Not Hardships, but Things that Get in the Way Nonetheless

[GSGregg]

I decided not to highjack sleepy's peace, but here they are in order:

Worn-out Shift key (flipper) switches on my Corsair mechanical keyboard led me to buy a ten-pack and find the time to replace them, but then the entire row between the Shift keys went dead and I ultimately RMA'ed the board.

Within days, the switches on the replacement board (refurbished, I assume, rather than new) failed intermittently, so I again planned for disassembling the board to replace a pair of switches.....

and my refrigerator (1964 Frigidaire Imperial Frostproof) decided to have its first problem in 36 years, thawing out a bunch of 'frozen' food thanks to the defrost heater coil burning out and allowing the cooling unit to clog with ice, blocking the airflow that is responsible for dropping the temperatures to correct levels. So, I'm diagnosing and manually defrosting that.....

and the crack in the wall of my laundry-containing basement has doubled in thickness over about two weeks thanks to a tree root that suddenly decided to grow after being almost dormant for my 19 years here. And with California being earthquake country, it will serve me well to get it fixed sooner, rather than later. And my limited funds are supposed to be for extreme old age, medical recovery, or some other such nonsense.


Gregg

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

and the crack in the wall of my laundry-containing basement has doubled in thickness over about two weeks thanks to a tree root that suddenly decided to grow after being almost dormant for my 19 years here. And with California being earthquake country, it will serve me well to get it fixed sooner, rather than later. And my limited funds are supposed to be for extreme old age, medical recovery, or some other such nonsense.

i notice lots of kids these days doing video blogs and making nice ad revenue off all that. maybe you could v-blog your basement and do a sort of "poltergeist" thing, eh?

as usual, you're quite welcome for this extremely helpful advice, gregg. :)

 

[Coil_Smoke]

wrong thread : post moved : http://www.pinballnirvana.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13206

 

[GSGregg]

Well, thirteen months and change later, I'll add my XP-running AGP computer to the list of non-hardships with a brief timeline...apologies if I already posted this elsewhere but then forgot.

(Note to those who are bored easily; skip to the last two lines. The timeline isn't so brief.) :)

Late (September or October) 2016, machine began infrequent freezing and requiring interruption of power (pulling the cord or cycling the power supply switch - the Start/Restart/Shutdown switch did nothing) before it would restart. Event Viewer never showed the freeze; just the 6009 Uniprocessor Free code signifying the restart. Whether the early multiple-day interval, or the eventual several-per-day, the machine worked fine...until it didn't.

January 10, 2017, actually paid someone to troubleshoot, format and reinstall XP. Freezes continued, and some feature that slips my mind right now no longer worked, so I installed XP again myself and saved the $$.

Early March, 2017, support for the Players that deliver TV episodes, etc, and even some YouTube, began drying up. Time to chuck XP if I want that stuff back.

Firefox, the last browser to support XP, announced it would be dropped by summer's end (at least I had Bitdefender and Malwarebytes).

September 1, 2017, the first spontaneous restart (huh?) with a few more two weeks later, then snowballing into 150+ by late November. Turns out, the XP devs had designed in 'Automatically Restart on System Failure' to obscure frequent BSODs (blue screen of death); if there was no critical problem, the comp would just drop everything and start over without showing the blue screen. (Yeah, but WITH a critical problem.....?) So, I unchecked the box and saw all of the blue screens I could ask for.

By mid-December or so, the machine was lucky to boot at all, and would freeze or spontaneously restart after only minutes, then finally not even complete the boot cycle. By this time, I was reserving library computers (maximum two hours daily, which was not enough) and digging up whatever diagnostics seemed relevant...

March 12, 2018, I gave up and ordered a refurbished small-form-factor HP Compac Elite 8000 running Windows 7.

Now, If I can clear some other non-hardships from my yard, driveway, etc, I can get back to such things as Advanced Search.....

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Funny (well actually, very much NOT so much), my HP Compaq Presario laptop has been going downhill lately.

Granted it's eight years old and that line is famous for overheating, but I've always tried to treat it right. For example, I rigged up a custom cooling station in which the machine sits a foot off the floor, with a box fan blowing on it at all times. I thought I was ahead of the odds, although unbelievably, this thing still gets absurdly hot and still needs to shut itself down from time to time.

Anyway, the past two nights, each time in the early hours it shut down on its own. In the mornings I've tried to turn it back on in vain. It will start up very briefly, then shut down immediately. So I start taking it apart, pulling the drive, removing / swapping the RAM modules, and playing around with the power button, i.e. quick start vs. 5-second press vs. 90-second press. Somehow I've gotten it to restart normally so far, but this hain't a lookin' good.

Prolonged heat tends to destabilise / weaken connections between components, so I have a feeling that pretty soon I'll be needing to completely pull the laptop out of its case, disconnect and re-seat everything, and... yeah. Just not looking forward to all that complication and uncertainty. :/

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

In fact that's what I had to do last night-- completely disassembled the laptop, reseated all connections, and put it back together. Quite a miracle that it's working for the moment.

I also had to kludge together the power button of all things, which internally is little more than a concave metal dot that briefly connects two leads. And I kid you not-- a tiny piece of tape had been holding the dot in place, which eventually went 'stale'. So I did the smart (borderline idiotic) thing-- I cut another tiny piece of tape and managed to get the dot back in place so that the button is working again.

This whole situation is almost too ridiculous for words. Almost!


EDIT: I forgot to mention, I found some teeny-tiny critters crawling inside the case and the works. They're grey, and vaguely look like flattened isopods, i.e. roly-polys. Not exactly another confidence booster.

But as I understand it, electronics are typical places insects like to hang out in for warmth, more usually roaches. I would guess mine are way too small and non-populous to cause problems, fortunately.

 

[GSGregg]

Visualizing documentaries of ants that want to get from 'A' to 'B'; one ant grasps point 'A', another grasps the first ant, and so on...until they have created a bridge all the way to 'B'---which is a charged circuit that zaps the entire crew and makes them begin anew.


Idiots!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Thanks, Gregg, you're a big comfort as usual.

 

[GSGregg]

Thanks, Ike - I aim to please...

I wonder if Fred Rogers ever asked, "Can you say, Armadillidiidae?'

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Oh come on, Greggorius-- Fred Rogers is an absolute badass, and armadillos are in fact major leprosy vectors.

"Look it up, look it up, all ye non-believers" (actually it's a bit annoying)

So, yeah....... Coil Smokes, Da Prez, and various other Major Geniuses in life... is there something you really wanted to know...?

 

[GSGregg]

I just rented the "Won't You Be My Neighbor" DVD, and was surprised that his 'neighborhood' didn't start until 1968. Also, the story about his having been a Navy Seal, etc, was just 'fake news'.


'dillos and leprosy, huh? Does that mean I'd go all to pieces if I petted one?

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Totally! Ah, well, maybe not. (probably not) But they're pretty interesting creatures on the whole IMO. For example, they typically give birth to clones of four individuals because of the way the egg divides. Crazy, huh?

Yeah, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood went national in the late 60's IIRC. Around the same time as Sesame Street, I think. So what were kids watching before that? Andy Divine, Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody? Pretty good shows all, but not on the same level IMO.

Anyway, I respect the hell out of the first two in particular, but it's actually the Teletubbies I'm probably most fond of. Just the idea that college students were having toke parties and watching the 'Tubbies doing their thing tends to crack me up pretty good. :)

Fred a Navy Seal? I never heard that one. I guess that's why Snopes and WP are such useful, quick-hitting sites IMO. More people probably in life could probably benefit from that simple info.

On a semi-related note, good ol' Bob Ross was an Air Force petty officer IIRC.