Nuke

so i got a big fat stimulus check and i have no idea what to do with it and it is a terrible time to buy computer stuff. replacing the 8086k is still difficult. even going with the ryzen 7 5800x seems like more of a sidegrade. i get a couple more cores at a cost of a couple hundred mhz on the base clock. high end video card is out of the question due to stock issues and my 2070 super is still pretty solid for gaming (recent interest in some light crypto mining would be the main driver for that if it was possible). only real rule is the machine has to be improved. one of the driving forces in this upgrade is reducing my vr latency. doing the core components i can get this mobo and the 5800x, which will give me the better usb and 2.5 gig ethernet port wifi 6, and usb 3.2 in a type c plug, all of which will help that problem. i can hardwire to the router (recently upgraded) and go wireless, jack in for desk bound sessions. i can kind of do both of these already, but some games have nauseating latency. full atx users would just use add in cards for this, but im a crazy mini-its sff builder. i did want a storage upgrade and will swing for a 2tb m.2 as part of the upgrade no matter what. the performance of the drives is the only real question. the mobo above also gives me pcie 4 which means i can go nuts on the high performance storage. but such drives usually are about $80-100 more than tlc or pcie3 drives. alternatively i could save money with slower drives or pci3 drives, this might mean more capacity also. lack of storage on this machine has been the bane of my existence for the last 6 months, 1.5tb is not enough anymore. if i get the afore mentioned cpu, storage and mobo, i spent about $1k, for a partial core components upgrade. i still have to use the cryorig c7 cu which i believe is compatible with am4 and probably wont get much turbo out of it, it might even perform worse out the gate. it also means re-using my existing ram, which is slow standard speed non overclockable ddr4 at 2666. i did find a 32 gig kit at 3600 for another $200. but that seems a bit steep. less memory, less fancy memory, or less fancy storage might get it under the 1k mark and these can be future upgrades. alternatively i can try to upgrade the stuff i got. best way would be to address the thermodynamics limits of the system. seeing as its running on a 115tdp cooler i cant get anywhere near the theoretical maximum turbo of 5ghz on this 8086k. it tops out at around 4.2ghz right now. that usually requires drastic measures. this plan would involve parting with the elite 110 for something bigger or more optimized for an aio or big honkin air cooler. something like the cm nr200 would give me slightly more volume, and it supports dual 120mm aios or a bigger air cooler. also provides room for future video card upgrades. to facilitate that i would probibly upgrade to a 750w sfx supply (current supply is 600w and rock solid, but i dont think that would support 3xxx series nvidia cards). storage upgrade would be cheaper here as i would just buy gen3 drives and possibly at a higher capacity. this would only come in about $600, leaving funds for a monitor upgrade and perhaps some new input devices. big question is what would you do? starting with these specs: 8086k with cryorig c7 cu 2070 super (mini) 16gb 2666 ddr4 asus b360i mobo would you prefer core components upgrade (full or partial) for $900-1200 or the everything else upgrade path for $600-800? note that saving the money is not an option (entropy calleth).

what ive learned following polywell and other small scale fusion concepts is how far they are behind tokamaks in their development/testing. they might come out ahead in the long run, when they need to solve the economy problems with gargantuan tokamaks beyond engineering breakeven. but i very much doubt they will be first. at worst i think some of them are trolling for patents. they know fusion is coming and if they can patent the one or two little tricks that make it all work, they would be in a good financial situation later on. they are doing real research, so i cant really fault them for wanting a return on investment. if you buy stock in one or more of those companies you could be rich in 30-100 years.

you really shouldnt. cats cant digest the stuff. you are just going to make your litter box problems worse. if you must, give them kitten formula instead.

years of playing ksp has led me to the knowledge that things can burn up while leaving too, provided they are launched fast enough. the fate of the manhole cover is probably such.

i mostly use windows, usually out of stockholm syndrome since most of my software and games runs on winders. linux tends to be application specific, i use it a lot but never as a desktop. i mostly don't like apple for its lock-in and the fact that you don't get to build your own, excluding the occasional hackentosh. i am however quite fond old skool apple products, like the early macs and apple 2s. also i most decidedly do not like android. it lacks a lot of features that users take for granted in the other 3. also in a world where you can run any system on anything via virtualization, i dont see any reason to fight over which system is best. run your daily driver and when you need the others just launch virtual box or whatever.

i just got back today. seems that practically everyone was masking. i maybe saw one or two people without but not inside the main terminal past security. on the plane the flight attendants did a pretty good job of making sure people were wearing their masks correctly. at my stop in juneau the cleaning crew were especially garbed up in protective gear. very few people in anchorage were mask dodging. compared to where i live. i wore my mask the whole time, but now i feel like hocking up a hairball. one anomaly i noticed. nobody stopped me to check my temperature or my vaccination status between the gate and the pickup area. there were announcements that out of state travelers needed to have proof of negative test before leaving the airport. but seems it would be very easy to dodge. likewise coming back through there, no health screening at all. i think they really dropped the ball on this one. getting into the hospital on the other hand involved a much more thorough health screening. alaska has done a good job with vaccination. when i got my second dose back in february, i was told we were up to a 40% vaccination rate among adults in our community. our biggest outbreak lasted a week. there have been a couple more vaccination sessions since then. so i think we are on the verge of heard immunity if we have not already obtained it. anchorage would be our major hotbed since that's the most populous city.

heh. if i see someone without a mask im probably going to take mine off too. i had a bad bout with rsv before the pandemic went down, been hard to breathe ever since, especially with a mask. i dont exactly have a doctors note for that and i really dont want any trouble from the tsa or the airline. ive been vaccinated myself so its more about complying with federal mandates and protecting others than anything. i also dont intend to wear masks anymore the second there are reports of surplus vaccines going to waste due to low demand. im not going to mask for anti-vaxers, id rather let evolution do its thing.

turns out i have to fly to anchorage to collect mom after her injury. anyone got any tips for flying under covid? i got to leave in a few hours. medicaid booked my flight, they gave me zero lead time on this one, i have to leave around noon.

are we retconning history again, winston? or do we need to visit room 101 again?

i kinda got bit by the crypto bug. i set up a nicehash account a few days ago ive made about $10 already. think i might just run it to pay for hardware upgrades. got 2 machines, one has a 1060 and then i got my 2070 super in my main rig, they are doing 19 and 36 mh/s respectively and i think it costs about 15 cents an hour to keep it running., if my math was right. i have some older video cards but they are power hogs and probably don't hash too well. my rigs also got 4ghz cpus (4790k and 8086k), but they are way down in the kilohash range, probably not worth the power and it makes the computer practically unusable. its fine on my old rig, but this one i leave it off. the 2070 does the lions share of the work. i figure i can make the video card pay for itself in 3 months. looks like its mining ethereum and monero, but it seems to pay out in bitcoin. nicehash is easy to use though and you can watch money trickling in at a slow but steady rate (its more of a rent your hardware arrangement), but if i ever end up with a ton of hardware i might ditch the middleman.

totally not like how its spelled.

ma fell down and dislocated and/or broke her elbow. they medivaced her to anchorage for surgery. as a result i get a much needed vacation from my caregiver gig. frankly her ocd was starting to drive me bonkers.

i once did this thing where i installed a bunch of other star systems, kerbal konstructs, and old boom boom (any interstellar propulsion mod will do). the rule was, if you landed a kerbal on a planet in one piece, you could set up a custom spaceport with kk on that planet and launch your next mission from there. i had managed to set up many kerbal outposts in multiple star systems. of course i broke everything when i tried to update all the things. not all versions of kk played nice with this kind of thing, some didnt work so well on planets other than kerbin, worse on 3rd party planets. having to build a base was also tedius. i think i limited myself to one runway and/or launch pad depending on what the planet/moon would require, some fuel tanks and some kind of habitat. would be cool if there was a meta-mod where if you planted a flag and then land a lot of different resources within a radius of that flag. perhaps some mining gear and a rover, it would pass commands to kk to set up a suitable pre-fab base. would be cool if it was like ksc where you would start with a basic base and upgrade it with funds. anyway i expect that to be a thing in ksp2. ive tried the extraplanetary launch pads approach and i didn't like that i couldn't make surface bases static and you also had to micro manage your base a bit more than i would like. they would always get destroyed, and usually by something stupid like a lod glitch and never in a rocket explosion like you would expect. very hard to keep those saves alive.

no monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito.

i think you are on to something. id love to see 70s and 80s action movies performed with muppets. muppet death wish would be nice. muppet aliens, muppet die hard. yea i would give real money to see that. still haven't gotten around to watching farscape.

i don't have patience for licensing shenanigans. ive stopped all activities that require it. i wrote the i think im a cat blues, i still haven't released it. still trying to summon the devil to sell my soul for blues fame. you know how hard it is to source unholy goat blood.

im mostly out of the mod business. i rarely put time into my game engine, but i don't see anything becoming of that. even my hardware hacking has taken a hit, i got a desk full of dev boards i forgot about or why i ordered them in the first place. i got an i2c current sensor i cant explain and a raspberry pi four that i haven't even booted yet (i got it the week they came out). theres even an occulus quest 2 on my desk, and i might have less than 10 hours on the thing total, just sitting there since crazy religious holiday, i even blew a couple hundred bucks on games.

with how frequently game devs set way overly optimistic deadlines and fail to meet them, i mostly see it as business as usual. they all do it, its so ubiquitous that perhaps they ought to see it coming. pull a scotty and multiply the expected dev time by a factor of four. buffer time! if it comes out early, everyone will like you, if it gets a little extra spit and polish, that's good too.

pi hole

you mean the cat walked the neighbors, right?

we get around the dead bird problem on the grounds that all the birds round these parts are huge. we got eagles, ravens. and seagulls. my most active kitty made friends with one of the ravens, and they are about the same size.

for me every day is cat day. i just fed them so two are sleeping, the third is bouncing off walls somewhere upstairs.

we came in contact with someone who tested positive. were vaccinated so we should be fine, but now were stuck in quarantine for a few days. looks like were finally getting hit, they had done quite a good job keeping it out of town till now., never had more than 3 active cases simultaneously. and we only had one die while on vacation out of state (mardi gras apparently). was told when we had our second vax that the town was roughly 40% immunized. probably not enough for herd immunity.

i think my original assumption was folley. its possible, but instead of a space suit, you would be wearing a planet, possibly a super earth.

im the other way around.