Whatcha doin????

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by TrustGzus, Aug 16, 2018.

  1. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

  2. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Mon russe est mauvais, mais je tape bien sur google.

    Putin is at least honest, and if you read his historical speeches, he has always been, and ever shall be, about restoring the glory of the Motherland.

    My Army officer baby brother is losing his mind over the inadequacy of preparation and policy to deal with this; anyone who has studied Russia and the Middle East has seen this coming for years. Our duplicity with both Russia and Ukraine has been revealed, and the USA is finding that when you try to cheat and lie to two opposing countries at once, the outcome is never good.


    Ah, but at least no mean tweets. And no COVID. And no crisis on our southern border.

    By the way, if we follow Putin's logic, we need to step aside and give all of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California to Mexico, Guatamala, Honduras, and El Salvador in order to protect the autonomy of the ethic Latinos in the region...
     
  3. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Laptop surgery today. Having taken one laptop apart to see if I could get parts of it working again and finding all the faults apparently went away by themselves, then taken another laptop apart to try and clear crud out of the keyboard, it's time for my primary laptop to get some attention. It's mostly working OK but the backup battery wasn't doing anything any more, so almost every time I started it I got BIOS errors saying the date and time were invalid, and it thought it was 00:00:01 on 01/01/09 again.

    It was fiddly getting at the battery, not least because the only technical manual I could find was for a generic version of what I have. So when it came to removing one particular part the "small tool provided" didn't seem to exist, and the picture of where the battery was in the manual didn't match what I had in front of me. What I had wasn't a handy battery holder screwed into place to make replacing the battery easy. Oh no, that would make life much too convenient. I had a shrink-on sleeve, stuck to the motherboard with a glue pad, and the wires stuck to the battery with the kind of nasty sticky metal strips that seem to be designed to be as unmaintainable as possible. In the end the best I could do was to cut the shrink-on sleeve with a craft knife, then separate the metal strips from the old battery with a craft knife, and then stick them back into place with electrical tape.

    Having powered up the computer the first thing it did was complain the date wasn't valid. Not surprising, given I'd removed both the main battery and the backup battery. So I set the date and time, and will find out before long whether my repair job has worked. If it has I'll look at upgrading my hard drive. If it hasn't I'll be looking for a better solution and starting to think more about replacing the laptop.

    The old battery showed a voltage of 1.05 when I put it on my test meter. This is a CR2032 battery that should be putting out 3V. I guess that's what happens over the course of many years.
     
  4. Cloudwalker

    Cloudwalker The genuine, original, one and only Cloudwalker Staff Member

    I was in Walmart yesterday and saw something that almost caused me to faint. There in the lane next to me was a cashier that was actually working fast and not the usual crawl that I thought was usually required.
     
  5. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    So far it looks like my fix to my laptop has worked. I'm trying to find a place that can sell me a battery holder that's small enough to fit into the space and doesn't have connectors sticking out of the bottom that are intended to be soldered to a circuit board. I need to be able to stick it in place with a sticky pad, have something to make sure the battery doesn't fall out, and a wired connector so I can connect it to the motherboard. And ideally I don't want something that costs $2.99 with an extra $6.99 for a six-month wait for it to arrive from China.
     
  6. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Term: Great resignation. Sounds more enticing each day.
    Just saying.
     
  7. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Just call it "Trading your sorrows for the joy of the Lord," and move on to the next great adventure...

    :)
     
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  8. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Some horror stories I hear about employment in the US make me wonder why people put up with it. Unless every company is just as bad it seems like even those at the very bottom of the economic spectrum should be able to find somewhere to work that treats them at least as a human. Perhaps what we need is a shakeout of some bad managers rather than endless tiers of workers.

    We should probably introduce a new rule that allows retail workers to bitch-slap a limited number of customers every day. Just a small number so they have to be used sparingly but enough that the full metal Karens of the world know they won't just get whatever they want whenever they want.
     
    IMINXTC likes this.
  9. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    I could probably get on board with that.
     
  10. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    How is your running coming along, Mr Rabbi?
     
  11. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    My daughter did a 20-km cross country ski race today (skate style). 1hr 45min. Not bad.
     
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  12. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    I've never tried that - is it a strenuous way of getting around?
     
  13. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    When you're not packing a quarter section of caribou on your back. Or so I've heard.
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2022
    tango likes this.
  14. Cloudwalker

    Cloudwalker The genuine, original, one and only Cloudwalker Staff Member

    If you ever see me running please catch whoever is chasing me.
     
  15. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    I've been trying it this year and I've found it way more cardio intensive than the classic style especially when going up hill. I have not had any formal lessons either so I may not be doing it efficiently.
    Classic affords the ability to ease off while still moving. That is harder to do in skate style. Skating is way faster though. Someone in the race did a 60km in just over 3 hours, so just under a sustained 20km/hr which is crazy fast.
     
  16. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Doesn't the classic style require gravity, making going uphill impossible?

    Seriously, I've seen ski trails around my local woodlands but never felt inspired to take to skis like that. I guess I'm so used to there never being enough snow to even consider it, that now I live somewhere that does get enough snow I don't think about it until someoe else mentions it.
     
  17. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Nada.

    Strained my hips really bad in early January and just haven't gotten back into it due to weather and schedule.
    and laziness
     
  18. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Weather is a tricky one. Laziness sometimes seems like a good form of self-preservation.

    Hope the hips improve, even if not for running purposes.
     
  19. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Thanks. I've rested it from running for about 8 weeks now, and it feels 100%. My doc thinks it was either a torn fascia or perhaps just really strained tendons and/or ligaments.

    I've been doing regular activities, yardwork, and some two mile walks up and down hills when the weather has been decent without any pain, so I think I'm back to as 100% as I can be!
     
  20. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Excellent news. I'll go ahead and sign you up for the Boston marathon :p
     

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