richfiles

I'm planning on using OPM, which has a stock-alike "Kerbalized" planet for each real solar system planet not already mimicked in the game (Saturn through Pluto), and a plethora of additional moons! I also want to add a mod that mimics some of the well known dwarf planets as well. While most people consider Eeloo as a Pluto analog, OPM re-arranges it into an Enceladus analog, and makes Plock much more similar to what we now know about Pluto.

So far so good... It seems someone in management may have finally grasped that pushing your part time workers into full time hours and cutting labor might cause a bit of burnout. I actually got out at a reasonable time today... Although, I'm sure I'll soon be complaining about not making as much as when I used to have 74-90 hours on a single pay check. Here's to hoping I can pull out of the burnout rut, and get back to work on my Kerbal instrument panel and my keyboard.

@KerBlitz Kerman The metal is not solderable, and heat will demagnetize magnets anyway. I simply don't need any more pins either, as I only need two pins for data. You are suggesting solutions to problems that never even existed in the first place. Everything is already figured out on the hardware side. The main keyboard is already completely built. It's done. It only needs software, and the number pad only needs the port expander wired in. All that remains is software, and that's it. Again, I suggest reading the build thread on Geekhack for details of the keyboard. Everything you need to know about the keyboard is already covered over there.

Literally what I'm already doing. Here is my build thread for the keyboard, over at geekhack and Same build thread, but on Deskthority. All details can be found over there. While the keyboard is being designed to slot into the gap in my Kerbal controller while playing, I don't consider it a part of the Kerbal controller. It is it's own uniquely separate build.

Well, everything's already built. I'd have to completely redo the keyboard to try it that way. Everything is already assembled, wired, and it's definitely not coming apart! Besides, It should be more than possible in software. It's just a matter of programing. i grasp the basic flow of how it should be managed, but I don't know how to actually do it. There are also significant clearance issues. The rear of the keyboard has an internal 11.1mm of clearance, but due to the angle of the keyboard's slope, the front of the keyboard only has 5.5mm of clearance. It's gotta share that with the MX switches, and there is simply not room for a wider connector. The 5.5mm clearance at the bottom is so slim, that I had to actually shave plastic off the MX connector's bottoms to fit them! They are nearly flush with the edge of the case... practically no clearance! Maybe a millimeter, tops! The magsafe connector sits at the thin gap near the thickest portion of the keyboard, where it can barely overlap with an MX switch, sitting underneath it, in the 5.6mm (and shrinking, the closer to the front of the keyboard you get) space available at the thickest end of the keyboard. Even after the width of the magsafe connector, there's simply no longer even room left for a wider connector. Even with both the switch plate and the bottom cover installed, the front edge of my mechanical keyboard is only 8.5mm thick! Heck, my old Logitech DiNovo Edge is 10.1mm thick at the thinnest (not counting the integrated wrist rest's tapered slope)... And it's only a membrane keyboard! I'm pretty happy with the thinness of my mechanical keyboard, but it simply means no clearance for overly huge connectors on the sides. I actually considered what you suggested. It's why I actually have three magsafe connectors, which would have given me 15 pins... There just wasn't room in the design. I also needed clearances for the 4mm cylindrical neodymium magnets, and the magsafe connector is it's own magnet as well, saving an additional magnet space. It's been designed for serial communication, and that's what's gonna be used. Even if I'd have had access to that connector, I'd still not have enough I/O ports on the Teensy to actually interface all 122 keys. Even with an ideal matrix, 11x11, I would still be one key short. Not to mention that an "ideal" matrix would be quite un-ideal for a non square layout... It'd be as tangled a mess as a spaghettified, krakenized Kerbal! Additionally, I mentioned the magsafe connector is a magnet... Well, it's a ring shaped neodymium magnet that surrounds the entirety of the pogo pins. It's far stronger than the two small magnets on that 10 pin connector, and I needed a strong magnetic bond to keep the keyboard halves together. Neither connector you showed would have been any use. The one with enough pins has no integrated magnetics, and the one with magnets have only a fraction of the magnetic hold as a magsafe connector, nor does it even have enough pins to serve the purpose of hardware level hookup anyway. This is something far more easily solved in software... And even if a hardware solution were to be sought, a simple USB hub and USB over the 5 pins would be more than sufficient, but I want to avoid this, as my computer would see this as two separate keyboards, and I don't want that. I want this to be seen as a unified single keyboard. On a side note... I just discovered that I have a 4 day weekend, and didn't even realize it. Tomorrow (Friday) is the last day I work until next Wednesday! How about that! if I'm lucky, maybe I can make myself work on either the keyboard, the Kerbal controller, or (gasp) both!

Be careful going TOO cold with the AC direct cooling. If certain parts of the laptop chill too low, you can get condensation inside the machine. YouTuber Louis Rossmann does repair videos, and showed an e-currency ASIC mining rig that was run next to an AC all the time. It was so corroded inside that there was no possibility for him to fix it, and this is a guy who has brought machines back to life that have burned holes through their motherboards! Just cause it might seem to make sense, doesn't always make it the actually the right course of action, even if the immediate results seem to be beneficial. I make no guarantees that what you are doing is good or bad, just that you should be aware of the possibility of the issue.

My keyboard matrix is far too large to be accommodated by just manually wiring in all those connectors. It'd require 12 wires for the 6x6 matrix and 2 more to cover the sub/back-lighting LEDs. 14 pin magnetic connectors just don't seem to exist. That's why I'm using a 5 pin Apple MagSafe connector and an I2C port expander, and an I2C DAC. The 5 pin connector provided Power and Ground, The two wires required for I2C communication, and a sense wire that detects if something is plugged in or not. Even if I were to go the lazy route and install three of the Magsafe connectors to just brute-force the pin count, the Teensy 2.0 doesn't have enough pins to do a matrix big enough. The Ergodox keyboard uses either dual Teensy boards sort one teensy and an I2C port expander to connect the two keyboard halves together. The firmware I have, I think even supports split keyboards, but there's no provision in the code for what happens if the connection is broken. I think it just crashes. What I need, is sufficient understanding of how to code, or someone willing to help me out with their coding knowledge, to create a conditional branch, where it checks the state of the sense pin, and if it indicates something is attached, to then send the appropriate data over I2C, then wait for an appropriate response, to scan the additional external matrix. It needs to be capable of abandoning a read if it times out, so it can gracefully handle disconnecting at any time, including after the sense pin check, but before the commands are sent or data received back. Basically, I need it to gracefully ignore the I2C port expander any time it's flakey or not present. It would also be necessary to periodically send updates to the back/sub light DAC, to make sure the LEDs on the numberpad shine the same brightness as the LEDs of the main keyboard. There are no LED indicators on the numberpad.

I'm not. The raw waveform is a 400 Hz sine wave, but all the micros have to do is output three "attenuation values" and three polarity values to represent the angular position of the (virtual) synchro rotor in relation to the stator. Those values only update as fast as the data changes from KSP. An attenuating DAC, or multiplying DAC, is a digital to analog converter that lets you feed an input into a reference in, and the value loaded digitally determines the percentage of the input that passes through... The attenuation factor. Because of this, I can feed the data in (at the rate that KSP sends new data packets), and it will update the synchro angular values, and the 400 Hz sine wave (from a hardware sine generator) will simply pass into the reference in, and be attenuated at the DAC's output. 100% hardware doing the waveform! This is a rough block diagram of what I'm doing. Originally I had one microcontroller handling everything, but I realize now that I can "game" the PCB manufacturing industry by making each axis as it's own independent PC board. When I order, I'll oder only "one" board, but get three identical physical boards, and I'll only need to drop a teensy or Arduino onto each board, and connect the appropriate reference pins to the sine generator. Other changes include using a high power integrated audio driver chip instead of the... Not sure if they are really real LM675s that I got on ebay... Probably from questionable sources in China. The audio drivers should have no problem driving enough current to step up the transformer output to 28 volts for the synchro inputs, and 115 volts for the reference/power input. And as a reminder, this image is old, so it's not up to date with the split axes/three controllers concept. I did some off the cuff calculations, and even if I have a PEAK of 60 data packet frames per second (from KSP), then I need to send 60 x 9 SPI transmits each second. That's only 540 DAC transmissions per second. If KSP only transmitted half the data packets per second, that number would cut in half to a mere 270 SPI transmissions per second to the DACs. That's also ALL THREE axes! If I go with a separate controller per axis, then that reduces the requirements further to 180 SPI transmissions per second at 60 frames per second, and a measly 90 SPI transmissions per second, if KSP were only sending packets at 30 frames a second. I'll need 5 6 Chip select lines (since I'm favoring multiple identical PCBs over part count reduction), plus the SPI bus connections, and a single digital out to update all the DACs to their newly updated values. I'll also have an incoming serial bus that it will be watched for frame updates. For the individual microcontroller configuration, there's only need for 2 chip selects, and three polarity selects per controller. While a more expensive hardware solution, splitting each axis into three identical boards means you can focus the software on just controlling the one axis, dealing with only monitoring for one piece of data from the incoming serial packet (not from KSP, from an arbitrator micro, that would receive the KSP data over USB, then send it out, probably over SPI to other controllers), outputting data for only three DACs over another SPI bus, managing the chip selects for the two DAC chips (each chip has 2 DACs... one goes unused), and managing the three polarity digital I/O. That's it. Repeat three times, and you have an FDAI Synchro emulator... My navball brains! I hope.

--< Sniped a long rant that didn't feel like it actually belonged here...Yada, yada, soul crushing work... Burning out at my job... >-- Long story short, I'm so worn out at my job. I'm burning out there, and they are absolutely taking advantage of the fact that I know it's the most secure thing I've ever had in my entire life. It's stressful, it kills ALL my time, and I know they are definitely taking advantage of me. Thing is, it's hard to argue with the incredible security of the position, or the good coworkers... At least right now, the people I work with these days are pretty awesome. Thing is... I JUST wanna BUILD!!! So, ranting aside, I've thought about little details and stuff over the past year... I still can't belive it's been about a year since I did the diode ROMs. Thankfully, I leaned to use KiCAD in that time, which will greatly benefit the FDAI controller build. While not particularly exciting, I've definitely thought about driving the diode ROMs. Mostly just transistor theory there. I think I want to adjust the resistors on the LEDs. I'm not happy with the current draw, and I suspect I don't need the brightness to be that intense. Annoying as it might be, it'll be a huge pain to refit all the individual resistors, so I'll probably just tack a low value resistor, capable of handling the power requirements of all segments, to the cathode of each LED display. It does mean I might get a dimmer overall per segment brightness when more segments are lit, but since most of the resistance is per segment, it shouldn't be bad. Might not even be noticeable! I still have no idea what happened to my large toner transfer drum, but worst case scenario, there are MANY smooth round things in the world to use to laminate the filter layers together instead. I have not worked out the programming side of things. Honestly, I've gone nearly a year without major advances. As I ranted above... Work's been insane. My old keyboard is actually starting to go, so I need to get my mechanical keyboard programmed as well, first even. Soon™ There are firmware packages that are supposed to be easily modded to conform to your custom layout, but my issue is I need an I2C port expander chip to be hot swappable, for my keyboard's unique features to work. If I ever set aside the time to do it, I could probably get my main keyboard working, but I have no idea how to do the hot swapping number pad. I worry that would need far more custom firmware that I have no idea how to make. My biggest issue, is I need the time to sit down and play with the stuff, but by the time I'm done with work (been working full days, even though I'm only supposed to be part time, and have another job on top of that). I am very happy to have learned KiCAD, as it means doing the Navball controller more easily. If you're really willing to help out with the programming aspects, then I would be quite grateful. I need to work out the required waveforms for driving an axis of the FDAI. I think I'd run a single Arduino or Teensy per each axis (three axes, three controllers). The only difference in their program would be which number they read from the packet, but otherwise, the three controllers would almost identical software. I will have dedicated microcontrollers for each general sub-system. Coding should be easier, by separating tasks so each individual controller only has a somewhat singular task to perform. The software would have to: Read the correct number out of the data packet sent to it Store that number, then add 120 and 240 to it. If the two results are > than 360, then subtract 360. Then it would need to take those three numbers and find (I think) the *sine value for them. I imagine a lookup table would possibly be the most efficient route to go with that. (rather than an actual sine value, it might be easiest to just store the DAC attenuation values in the lookup table, aka, figure out the results of the multiplication and just store that, to avoid the multiply) A sign check would be need to be performed to determine what polarity the switch output of each of the three "sine" outputs is. The actual value sent to the DAC would be absolute (stripped of sign) The three lookup table values and the three polarity values would be output. The polarity values are just digital out pins being high or low. The DAC values are sent over I2C to the DAC chips. It would need to be able to do this, preferably for every frame of data sent by KSP, or the ball might end up jittery. The nice part of my FDAI hardware design, is I'll be handling the generation of the 400 Hz reference in hardware, and the DACs only attenuate it from 100% down to 0%, and the polarity signal switches the phase 180° out (flips the sign wave). It means the controllers would only need to update the DACs once every data frame, and polarity every half turn of an axis of the ball. Polarity never switches unless a DAC's attenuation point reaches 100% (the zero crossing point of the sine wave). It'd probably make a lot more sense if I had a waveform to visualize the operation of a synchro, which is what this hardware and software would be emulating... Nine of them, to be specific. Three per axis. As I said, the program on each controller would be identical, except for what value gets read from the data packet. It's also possible that i might be necessary to "rotate" the numbers in the lookup table, depending on whether my FDAI shares the same "home" reference points as KSP or not. The analog meters, fortunately, are pretty simple. Just readouts of different data from the packet. Same with the digital readouts, except that some numbers would need to be formatted for display on an LED readout, and I'd need for the scale to place the decimal at the correct point for the unit of measure used, and output some digital out to control which unit displays. The Radar altimeter will need to be able to operate a motor of some kind and read, probably a quadrature input to determine position of the tape. I'm thinking a reflective mar on the back of the tape would indicate the home position, and reset the tape to the correct position on power up. The carriage meter will be kinda fun. I need data outputted from a mod, and that means it's value(s) need to get added to the KSP mod that communicates, as well as needing to read the correct packet on the receiving end. It'll need to monitor a button or two in order to know when to reset and set the carriage assembly. The set button would set the carriage in the up position, and display the node ∆v on the carriage meter display and the estimated burn time, and store that peak value for use. The meter would move down, driven by a motor, moving to match the percent of remaining burn (reaching the bottom when node ∆V = 0). Reset would clear the meter and return it to the bottom position. There might need to be some error handling on that one. If the system returns a node ∆V value, but it's not set, I'm not sure if the motor should do nothing, or if the peak should be instantly recorded, and the meter rapidly move up to follow that burn. Likewise, if node ∆V reaches 0 or null, I would think the meter should jump to the bottom, and zero out. The displays used for the carriage meter are "smart" displays, and you can directly communicate with their integrated controller. I might want to use a custom character or two, if they support it. That would need to be initialized at power up, if the smart displays support it (I don't recall if they do). There's clearly a lot to think about, when it comes to my panel, and I feel awkward, knowing all the hardware aspects of it, but not having the software expertise to really back my goals. Again, help is always welcome. I just wish I was at the point where I even needed the software yet.. I still have SO MUCH hardware left to build... Pretty sold on my LEDs. They won't fade gradually like the EL can, over time, and I really have no need for EL. The LEDs will mimic it well enough, and can be driven with a simple power supply. It's a good suggestion, but I just already am invested in all the LEDs I need for the project. Thanks for at least thinking about it though!

I does suck, but we've been expecting her time to come up... for a decade or two. She made it to 105, which by any standard, is an incredible run. She had a good life, and a large family (17 kids, an order of magnitude more grandkids and great grandkids), and even into her final years, still managed to live well. She only required moving into a nursing home two or three years ago! We were able to, between family and visiting professional care, allow her to live in her own home till well after her hundredth year. She has had developing dimensia in the final few years, but she always had more lucid days, where she'd still remember things just fine, often with merely a reminder at worst. She did have bad days, but they were sporadic. All in all... She had a GREAT run, and definitely lived a full life... I can't complain about that! Seeing as how this is a complaint thread, though... My buddy bought a bird, and recently upgraded it's cage to a much larger one. Birb is movin' on up! He made the mistake of buying a cheap one from eBay... China's retail storefront. The cage is big, it's actually kinda nice... But they cheaped out on the number of cross supports for the wires, so they are super easy to flex sideways. It looks like it could be very dangerous if the bird tried to squeeze through. If it really tried, it could totally get it's head trapped. We decided to get some aluminum wire from the hardware store and loop it around every single bar, wherever there was a wide gap between crossmembers. It worked VERY well to reinforce the bars, and keep them from being able to be bent easily... But we're LOOPING EVERY BAR... I think he calculated there were over 400 loops... Feed the wire through the bars, fold it over the bar, draw it back through the other side of the bar, fold it over and then feed it around the next bar... So. Much. Work! He regrets not spending the extra $40 for the brand name cage... So do I! ... And of course, while I was tormenting my fingers, fixing an "unfinished" birbcage, no one could be bothered to give me even that single, simple phone call... Not even a text... Why wait to the last second, when they knew this was inevitable for the past three days! I was informed this morning, and as I was getting ready, I got the second call. I'll be okay. It is what it is. It hurts now, but that'll fade in time, and life will carry on. Ironically... I'll probably end up drowning my sorrow in work, and finish that dumb cage for my friend... I'll probably drown my sorrows in something else too...

For the second time in my life, I've not been informed that one of my grandmother's had her health take a drastic turn for the worse before passing away. Really getting tired of not being told these things. Hopefully it won't happen next tim... Oh....

Hawaii "Holy smokes! Look at all this energy being thrown at us!!! We can't even handle all this energy!"

Reminds me of family. So many of my family worked on oil pumps. It was a job. They paid well, took care of their employees. I don't like the mentality of some of the big companies any more than you do, but they still keep the gears of modern society lubed (in this case, literally), and they still provide a means to those with families or even just selves to provide for. I know people like to point fingers at EA, or at the big oil conglomerates... They are definitely in it for profit, and they definitely will step right over their consumers to bring in the almighty dollar/euro/yen/etc... But if you want actual evil in corporate form... Monsanto. I'll just leave you to do most of your own research, but here are a few details. Forty percent of the world's genetically modified (GM) crops are grown in the US, where Monsanto controls approximately 80 percent of the GM corn market, and about 93 percent of the GM soy market. They create near monopolies out of food crops by forcing farmers to sign away their right to lawfully retain seed, forcing them into a cycle of annual repurchasing. They are most notorious for actively pursuing damaging legal action against farmers that don't buy their product, or who legally process heirloom seeds, by claiming they are violating their patents when pollen blows in from other farms, cross pollenating plants that end up on said farms... And yet, when people question their desires to introduce crops with genes that produce infertile seeds (good ONLY for consumption, not replanting), they claim there is no risk of cross contamination with non GMO plants (something that could destroy heirloom seed varieties, rendering them infertile)... This is, of course, in spite of their numerous legal cases attacking farmers who have been the unfortunate recipients of neighbor's GM pollen... That is reaching evil villain tier, right there!! I don't even like tea! The one time I thought I'd manage to come up with a tea that I liked, it was some sort of Pomegranate tea, and I love pomegranates. I even had an actual pomegranate and I got the flesh out and was gonna make some sort of super tea + fruit concoction... It never made it to my mouth. Glass, tea, fruit bits, scattered and shattered all over the floor. I never even bothered to try recreating the fruit-tea experiment. I still have never tasted a tea that I liked...

Fifty Three Projects... 53... A Five followed by a Three... 00110101 Good gravy, that's a lot of simpits! I find it absolutely incredible that so many projects are being developed or have been completed!

Right click on Kerbal Space Program in your Steam Library Select Properties Click the Local Files tab Click "Verify Integrity of Game Files" A while back, I had a hard crash that happened whenever I was in physics range of any desert biome. Turns out, I had a corrupted file, and that fixed it. Wait... You're telling me I should spend my own money and perform manual labor in place of whining to my landlord to do it? Have you been spaghetti dancin' with the Kraken!

No, that's a 2 axis attitude indicator. The way you can tell is that it only rolls relative to the horizon, and only has linear graduation marks on one axis for pitch. There's no vertical marking to indicate yaw. Sorry. Internally, these are more like a donut than a ball, and if you're particularly unlucky, they are sometimes merely a mechanical gyroscope driven by either a vacuum driven motor or an electric motor... so those particular models are not even servo controlled. They literally are just a free spinning gyroscope behind glass. A single motor spins the gyro, then you have to move the whole unit relative, and the donut stays stationary, showing your relative attitude. It's rarer to find servo driven models that use an external gyroscope, but they do exist. They tend to be more expensive, but still won't give you a third axis for yaw. You will find a LOT of 2 axis internal gyroscope driven Attitude Indicators on ebay for sub $200 prices. Most planes use a separate instrument called a heading Indicator to convey yaw, as it relates to the desired heading. The style Attitude Indicator you need for a space capsule instrument panel should have three axes, and will have markings that form either a connected or an unconnected grid made up of both horizontal and vertical graduations. They typically look something like mine below, or like some of the alternate styles shown further below. Mine! Looking at photos, this style is very reminiscent of the Gemini style navball. It had no red "gimbal lock" regions. The particular one shown is actually the same model as mine, but a different year of manufacture and with a different ball pattern. Here's an actual NASA navball. Apollo capsules had the red spot to warn the astronauts where the gimbal lock region is. The space shuttle had a four axis gimbal, so it didn't suffer that problem. It's early instrument panel (before the glass cockpit refit) used the same style navball, but it didn't have the red gimbal lock region.

Landlord has a literal stack of replacement panels for these windows. I suspect they'll go through their supply first before considering anything special.

Darn kids broke my window again... The SAME one as last time. That's not my main complaint... My main complaint is that I was at work, so I couldn't yell at them!

Hehe... That slip. LOL Thanks, but I still ain't sellin'!

A: The Nixie tubes were from a 1967-68 era Sony ICC-500W calculator. The unit was a donor parts unit used to restore my ICC-600W. The 500 was in horrifying condition. The case had become brittle and shattered into several chunks. The calculating circuitry was utterly hosed, often displaying overlapping numbers, and not responding correctly to any keypresses. What worked was the display section. My 600W appeared to work, but had display and decimal selection problems, so I used parts from the one machine to resurrect the other. Both calculators were bought off ebay, as non working. Two broken machines were cheaper than any functional model was, and I got lots of spare parts that way. Yes, I'm a weirdo with a calculator collection. I dig digital electronics and logic. I dig vintage electronics. This was inevitable... The restored Sony Sobax ICC-600W is the black and silver calculator on the second shelf: Warning... There's a nekkid calculator hidden below! I warned ya! it's topless and everything! Nixies and internal workings showing' left and right of the decimal! It's obscene! 2: I didn't get the 1939 Philco radio cabinet at a current real estate broker, but did find it some time ago when said location was a former local antiques shop, and definitely not back when it used to be a former gas station that looked (and still does look) like a "micro castle". It even has two towers! Basically, you need to find a small castle. If it's a gas station, you went to far back. Real estate broker, not far enough. Knights... Hold yer horses buddy! WAY too far! Need to get it just right! In seriousness, antique shops, and even thrift shops sometimes have this kind of stuff. I saw an intact radio of the era at a local thrift shop just a couple months ago. The one I found had been utterly gutted. There was no electronics left inside it at all when I found it. Not even the front panel of the radio dial was left. I do not recommend gutting good radios, or even restorable radios, as there's a huge collector's market out there who would be mighty tempted to see if voodoo really works (or at least provide a rigorous interwebs lashing), if they heard you gutted one of their preeeciousss radios. Gutted ones can be found though, and only the most extreme restorers will flap their flesh speakers about "repurposing" one. Fortunately, someone else already gutted it, and will have acted as a shield for you. D: ... D: You want my 1939 Philco radio cabinet Hackintosh! Sorry, there's no convincin' me! Nevah! It's just too goshdurned purdy! I could never let her go! So much work went into it! It used to be significantly taller, but I cut it down to be a more reasonable size. I put boards across the open back and used nylon ratchet straps to crank down the case onto those boards as a structural scaffold. Then I used a hand saw to carefully saw the case through the speaker grill area. Once I'd cut my way through, I was able to reattach the top of the radio to my new cut. Looks like it was made that way! There's a lot of veneer, and some of it is chipped... Honestly, I LIKE the old beat up look. I'd have been perfectly cool with a pristine one too, but I don't mind the chips and nicks, and the brown marker touchups. As for the case itself... It's seen a major revision, and is pretty much always "in progress". I'll come up with one more thing to do. Some are done. Some are not yet started. I suppose to make this whole post on topic, I gotta complain again about there never being enough time in the day, and about my job consuming more hours than I'd like. I'm part time there... I'd like to get home with time to actually do things... Like the latest mods to this case! Anyway, nothing to hide... Just figured the post is already pretty big... So I'm hiding more pictures to keep it short...ish.

Just yesterday, I think I witnessed an old friend have some manner of emotional breakdown that left her walking out of a good job of seven years. She had been working with a close friend for at least the past two decades, maybe more. They worked at the same electric motor manufacturing job since before I worked there, and I was there for nine years (2000-2009). After we were bought out and closed down, they both applied to the lab where I work. They'd been there two years already by the time I started there. Anyway, the other of the two old work friends retired about two weeks ago, due to health issues. The person they put in her former position has been with the company for around a year already, and he has worked numerous times with my this old friend of mine. There were never any problems... Till he replaced her old friend. In the past week, there were enough complaints that HR got involved, and all suspicion went toward the dude who had just started the new role. He was brought in to the office, pretty much reprimanded, and told he needed to change his attitude... and the complaints kept up. The difference, is they observed, and realized that it was 100% HER! She was refusing to show him how to do things, as he was trying to train in, then would complain about how he wouldn't do stuff, or did things wrong, or didn't "care". HR saw that things were not as they seemed, and things escalated for her when they confronted them both together, and he complained about her not giving him a chance to even try to learn the position. When HR sided with him, and told her that she was in the wrong, that she was being unfair, and that she needed to treat him fairly and actually train him into the position, she apparently flipped. From what I heard about the incident, people who saw it go down said she seemed to claim that everyone had ganged up on her and she felt threatened. To be fair, I saw the crowd from a distance. HR, the department supervisors, their assistants... Half of the management from that side of the building ended up in an area only as big as three counters and a sink. In her state, I can kinda understand her feeling cornered. She gave an ultimatum, that he had to go, or she would... and they told her that if she walked out the door, to leave her key fob behind. She did. It was so abrupt, I never had a chance to talk to her, ask her if she was okay, or even say goodbye. I get that a major life change had just occurred for her. NO ONE saw this coming. She probably spent at LEAST 1/3 to 1/2 of her life working, literally side by side, with the same friend... And that was over. Knowing that her friend had medical issues (not life threatening, but quality of life issues), and had to give up working over it must have been incredibly stressful. She'd been there seven years, and was a very good worker, and most people there know each other. It's not a massive company. So, I guess my complaint... Dang it HR, dang it management... I get that she was in the wrong here, but it was also clearly an emotional breakdown, and instead of talking her down, they ESCALATED the situation to the point where in her fragile mental state, she felt threatened and walked! I'm sorry, but anyone with half a lick of common *Check yo' Stagin'* sense should have seen that the situation was handled exactly in the opposite direction that it needed to... She was clearly in the most fragile state she's been in for at least a decade... A therapist or even just a friend to talk to and explain what she was going through would have done far better than what happened. The entire incident was handled from the get go in a confrontational manner. I'm just really disappointed with this company (what's new). Between this debacle, and them actively taking advantage of my insurance/part time situation to get full time hours from me without offering any full time benefits, I'm pretty disgusted with them. I feel like the management genuinely either don't care, or are all too happy to take advantage of their employees whenever opportunity arises... At least it FEELS that way. I got into a great insurance program through the state, that I can actually afford, and actually has decent coverage. unfortunately, I only qualify for it cause I don't currently have employer provided insurance... This is why I remained a part time employee, even though the paycheck before my latest one had 90 hours on it for two weeks. I'd no longer qualify if I had the option of getting insurance through my employer, and going full time would effectively disqualify me from the insurance I'm on now. My employer's insurance is ABYSMALLY BAD! I'm talking 4x the premium for TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE higher deductible (97x higher)! My employer's response has been to cut back a job that historically had three employees, and sometimes four, down to two, and leave me working full time days, without any of the benefits of full time... But mah insurance... Honestly, the ONLY thing that keeps me there, is the fact that it's the most stable, rock solid job I've ever encountered in my life... It's an employer that would take a natural disaster, total economic collapse, or warfare to fail. Only a local competitor could put it under conventionally, and that would leave... A replacement local job with equal stability... The job is effectively region locked. And yes, I value job stability and my insurance enough to stick with it.

I wanted to build a second PC this year. I love my old Hackintosh build. it certainly is cool, with it's 1939 Philco radio cabinet PC case, nixie tube clock, and all that fun stuff, but I built it in 2013! While it is very capable still, it is getting old. I've already had the motherboard fail, requiring major repair. Additionally, my workshop is still without a proper PC (and no, a Twentieth Anniversary Mac that functions as a glorified iPod doesn't count). This leads into my complaint... My plan for this year was to take my income tax refund and buy a new motherboard, CPU, RAM, and throw my Hackintosh SSD and my 980ti onto that, to make it my new Hackintosh, and then take my old motherboard, CPU, and RAM, with the Windows 10 SSD and build up a smaller PC case to put into my workshop as a second computer, focused on technical usage. Later on (maybe with next year's tax refund), I'd buy a new Radeon Vega or Navi... Whatever comes out from Team Red that impresses me next year, and move the 980ti into the PC, cause Nvidia drivers are kinda meh on Macs, but have pretty great support on PCs. So what happens this year??? Meltdown Spectre Intel admits to it's shareholders that it's 10 nanometer process is "broken" (their words) Ouch. Intel states that they will be delaying releasing 10 nm chips till at least next year, and making their next CPU generation on the old 14 nm process. I'd just buy a Ryzen chip and go all AMD (and save some cash even), but it's harder to get a good stable Hackintosh build going on AMD hardware, since Apple strictly uses Intel hardware, and I wanna upgrade the MAIN computer, not the secondary, and my MAIN is my Hackintosh. Long story short... I can't look at the current situation and even try to begin to justify buying parts to a new long term build right now. I want to wait for a significant tech improvement that will last me another 5 years. I wanna wait for the major hardware flaws to be corrected. I just feel like now is a VERY BAD time to want to build a new Intel based system, and that's exactly what I want to build!

And I like Mac OS, but was complaining about the perpetual decline into mediocrity of Apple's hardware performance, expandability, and upgradability. As for today's new complaint... Walmart sucks at video game releases. The Nintendo Switch finally is getting "South Park: The Fractured But Whole". It was supposed to release today, but the local Walmart doesn't appear to have it. Sadly, Walmart has already driven the local Target and the local Gamestop out of town. Now they are the only ones who sell new games... Except half the time, they never even have the item on th e launch day, and the other half, they have it, but never stock the shelves with it, cause they get behind on their updates. It wasn't always like this either... I used to be able to just show up at 6 am, when they opened, and find someone and ask for it, and they'd get it from the back, or from the stock cart... Not now! No preparation for new sales, and a seeming obsession with their "modulars". That's the second time they've biffed a new video game release in LESS than ONE week!

I am in the strange position of liking Mac OS, but finding nothing redeeming about Apple's hardware, for the past decade or so. I liked the old expandable Power Mac G3, G4, and G5, and the early Mac Pro. I actually almost considered getting a Mac Mini, back in the day, once I realized I could run three monitors on it... But what turned me off was the lack of true expansion or upgradability, the lack of power, and it STILL being way too expensive (not to mention I'd have needed all new monitors with the right inputs, or a bonanza of ACTIVE adaptors)! I miss the old Apple... The pre-iPhone Apple... the Apple that existed when Jobs actually tried to brag about power and expandability in pro models... I had an old Power Mac G3 way back in the day, the Blue and White one with the easy access side panel that hinged open to allow access to ALL of the internals. It had a 400 MHz G3 processor, 128 MB RAM, a 12 GB hard drive, a DVD-ROM drive, a Zip drive, and an ATI Rage 128 GL "Orion" GPU that had a measly 16 MB of VRAM, could only run a single VGA monitor, and had a hardware DVD decoder. It required the hardware decoder because neither the stock CPU nor GPU could manage even a simple 640x480 MPEG2 decode without it. Oh yeah, and a gloriously fast 56.6 Kbps modem! By the time I retired the old machine (almost 8 YEARS later), it had a 900 MHz G4 processor, 1 GB RAM, six internal hard drives (120 GB, 4x 250 GB, and a 750 GB... Some homemade brackets and a PATA expansion card were involved in making that a reality), a DVD/CDRW drive, a USB 2 expansion card, a serial port mod that exchanged my obsolete abysmally slow 56k modem for a serial port (good for connecting old stuff like my TI calculator communication cable and chip programmers), and dual video cards, allowing me to capture video, watch TV, and run three monitors. The main card was an ATI Radeon 7000 Mac Edition (a first gen Radeon R100 with a measly 32 MB VRAM)... Yikes! At least it could run two monitors. The other card was an ATI Xclaim VR 128, which was a Rage 128 card with a hardware tuner/capture system that chromakeyed the video input into a window, the desktop background, or full screen, to allow 0% CPU load preview and display, and only burdened the PCI bus and CPU if actual capture was being performed. While I grunted and groaned at the slow old lumbering beast near the end of it's life, when it was new, and particularly after the CPU upgrades and RAM and Storage upgrades, I was rather proud of my little powerhouse. That was a rather expandable little machine, and yet, even back then it was not considered as expandable as an old Power Mac 9500, which had 6 PCI slots. I later got a Power Mac G5, and while it had expansion PCI slots and room for 3 internal hard drives (stock) and one extra via a mod I performed, and while it still supported the legacy 56k modem to serial port mod, that machine was starting to show some early signs of Apple closing down. It had less space for hard drives than the previous models, despite a bigger case, and aside from memory and PCI/PCI-X and PCIe for later models, that was about it. There was an official Bluetooth module and an official WiFi module, but it was Apple proprietary stuff. What was pure evil though, is even though the G5 CPUs were socketed, the clock speed was hardcoded into the motherboard, not the daughter card with the CPUs, so you couldn't upgrade the CPUs easily. It was a dirty move, and one I didn't forget. My old G3 had had not one, but TWO CPU upgrades, over it's long lifetime. The G5 was purchased used, the year after the Intel based Mac Pro first came out... I regretted that decision till 2013, when I finally replaced it. I'd lost my job shortly after buying it, and never had the funds for a proper replacement. The Intel Mac Pros were way too expensive for my blood, and though the expansion options were decent, it still wasn't ideal. Apple had limited the G3 to four PCI slots, the G5 to either three PCI and one AGP, or four PCIe slots, and the Mac Pro was still limited to a mere four PCIe slots... They just spaced out the top slot to support double width GPUs. For nearly a decade, Apple didn't support more than 4 expansion cards in their pro machines. That was kinda pathetic! This brings me back to my evaluation of Apple's hardware, circa 2013... I had discounted previous models of the Mac Mini, because I had become long accustomed to operating a triple monitor setup. Around that time, it became possible to run three monitors on a Mac Mini, and I had actually considered one... The problem, is the tiny little brick had as much processing power as you could expect from a tiny little brick. It was an economy computer, priced at an entry enthusiast price tag. The Mac Pro's nicely expandable design got literally tossed into a black shiny trash bin. Nothing in the modern lineup was either powerful, cheap, or expandable. I had looked at the options shortly after getting the G5, to see if a Hackintosh was feasible, but it was prohibitively difficult back then. I looked into it again in 2013, and found that it was significantly easier to make it work, with detailed hardware guides and installation tools and all sorts of goodies to make it easy... And so, my decision was made. My next Mac would NOT have an Apple logo on it, unless I stuck a sticker onto it. I built myself a Hackintosh in 2013, and my next build will likely also be a Hackintosh. I might someday decide to buy an old obsolete Mac Mini, just as a legacy option, if I can find one for well under $100... You still require a Mac to easily make the USB installer, so having a REAL Mac on hand would be useful. I had to jump through hoops to get my original USB installer made without an Intel Mac, and it's always nerve-wracking having only a single Hackintosh to make new installation tools with. Having the real deal on hand would make that task a breeze. Apple won't get money from that transaction... Something old and used will do just fine. Until Apple learns that bragging about power, and expandability, and upgradability is a greater collective argument than "Mah thin aesthetics"... Apple will still get no new sales from me, and if they make that oft rumored switch to ARM processors, or some other non-intel, proprietary thing... Well, I'll probably suck it up and see how close to Mac OS's behavior I can trick some Linux installation to behave.

I'll have you know, I used IRC last night, and the night before, and have used it every Friday night and many Saturdays since 2012, thanks to a movie night I partake in. ... No complaint with IRC... just the abysmal buffering of Ustream, or IBM Cloud or whatever they're trying to pass off their shoddy streaming service as these days. Ugh... That. Is. EVIL!!! Almost as bad as people who claim Apple "invented" the GUI. It's as authentic a claim as saying Apple was the first to say "Good artists copy, great artists steal."... (Picasso's ghost would beg to differ) At least they live up to the statement! All art, no function, and aaaaaall stolen!