Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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On a “Compgeeky” Roll Here

Numerically, my last few posts have been dominated by some computer-related stuff. Well, here’s another one. I had just read an interesting post on the economy and the higher education bubble (They told me if I voted for John McCain young women would be forced to sell their bodies to pay the rent… “ ;-)) and was about to click off, when I saw an add in a sidebar. Now, I ordinarily ignore ads (and indeed, have most ads blocked), but this one intrigued me, so…

I CLICKed on over to see what Jerkstopper was all about.

I have to say that the idea makes sense: a strain relief for notebook power cables. Heck, I do an informal strain relief system on my own and my Wonder Woman’s notebooks now and recommend ANYONE with a notebook do so. What we do is simply make a loop in the notebook’s power cable within about 6″-8″ of the plug into the notebook and place that loop under the notebook. It seems to work well.

But an actual device to formally install a strain relief designed to avert damaging the power connection seems like a good idea, if it’s actually engineered well, as I have seen more than a few notebooks that exhibit the problems outlined on the site as associated with damaged power connectors:

Continue reading “On a “Compgeeky” Roll Here”

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Fun Fun Fun

So, decided to check my email one last time before being mugged by the rack monster last night. Mistake. Hit the desktop in my Junk Room (also laughingly referred to in some quarters as my “home office” *heh*).

Nothing. No, not “It wouldn’t wake up.” Nothing. A power cycle didn’t even bring it to life. No video; no beep codes. Nothing.

Left it and let the rack monster have its way with me.

Today, tracked down the faulty component. Finally able to boot and access the CMOS setup screen using only one well-cleaned (with DeoxIt Gold contact cleaner and conditioner) DIMM installed in memory sockets after removing and replacing the memory modules produced a beep code for memory errors.

CMOS battery dead.

Ha! Replaced CMOS battery and cleaned/conditioned all other memory modules. Running fine, now.

Went back and treated all accessible electrical connections (peripheral cards, drive cables, power cables, etc.) with DeoxIt–either gold or regular, depending on the contacts–just for good measure. Hadn’t done that on this machine in two years, I realized later. Blew out dust bunnies while I was at it and just did some general housekeeping.

Oh, heck, while I was at it, a little rationalization of cables, re-tasking of onboard USB connections, and even dusting of the desk seemed in order, so there I was.

Nice, fun Sunday afternoon.

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I Usually Get Away With This, But…

…not today. My Wonder Woman’s ethnic heritage is pure Norwegian (20th Century grandparent immigrants on both sides). While I usually get away with it because it sounds–the way I deliberately pronounce it–like “Sweetie”, today when I called her my “Swedey” she didn’t let it slide… *heh*

Oh, well, another lil grinner down. *sigh*

😉

In related fun, while reading an article on PixelQi’s transflective display retrofit kit for netbooks, I ran across this in comments:

…which earned this response:

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Again With the Win8 “Developer Preview” Thingy

[UPDATE:be sure to check out a mini-micro-factoid mentioned at the end of this post in a note ;-)]

So, I decided a VM wouldn’t offer a fair look at the thing and took a spare, relatively small as these things go nowadays, drive and popped the developer preview onto a 64-bit machine with 4GB of RAM–a fair MOR machine.

I’ll tell you up front that I was right: I hate the “You’re too stupid to use a computer” interface on the “Start Page”. Already, recent versions of Windows have dumbed the interface down to the point that it’s a pain to dig into customizing things. Not as bad as Apple makes it with its desktop/notebook OS, but close. THIS interface says, “You are an idiot. Don’t even THINK about doing anything but what we want you to do with your computer,” just like OS X, et al. Continue reading “Again With the Win8 “Developer Preview” Thingy”

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Spinning the Loss

The most honest, open, blatant spin of the Dhimmicraps’ loss of NY-9 for the first time in 88 years so far has been Jon Stewart’s asinine assignment of blame to Ed Koch robocalls for the Repugnican’t candidate and Weiner’s, urm, wiener.

Right. Although both Bubba Clintoon and Andy (where’s Amos?) Cuomo made robocalls for Davy Weprin andthe New York Slimes was effusive in its endorsement, the Roman Catholic, pro-life candidate running in a majority Jewish liberal (~75% Dhimmicrappic) district pasted the Dhimmicrappic candidate… by running against Obama. Yep. That was just about the sum total of Bob Turner’s platform: running against The Zero.

But yeh, Stewart (apparently the “news” source for a majority of 20-somethings, from indications “on the street” as it were) and others are all trying to spin the thing to provide cover for The Zero. And it will work… to convince idiots.

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Two More Unrelated Things

*heh* Well, unrelated except in the most passing, glancing relationship…

First, yes I did have 38 tabs open in Opera in the session shown in the screenshot below. So? Wanna make something of it? *heh*

Second, what went wrong? I mean, after the start I had under the first (and arguably, at least one of the very best, as another former student of his while he was at Florida State attested to me 30 years later) director of the band noted in the screenshot below, how in the world have I ended up with a “houseful” (well less-than-full in recent years) of musical instruments… that I no longer play?

Oh, well.

*hmph* We only toured a few hundred miles into the interior of Mexico “back in [my] day”. Still “won” everything in sight in competitions, though, during the first four years the high school was. A high school, that is.

(OK, one of the 38 tabs noted in the screenshot above contains the question someone asked me that spurred me to look up the info noted. That’s the second-order relationship between the 38 tabs and the content of the screenshot. A more distant, ethereal connection exists, though. :-))

And more… (Sounds/looks like a Capshaw designed and rehearsed this program; don’t ask how. Not so sure about the treatment of Holst).

Sadly (or perhaps not? ;-)), none of the old black and white film from the performances 45(?!?) years ago has made it onto YouTube. *heh*

More unrelated (except in the twisted back alleys of my mind)? OK. Linux Turns 20.

Even if you don’t run Linux on your desktop or notebook, you probably use devices that depend on it, and you absolutely certainly *heh* use it daily as you access material on the web that depends on Linux servers and devices with embedded Linux systems.

Like third world county.

Continue reading “Two More Unrelated Things”

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If You’re a Windows Geek…

…(“geek” for Windows values of geekiness *heh*) this might interest you: Windows8 Developer Preview available for download.

I’ve not had a look at the different builds yet, but I may install a couple of VMs and see what they look like. Chris Pirillo says,

“Windows 8 may be the first version of Windows that would compel a hardcore Mac user to either switch hit or switch outright.”

That might mean that it will be a tad off-putting to me… *heh*

OK, it will install in a VirtualBox VM. I’ll see what I think as things go on, but for now, here’s some M$ propaganda:

Fortunately, the default interface, designed for tablets and other touch devices, can be ditched.

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They Just Won’t Give Up

Reuters, full time publicity flacks for leftwing wackos, just won’t slack in its due diligence to the Hivemind’s narrative:

Yep. To the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, Algore was once President. He had to be. After all, didn’t the Hivemind vote en masse for him?