca-9e39-02c411bb6427-PXL_20230430_161636593.jpg

      I start to head towards home but it's still the morning and I'm only like 4 hours away so I decide to take another diversion.

      An access road that probably exists mostly for servicing this rail line called to me.

      2782efa0-e914-4304-9306-87cee3363dfa-PXL_20230430_164456497.jpg
      choo choo!

      Here's where the pilot started to impress me
      0fd63d8c-9841-4cc7-8906-bce4ed14b9c0-PXL_20230430_165210300.jpg 136d1a96-b8fb-4081-8f40-9fa64819805b-PXL_20230430_165538414.jpg 54ac833b-90f2-4420-8fc3-54772b18c187-PXL_20230430_164833667.jpg

      These roads were closer to trails and the pilot did damn well even with shit tires on it.

      Then I headed towards home - the current fleet!
      62d69652-83d1-431d-81e4-e9d338a693a5-PXL_20230430_231122968.jpg
      See how filthy it is - I told you to not worry about detailing the outside @TheBarber

      The trip ended up being just over 1,100 miles and the Pilot averaged 19.5 MPG during the trip. It performed very well in everything I cared about and it's exactly what I was looking for. It was cheap (I don't think Barb made a dime on this thing), cruised at 85 with no issues, was comfy eating up the miles, I can sleep in it and it was more capable off-road then I expected.

      posted in Oppositelock adventures with jminer overland
      jminer
      jminer
    • The end of necessary car shopping!

      A CAR HAS BEEN BOUGHT!

      Last night I bought a 19 Tiguan SE.

      038aa750-501a-4a98-b264-48fe6cbaab5b-PXL_20220414_220946782.jpg

      The options are just about perfect on it for me. No sunroof, radar cruise, third row or lane keep. Has android auto, AWD, is a real color and blind spot monitoring. The inside is black leather which isn't awesome but the lack of a sunroof will help and there's already some tint on it.

      11cbbc3f-b2db-47e3-a824-a82f8b603228-PXL_20220415_002708351.jpg

      Yesterday I (and especially my wife) was getting fed up with the vehicle search and while browsing alltrack listings (and being disappointed) a decent priced tiguan was spotted. A quick look at specs showed me that a tiguan is only a tiny bit bigger than an alltrack while having the same gas mileage and cargo space and has slightly more power. It is objectively uglier than an alltrack but a fine looking crossover and should fit my needs and desires on a vehicle right now quite well and cost me $5-10k less than a comparably equipped and mileage alltrack, tourx or volvo. My thinking is very similar to @HammerheadFistpunch and his earlier post talking about this exact thing and while I'd rather have a hatchback or wagon those options are shrinking fast and this fits my needs just about perfectly now.

      60d373ec-03b4-4cd5-9561-7e5dc55bddfd-PXL_20220414_220925740.jpg

      So I went for a test drive yesterday evening and quite liked it. The car felt a lot like my MK6 TDI sportwagen (which I loved) and I brought it by the house and the missus liked it too so I went back. Relatively little runaround at the dealer but it took forever (as it always does).

      7f4dd0f8-b323-4e1a-a152-b021d0595000-PXL_20220415_002717495.jpg
      Damn fingerprints

      The price was decent (for this fucking market) and the warranty sweet. VW stacks the factory warranty and the CPO warranty so I've got 3 years and change (and nearly 60k miles) plus a year and 12k miles CPO warranty that starts when the factory warranty ends.

      The Fleet! (well most of it)
      a822b666-5886-4476-beba-6028243b098b-PXL_20220415_002436134.jpg

      For now there are no other changes planned for the fleet. This takes the ranger out of forced daily driver duties. I'll use it around town and slowly figure out what I need to do next on it. It may get tiring and be rotated out for another fun project but we'll see.

      At the moment my wife drives more than me and the Tiguan gets more than 50% better gas mileage than the GX so she's already laid claim to the VW for now. This does give me access to the GX for wilderness explorations, it'll accompany me on some off road relaxation next week and to the PNW oppomeet in June if I can make it.

      My wife is incredibly happy with me being done car shopping and I'm sure you all are too.

      posted in Best of Oppo
      jminer
      jminer
    • The Hyphen - One year in

      Just a little over a year ago the kinjapocalypse finally came to be. While we kept faithfully visiting the G/O sites, engaging and generating ad revenue the decision was made to ax all user communities.

      There was a good deal of panic and grief in those days as there was no clear place for us to go to. It seemed the true end was actually here. Many life rafts popped up, some with more promise than others but none really seemed to speak to the whole community. DriveTribe was very close with an engaged and supportive ownership group but the mobile interface was very lacking, ads were heavy and it just didn't feel like home to a good chunk of the community.

      While so many of us were dealing with the stress and upheaval of a global pandemic, a recent election and so much more the last thing we needed was the death of our community. I was in the middle of a cross-country move at the time having just started a job in California and living alone in a studio hotel room while looking for permanent housing so my wife could join me.

      My social support groups were all gone as I was living in an entirely new place and the prospect of losing Oppo too was a bridge too far and after talking to a bunch of folks on both the Discord and Kinja I decided to start doing research and tinkering around with options for a new oppo. I'd also been drinking, which probably helped tell the 'this is too big a problem to solve' part of my brain to shut the hell up.

      I go into a bit more detail around the actual creation in a post I made on our two month birthday. I still have a hard time believing that the community has managed to survive largely intact. We all have stories and memories of communities long gone that were special to us. There was a very real risk that Oppo would suffer the same fate of turning into solely a FB group.

      There was definitely something truly special in oppo and it is definitely still here. That magic is what allowed us to survive, without it we'd be gone I'm sure. This is a place that so many of us have come to for advice, entertainment, friendship, support and camaraderie. One year in our new home is not only surviving but I'd say thriving. We're serving up roughly 800k page views a month with an engaged and growing user-base. Excellent content gets created faster than I can keep track of it and I'm constantly surprised the knowledge and experience we have in our little corner of the internet. While we'll never be huge, new and old members show up and introduce themselves regularly and our substantial lurker community keeps this place humming along nicely. I'd for sure like to see some more new folks so tell your friends, but we're still healthy.

      So a year later we have a pretty well functioning community that's self funded with no ads and is proving itself to be quite sustainable in the long term. I don't see us going away anytime soon. Myself and the @Curators have plans to keep growing the site as well as better highlight the Best of Oppo with dreams of turning it into a destination of sorts. We're still all volunteer run so work and life having the demands they do slow these things down but we'll get there.

      I couldn't have done any of this alone and just want to thank everyone that both helped in the early days and since. Feedback and engagement is essential and we couldn't do any of this without all of you.

      This got more sentimental than I intended for it to, but so be it. It's late and I'm waxing poetically on this a bit as I think back to our humble beginnings.

      As always if you have any suggestions, feedback, thoughts or questions feel free to reach out to me directly either on chat here or email at oppo@opposite-lock.com.

      posted in OppoDocs
      jminer
      jminer
    • Hyphen Traffic Update

      It's been far too long since I've posted a traffic update but here goes.

      edit for @Just-Jeepin
      Times on all graphs are Pacific.

      First the snapshot of our internal forum metrics for the last 24 hours

      a419a7e1-c5c2-4dfc-871c-d1bbc87eae7d-image.png

      This looks pretty typical for us day to day.

      Here is the overview from the last 6 months

      40500736-1327-454b-a74e-1416acd47c94-image.png

      Note that big-assed spike from when drivetribe died. It has returned both a sustained bump in registered user activity and guest activity (these are folks with or without a login). It's tapered a bit but we're still steadily above where we were before it.

      Thanks for hanging out here and making us batter. As of this point you're now full Opponauts, no longer DriveTribe refugees!

      More metrics from the internal stats engine.

      f826e866-cc87-43ff-817a-5beaff904c6e-image.png

      Here's a breakdown of new topic creation over the last 24 hours.

      d1afd74e-1cbd-416f-a8e7-9f081ed6acf9-image.png

      Same over the last month

      9317aefe-0962-4e0f-a3df-2f15f9ba863b-image.png

      Now I'll pop over the google analytics metrics. I'm using the last 6 months as the dataset again for most of these.

      525f0bee-1cf3-4a6b-9982-f61891b53f79-image.png

      User OS breakdown

      2e51499c-d49b-4cf3-bccb-d4951def8261-image.png

      I know the blackberry is @svend but who's the PS4?

      Geographic breakdown

      afbc49ae-8977-464f-b3cb-1e79986fd27b-image.png

      Over the last 6 months our search engine referrals have gone up substantially from where they used to be.

      4bfa8cd3-f838-49e3-a58b-786b572c627c-image.png

      a051d2a2-7ad7-4a49-bcdd-4c5c55565a11-image.png

      Now onto more specifics of google search results that landed on OPPO

      f0427905-5aaa-44d4-888e-8ea224a8623e-image.png

      44826312-af8c-4127-9715-871e4524e821-image.png

      My favorite snippet there is that for some reason the algorithm loved @doodon2whls's post about a new dyson jet engine and just kept feeding it to people netting nearly 7k views to a joke post.

      Couple searches both from our former parent and new friends lead some folks here (again hilariously around another search term to the dyson engine post)

      8d8286d5-0035-4061-93e0-a98b480a9b57-image.png

      Google sent me this email too recently

      cc68f306-92a2-4201-97c2-405c89bfad51-image.png

      On google discover we got some attention for a bit 6 months ago and then it's totally ignored us ever since.

      ef92f83e-86c5-4477-bbcd-e6a4a6ee0504-image.png

      As an aside I had to increase the allocated storage on the server today to make sure there's room for all the shitposts #topshelfcontent.

      If there's any other stats you want to take a look at let me know and I'll see if I can dig them up.

      Well that's all the entertaining statistic snippets I've got for now. Thank you everybody for hanging out here, posting, lurking, donating, buying merch and just all around being awesome!

      posted in Oppositelock hyphen data hyphen traffic nerd shit
      jminer
      jminer
    • It finally happened, I bought a thing!

      After a few weeks of back and forth with the seller waiting for a smog inspection I have a pickup!

      PXL_20211013_180140474.jpg

      It's an 89 Ranger with the 2.9 V6, a 5 speed and 4x4. The boss lady enthusiastically approved and is excited for a project we'll work on. Both for her to get her hands dirty and something to keep my ass occupied.

      It does not actually have a smog inspection, the valve covers leak badly and smog shops wouldn't inspect it with the engine bay smoking. I got it cheap enough though I'm not terribly concerned about it, even if I have to put a couple grand into it (which I don't think I will) I got it far less than if I had bought a slightly nicer one with an inspection and it passed back in April anyway.

      PXL_20210926_165936875.jpg

      The pickup is hopefully a solid project for me that checks a lot of boxes. It runs and drives pretty well but still needs a decent amount of work. When done it should also be a solid little runaround and exploration pickup.

      PXL_20211013_180111219.jpg

      The interior is absolutely trashed and will need a couple trips to the junkyard for explorer seats and various ranger trim bits.

      PXL_20210926_170416291.jpg PXL_20210926_170419293.jpg PXL_20210926_170413098.jpg

      While there is some surface rust on various body panels from sun baked paint fading and flaking the undercarriage is mint!

      PXL_20210926_170523570.jpg PXL_20210926_170512831.jpg

      I cannot believe a 33 year old beater pickup looks this clean underneath. California is still breaking my brain having lived all my life in the rust belt.

      In the next few days I'll replace the valve cover gaskets and give it a light tune up while I work up a larger parts list of both junk yard items and fresh parts it'll need to put back in full fighting form.

      Wish me luck!

      posted in Oppositelock he finally bought something ranger time
      jminer
      jminer

    Latest posts made by jminer

    • RE: Why tho? Jeep Gladiators

      @HammerheadFistpunch you make one of those with a 6' bed and it's on my radar now. But then again people don't but 2 door trucks anymore unless it's for a fleet and fleets won't buy these.

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • RE: Montana

      @ike808 I saw the thread title and was gonna post that video as a response - well done sir

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • RE: Get your OEM GM and Mopar parts while you can.

      @Vondon302 Good luck with it all man - I'm pulling for you!

      I had a lot of friends that worked for Mopar before they closed the St Louis plant. I worked right across the highway from it and it was quite depressing to watch it go vacant then get turned into a parking lot. Fuck those guys running the show and get yours!

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • RE: Self Driving Clusterf**k

      @іди-на-хуй-Влад-formerly-known-as-Distraxi you explained that very well. I hadn't been able to put it to words but that's exactly it

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • RE: Is it too much to ask

      @HammerheadFistpunch said in Is it too much to ask:

      @jminer under 20k.

      That's not much more than what a cheap pop-up costs these days.

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • RE: Is it too much to ask

      @Rusty-Vandura can't your not a Durango tow a popup?

      @HammerheadFistpunch what would the ideal pricing be on something like this? Last time I looked at campers they started at too expensive for my thoughts.

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • RE: Are you planning to get the updated Covid shot?

      @CB said in Are you planning to get the updated Covid shot?:

      Absolutely. I work with the pubic daily

      Giggity

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • RE: We finally got our own merch!

      @Mark-Tucker I really like my autopian member T-Shirt.

      Solid bout of swag you got there!

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • RE: Forgotten dreams

      @CB anytime I think of fisker this pops into my head

      Edit - it's late and you said spyker and not fisker. Oh well. Have some Childish Gambino anyway

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer
    • RE: Son's Fiero project update - the alternator debacle

      @Green-Truck solid fix! Strange old cars have all sorts of random problems like this. It's an adventure to fixing them!

      posted in Oppositelock
      jminer
      jminer