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Where Have All The good Guys Gone


Guest Don Gillespie

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Guest Don Gillespie

I can remember the good ole days on LOR that you could have fun, make jokes and all had a good time.

Now it seems if you try that, someone will cry to the admins and get thread locked, posts removed or worse. I agree DonG, everyone to to but on their big boy pants and not let the little stuff bother them.

If you think I'm wrong, go search the thread with Jim's tree falling down. That went on for a long time and nobody went crying to admin. Search frickin wire cutters, again, nobody cried foul. I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.

Totally agree with you Shfr26 those were the good old days, had more fun here, couldn't wait to get in the morning to see what was next, now I could care less about it, the fun has left the forum, I also wear my big boy pants if I didn't I would take things way to seriously, Jim took a beating for his tree, that was some funny stuff a few years ago, I got hammered for my wire cutters, always looked for the next post, to get a good laugh, now I watch for the moderators, have to be very careful what you say might hurt some ones feelings, never know when they are going to shut a thread down.Sheeeeeeeeeeeeesh what is this world coming to?

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I agree with the search comments. I have searched for several things only to find "no results" Good advice on the google part, I hadn't thought of that.

Sometimes us newbies think we have a very specific question that isn't exactly answered by other posts. There may be posts on the topic but it doesn't address our specific question. Newbies don't know what they don't know so the ability to infer from other posts is limited. Hence asking the same question several times (I know I'm guilty of it). Some of us newbies are really overwhelmed when jumping in and don't want to make mistakes. To us you are experts that have displays that are legendary and here we are trying to run a show on 16 channels with the lights we have. It's humbling to get advice from people whose shows have gone viral on youtube and are so creative.

Thinking about the people asking for free stuff or to buy stuff; maybe there should be a sub heading for "looking for" and "for sale" (this may not work as I know LOR wants to make money on people buying their products from them)

In any case, I get a lot of advice here and have learned a lot. It is a resource for me and I will hopefully be able to share that with other newbies as the years go on.

Just my .02 but maybe it's only worth .01

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If you think I'm wrong, go search the thread with Jim's tree falling down. That went on for a long time and nobody went crying to admin.

I think they left the thread on Jim's tree up because it was VERY informative. Good info on what NOT to do. ;)

As far as the old "pros" leaving, I am sorry to see them go. Some did seem to be growing cranky and a few acted like they "owned" this hobby, but they also were very helpful to many. They should have probably just decided on not posting to certain threads. I have read many posts that ask questions easily explained in the manual that I will not respond to. If the person doesn't take time to read, I won't take time to respond. But sometimes there are just those "duh" moments where someone, myself included, just needs to be shown.

I hope they take some deep breaths, maybe a nap or two, and remember why they joined the forums in the first place. Hopefully we will see them back. If not, I want to thank them for their help and wish them well.

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People here have always been very helpful to me.

Most of my questions were/are pretty dumb.

As mentioned with a lot of the new technology available to us, people seem to be migrating towards it.

Facebook is drawing a lot people due to the fact you can say and do as you please.

It is disturbing to see the "gurus" leaving....

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Most of my questions were/are pretty dumb.

The only dumb questions are the ones you don't ask.

I asked and promptly received an answer to something I just plainly missed in the LOR program. Dumb question? Some might think so. But, I asked, not for the lack of looking. It was just something I missed.

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I know a few times people have tried answering a question and didn't read or understand the question correctly and caused a couple arguments. I've seen both newbie and veterans do it. There's also more than one way to achieve something, doing it one way because it was cheaper or easier isn't always the case. The veterans have been there, done that and newbies can be stubborn wanting to go the easy route. For instance, The veterans buy fullwave sealed lights, newbies go to the big box stores. It's cheap and helps get your display the way you want it faster. But in a couple years your finding yourself buying lights to replace what you have and also trying to expand your display, that can be very fustrating on a limited budget.

A couple years ago, most threads were about incads and led strings, how to make super strings, arches and megatrees. Now there are so many options it's overwelming, especially for a newbie trying to make heads or tails of it all.

Maybe LOR needs to have three forums. One for newbies with just the basic LOR options, second for second year newbies with the advanced technolgies and then the beta forum.

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Maybe LOR needs to have three forums. One for newbies with just the basic LOR options, second for second year newbies with the advanced technolgies and then the beta forum.

With technology changing everyday, sooner or later we all become "newbies" again... :blink:

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I think the biggest problem for a newbie is that you don't know what you don't know.

Newbies don't know what they don't know so the ability to infer from other posts is limited.

However, I think that the frustration comes when newbies don't know what they should know.

There are just some basics that you have to take time to try to learn by doing plenty of reading and watching tutorials. This is a hobby of needing to learn to crawl-->walk-->run. Have you ever tried to teach a baby to learn to crawl? It doesn't work. No matter how hard you try to prop them up on all fours and even try to nudge them along, they just sit there staring at you and drooling, and eventually get frustrated and cry for mommy (reminds me of some of the newbies around here :P). And the more you try to nudge them from behind, they usually just end up falling forward on their face (and again crying for mommy because you hurt them). And they don't even know why they need to crawl anyway. They just don't crawl until they figure it out. Now learning to walk is a little different. You can help them learn that. Parents will lead them along by the hand at first, and help them figure it out, and that works. And then you can stand out in front of them with a toy and entice them along, and they have now figured out why walking is important -- "I can get to cool stuff by walking!" Now the neat thing that happens after that is that they start to figure stuff out on their own again and that is when they learn to run (again, you usually don't teach them this part). They just start putting two and two together and realize that if they start walking really fast, they can get to cool stuff even faster and it is a lot of fun. Sure, they might fall down sometimes and may even need a little help getting back up again, but they are usually pretty good to go at that point.

Now I know the above is a pretty strange analogy, but if you really compare the steps in this hobby, you have to go through all those steps in a very similar fashion. You have to learn some of the basics on your own (if you can't even get that part on your own, then this may not be the right hobby for you). Once you know the basics, those that "have walked before you" will help you advance from there if needed. Before you know it, you are running pretty smoothly and having lots of fun. Sure you might trip up on something unexpected, but if you can't get yourself back up again, there are runners here to help you get back up again, so you can run again on your own.

So it seems to me that there are way too many entering this hobby that want to skip crawling and get right to walking (or even worse yet, running). And heck, they don't even know why it is important for them to crawl first or think "I am an intelligent person or know a lot about tech stuff, I don't need to crawl first since that is just for the idiots." But guess what, you are going to get yourself hurt big time (literally) in this hobby if you don't learn to crawl first, or just going to get mad that mommy/daddy don't want to help you walk right from the start. Plus you will sit there crying wondering why everybody is sitting around laughing at you when you fell right on your face (again, sound familiar??)

So in my opinion, I think that every single one of the following items on the following pages are required reading/watching for every single newbie so they can learn to crawl. Don't assume anything...again, you won't know what you don't know, until you know.

Training Guides and FAQs

http://www.lightoram...ral_Information

Video Tutorials:

http://www.lightoram...orialLinks.html

http://www.lightorama.com/PDFs.html

Bookmark the above as you will continue to learn from them further when you know how to walk too (as well as this searchable S3 user manual: http://www.lightoram...8.0/LORHelp.pdf

or the online version: http://www.lightorama.com/help)

Hopefully when the time comes that I need to ask a question it will be an intelligent one!!

There is a much better chance that it will be an intelligent one if you have completed the above steps. And amazingly, you will be more likely to get an intelligent correct answer as well. But if people don't figure out the above on the sooner side, all the rest of those that can still provide the best answers will be gone.

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And yes, the search function of the LOR forums sucks -- always has.

Use Google only!

Enter in Google search box:

lightorama.com [and then the keywords of what you are looking for]

For example, somebody above mentioned not knowing about snubbers. How might they have discovered the need? Because their LEDs weren't fading properly and wondered why.

Google:

lightorama.com LED fading

See what it pulls up:

m0cpc.jpg

You can narrow the search to just the forums if you want by Googling:

forums.lightorama.com LED fading

1ghqug.jpg

If you then click "More results from forums.lightorama.com »" you will get:

xm372p.jpg

Would have learned a lot about your LED fading problem and that snubbers were the fix within a few seconds/minutes, even if you never heard about them before.

And yes, if you are searching for a specific phrase or set of words, put it in quotes since it will only find pages that have those words next to each other.

Edited by Surfing4Dough
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Here is how I do the search in google.

site:forums.lightorama.com chickens

type it in just like that where chickens would be what you are searching for and yes chickens did pull up some post.

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I look in sometimes but don't have the time to keep up with the forum on a regular basis. If I got all my posts in email like the old forum I'd still be more active. I almost never go on PC anymore. Again because of time and having to click around to all the topics instead of a nice sorted list in email.

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I look in sometimes but don't have the time to keep up with the forum on a regular basis. If I got all my posts in email like the old forum I'd still be more active. I almost never go on PC anymore. Again because of time and having to click around to all the topics instead of a nice sorted list in email.

You can still get emails for every post. On the top of every forum (eg. coffee shop) Click on Follow this forum. You could also do it in your profile settings. Then you need to check you settings for notifications to make sure you get immediate emails for post. I have it set up for the Important announcement and a few other ones.

Edited by TitusCarnathan
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I must say I have learned TONS from the veterans. I will miss those who have moved on. I learned very early after making a stupid post. READ FIRST. Who knows what you will learn when you just read the forums. I mean WHO KNEW that trying to learn about Christmas lights would teach you what the "White Stuff" is in bird poop.

As far as the entitlement and "gimmie" 's of newbies. I must apologize if I have ever come across as such, as it was never intended. Being as cash can be short, I have tried to make the best of the situation by attempting to trade the products of my hands for the goods of others. I know some might not understand this methodology, but it is what I can do. I am not asking for a handout, I'm in essence asking to "Work" for you. In the future to avoid being perceived as a gimmie, I'll build first, post a pic of what I have, and state what I would like in trade for the item. No more contacting others with items to sell for a trade.

Unfortunately we all live in different places around the world, but I wish we could all get together and have a drink and settle things like civilized people. So if you're in the neighborhood for NWCLAP and you are in need of an apology beer hit me up. I'll buy a case and we can sit in lawn chairs in the Walmart parking lot and let bygones be bygones.

-RainyOregonChristmas

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I must say I have learned TONS from the veterans. I will miss those who have moved on. I learned very early after making a stupid post. READ FIRST. Who knows what you will learn when you just read the forums. I mean WHO KNEW that trying to learn about Christmas lights would teach you what the "White Stuff" is in bird poop.

As far as the entitlement and "gimmie" 's of newbies. I must apologize if I have ever come across as such, as it was never intended. Being as cash can be short, I have tried to make the best of the situation by attempting to trade the products of my hands for the goods of others. I know some might not understand this methodology, but it is what I can do. I am not asking for a handout, I'm in essence asking to "Work" for you. In the future to avoid being perceived as a gimmie, I'll build first, post a pic of what I have, and state what I would like in trade for the item. No more contacting others with items to sell for a trade.

Unfortunately we all live in different places around the world, but I wish we could all get together and have a drink and settle things like civilized people. So if you're in the neighborhood for NWCLAP and you are in need of an apology beer hit me up. I'll buy a case and we can sit in lawn chairs in the Walmart parking lot and let bygones be bygones.

-RainyOregonChristmas

Very well said. Some people take things way to serious. We all put our pants on the say way "one leg at a time" so they need to take a chill pill.

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Good to see ya again Michael.

I tried Facebook a couple years ago and my life is just too busy to keep up with it. It's almost that way with forums.

Hey Tom, good to see you too ol' buddy! I don't post on the forums much any more. Facebook usually gets me any answers I need. Plus, FB already has my pics and they are easy to upload.

I think FB is a major reason the forums are so light. PC was hurt when LOR started their own forum. It didn't give most old timers a reason to stay. On FB you can block anyone annoying and keep going. I love it.

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Very well said. Some people take things way to serious. We all put our pants on the say way "one leg at a time" so they need to take a chill pill.

And that applies to new and old. Many are always saying the veterans need to calm down or be more patient/kind. However, newbies put their pants on "one leg at a time" also, but sometimes they aren't big-boy pants. Everybody needs to not take offense so easily (again new or old). Anybody that can't take criticism, joking, or even downright flaming here on the internet, I wonder how they handle real stress in the real world. This isn't the YMCA and not everybody will always get along or sit around holding hands and singing Kumbaya. But we are mostly all adults here (and at least older teens), so you just have to not let your feathers get ruffled and move on. It is just Christmas lights folks. You can't take offense for every little thing in life -- especially on the internet (not just here in this forum), nor can you forum moderate enough to make it happen (usually just adds fuel to the fire).

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