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

[LordFerret]

On 4/20/2019 at 12:17 AM, 5thHorseman said:

Equal parts frugalness and ineptitude, with a dash of bad luck.

I'm putting that one in my cookbook.

[DAL59]

My macbook goes from 100% to dead in less than half an hour, even when just running chrome

[richfiles]

Sounds like you probably need a new battery. If only Apple didn't glue their darn computers together. Battery replacement is SUPPOSED to be easy... 

I helped install lights on a tractor for one of my brothers. Most of the time, when there are electrical problems on those old machines, the solution is to just wire in a toggle. My brother is rebuilding the machine, and so on Saturday, I helped him get the thing rewired to work with the original stock rotary light switch on the dash. Off, Position 1 - Dim forward lights and flashers (Low Beam road lights), Position 2 - Bright forward lights and flashers (High Beam road lights), Position 3 - Double bright forward lights and rear facing work lights with no flashers (Work light position).

The problem... I left my multimeter at home. Literally brought EVERYTHING BUT it... Ugh... made things WAY harder. Then, in all our wisdom, we installed lights on one side while inside the shop during the day. As the sun went down, we realized the other side didn't have shop lights illuminating it, so we moved the tractor out of the shed... into the last 15 minutes of sunlight, then did the rest of the work with NO shop lights at all, with just flashlights...

Yeah... I had a serious case of the dumb that day... 

Finally, my finger picked a fight with a screwdriver, and VERY much lost... I was slinging blood like Spidey slings webs! 
It's a bit sore today...

Edited April 22, 2019 by richfiles

[Flibble]

3 hours ago, DAL59 said:

My macbook goes from 100% to dead in less than half an hour, even when just running chrome

My dell laptop has a battery life of about 5 minutes on the desktop with nothing open.

[Geonovast]

6 hours ago, Flibble said:

My dell laptop has a battery life of about 5 minutes on the desktop with nothing open.

I have an older Dell that doesn't even give you time to plug it back in if the power cord falls out, even if it claims the battery is roughly half charged.

[TheSaint]

You guys do know that you can get Chinese-made clone batteries for most of these old laptops for $20-40 on Ebay, right? (Although I don't know about Macs. I prefer freedom over fashion. )

[LordFerret]

1 hour ago, Geonovast said:

I have an older Dell that doesn't even give you time to plug it back in if the power cord falls out, even if it claims the battery is roughly half charged.

I have a few really old machines that are like that.  I often wonder if I should leave the battery in at all, as running it, running power through it and the battery, does nothing more than cook the battery.  Older machines have that problem.

 

18 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

You guys do know that you can get Chinese-made clone batteries for most of these old laptops for $20-40 on Ebay, right? (Although I don't know about Macs. I prefer freedom over fashion. )

This ^

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, TheSaint said:

You guys do know that you can get Chinese-made clone batteries for most of these old laptops for $20-40 on Ebay, right? (Although I don't know about Macs. I prefer freedom over fashion. )

Yep, I swear my replacement, higher capacity battery for my HP has lasted longer than the one that came with it, still with full runtime 4 years later

[richfiles]

 have an iPod Mini from 2005 that I STILL use to this day. I swapped the hard drive out for a compact flash card, so it's now a 16 GB flash iPod, and I replaced the battery twice over the years with third party replacement batteries. That latest battery still works for a few hours, but it's definitely reduced from the old literal full day of play time it used to have when fresh. Definitely time to upgrade the battery again. Heck... Maybe I'll even get a 32 or 64 GB card and upgrade the whole thing! Far cry from it's original 6 GB!

Edited April 22, 2019 by richfiles

[Boorang]

On 4/16/2019 at 7:21 AM, Flibble said:

Do you want to subscribe?

Do you want me to spam your phone / desktop full of notifications?

Can I drop so many cookies it would give even the cookie monster pause?

No. Shut up. I just want to browse your content.

yeah!

[klesh]

On 4/17/2019 at 3:06 PM, RealKerbal3x said:

*cigarette smoking*

It really beats me why people do it.

 

Addiction can make you do lots of things that seem crazy to a non-addict. 

I smoked a pack a day for 27 years.   It was to the point that when I decided to quit, it was as if someone had told me "tomorrow you wont have any water, and you can never have any water for the rest of your life."  Ciggies had seemingly become that essential to my existence. I've just passed 8 months without them. Cold turkey; I just stopped one day.  Now even the slightest whiff of them makes me sick.  Its amazing, the difference.

[Superfluous J]

52 minutes ago, klesh said:

I've just passed 8 months without them. Cold turkey; I just stopped one day.  Now even the slightest whiff of them makes me sick.  Its amazing, the difference.

New Year's Day 2005. Smoked my last cigarette at midnight after yelling Happy New Year.

Food tastes so much better now.

[StrandedonEarth]

Yay! Vancouver has the highest gas prices in North America!

[LordFerret]

2 hours ago, klesh said:

 

Addiction can make you do lots of things that seem crazy to a non-addict. 

I smoked a pack a day for 27 years.   It was to the point that when I decided to quit, it was as if someone had told me "tomorrow you wont have any water, and you can never have any water for the rest of your life."  Ciggies had seemingly become that essential to my existence. I've just passed 8 months without them. Cold turkey; I just stopped one day.  Now even the slightest whiff of them makes me sick.  Its amazing, the difference.

 

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

New Year's Day 2005. Smoked my last cigarette at midnight after yelling Happy New Year.

Food tastes so much better now.

 

I smoked for over 45 years.  I quit cold-turkey in 2012.  There's a lot I could say, but I'll not, I'll just say this... If you smoke, quit... If you don't smoke, don't start.  Same for vaping.

[razark]

I just want to complain that y'all are making me feel guilty for not quitting yet...

 

(I know I need to, but the last year and a half just seem to be one thing after another.  Every time things seem to be settling down, something else comes up.)

[StrandedonEarth]

What worked for me to quit smoking was not planning it. First step was to smoke outside (didn’t have a laptop then). Before that “Loading, Please Wait” meant light a smoke. Breaking that trigger was the first, er, second step. 

After that, I made sure to run out of smokes at bedtime, so I couldn’t have one until I went out and bought more. One Sunday morning I was too lazy to go out, and I never looked back. That was 15 years ago, after being a smoker for fifteen years. 

Well, that broke the tobacco habit, at least...

[razark]

1 minute ago, StrandedonEarth said:

First step was to smoke outside...

Yeah, I've always done that.  My ex-mother-in-law long ago convinced me of it.  Her house was always full of smoke.  Spending a few minutes there was enough to permeate that smell into everything.

3 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Breaking that trigger was the first, er, second step.

... I made sure to run out of smokes at bedtime...

Those triggers can be hard to avoid, especially when you hang out with other smokers on a regular basis.  I was just thinking along the lines of the second.  Or at least get in the habit of not smoking at home and try to work on that first, before moving on to other locations, like at work and driving.  The weekly RPG session is going to be the really hard one.

 

[klesh]

Unfortunately, even though we're all adults here the kiddietime rules of this forum prevent me from discussing some of the methods I used to help me quit.

One thing to internalize is that smoking cigarettes doesn't actually help you deal with stress better; in fact it makes it worse.  Check out the Easyway to Quit Smoking by Allen Carr.  The book helped me change my outlook on cigarettes.

 

 

[kBob]

A woodpecker has been drumming on my roof at the crack of dawn every day for a month.  I've tried throwing things, squirting it with alcohol, yelling at it with words I can't use here all to no avail.  I found an air pistol in my dad's house while cleaning it and so I shot some bbes at it they make a nice sound but the damn bird ignores them.  Finally found that turning on the air-conditioning fan seems to keep it away so I'm a little hopeful.  If some lady woodpecker would respond I gather it will probably stop and I can stop shortening the aircons longetivity.

Edited April 23, 2019 by kBob
Speeling hard

[razark]

36 minutes ago, klesh said:

One thing to internalize is that smoking cigarettes doesn't actually help you deal with stress better; in fact it makes it worse.

Shhhh!
Stop destroying my carefully built rationalizations!

 

On the serious side, though:

36 minutes ago, klesh said:

... discussing some of the methods I used to help me quit.

Not every message is public, you know.

36 minutes ago, klesh said:

Check out the Easyway to Quit Smoking by Allen Carr.

Well, a quick check on Amazon shows that it's not much more than a pack of smokes.

 

 

2 minutes ago, kBob said:

Finally found that turning on the air-conditioning

It's April.  Isn't the AC running full-time yet?

 

Edited April 23, 2019 by razark

[kBob]

35 minutes ago, klesh said:

Unfortunately, even though we're all adults here the kiddietime rules of this forum prevent me from discussing some of the methods I used to help me quit.

One thing to internalize is that smoking cigarettes doesn't actually help you deal with stress better; in fact it makes it worse.  Check out the Easyway to Quit Smoking by Allen Carr.  The book helped me change my outlook on cigarettes.

 

 

My dad quit, cold turkey, when he was scarred by a stroke, he lived another 29 years.

4 minutes ago, razark said:

Shhhh!
Stop destroying my carefully built rationalizations!

 

On the serious side, though:

Not every message is public, you know.

Well, a quick check on Amazon shows that it's not much more than a pack of smokes.

 

 

It's April.  Isn't the AC running full-time yet?

 

I live high up in the far northern Sierra Nevada mountains...still got a pile of snow behind the house.

[razark]

3 minutes ago, kBob said:

My dad quit, cold turkey...

Quitting is easy.  I've quit cold turkey hundreds of times already.

4 minutes ago, kBob said:

I live high up in the far northern Sierra Nevada mountains...still got a pile of snow behind the house. 

It comes in piles?!?  (We had a blizzard last winter.  That means the snow wasn't completely gone by 10:00 AM.)

I'm on the Gulf Coast here.  The AC isn't actually running full-time yet, but it's not far off.

[kBob]

1 minute ago, razark said:

Quitting is easy.  I've quit cold turkey hundreds of times already.

It comes in piles?!?  (We had a blizzard last winter.  That means the snow wasn't completely gone by 10:00 AM.)

I'm on the Gulf Coast here.  The AC isn't actually running full-time yet, but it's not far off.

Well it slides off the roof...until it reaches the eves.  We had late but good winter about 20 feet in February...was snowed in for a few days (the county has trouble hiring plow drivers because of low pay).  If I could build a Rover like I can in KSP it would be no problem .

[Flibble]

8 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Yay! Vancouver has the highest gas prices in North America!

Still cheaper than Europe, I'm paying over $2CAD per litre.

[Superfluous J]

5 hours ago, razark said:

It's April.  Isn't the AC running full-time yet?

AC? It snowed just a few days ago!