Thread to complain bout stuff

[Vanamonde]

9 hours ago, Geonovast said:

Re-started taking my heart meds a few days ago and now I'm always tired and easily irritated. 

Apparently I've been on heart meds and didn't even know it. 

[YNM]

6 hours ago, Spaceception said:

they work now, ha.

Can you get a look inside ? Or take it to somewhere you'd trust and not lie to you. Might be the battery connection or even the battery itself or so.

My laptop pretty much only last long if it goes slow. Don't think the battery would lasts more than 5-6 hrs on that, or 1-2 hrs on full usage.

7 hours ago, NSEP said:

WE CAN GO BACK TO THE MOON WITH THAT MUCH MONEY.

dot com bubble.

Edited November 8, 2018 by YNM

[Spaceception]

12 minutes ago, YNM said:

Can you get a look inside ? Or take it to somewhere you'd trust and not lie to you. Might be the battery connection or even the battery itself or so.

1

Unfortunately, I'm not good enough with computers to do that. So if we do something, it'd have to be a professional service.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Hopefully it's not expensive.

[LordFerret]

3 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Apparently I've been on heart meds and didn't even know it. 

Wha?!? How does one not know they're taking heart meds??

 

13 hours ago, Geonovast said:

Re-started taking my heart meds a few days ago and now I'm always tired and easily irritated. 

 

Curious as to what you're both taking. Care to list it?

[TheSaint]

2 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Wha?!? How does one not know they're taking heart meds??

I don't think Vanamonde is actually taking heart meds. I think he's suffering from moderatoritis. It's been known to make people chronically tired and irritable. I should know, I suffer from the related malady, techsupportinitus.

[YNM]

3 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Unfortunately, I'm not good enough with computers to do that. So if we do something, it'd have to be a professional service.

One possibility is simply the software side - maybe the resource usage is higher today than when you bought it, in which case try to look what caused it and fix it from there.

If nothing odd has been happening system-wise, and your device is still well in warranty, you can hand it over to the proper repairing site without self inspection.

If nothing odd has been happening system-wise but your warranty has ran out, you might want to see things for yourself first. You just need to visually look at the innards. Opening the lid require either a flathead or usual plus/cross screwdrivers (if it's proprietary kind then you really want to see someone you can trust). Unless by "laptops" you meant the reeally thin kind that wouldn't fit an optical drive of any kind (that really should be called notebook or so).

You just want to see :

- amount of dust

- any corrosion

- any loose or broken connectors

- bulging on the batteries.

[richfiles]

21 hours ago, p1t1o said:

What is it in human male DNA which makes hyper-accurate rolling stock seem so cool? (Its not even my hobby)

I think it boils down to having a thing that otherwise is far beyond your personal means to possess... There's no way I could have a real train. There's no way I could have that much land, or all those buildings and businesses. I can't have control over any of those vast and impressive things... Unless I build them in miniature... I DO like to build things, after all! Then I can be the master of it all!!! MWAHAHAHA!!! 

I kid, I kid...

I suppose for some people, they enjoy the operations. I think I'd get bored with logistics. An Arduino can handle that for me all day long. Some people... They love the idea of having a timetable for their imaginary freight and passenger stops... Pickups, deliveries, schedules... They want to manage an entire fleet, and do it by the book! What's a loop? A real train wouldn't just roll loops! It has places to go businesses to service! Stations to provide transit for!

I'll bet you there's even those "snooty" hobbyists (not to be confused for the EMD SD40-2 "snoot nose") who like to just buy the most impressively expensive limited run production models, just so they can feel superior! "Why yes, I DID indeed spend $880 on a Santa Fe Warbonnet F7 A-B-B-A quad locomotive set WITH the DCC plus sound decoders, as well as the complete Pullman coach set. That was another $600, plus the extra $120 I spent on the custom replica of the "Turquoise Room" Pleasure dome lounge. And yes, I did spend $500 on that Union pacific "Big Boy" steamer. Oh, of course it has the Tsunami sound DCC decoder installed. What do you take me for, some DC track savage!?"... Yeah... I bet that guy's out there, somewhere... Waiting... Lurking... Ready to pounce and belittle your puny little Atlas Dash 8-40C that you only spent $65 on... egh, used... blech... with NO decoder installed... DC savages... Even with a DCC decoder installed, it doesn't support sound without... *haughty shivers* mods... Ugh... Pathetic... Yeah... That guy is totally out there, and I'm 99% certain I encountered him this passed July, belittling me for being cheap when I laughed on a modelers forum about an incredibly rude ebayer trying to sell a $75 Exactrail DM&E hopper set for $145. This guy's EXACT response to my post about the ridiculously priced auction... "I hate selling stuff because somebody always comes along and want's to explain to me why the price is too high and that I should be grateful for their lowball offer. (I offered the ebay seller higher than the going used prices on ebay... This here is just a guy complaining that I was cheap!) I'd sooner throw some stuff in the trash (Really!?! You'd rather throw, in this example, $75 worth of models away, than to make a deal with another human! Yikes!) than deal with Richard Rawlings or Rick Harrison wannabes sending unsolicited messages about what their opinion is. (Unsolicited?!? This guy is nuts! I clicked on someone's ebay sale. Clicked "Make an Offer". I was declined manually, I replied trying to find what the seller was realistically wanting to get... I wouldn't call that "unsolicited"... Lordy...) You're entitled to your opinion, not to my attention, that this guy replied at all is more than I'd have done. (And yet this randumb guy took the precious time out of his busy day to tell me how cheap I was for not offering DOUBLE retail price for these out of production hopper cars... Must be quite the amazing product, eh? ... Right?) I saw these DME hoppers. I'm watching them to see if the price changes, but I don't really want them. Intermountain cars with their etched roof walks are better, these with their clunky plastic walks were obsolete when they came out. They appear to be sold out on EXR's website, and I doubt they'll ever be rerun." ... Whaaaaa!!!  There is a REASON I put this random, unsolicited response to my laughing at an ebay seller's absurd auction in Comic Sans. More money than brains, I guess! (Well, I complained about that bit of silliness, so I guess I'm on topic now!) 

Honestly, for me, it's the building. When I got into the hobby originally, back in high school, All I had was a $7 train set from a fleamarket. I had no buildings. I had to build everything myself. I got some books from the library and I carefully built a few things, step by step. A log cabin made out of skewers. A coal tower made from balsa sheets and toothpicks. An oil pump made from cut rail scraps... But then I discovered the joy of recreating real buildings. I built my mother's house, and my dad's house, our family's old farm house, the barn, the machine shed... When I went on a church youth group trip, I measured the dorm we stayed in and built it. I'd find a nice vantage point and sight the building, recording my measurements. Sometimes I'd measure the space of one lap of wood, or one brick's dimensions (plus mortar), and count them. Other times I took sighting angles and used trigonometry to calculate the dimensions... I was a real nerd in high school... I only got worse! 

I have very little of anything I simply bought from back then... What I retained after so many moves, was all those old buildings that I'd created. For me, it's the creative works and the recreations of the real, made miniature. There are things I thought I'd saved, but I can't find. That has been driving me absolutely MAD! (that's also my complaint, so I guess I'm still on topic!) Ebay can replace those old items with identical copies, but it can't return my originals to me, and I have NO IDEA what happened to some of my original rolling stock.

I think another aspect of it is the application of useless knowledge... Knowing how the airbrakes work on a machine you will NEVER OPERATE is pretty useless... Knowing they are accurately reproduced, down to every little hose, the brake wheel, and the linkage to actuate the system, and also knowing the transportation hazard markers and all the road numbers and markings are faithfully reproduced on a miniature is a justification for all our useless knowledge! Most of us will never launch a rocket of our design either, but we know the basics behind it, at least on Kerbin! In the end, we all might even be able to apply said useless knowledge towards impressing the fellow nerd herd and gain status within the pack's hierarchy... 

Okay... That, or it just simply looks cool! 

Edited November 8, 2018 by richfiles

[YNM]

4 hours ago, richfiles said:

There's no way I could have a real train.

Join a preservation society or something ? You'd collectively own a train.

Or maybe those are only common in the UK, I don't know.

[0111narwhalz]

4 hours ago, richfiles said:

But then I discovered the joy of recreating real buildings.

[KSK]

On 11/7/2018 at 9:46 AM, p1t1o said:

What is it in human male DNA which makes hyper-accurate rolling stock seem so cool? (Its not even my hobby)

I believe it's the TACCATA repeat motif found on the Y chromosome. So-called because when you read it out loud, over and over, it sounds like the soothing sound of rolling stock over railroad lines.

[Green Baron]

No hot shower today.

The pressure valve of my solar water heater broke off. It is a proper bronze (or brass) cast part with a 1" thread. When unscrewed it serves as inlet for the circulation between the collector and the water tank. I never touched it, the highest force it ever had to bear was probably solar radiation. Today i touched it to open it up to control the content before the cold season ... and held it in my hand. The thread is neatly sheared off.

It is not a big deal, i'll get me a new one. But until it is installed the sun will be too low to heat the whole content again.

 

[LordFerret]

Are we Fugue'ing over Toccatas again?

[kerbiloid]

29 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

The pressure valve of my solar water heater broke off. It is a proper bronze (or brass) cast part with a 1" thread. When unscrewed it serves as inlet for the circulation between the collector and the water tank. I never touched it, the highest force it ever had to bear was probably solar radiation. Today i touched it to open it up to control the content before the cold season ... and held it in my hand. The thread is neatly sheared off.

It is not a big deal, i'll get me a new one. But until it is installed the sun will be too low to heat the whole content again.

So, you rotate the sun around your house with a valve? Interesting...

Must it necessary be made of a copper alloy? 
And btw what's your workout system?

27 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Are we Fugue'ing over Toccatas again?

99% of classic music fans know only this track as a classic music.
Mostly initial accords.

[Green Baron]

5 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Must it necessary be made of a copper alloy? 

Lead has come out of style because reasons . Most water installation stuff is, or plastic for in house. In this case, as  is closes a circulation of hot water (in summer really hot because sun -> zenith) and is exposed to heavy insolation, plastic won't do.

Quote

And btw what's your workout system?

None. I am a fat lazy guy .

Edited November 8, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Quote

And btw what's your workout system?

None. I am a fat lazy guy .

That's good. Otherwise you would probably pull out the valve together with pipes.

[Geonovast]

9 hours ago, LordFerret said:

Curious as to what you're both taking. Care to list it?

Metoprolololololol.

It's a beta blocker, it's to try to keep my heart rate down.  Now the real trick is to re-quit caffeine.  A bit of a conundrum, as the beta blocker + no caffeine = me essentially in a coma.

9 hours ago, TheSaint said:

techsupportinitus.

I think I have that too.  I frequently deal with bank tellers who have no business being anywhere an electronic device or other peoples' money.  A good percentage of my phone calls are done in a perpetual facepalm.

[LordFerret]

1 hour ago, Geonovast said:

Metoprolololololol

You should try a good decaf. I've a family member I keep an eye on, he takes Cardizem (Diltiazem)... he and I both have issues with Arrythmia, although he's in and out of Afib as well.

I'm not taking anything (yet). I'm not ready to give up my caffeine ... er ... I mean coffee.

 

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

99% of classic music fans know only this track as a classic music.

It's my understanding that Bach wrote that piece for use in testing the performance of pipe organs, which he tuned as a side-line in making a living. (or something along those lines)

Edited November 8, 2018 by LordFerret

[Geonovast]

3 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

You should try a good decaf.

I don't think they make decaffinated KickStarts.  I've never touched coffee.

My biggest problem actually is the taste.  If Monster would make a decaff PipeLine Punch, or Roho Tea,  I'd be good.  All the best tasting beverages have a ton of caffeine.  I could kick back a caffeinated one in the morning, then placebo my way through the rest of the day.

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, Geonovast said:

Metoprolololololol.

It's a beta blocker, it's to try to keep my heart rate down.  Now the real trick is to re-quit caffeine.  A bit of a conundrum, as the beta blocker + no caffeine = me essentially in a coma.

My cardiologist has me on atenolol for the same reason, although I'm on a very low dose. I was hoping he would take me off of it when I went in for my biennial checkup last month, but no dice. Better luck in two years I suppose.

Quit the go-juice and get more exercise, man. As I heard it put in a documentary my wife was watching, "Exercise is the closest thing to a wonder drug that we've found." 

1 hour ago, Geonovast said:

I think I have that too.  I frequently deal with bank tellers who have no business being anywhere an electronic device or other peoples' money.  A good percentage of my phone calls are done in a perpetual facepalm.

When I worked for 99 Cents Only Stores (The first time. It's a long story.) I wound up supporting their ancient POS system that ran on DOS, so everything was command line. One morning I got one manager on the phone who I needed to walk through a relatively complex procedure. The problem was that, no matter how many times I told her not to, no matter how many ways I explained it, whenever I would pause in reading out the commands to her she would press Enter. If I had to turn a page, or stop to think, or take a breath, suddenly there she was on the phone, "Okay, now it's saying, 'Syntax Error at...'" "NO! Stop! Now we have to type that all over again!" At which point I would be treated to a minute long lecture about how she wasn't a computer person and I needed to bear with her and talk slowly because she had never done anything like this before and blah blah blah. It was maddening. I was struggling to maintain my composure. A procedure that should have taken five minutes wound up taking almost half an hour. My boss's office was right next to my cube, so he overheard the whole thing. When it was finally over he came out and, in his best drawl, asked, "Wuz shee duumb?"

[LordFerret]

39 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

"NO! Stop! Now we have to type that all over again!"

Too many years have gone by, but I believe it was F3 that brought up the last line typed in... and all you needed do was continue typing.

[StrandedonEarth]

14 hours ago, TheSaint said:

I don't think Vanamonde is actually taking heart meds. I think he's suffering from moderatoritis. It's been known to make people chronically tired and irritable. I should know, I suffer from the related malady, techsupportinitus.

Those both sound a lot like parentitis. It’s no surprise, since “-itis” means “inflammation of the -.” My teenager certainly does get me inflamed...

[razark]

3 hours ago, TheSaint said:

...treated to a minute long lecture about how she wasn't a computer person and I needed to bear with her and talk slowly...

My last job was tech support at a large server-hosting company.  The sort of place that hosting companies rented their servers from before rerenting space on them to their customers.

They also had absorbed some smaller hosters along the way, so there were a few legacy customers that had a web page or an email account.  One call, I'm walking a customer through installing packages from the command line and getting his webserver up and running.  The next call, I'm trying to explain to a customer how to use a GUI to upload pictures to his website.  I was told that I "need to stop using that high tech jargon, like 'clicking' and 'dragging'."  

They can't all be rocket scientists, I guess.¹

 

 

¹Those guys aren't always very computer literate, either.

[TheSaint]

1 minute ago, razark said:

Those guys aren't always very computer literate, either.

I currently work in IT at a community college. You should listen in on the calls I get from the computer science professors some time.

And people sit up nights and wonder why I'm not enthusiastic about the value of a college education.

6 minutes ago, razark said:

My last job was tech support at a large server-hosting company.  The sort of place that hosting companies rented their servers from before rerenting space on them to their customers.

One of my best friends used to be a bigwig in corporate sales for Rackspace. But he's moved on to bigger and better things.

[Barzon]

I hate creative writing. I have to write a short gothic story, and I'm setting it on a Titan base. 

Can anyone give me some help?

Spoiler

An abandoned base on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. An asteroid collided with Titan, sending debris all over the Saturnian system, and severely damaging the base. However, a few months later, the DSN picked up a faint SOS signal originating near Titan. After much deliberation, the TEPES (Terran Extra-Planetary Exploration Service), decided to send a rescue mission.  

This is just backstory/setting, but I don't want to make it:
a. Way to hard for me to stick to the plot, (ADHD),

and b. I really don't want it to be corny!

Edited November 8, 2018 by Barzon Kerman

[razark]

18 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

You should listen in on the calls I get from the computer science professors some time.

No thanks, I've heard my share of calls.  And I've been listening to my coworker walk one of the folks in Florida through installing some software for the last 55 minutes.  And looks like this will continue for a while longer.

(In this case, however, it's the software, not the user.)

 

I actually liked working tech support.  Having a variety of problems to solve and a (mostly) good group of people to work with is good.  Phone calls and management were the main problems.

Plus, I liked the fact that I had my own office that I stole.  I didn't get to use it, but I had it.  When we moved into a new building, they had a row of offices with the keys just sitting in the locks.  Locked one door, took the key, and never saw that door open again, even though the offices on either side had people.  I handed off the key to one of the other tech support guys when I left.

Edited November 8, 2018 by razark