richfiles

Aww, he just copied that from somewhere else! It's not the same thing. That's an ideal. A way of living. While politics was involved in it's creation, it's more than "just politics". And you know what I mean... I know you must... When people apply the things in current events, current news, current politics, and stuff it into entertainment, it can drastically backfire. I'm not saying you can't ever. Classic Trek was masterful at those charged issues. Thing is, They were subtle about it, or put an episode to a subject and then moved on... If you're gonna do that, that's how. If you make it a core of your show, and try hammering it in every episode, eventually people tune out. It gets old. Star Trek: Enterprise made the mistake of dedicating nearly an entire season to the terrorism theme, in around... I think it would have been 2003-2004 for that season... A two parter episode, or a s season premier and a finale dealing with it, but not outright making the whole season into a focus... That would have worked, but dragging it on as a subtext or main plot for the entire season killed all enjoyment... Star Trek: Discovery is starting on this mistake, and that's bad... They basically established the prime antagonists of the series as being modeled on their stereotyped views of a particular political party's supporters... The worst that can be offered. They are in no subtle way, making an entire non-human race into caricatures of this stereotype, and have openly stated as such publicly. That's just bad form. It's insulting to millions of people who are nothing like what the cast and crew think they are like, it tarnishes the very premise of the show, and it has already forced politics into any criticism of the show, which is already being used as a tool to overhype the ratings... aka, all the bad reviews are from bad people who you shouldn't trust cause they're haters... I've already seen the comments "Oh, so you didn't like the new Star Trek? Is that cause you can't tolerate it's diversity?" I'm seriously not joking... I've seen THAT COMMENT out there in the wild online wasteland, and it's just pathetic. To be honest, I didn't like the new Star Trek, cause it doesn't "feel" like Star Trek... The acting is cardboard... All the Klingon speech sounded like it was being read from a single line teleprompter... The gaps between words made it painfully slow... They changed klingon tradition in regards to how they regard the corpses of the dead... ... I mean... In the other Trek series, they viewed the corpses of their dead as "empty husks, to be treated as such". The main actor "pretends" to be vulcan, but is human, and really fails hard at the "I got this" bit, to the point of her coming off as... borderline stupid. All the characters felt "wooden"... I's like they were not sure of their performance, and just said, roll with what we got, the effects will make up for it. Above all... It feels more like a Star Wars style Sci-Fi action thing than a Star Trek style show. The two were always separate fandoms for a reason. The new Trek movies and this new series both feel less like genuine Trek, and more like generic Sci-Fi with he Trek insignias and sound effects... And the wrong Klingons... Honestly... I feel "The Orville", in it's satire of Star Trek, actually "feels" more like a legit Star Trek than the actual new Star Trek series! I am 100% serious with that statement. Orville>Discovery! Anyway, I'm drifting... I had genuine technical complaints about this version of Star Trek... Honest complaints about the visuals, the acting, the costumes, and the overall feel. The issue, is that by injecting the vitriolic nature of current politics into the show as part of the fundamental antagonist of the series, from episode 1, has already injected political defensiveness and political attacks, even in commentary on the series... My complaints above, are rendered invalid, cause some SJW on the war path will accuse me of being a dirty racist or not standing for equality, just for the abominable sin of not absolutely adoring the new Star Trek... The SJW disease... it's bad... It's fitting the abbreviation of this new series is STD... I'd rather not catch it.

I'd like to complain that they changed the friggin' Klingons... AGAIN!!! Why would you even DO that! Like, seriously! Why did they change the Klingons for the new Star Trek: Discovery series!?!? WHY!? We had PERFECTLY GOOD Klingons before! They were good Klingons! They looked cool! They died with honor, and had a good day looking badass when they were dying! What happened! What nut decreed this alteration! Worse, the cast behind the new Star Trek series are incredibly vocal with their politics, and have been letting it bleed into the show... Even going so far as to make public claims to news and social media about "how they modeled the Klingons" that more or less is poised to alienate half the people of the United States... Purely out of political animosity! They literally modeled the antagonists of the new Star Trek on fallacious stereotypes the cast stubbornly hold against literally half a nation... Stereotypes that are cherry picked from the bottom of the lowest rungs of society... and painted across half a nation... and now turned into this absurdly modeled in-human caricature. This is political-social de-humanizing in a quite literal form. It's offensive behavior, on the part of the cast, and it genuinely detracts from the show, especially if you've had the misfortune of reading their public statements. The first rule of entertaining is: You don't mix real life politics and tragedy into your entertainment! people are tired of seeking that junk on TV... They seek out entertainment to get away from that mess! To escape it! Star Trek: Discovery breaks that cardinal rule. It's part of what killed Star Trek: Enterprise... A shaky first season, combined with that horribly annoying Xindi terrorism arc... When Enterprise was on the air, terrorism was all they talked about on the news... It was tiring... That killed Enterprise, even though their third season finally found it's stride... Too much damage had been done, and it killed the show! They just don't learn! Combining politics into entertainment, AND hiding it behind a paywall... Star Trek: Discovery is a dead show playing. It'll literally be finished before it ever even had a chance to begin. Disco is Dead

Thing is, getting the jack out of the hole WILL get your speakers working. There's a contact switch inside the socket that disables the speakers when there is something inserted in the jack. Anything else is just a hack. clearing the socket is a fix. Heck, you can probably replace the socket for a few bucks, if you're willing to put in the work. If people are offering a fix for your problem... Maybe let them fix it. Try a VERY TINY dab of super glue on the tip of a toothpick. Insert it so it touches the stuck jack, and when it's had a moment to cure, pull it straight and gently out. Don't use too much, or you could make it worse though.

I think Ceres looks rather pretty in this picture! Honestly, Ceres Dres has plenty of potential! Sure, it does look a lot like the Moon Mun, But does Mun have bright white spots begging to have surface samples taken and analyzed? I didn't think so! Also, to quote Wikipedia: "Ceres appears to be differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle, and may have a remnant internal ocean of liquid water under the layer of ice. The surface is probably a mixture of water ice and various hydrated minerals such as carbonates and clay. In January 2014, emissions of water vapor were detected from several regions of Ceres. This was unexpected because large bodies in the asteroid belt typically do not emit vapor, a hallmark of comets." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet) So then, Seeing how Dres is Ceres Kerbal equivalent... What of those white spots on Ceres? Dres could certainly use some. Regarding water vapor... I wonder if it's possible to do an atmosphere that is lower than the highest peak? Basically, the deepest crater would be your ASL point, and maybe have an atmosphere that only goes up 1500 meters (that's just an example). I think Dres's highest altitude is 5.7 meters. That would mean most of the planet would be in vacuum, but deep in Dres's lowest craters, you could have a very thin atmosphere, with he description defining it as water vapor. Just a thought. Maybe, if we're doing water vapor, we could do geysers? If so, that'd be friggin' amazing'! I mean, it's a biiiiit much, since water vapor is a far cry from a geyser, but if you're wanting to get creative... Who knows? A geyser at the bottom of a crater could potentially explain both the white spots and the pooling of water vapor in a low region, and make for an interesting feature to visit. Regarding "lakes of liquid ammonia... I think out and out "lakes" is probably pushing it for a largely atmospheres world, however, I think it'd be a really interesting feature to have very shallow pools of liquid that are sporradic and not deep enough to swim in, scattered at the deepest depths of a vapor filled crater, with evidence of geyser or cryovulcanism at the center... How epic would that be... Rather than a lake, a basin of fleeting puddles, being replenished by the liquid beneath the surface, and constantly sublimating or evaporating into that minimal atmosphere settled in the crater basin. I think the best treatment for Dres, would be a review of everything the Dawn probe has discovered about Ceres.

Handicapped parking availability is usually pretty decent around where I live. It's rare for every handicap space to be unavailable, except maybe when there's only one or two, or one exceptionally busy days. My mother doesn't drive anymore, but has one of those hanging handicapped parking cards for the rearview mirror. About a decade and a half ago, she fell down some steps... Shattered her ankle and literally twisted her foot sideways. I STILL have a deep seated disgust for the doctor that handled her injury... FOUR HOURS, he let her sit... The ER was EMPTY. No other emergencies. It was late, and there was no queue for any of the radiology equipment... I watched this... not gonna say what I think of him... CHAT with other hospital staff just around the corner, all while my mother's foot slowly deteriorated, because that whole "being put on sideways" bit just so happened to have cut the circulation. FOUR HOURS after she had been admitted, he FINALLY set the severe dislocation, but by then, the nerves in her foot were long gone. See, the foot was on the side of the tibia's end, as opposed to being on the END of the tibia, like it was supposed to. The skin was stretched so taught that it cut off circulation, killed most of the nerves, and left the skin so bad off, that it basically just became a huge open wound of necrotic tissue that was bigger than the palm of my hand. It grew to nearly double the size, before it finally started to begin healing. Healing took four months. She had to sell her house for next to nothing, just to get out of the expenses. Took two years for her disability to get approved, not for lack of MORE hospital idiocy... At some point, they did some sort of psych evaluation to check for depression or something (no offense, but a permanent life changing disability is pretty danged depressing, regardless)... Apparently, the doctor used speech recognition dictation, and had noted her hobbies as "Arts and crafts, quilting, and cocaine"... She had actually said crocheting. (And I can't belive I spelled that correctly) That one little "hiccup" took MONTHS to have fixed, and actually delayed some of her surgeries! The lack of mobility has actually been very bad for her weight. It's hard to "walk it off", when walking itself is difficult. She had a gastric bypass, just to try to maintain rather than gain. It's a genetic thing in out family too... She has a garden, raises her own greens, fruits and veggies... and still, she can't hardly shed a pound, even with the gastric bypass. That compounds, and means the arthritis in her ankles, knees, and hips gets worse yet... It really is a no win situation. That's part of why she still walks around the store, rather than use the little scooter carts to get around. It's why she still goes out and tends her own garden... Anything to get some movement into her life, even if it hurts. If I'm not mistaken, I think her ankle has a range of motion that's less than 20°. Walking is very painful for her if she has to do it for extended periods of time, but she still does walk. I do try to park close for her, but more often than not, rather than use the handicapped parking spaces and dig for the card, I usually just let her off at the door, find a place to park, and then catch up with her... Which needless to say... Is actually usually rather easy...

Hahahaha!!! The landlord never even showed up to my apartment to "inspect" all the "computers" I must have plugged in! I went to the utility company on Monday. They circled their number on a rates pamphlet, wrote the name of someone at the office and told me to give it to the landlord and have her call them. I called the landlord and let her know the Utility company wished to speak with her, and relayed the number and the name... Not only did she not show up for her "inspection", but she hasn't even contacted me in the past two days now! I suspect she's quite embarrassed.

That's great work for being mostly mockups! Nice job! For the flag indicators, the drawing is... Are you showing two possible methods of actuation, or is there some mechanical magic I'm not grasping? One option, if you're going with a slide style mechanism, might be to thread a screw into the servo horn and use that screw as a "pin cam" to actuate. It's pretty simple and straight forward, and the benefit, is you can orient the servo endwise to the panel, instead of sideways. That'll let you mount the flag indicators closer together. The back of the moving part of the flag indicator needs a slot that the screw head fits into. As the hobby servo rotates, the screw can freely slide side to side, but slides the whole sliding assembly up and down. In this example, rotation of the round part moves the slot left and right. With the servos in this configuration, the only limiting factors with packing flag indicators close together will be the width of the servo and the diameter of the servo horn. Good luck on your build!

Electric is "included" in rent for me, as in I pay rent, and no separate utilities. Her "issue" (beyond epic levels of "teh stoopid") is that since "my meter" is so much higher, I should be responsible for it... Good Lord, is she dense! Denser than Kerbin! This craziness is why I went directly to the utility company. If they can't straighten her out. I'll have no choice but to take it to a court and have a judge knock "teh stoopid" out of her with his gavel! I miss having my own house. Employer got bought out in 2009, and our location liquidated. My replacement jobs kept reducing hours, till I had to give up on the mortgage, and take cheap housing... since 2012 to today, rent has gone up from a little over $300 to around $600. Still have not managed to make it back to my old income levels, even working two jobs. It's ridiculous.

Wow... just wow... I figured maybe the landlord might have read an annual energy usage report and mistaken it for a monthly, so I called back after work to check... Nope. She says I used over 9000 kW last month... Impossible!!! She says that everyone else used 800-1000 kW over a month... But me, the second the old landlord left and the new one came in, I'm suddenly using between 5K and 10K... Right... That's not me installing a server room... That's an error by the landlord. I contacted the utility company and asked for help. They told me that they only have four meters registered with the apartment. They asked if my building had 4 apartments. I told them no, the building has 12 apartments, and there are 4 total buildings: A-1, A-2, A-3, and B... Then they tell me the meters are listed as A-1, A-2, A-3, and B-1... My apartment number is B-1... but the building is only marked as building B on the lettering by the door... Ding, ding, ding! I know what's happening. The landlord is (stupidly) attributing the B-1 meter (building B) to my SINGLE UNIT... a TWELVE APARTMENT METER... and she's pointing the finger at me... Well, I can prove it to her... I'll shut down my computer, then have HER take a flashlight and turn off ALL my breakers, then go read the meter to see if it shows zero power usage. That, and tell her to call the utility company... If they don't call her first!

That's what I say... I own two power meters, an actual Kill-A-Watt and a Belkin power meter. I KNOW my AC draws 1040 watts when the compressor pressure settles, my computer desk+entertainment center draws 400 watts with my computer at idle, my Tivo, all the computer accessories, and all three monitors on. At peak CPU, it goes up to 450 watts. I've determined the monitors together draw 110 watts. If I use the computer actively for 10 hours a day on average (with the monitors on), and the rest of the day let it run 24/7 with he monitors off... I watch less TV these days, but even so, lets say I use the TV 8 hours a day, just for the sakes of an example... And the AC, I rarely run for more than 4-8 hours a day... I can't really run it too long at a time, or I risk the thing icing up, so I shut it off periodically. 0.450 - 0.110 = 0.340 (Total power for computer + monitors + accessories + TiVo combined, minus the difference turning off the monitors makes) 0.340 x 24 x 30 = 244.8 kW/h per month for the computers + TiVo + all base accessories (on 24 hours a day). $33 0.110 x 10 x 30 = 33 kW/h per month for the three monitors (assuming they are on 10 hours a day). $5 0.260 x 8 x 30 = 62.4 kW/h per month for the TV (assuming 8 hours a day). $9 1.040 x 8 x 30 = 249.6 kW/h per month for the AC (assuming 8 hours a day) $33 I know my workshop can't be using much power, as I rarely run more than lights and my soldering iron, plus maybe my small power supply and meter. It's a 50 or 60 watt iron that has probably a 50% duty cycle, so basically 25-30 watts overall. Even using my hot air gun, i measured it at 600 watts, and I maybe use it for several minutes at a time, once or twice a month... I don't use it frequently. I have a microwave, a refrigerator, a standard electric range (oven and 4 burners), and and a toaster oven. The lights are bright, about 40-50 watts of fluorescent lighting. Even assuming a full "work day" worth of time, with the lights and soldering iron on, I'm only looking at 19-20 kW/h... Even if I worked in there EVERY SINGLE DAY of the month... I'm lucky to get one or two good days of work in there every other week. It's an insignificant amount of power... Ugh... Clearly this is crazy. even if I ran my AC, computer, tv, and workshop 24/7... it would all add up to about a max of $175... And that's absurd... I'd never run all that stuff 24 hours a day, much less for a whole month... If that ever happens, it means I croaked. My lighting is all high efficiency stuff. Most of my living room is LED, and what isn't is a few low wattage fluorescent. The kitchen is LED, and the bathroom has a combination of low intensity LED lighting and full intensity fluorescent. All other rooms are fluorescent. I don't tend to leave lights on, except for LED keyboard lighting and the workshop, when I'm working. There's also the occasional use of tools like a drill, dremel, or my mill, and that can be weeks to months between uses. The only other devices I even run are the range, fridge, microwave and toaster oven. I'll admit my computer and entertainment center draw more power than that of the average person, but the claims are clearly absurd. I'm actually wondering if the landlord is misreading the billing, or something... Maybe annual costs vs monthly... it's crazy though... I'm still heavily concerned about the theory I mentioned before... Trying to "force" me to get rid of my electronics, so she can potentially evict in the future with a lower risk of electronics disposal fees.

Boy do I have a complaint... My landlord is claiming that I'm costing over $1000 a month in electricity. She is suggesting I "get rid of all my computer stuff"... Yeah, I smell a big steaming pile of BULL here... I have an extensive collection of vintage calculators and computer hardware. Multiple display shelves with stuff... NONE of it plugged in. My ACTUAL computer is a quad i7. If I measure the watts consumed by EVERYTHING on my computer desk (this includes the cable modem, router, TiVo, and all my various computer and video accessories, including video games and chargers and their standby power consumption... I get 400 watts idle and 450 watts with my CPU at 100% usage. Even with my CPU at 100%, 24/7... 0.45 kw/h x 24 x 30 = 324 kW/H per month. At 13.3 cents per kW/H, that's about $43 per month, if I MAX my CPU 24/7 for a month. That cost includes everything for my entire computer and entertainment center. If I turn on the TV and surround sound, it adds 260 watts, but I use my computer far more than my TV lately. I figure, even if I watch 8 hours of TV a day, every day, it only adds another $8 per month. My Air conditioner draws 1040 watts per hour, but I rarely run it for more than 2-6 hours at a time, depending on temperatures... but lets just say... I ran it constantly (I don't) it could not POSSIBLY add more than $100 per month to my bill. Realistically, I doubt I run it more than 8 hours a day, and that would be about $33 a month. Needless to say, the claims that I am costing "over $1000 per month" are big ol' steamin' pile o' bull patties. Either the apartment provided stove, refrigerator, or the actual building wiring is malfunctioning, or an error was made either recording to calculating the meter charges... If there's a fault... Then that's a fire hazard, and it's MOST DEFINITELY not anything I have causing it... I know, cause I have two of my own kW/h + wattage meters that I can use to measure my own power usage. I'm calling the utility company on Monday... I plan to get to the bottom of this. What I more suspect is the landlord doesn't like the stuff I have, and is coming up with a bull reason to try to coerce me into getting rid of it. It's new management (apartment was bought this past summer). I found out through other residents that new resident's rent is about 50% higher than the pre-existing renters. More than likely, she doesn't want a bunch of electronics in my place, in case the inevitable rent increases that are surely in store for my future end up with her trying to evict me, if I can't cover the costs... She doesn't want to end up with he fees to have a bunch of electronics picked up... I'm 90% sure thats what she's actually trying to pull. I miss the old landlord. She was actually quite nice.

I'd like to complain about the fact that we don't have a probe around Saturn anymore... We are proud of you, Cassini... Also adding the additional complaint that Uranus needs some love too. Why are we not probing Uranus! And Neptune. Neptune too. It's been a while since the Voyager fly by.

How goes the recovery? I hope the shoulder's healing up properly. I know all to well how long shoulders can take to heal.

Ugh... Why me... I just spent $24 on a stepper motor from Poland. Won't arrive for between a week to 2.5 weeks... And I just found the PERFECT mechanism in a cheap scanner to do THE WHOLE WORKS... It's a plastic rack and pinion gear setup, and it's actually ideal, cause it completely encloses the rear of the slide. Since it's plastic, I can EASILY cut it and shape it and glue it and whatever I need to do to make it work... So yeah... totally wasted my money, when i had something I could salvage all along.

I'm a bonafide idjit... I'm glad I've been busy/lazy and not made any more of these stupid light boxes. I KNEW I'd designed the color bars to be that size for a reason... This is the part where the epic facepalm occurs. I'll need to order a couple of them. Specifically, the narrow versions of the short red and yellow, and the long green ones. Go figure, that I'd have green ones only in wide versions, and all my narrow yellows are long versions. I think I only have a single short, narrow red LED, so I'll need a few more. It's MUCH simpler though, than all the work necessary for those dumb light boxes! I get a lot of bleed through, thanks to the thickness of the plastic, so I might actually consider cutting out that space to mount the LEDs flush with the back of the scale. The secondary benefit of this, is since the LEDs would end up epoxied into place, I don't need a PC board to secure them, and I can run wires straight back, so there is no risk of anything shadowing the blue-green LED backlighting. On another note, I've started looking at viable parts to start constructing my digital readout carriage meter. I'm trying to decide whether to go with a stepper or a DC gear motor. To get a stepper with a threaded shaft is almost twice as much as a surplus DC motor that I found with a similar threaded shaft. I'd probably have an easier time controlling a stepper, but it's so bulky and expensive in comparison... The cheapest parts seem to be CNC and 3D printer parts, thanks to the volume those are seeing these days, but it's still approximately $35 on average for the stepper alone, with the threaded output shaft. It seems linear bearings are pretty cheap, and I have some steel rods already, for my linear guide. Man, it's SO overkill. Literal CNC parts to move a pointer with LED displays on it. Everything cheap though... It doesn't have the reach. I could try a setup with some manner of long arm, hinged further back, and get a different assembly with about 90-95 mm of travel, but it seems like so much extra mechanical work, when I know exactly how to do the whole job with the CNC parts. All I know, is I wanna order soon, cause I want to build the meter before it starts getting cold outside. I want time to make the meter (since it's the last instrument to be made or acquired), so I can know exactly how it'll turn out, and start placing parts and measuring to cut the main panel. I'll likely need to do that outside, so as to not bother the neighbors, thus outside. If it gets cold before I have all the instruments ready and measured... It probably won't happen again till next year, and likely no sooner than late April or May. And yes... I live in Minnesota, where the start of September is when we begin dreading the upcoming cold season. Actually, I once did that on June 21. Winter is coming... **EDIT** Ordered the stepper from Poland. Best size and overall length, and even with shipping, a very reasonable price. Shipping is a gamble, as it could arrive as early as the 13th, but it could also take till the 25th. Lets hope for the earlier date. I'll have to see what I have on hand for linear guides. If I can find an old scanner, I can salvage from it. **EDIT 2** PRINTERS!!! I realized every old inkjet printer dumped on me probably has a good quality linear slide... Now if only I'd played around with belt drive instead of screw drive, I might have paid nothing for the carriage meter. Oh well. The screw drive will actually be easier to build than some complex pulley contraption.

It was a part of the Godspeed keycap set from Massdrop. Complete space themed nerd out set... Done though. Sometimes they carry spares during their annual clearance (they order extras to deal with stuff like lost or damaged items in shipping, etc)... But if that happens... Probably won't be till October-ish... 2018.

phylactery Next thing you know, the textbooks are gonna start suggesting flat farther youtube channels for their online courses, and will be claiming the mun moon is a hologram and that we never actually landed on it, and the gubmint wasted tons of money, and you should be a farmer, and you should be a farmer, and YOU should be a farmer... Oh wait... I think I saw that movie once. I would like to reiterate my belief that flat earthers and mun moon hoaxers need to have boarding be budgeted into all future space flights... Launches only... No return trips! My thing to complain about... Guilt... I feel incredible, soul-crushing guilt for forgetting to tell all you guys there was a custom keycap set (orders ended today) that had an epic "RIP JEB" key, in light green, no less! The keycap set also had planet keys. PLANET keys... With pictures of the planets! I feel awful for forgetting about it. I hope anyone who had an interest already knew about it. If not... I feel even worse for dangling the carrot and yanking it heartlessly away...

This is too awesome not to share! I mean, come on... RIP JEB! How can you NOT want these keys! I also ordered a set of planets, cause why not! I know they're almost done taking orders. I know I should have shared them earlier. I just forgot about it... Two weeks ago... So sorry guys! Still, I said screw it, and committed to buying them. LOL

Welp... I just spent money to order these keycaps... No idea if I'll even use them, but I couldn't say no... Guys... RIP JEB... Moar like RIP, MAH SIDES!!!

Back when I used to work at Gamestop, they "offered" us an invitation to a survey site that offered Gamestop gift cards as rewards. Wow... What an "offer". -First off, the site typically offered anywhere between a few cents to a couple dollars per survey. Most were a few cents. -Second, since they are looking to fulfill particular demographics, you had to actually fit their demographic to get passed the survey intro... You typically got 5-10 cents for trying, even if rejected. -Third... Occasionally, surveys would offer between $5 and 10... Except they'd make you sit through a series of UNSKIPPABLE video clips! You reminded me of this... -Well, those videos (or any survey at random), would often not even work if they launched in the wrong browser... And would count as viewed and skipped already, if you tried opening them again in the correct browser!?! -Even WORSE, was the times when you sat through 30 minutes of ads or TV show or movie trailers (and they were always garbage)... Only to be told that you didn't fit the demographic... and they'd give you a pittance of 10-25 cents, after luring you to watch their junk with the $10 bait... -In the end, if you powered through and went for the Gamestop gift card... It could only be redeemed at 50% the value rate of the restaurant and travel cards... If you earned $50 in reward value, you could only buy a $25 Gamestop gift card with it, vs a $50 airline gift card... Needless to say, I quit that garbage and never looked back. **EDIT** And you need to understand, with these video surveys... They weren't just making people watch couple videos and then asking a few demographic questions... They were basically sneaking in the bulk of the survey in BEFORE the demographic questions... It was totally a scam to lure more clicks, get the survey results they wanted, and bail without paying the big payouts. I actually filed a complaint with the company over it, and cited the blatant abuse of the system to game results without paying, and the fact that the survey site repeatedly accepted those bogus surveys, AS my reason for quitting.

My buddy and I gave up on our eclipse road trip... We would be leaving for Nebraska right now, pooling out resources for gas money, sleeping in the car while the other drives, and not stopping at any motel... And STILL choosing which bills to pay late... Now it looks like to get clear skies, we'd need to drive all the way into Wyoming! That takes the one way distance from 6 hours to 10 hours of driving... It's just not possible... It's almost double the gas, 20 hours on the road, vs 12, with every place to sleep on the eclipse path booked... Dear Lord... Yeah... We decided to call this one a bust. All we can hope for is to see the one in seven years... Dang weather... And if you like corn and soybeans, and MOAR corn... Come to Minnesota!

My complaint... Not sure I'm gonna get to even SEE the eclipse... Wide swaths of the the US are going to be seeing storms on Monday... Storms = Clouds = No seeing totality Given that it was a planned 6 hour trip to see totality, and a 6 hour trip back... and the place has a forecast 75% chance of being cloudy with thunderstorms... Dang... We'd have to drive an additional 2 hours out (plus two more back) to even get to a place with a 50/50 chance of being cloudy. I wanna see it, but that's a lot of gas money for a 16 hour on the road gamble. Also, I spent $12 on welding goggles with a flip up #5 lens, and $2.50 for a #9 lens. The shade value are linear, and stackable, so a #5 + #9 = #14... If you really need to, you can always buy a couple shade plates for a couple bucks, tape them together, and just hold them up to your face... If you can see the sky...

Weeeeell... The Jacquard loom used punched cards or punched tape to automatically operate a loom, and control the pattern of the weave when manufacturing textiles on a power loom back in 1804... It was a start... MS Weave

Indeed. I like Mac OS as a regular, everyday OS to use for... You know, everyday tasks. I'll admit to being an Apple basher, because, lets be fair... The company IS guilty of a number of issues: Poor repairability, poor upgradability, overpriced hardware, form over function, etc... But when you get people saying you're an "Apple fanboi" or that you "drank the Kool-aid" for "using Apple", just for the horrifying crime of mentioning you are on Mac OS... Ugh... I limit my discussions to facts, and I limit my discussions by not insulting people. I also don't go over to PC forums to bash Windows. I speak about Apple's problems where relevant, and speak of what I'd want to see for them to improve (PCI-e slots in pro hardware, of the love of all things good and decent in this world)! My only response to them: "I built a Hackintosh. No, I didn't overpay for my hardware. Heck, I haven't given Apple a penny for over a decade, because they have not made a product that appeals to me in a decade. Yes, my Hackintosh is highly repairable. Yes, it's highly upgradable, and I spent my cash on the best hardware I could afford, aiming for highest performance per dollar for my budget, but also skimping on some parts, so I could upgrade later, when I had more cash. Now it's a powerhouse, so it's very much function first! Also, with a custom 1939 Philco radio cabinet case, that function does not come at the expense of form!"... Take that! Ha! If you don't like the company, or their practices, then why spend so much time seeking out users of the thing you hate, just to berate and look smugly down on... Ugh... That's how I counter all their arguments, without resorting to insults, name calling, or the like... I just make it clear I like the OS, and not the hardware, and I actually did something about it!

I absolutely love nixie tubes too, but they don't fit the Apollo style, unfortunately. I'm trying to stick with a fairly reasonably close NASA/Apollo theme. It's okay though, cause my PC case has an integrated nixie tube clock built into it! It also just happens to be the old wood cabinet of a 1939 Philco radio. Picture's a bit old. The PC is actually temporarily in an open chassis at the moment, cause it's on the bench being fitted with new upgrades and a reconfiguration from a slide out motherboard tray to a tilt out tray (that allows full length GPUs). One of the upgrades is a seconds display. Not shown, is a circuit I want to build that will take the signal from the drive activity indicator to spin a dekatron (ideally), or at least a ring of neon lamps. I'd prefer the dekatron tube, but I don't have parts for it yet.