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Did not smell smoke this morning. That's always good. AND we still had power! Even better.
The clothes dryer was not feeling well however. Started the laundry and discovered it was taking forever to dry the clothes. Gave it a once-over but this is a (very) old dryer that has been repaired many times already so it could be pretty much anything. The dial to set the heat and one of the mode selector buttons don't stay attached. The lint trap bracket is cracked. The bearing for the drum that tumbles the clothes rattles and probably needs replacing. So does the blower. Etc. Etc..
So a not-so-quick trip to the nearby Lowes (hardware/housewares/appliance chain store) and I've got a new dryer set to be delivered and installed in a couple weeks. New washer too, since it has a number of issues as well. Got it at the same time as the dryer and it too has been repaired at least as many times. Expensive (isn't everything these days) but a new washer/dryer every couple decades isn't so bad. At least this way I hopefully won't have to deal with any laundry-related issues for another decade or so.
Meanwhile I also upgraded Ubuntu to 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" last night in a fit of madness. I was a little worried since 19.10 had depreciated 32-bit software support and updated the kernel from 4.18 under cosmic to 5.3.0 under eoan. Bash went from 4.4 to 5.0. Gcc went from 8.2 to 9.2. Bumps on the 3d and AMDGPU gfx driver(s) too. Lots of moving parts, several critical for the things I do. Net result: Looks like my local server running the RLCraft modpack is down for good.. probably a java thing. (1.8 -> 11.0.. yeah.) KSP is still fine however (checked that much before upgrading), as is my minecraft client/launcher (once I updated to the most recent version that is). Spotify, Discord, and everything else I've checked also seems ok. So far, so good.
Can't tell if I'm winning or losing this week.
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Definitely agree to this. As far as I know, I don't own any 'smart' appliance so far. I really don't see the point anyway. Also, one of the firs things they taught me in engineering was that generally speaking it's a great idea to use as few parts as possible, because it reduces the possibilities of dysfunctioning elements.
I am glad that there (still) are at least some things we can fix ourselves. I am given to understand that for example in apple computers it is usually not the case that you can even exchange simple parts. If I look at laptops nowadays with RAM modules soldered into it in a way that you can't really desolder it without damaging anything (at least with my primitive soldering irons), I really envy the days when I mainly used tower PCs. -
Heh.. be careful what you wish for. I happen to live in one of those places with a warmer climate. Lately I don't know from day to day if I'm going to catch fire or just lose power.