Mobile Tech at Katsucon 2019

Mobile Tech of Katsucon 2019 Unite!

We have an obligation to be awesome every year and this year to do it we need some great apparel...


Exclusive Mobile Tech shirts are back!


With this year's design you'll have the choice of five different colors, in all sizes of men's, women's or kid's.

Stand out among the rest of Kastucon 2019 staffers with this great shirt! I'm hoping we can assemble a full team of different color shirts. I hope you all enjoy.

The shirt link: https://amzn.to/2RTJF3z
Full Disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

If you'd like a hoodie or long sleeve version or a different fabric type, please let me know, the cost will vary but I'll see what I can do.

P.S. There may be an additional shirt design this year if the design works out, from our resident awesomesauce assistant department head Dan!

Things customer service

The older I get the more I run in to customer service issues. Am I that old already? Or far more likely am lost in a sea of poor representatives? Commerce and especially eCommerce survive on outstanding customer service. While I may not be the best at what I do, you better believe I know what good customer service is, and it is getting harder to hold larger companies to a good standard.

In my experience it is simple to achieve great customer service with a few simple rules...

1. Listen - Really listen to the people you serve.
2. Be a problem solver - Solve the issues your customers have by trying to put yourself in their shoes.
3. Ask questions - Someone who is following the above two will be able to ask really great questions.
4. Be honest about your solution - If you can't fix or help your customer be upfront about it but do everything you can.

You won't have a solution for every situation, nor a great experience every time, but the above steps have always held true for me when I give a customer service. As with any skill it takes practice and every person is different so practice good customer service.

Thoughts on Selling

Due to a recent need to create a third stream of income for the family I started dabbling in eBay and Amazon sales to try and create something new for our family. I must say this is tough with no real experience running any kind of business I've been thrust into entrepreneurship way beyond my comfort zone. I've learned a great amount about business and myself through this process. This post is really to highlight a few of the sources that helped get me started.

My first inspiration was from YouTube's AlphaM run by Aaron Marino. From fashion to entrepreneurship his view on life is very positive and always speaks in a positive manner that grabs his viewer. His videos gave me a really good idea of what it was to start and run something for myself. In short he gave me a great confidence boost to help start me off in the right direction. It was because of Aaron and his videos that I found a style for myself that instilled a special new found confidence as an entrepreneur. On a side note it was because of him that I purchased my very first pair of Double Monk Strap shoes!

As I became more confident I sought out others that started their businesses with very little to no experience to hear their stories and learn from their experiences. Jaspreet Singh has a great influence on my development as a an entrepreneur. With his YouTube channel Minority Mindset, every week he has new videos to share and all of them dealing with something that he's thought about or explored in his experiences. His videos send out a positive message to his viewers and always leave you with a chuckle as he'll often get his point across with a bit of humor. Listening to his stories helped me to understand that part of being an entrepreneur is learning to fail well and understanding that failure in something doesn't mean that it is the end. If you fail at one business start another! Try a different angle or method, but his motto "Just Keep Hustling!" to me means never give up and learn from your mistakes because it is only over when you give up.

In any event, this has just been a bit of my personal development insight for others looking to start something of their own. My biggest takeaway so far has been that persistence and habit win out over motivation in the long run.

Solo A Star Wars Review

Here there be spoilers, proceed at your own risk.

There are a lot things I can say about the film in regards to the plot story and everything that might be wrong with the film in general, but that's not the whole story...

Overall I'd say that this film is the lovechild of Rogue One and Empire Strikes Back. The pacing felt a lot like Rogue One in terms of action and characters. The Han that is introduced to us feels like the one that can't catch a brake, much like in Empire Strikes Back, as his luck as all but run out. Like a snowball rolling down hill, the film and characters find momentum as they gather together, and then die, again another Rogue One trait. While not the main enemy focus of Han in the film, the Empire seems to still always present and to be nipping at Han's heels. "These are not the droids you're looking for." rings in my head as the comparison's add up.

The characters in this film did not disappoint I liked many of them, everything from the sassy droid to the plucky four-armed pilot. I think my favorite character development was seeing many more aspects of Chewbacca and bits of his backstory. Warwick Davis' appearance as Weazel was a most pleasant surprise, a familiar face that you never saw in Return of the Jedi. I was less so excited about Han, even though it was happening right in front of me, I found I had far less interest in his story. Not because I wasn't interested, I was, I just found that Han's story didn't interest me as Much as Val's or L3's. Where I think the film started to go sideways with the characters is when they started to kill off said some aforementioned characters, I like to call it the Game of Thrones syndrome. This isn't necessarily bad when you have a real connection to the character that dies. In Solo, it feels like you're supposed to care about this character dying but there just isn't enough time to grow that attached, and you're left feeling indifferent to the death. I will say the death I cared about the most was L3-37, I feel it was a bit telegraphed but still a surprise of how it happened.

On more of a positive character side there's Enfys Nest, L3-37 and Qi'ra. All are seen as strong female "bad ass" characters that know what they want and how they want it. If nothing else I really have to hand it to Disney for pulling away from the damsel in distress model of female characters. I felt like none of these characters had left me feeling like they were weak or could not handle anything on their own.

I feel like since Disney has taken over Star Wars Han's character has a much more Jack Sparrow feel to him. This appears to be true in Solo as well, I didn't ever get the smuggler vibe from Han's character that is perhaps is the most disappointing aspect of the character's development. Perhaps they're saving the smuggling for a sequel. It is such a disconnect from the Han that we've come to know that I feel like it is a different character. The few minor bits where smuggling is mentioned it just felt shoehorned in. The real true moments of Han's character are in his interactions with Chewy, those moments in the film are where the film shines. That relationship feels like a real kin to the original trilogy relationship they both had with each other.

L3-37's relationship with Lando is a bit of a curious one, a human droid love story perhaps in the way captain loves their ship. There's more to it than that, a love of a companion is how it looks from the outside, in the heat of the moment you never stop to think about Lando, the ladies man, caring so deeply for a droid. I for one enjoyed the dynamic between the two and was sad to see it go.

I was disappointed with the lack of tech in the film about the Millennium Falcon, with such an important role Lando just gives a quick overview of the modifications. Call me a bit of a techie if you want but I wanted more than just a quick rundown. One thing I did love is the way they finally validated the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs, I won't spoil it here but if nothing else that made the movie worth it. The flight scenes with the Millennium Falcon were well done, standard top notch CG and edge of my seat exciting.

As far as artistic presentation goes, the film was done well and it didn't follow the standard artistic approach. Solo was filmed in a unique and tasteful way, without a lot of the flashier CG and lens flares that we've come to know from other directors.

The story seems to only be the start of something bigger. Over the course of the film there were only a handful of moments where I felt like I knew where the story was really going. From the start it doesn't really feel like Han knows where he is going, except a vague idea that he wants to be a pilot. This contributes to the fool mentality of what Han has been turned into, leading to my biggest disappoint with the film, in my view Han is a lucky gambling smuggler constantly beating the odds. There was one redeeming moment at toward the end of the film where the Han I used to know showed up, when giving over the fuel to Dryden Vos. The biggest WTF moment in the film was seeing Qi'ra contact what looks to be Darth Maul. Not sure how that fits in at all except to setup a sequel. The winner for FTW moment was watching Han shoot Beckett first. The way I see it a sequel is imminent, Solo 2 the search for more money is likely incoming. Overall I liked this film a lot it had a lot of great moments and it is definitely worth a see in theaters! The story may not be the most original but it gives new depth to characters we've known for so long. Once the story gets going it doesn't stop, and while it doesn't tell everything it packs a lot in and does continue to be an interesting ride to the finish.

Basic Crypto Currency Mining PC Build Thoughts and Parts List

Please note: these thoughts and experiences are my own, your mileage may vary.

One of my passions in life has been computers since I was young, later turning into a passion for building custom PC systems. Much of my experience is from a gaming perspective then branching out to meet my customer's needs. Depending on the application and customer I've built simple internet browsing boxes for as little as $300, all the way on up to the $4000 SLI gaming monster. Every time I built a system, I felt a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment...

Too bad those feelings never last and I have the itch to create again soon after! Building systems had as much of a hold over me then as it does now, stopping me in the middle of the day to spec out systems I've been building in my mind for hours or even days. So many options for some many different applications, gaming rigs for hardcore and casual gamers alike, and rigs for crypto currency mining.

Despite what you may have heard or seen elsewhere, crypto mining in 2018 is not dead. The whole point of crypto currencies is to be a decentralized currency and in order for that decentralization to be maintained it requires individuals to take up the GPU, (and to a lesser extent) the CPU (web browser mining) and HDD (burst coin) to keep things decentralized. The crypto currency movement is attempting to avoid the pitfall of the majority of currency falling in to too few hands. More on that at another time. Albeit a new hobby for me, I feel like crypto mining fits in to what I'm passionate about so seamlessly, it would be a shame to miss the opportunity to partake in something new and exciting.

In my endless quest for knowledge I was curious what it took to make a basic mining system for the newcomer to the crypto mining scene. I started digging and found I already had experience building a beginning mining system and I didn't know it. I like to be as cost effective as possible in any system build I do but in the interest of overall speed and perceived longevity some parts could go lower. I will provide a parts list and direct links (if you use the links to buy I get a little kickback to help keep the blog going) to the parts I'm talking about. I have no love for Intel over AMD this is just a basic build for a beginner using the cheaper of the two components. The biggest deal is to plan out your system before you buy or build, if you plan out your system, you can better avoid common pitfalls like part incompatibility and plan for the future but be aware of how many video cards you plan to start with.

Parts List:

The CPU isn't really used all that much in a mining application and a Ryzen 3 is a bit of overkill for the build but for the purposes of re-purposing later it is a solid choice.
Recommended CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 2200G buy

You should avoid motherboards with mining or crypto in the name as these will be over priced for what the beginner needs. Just make sure it has several PCIe 16x and 1x slots (3 to 4 total is plenty).
Recommended MOBO: ASRock AB350 Pro4 AM4 buy

The system RAM needed is only 8GB and you don't need fancy heat spreaders, so you can save some money there.
Recommended RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V series 8Gb (2x4GB) F4-2133C15D-8GVR  buy

Storage is mostly a personal choice based on where and how your mining wallets are stored, for this build we'll be using a 120GB SSD for simplicity, this will cover OS and any mining software you may need.
Recommened SSD: Mushkin Enhanced 120GB SSD MKNSSDSR120GB buy

Cases are hard here, the idea behind a case is to hold all of the important bits of your system, however, as you use the PCIe 1x slots they'll require an additional hardware piece that will allow them to hang outside the case. A good side panel that comes off easily is best. Again try to avoid anything that says gaming on it as it will be overpriced. Look for an ATX mid tower case as this won't take a super amount of space and will offer options for expansion. In the end, no matter what, good airflow is absolutely key!
Recommended Case: VIVO Micro-ATX (CASE-V06W) buy

The PSU is again subjective, this is where your planning comes in, if you plan on using no more than two video cards to start with, then a 600 Watt PSU will be the absolute minimum needed. I recommend at least a bronze power rating more if you can afford it.
Recommended PSU: EVGA 600 B1 100-B1-0600-KR buy

So far the build is pretty simple, but the GPU is where the high barrier to entry comes in. Cost vs mining potential (as of 2018-05-07) is in the realm of the nVidia 1060 6GB, 1070 (ti), and 1080 (ti).
Recommended GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB SC 06G-P4-6163-KR buy

The OS can be Windows or Linux here for simplicity sake I'll use Windows.
Recommended OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit buy

I only spec out a single gtx 1060 6GB card in the build to keep costs lower as that is the single most expensive part of the system. All in all, the system would do well and net somewhere between ~$1.98/day and ~$1.04/day profit after electricity calculation. (I use crypt0.zone calculator to get a basic idea of what the mining potential is.) Please note these profit estimates will fluctuate wildly as the market goes up and down.

As far as mining software goes, I recommend for simplicity sake, nicehash with a few caveats. Condition 1, use two factor authentication! No exceptions here. Condition 2, Always transfer out your earnings out ASAP. Transferring your earnings with nicehash to a BTC wallet will incur a small cost... Unless you're transferring to Coinbase.com (If you use the link I provided and buy $100 of BTC you will receive an additional $10 in BTC free!) then the BTC transfer is free. The reason I recommend nicehash.com is because it is simple to start and easy for a beginner to use AMD or nVidia GPU.

Again these weren't the absolute lowest specs for a basic mining rig, but it is a solid choice no matter what. I hope to add information on how to under volt and over clock the GPU in a future post to extend the life of your GPU. In the mean time I hope some of this information helped shed some light on the crypto currency scene. Good Luck! Please leave a comment if you have any additions or have built your own using this list, I'd like to hear about the build experience.