totm nov 2023 Thread to discuss negative things in a very general way, just see where it goes y'know?

[Lisias]

21 hours ago, Nuke said:

hard to do when you do the decorating, and the wrapping, and the cooking and have to push mom in her wheelchair to a bunch of free public events in lieu of overwhelming social anxiety.

Since I do not really know about you, there's a risk I'm going to talk some nonsense, but on the other hand, there's also a chance of telling something useful. So I a flipped a coin and… Let's go:

Chances are that you will miss it in the future. Try to focus on the good things, and try to accept the difficulties as the price you need to pay to getting such memories. This will not make things easier, but it will allow you to build memories that will be precious later in your life.

Christmas is a bittersweet time of the year to me - to the point that 4 years ago I didn't mind having to work December 24 and 25 (my son was visiting his mom, so no parental negligence here ). But yet, I have one big regret about this event:

I had a friend, one of that friends that you make when you are a teen and carry on for the rest of your life. And by some reason, we ended up getting into the same troubles in life [EDIT: and doing the same things to fix them]. When I fired my family and moved away from them,  I took some really harsh years - I made a bold move, I liquidate all my economies buying a home on the Subprime Mortgage Crisis (that also affected Brazil, only a bit later) and I took me almost 10 years to rebuild my finances - the sad fact of life is that somehow my poor economic state leaked out my network and by then all the job offers I got were paying less (because the <piiii> knew I had little to no choice due pressure on paying the mortgage).

EDIT: This friend of mine did more or less the same, except by the jobs offer - he did way better than me on this one.

No regrets here, I would not had afforded this home otherwise. But it took a toll on my friendship, because I was working all the time, including holidays, for some years to pay all the bills and rebuild my savings (not to mention trying to keep contact with my son, still a kid and living very away from me at that time) - what it means I neglected that friendship, because he was living a bunch of hours away from were I live and I rarely could spare that time at the same days he could and vice versa.

What I didn't knew is that he had a serious health condition, and he were risking dying suddenly sooner or later - and, so,  every year I failed to spend some days with him on the holidays meant smaller chances on managing to do it next year.

And, then, he died. About a week before Christmas. On the very year I was finally sabbatical and could attend something with him.

I can't say I regret all that years I spent the holidays working my cheeks out to pay the bills - my son and I have a comfortable life nowadays exactly because I did all that sacrifices.

But, yet, I still regret not spending more time with this friend of mine even at the cost of some economical security on the short run.

That friend of mine would die nevertheless - but I would have more memories of such friendship, and he surely deserved such.

 

21 hours ago, Nuke said:

i already threw my back out once this holiday season retrieving 50 pounds of packages from the post office.

Buy a cargo cart. Second hand, third hand, build one yourself - but get yourself a cargo cart. One that you could use on the streets.

I can't emphasise enough how my life got way less hurtful once I started to get old on the very day I bought one for myself.

I bought it in 12 instalments to avoid financial risks on the short run, and so I ended up paying almost 25% more than if I had bought it upfront - but even this way, it worth it because I didn't hurt my back anymore since then and, so, didn't had my DayJob© jeopardised by pain in the back (the upper one! ).

 

On 12/9/2023 at 3:18 PM, Nuke said:

in the world of random inexplicable computer problems. last night after finishing my chores i settled in for a gaming session. it was at this time i noticed a bunch of usb devices were missing from my system, <…>

<…>

get up this morning and my wifi is inexplicably working. an hour of playing musical drivers with a lot of reboots and everything was working again. i hate problems that fix themselves. still dont know what caused it. probibly windows thinking it was better at updating drivers than i am. especially these ch drivers which havent seen an update since 2011.

Check your home's power, you may have fluctuations sporadically on your electrical system.

Additionally, do you have a neighbour engaging on ham radio?

Spoiler

You know, I got royally screwed once trying to install a server on a local regiment of the Army in my city - I just didn't managed to make that thing to keep working, I left it working at night and on the next day I had a Lieutenant calling me complaining the system was dead in the water.

Well, I lost the Contract. As well the guy after me. And I never worked for the Army again.

Some years later, a coworker realised I was the idiot that got screwed on that regiment (ah, all that beer on the Happy Fridays… ), and since he also knew the dude that finally make that thing to work, he explained to me what happened: that quarter was next to the Air Force one, and obviously the Air Force quarters had a… RADAR.

It happened that by some reason, that RADAR wasn't operating on the hours I was there working, late afternoon and night. But once that RADAR started to operate, and the beam hit the building where the server was installed, the server just crashed.

And then, my friends, was when I realised that it's not enough to be a good technician on my field - you need to be a God Damned bad cheeks generalist to succeed if you want to make a living doing what no one else is doing.  

In a way or another, a HAM radio emitting near you would saturate your WiFi antennas to the point the MCU could not handle the noise and just crash.

Edited December 14, 2023 by Lisias
My god! It was full of tyops!!!! o.O (and some EDITs)

[AlamoVampire]

I just got FORCED to watch a FULL MINUTE of ads on youtube. Before you tell me get an ad blocker i cant. PS5. I just want to watch content and not be forced to watch ads. The full ad clock for the 5 ads? 70 seconds. Youtube needs to cut it out.

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[Nuke]

10 hours ago, Lisias said:

Check your home's power, you may have fluctuations sporadically on your electrical system.

Additionally, do you have a neighbour engaging on ham radio?

  Reveal hidden contents

You know, I got royally screwed once trying to install a server on a local regiment of the Army in my city - I just didn't managed to make that thing to keep working, I left it working at night and on the next day I had a Lieutenant calling me complaining the system was dead in the water.

Well, I lost the Contract. As well the guy after me. And I never worked for the Army again.

Some years later, a coworker realised I was the idiot that got screwed on that regiment (ah, all that beer on the Happy Fridays… ), and since he also knew the dude that finally make that thing to work, he explained to me what happened: that quarter was next to the Air Force one, and obviously the Air Force quarters had a… RADAR.

It happened that by some reason, that RADAR wasn't operating on the hours I was there working, late afternoon and night. But once that RADAR started to operate, and the beam hit the building where the server was installed, the server just crashed.

And then, my friends, was when I realised that it's not enough to be a good technician on my field - you need to be a God Damned bad cheeks generalist to succeed if you want to make a living doing what no one else is doing.  

In a way or another, a HAM radio emitting near you would saturate your WiFi antennas to the point the MCU could not handle the noise and just crash.

i think the thing that killed the wifi was the accidental bios reset, the card just never went through its normal reset procedure and was being held in the wrong state by standby power.  ive seen this happen before. usually due to brownouts, every time a squirrel tries to use the power lines as a superhighway and inadvertently becomes a resistor to ground. this was completely unrelated to the driver issue. much of the troubleshooting was spent going down the wrong rabbit hole of thinking there was a conflict. i thought the radio was on one of the usb buses, but when i realized it was on pcie, thats when i figured they were unrelated.  so i completely removed power overnight at the power strip and it was fine in the morning. the complete reinstall of the entire stack of network drivers was completely unnecessary.

i never did get the controller software to work, the second i loaded a profile it crapped out on me. i just went scorched earth on the ch drivers and now they are in their legacy hid mode now.  i went through the trouble of installing vJoy and Joystick Gremlin, made a new profile and i was back to my games in no time.  its kind of better in that i can now include other controllers like my analog keyboard and space mouse. i can also upgrade the adcs in my controllers for more resolution. the ch software aged like milk and hasn't seen an update in a very long time. its entirely possible they didn't renew their driver certificates with microsoft.

i might reinstall windows some time after the holidays as a clean up pass. lots of other messes to clean up, most of which were caused by windows update. some of which i may have caused whilst troubleshooting. and i think there is some residual nvidia crap lurking around the system that ddu missed. this should be the last reinstall i do before fully switching to debian when win 10 goes out of service life. 

 

as for your friend, i had one of those. he killed himself back around 2008. turns out i don't do friends very well. 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Nuke

[Nuke]

4 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

I just got FORCED to watch a FULL MINUTE of ads on youtube. Before you tell me get an ad blocker i cant. PS5. I just want to watch content and not be forced to watch ads. The full ad clock for the 5 ads? 70 seconds. Youtube needs to cut it out.

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i will stop using youtube if adds get bad. adblock works for now.  these people are going to drive me to obtain media in dead tree format. 

[AlamoVampire]

4 hours ago, Nuke said:

i will stop using youtube if adds get bad. adblock works for now.  these people are going to drive me to obtain media in dead tree format. 

Id say bad is where its at now. 60 seconds of forced ads, ad blocks with 3-7 ads in them. Youtube is pushing away users

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[Superfluous J]

More ad minutes per video minute than OTA TV and they don't even have to pay to generate the content (though hosting is likely not cheap).

I adblock YouTube without qualms and use a video downloader extension for most of my viewing which bypasses ads even without adblock. I feel bad for those who don't have that option. Frankly, I'd buy a cheap laptop so I could set all that up on it before I ever pay for a subscription to them.

[LHACK4142]

Also, yewtu.be

No ads, and a much more time-friendly design.  Don't know about you, but I can waste so much time on the default Youtube interface.  This cut down my time waste tremendously.

[DDE]

8 hours ago, LHACK4142 said:

Also, yewtu.be

Interesting. Wondering if I should take note of it in case the much-touted Youtube block happens.

When a company supports video streaming in your country with no way to get revenue from it from two years, it's really difficult to deflect questions about its motives... that said, this means I am one of the reasons you're watching this many ads!

Edited December 15, 2023 by DDE

[Nuke]

investigating my driver issue, i find i cannot go onto the ch products website anymore because chrome doesnt like the security certificates, they are expired. so i used tor. their news page has not been updated since 2014, and its just announcing that their industrial products line is now sold under apem.com (the ch products website now features "an apem group company" at the top of the page under the logo). incidentally ive heard of this company before, while looking for electronics components.  would seem like ch got bought out some time ago and stopped supporting their controllers, which explains why they let their website and driver certificates slip.

incidentally these controllers are still being sold on amazon and others. great controllers, they lasted longer than the company (its sad that making a quality product is a good way to go out of business), but dont expect to get the ch software working ever again. 

Edited December 16, 2023 by Nuke

[AlamoVampire]

I hate some people. Im out getting lunch and im in a drive thru. The truck in front of me is in my opinion abusing his dog. The dog is in the bed of the truck and is unrestrained. Shes 1 error in judgment away from his dog getting killed. Why do people do this? Put the dog in the cab with you and restrain it or cage in in a restraint cage bolted or otherwise secured to the truck to reduce risk to the innocent dog.

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[AlamoVampire]

So, im updating MSFS2020 and to kill time while it updates i decided to launch solitaire. I choose the version i want to play and im forced to watch a freaking ad!!! what?  Why am i being forced into watching ads in a default game program in windows? 
 

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[AstroWolfie]

I caught the flu... Thankfully, I'm feeling way better now, but I had a 103-105 fever

[DDE]

8 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

Why am i being forced into watching ads in a default game program in windows? 

Because a subscription-only Windows is only planned for 12, and you still have to be scalped somehow.

[AlamoVampire]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

Because a subscription-only Windows is only planned for 12, and you still have to be scalped somehow.

Tell me youre joking about a subscription based windows

100512212023

[AstroWolfie]

I saw this meme where it was like:

Author: I wrote this sci fi book to warn people about the dangers of [insert tech here]

Tech Company: after many years, we have finally made the tech from the sci fi classic, dont construct this tech

 

seriously though, it wouldn't be good if a tech company made something like GLaDOS or HAL 9000 and let it loose on the world

[DDE]

2 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

Tell me youre joking about a subscription based windows

https://www.pcmag.com/news/windows-12-may-require-a-subscription

Quote

If this turns out to be the case, we also need to consider the possibility of Microsoft offering a free tier and forcing the user to view ads placed throughout the Windows 12 experience.

 

[AlamoVampire]

@DDE just did some cursory digging and it appears to be a rumor only. While some features like office 365 may require a subscription the os itself looks like it will not. It may also (the rumor) be tied to cross platform uses ie ios using some windows components such as the aforementioned office 365. 
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[Nuke]

8 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

Tell me youre joking about a subscription based windows

100512212023

linux is starting to look better every day. expect a massive exodous. otherwise your pc experience will be as annoying as your smartphone experience. thats why everything is an app, so they can control the environment their web page runs in. the will of the user be damned. 

 

im gonna miss notepad++ and winamp. and i can kiss my somehow not expired 3dsmax 2014 license goodbye. maybe it will run in a vm under win7.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Nuke

[DDE]

14 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

@DDE just did some cursory digging and it appears to be a rumor only

It is a very furiously denied rumor.

[Nuke]

tis the season for sleep deprivation.  wake me up at an ungodly hour to go to some anxiety inducing public event, the third one in just as many days, on top of all the usual household work, shopping, postal runs, etc. there isn't enough coffee on the planet to make me feel better. 

[SunlitZelkova]

I caught COVID-19 for the first time

And it’s my last Christmas before moving to Japan…

My dad did too, but his symptoms are less severe than mine. Which is interesting, because he smoked for about 30 some years before quitting in 2020 when it became too difficult to buy cigarettes because of quarantine (and hasn’t restarted yet thankfully).

When I fall into sleep it becomes such a haze. I sincerely thought I was living on a Mars base and had to discuss why balloons were being shipped from the crew back to Earth.

I’m trying to look at this positively though. Maybe if I hadn’t been sick, me and my family would have died while driving to Hood River, the town we were planning to visit this weekend. Or maybe me and my sister would have been killed in a car accident on the way to my mom’s house, which is where we do the celebrations.

[LHACK4142]

On 12/21/2023 at 9:28 AM, AstroWolfie said:

I saw this meme where it was like:

Author: I wrote this sci fi book to warn people about the dangers of [insert tech here]

Tech Company: after many years, we have finally made the tech from the sci fi classic, dont construct this tech

 

seriously though, it wouldn't be good if a tech company made something like GLaDOS or HAL 9000 and let it loose on the world

Ah, the Torment Nexus.

Just found out that Soylent is the name of an actual product, which reminded me of this concept.

[Lisias]

I think the Game Industry would be in a sensibly less worst position nowadays if the money spent on useless (at best) or counterproductive (more likely), terribly executed guerrilla marketing would had be spent on hiring better managers and team leaders.

Dude, not every gamer is a 7 years old kid looking for a daddy/mommy replacement or a 15 years old teenagers in need to be told what to believe in.

#prontoFalei

Edited January 1 by Lisias
forgot some commas (and I swear I typed "teenagers" and not kids on the 15 years old thingy…)

[DDE]

Looks like I've got a very bemusing sort of tinnitus in my right ear (could be "objective", i.e. I've heard it when my neck is bent rather dubiously...)

Not the usual buzzing or other "glitchy" noises, not running water or an airplane taxing, but... a sleeping cat breathing out through the nose, once, about 0.5 sec in duration (believe me, I 1. know that sound and 2. it's happened where there are no cats around, and it's clearly unaffected by headphones).

Edited December 28, 2023 by DDE

[OrdinaryKerman]

Really minor, but

My 8yo brother cried when I told him how to hold and use a phone correctly, he insisted on using speakerphone in public

Edited December 28, 2023 by OrdinaryKerman