efaardvark
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Status Updates posted by efaardvark
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AT&T confirmed the install.. tomorrow is when the fiber comes.
Still trying to get my head around 300Mb broadband. I mean, I remember 300 baud modems, 2Mbit arcnet, and 10Mbit ethernet. Data from NASA's Mars spacecraft comes down at around 6Mb. My current DSL is about 10 (upgraded from 56kb dialup). 300Mb be like...
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The line I have just recently got upgraded from 4 (yeah I know, who knew something like that still existed) to around 50. To be honest though I didn't notice too much of a difference when it comes to downloads. Naturally I download stuff a lot faster, but I didn't really download much anyway (except for 'streaming' in a way). Biggest change that I personally noticed was in upload speed when uploading stuff for work or as online backups. Something that took hours now takes minutes, which is great
Let us know what you think after you have used it! -
My uplink on the DSL is abysmal, relatively speaking... just 1.2Mb/s. Ok for sending email, but that's about it. Most of the DSL bandwidth is allocated to the downlink.
Update on the fiber install: AT&T missed their installation window. This means no fiber yet.
I got a robocall from AT&T informing me of the news and I immediately tried calling back to see if I have to reschedule or what, but all I got was a message saying to call back during business hours. Looks like I'll probably have to wait until Monday at least. 
Unless the guy just shows up tomorrow. We'll see.
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UTC 2020-01-01 00:00:01 .. year rollover bug caused all our interfaces that connect our NOC to external users to core dump and refuse to restart. So far I'm not a fan of the new decade.
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Great, now they're saying we're going to get more snow & ice. Even in the desert! Not natural I say.
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AT&T FINALLY has fiber in my neighborhood so next weekend we're upgrading our 'net connection from ~10Mb DSL ("up to 27Mb") to 300Mb fiber. At the risk of jinxing it, I'm looking forward to the ~10x speed bump!
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Coffee is life.
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tbh I actually I prefer tea. I've gone back and forth over the years.. sometimes drinking almost exclusively tea. I tend to like the smell of coffee more than the taste. Lately though I have been addicted to coffee. Maybe it is the season.
re: sweet... I often put sugar in my coffee too. But I don't stir it to mix it well, just slosh it around a little so there's coffee syrup at the bottom and normal coffee at the top. For some reason I like the bitterness to start, but there's that yummy super sweet mouthful at the bottom to finish it off.
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And now my air compressor breaks. Got a tire pressure light in my car on the way home. When I got there and went to put/check air in my tires, the tank split as I was putting pressure in the tank to do the deed. The compressor bit is probably ok, but the whole thing is a cobbled-together mashup... an old motorcycle engine, an electric motor, a couple pulleys & a belt, some bits of copper tubing, a pressure sensor and an old pressure tank. Probably way past time for a whole new rig but .. it had to fail THIS week? Really?
Gotta be Karma from last year when I went around bragging that I had all my xmas shopping done by the end of November.
(Note wet cement.. from a pinhole leak right at the base of the tank. Looks like there was some moisture in the tank and it rusted enough inside to fail when pressurized.)
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Today is xmas shopping. Especially for my brother and his family in WIsconsin I need to get something shipped today or tomorrow!
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Woke up early Saturday so dizzy I could hardly stand. Turns out there's a loose stone in my head (who knew?) that's rattling around in my inner ear and affecting my balance. Got some medicine from the doctor, but it knocks me out. So my choices for this weekend have been either sleep or feeling like I just got off a slightly too-long ride on a playground merry-go-round.
On the plus side, it is quite a bit better today than yesterday. This morning the room was not spinning when I woke up like yesterday, and in fact I've found that if I keep my head still then I'm pretty much ok. It is only when I tilt or rotate my head that I get in trouble. I managed to - carefully - do a bit of laundry today and I'm watching TV, but unfortunately the xmas shopping and decorating I'd had planned for this weekend was not to be. Things like driving a car and climbing on ladders don't sound like things I should be attempting at the moment.- Show previous comments 3 more
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@Illusion of Terra the stones in question are calcium carbonate crystals. They apparently are part of structures (otolith organs) in the ear that let your ear detect head orientation. For a variety of reasons they can occasionally become dislodged and interfere with the process. They listed a few - head trauma, disease - but none seemed applicable in my case. I'm old enough that it may just be they're wearing out and breaking down after all these years.
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Just found a place that has "Science Fiction and Fantasy", and "Sword and Sorcery" genres. WTF?? Why bother to have two separate categories if there's no meaningful separation? "Science Fiction" IS NOT the same thing as "Fantasy", and it is annoying as heck to have to dig through the one to find the other!
No name or link because I don't want to risk sending them any clicks.
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"Fantasy" is not-real, by definition. "Science" is real, by definition. If I'm looking for something not-real then I am definitely, logically, absolutely NOT looking for something real, and vice versa. I will certainly allow that bad SF can be considered fantasy, but that's generally the author's fault not the genre. There's also stuff like Sword Art Online that certainly looks like fantasy, even though it is actually science fiction.
That said, as a buyer I can't use a label like "science fiction and fantasy" in any meaningful way. Lumping them together is simply being lazy and/or ignorant. They might as well be just saying, "Here's a book. You figure it out."
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Well, they might have a point. After all, you might need quite a bit of fantasy to believe that something was actually meant to be science fiction
Also, with 'alternative facts' being a thing nowadays, who knows what's 'real'
Seriously though, personally I'd expect quite something different from the 'fantasy' genre than from the 'science fiction' genre. Science fiction being something that while it might seem like magic still being able to be described in some way by natural sciences (and often related to some 'tech stuff'), while fantasy being something that functions on a completely different level (and often related to some flashy 'magic stuff').
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Looks like Spitzer project has set the date to end operations.
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I spent far more time than I should have today at lunch proving to myself that all these balls are the same color.
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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.
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They're talking about my back yard here. Glendale city limits are about 5 miles from my house! I have friends that went to GHS, and I myself went to Glendale Community College after HS. (To get my GED stuff out of the way at a cheaper price than the UC tuition rates, since GCC had a transfer program to UC Irvine where I thought I was headed at the time.)
Actually, this is kind of how it was when I was in HS, now that I think about it. You know, cold-war mentality and all that.
QuoteBased on Brian Ralph’s comics series, this adaptation from co-creators Aron Eli Coleite and Brad Peyton imagines an apocalyptic aftermath where Glendale High School students have carved up East Los Angeles into territorial pockets. The cheerleaders, the 4-H club, and the athletes are just a handful of tribes who’ve staked out their own domain in an irradiated landscape. Adults in this “Daybreak” world are either dead or have become ghoulies, zombie-brained walkers doomed to repeat their last innocuous pre-explosion thoughts for the rest of time.
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Currently I'm researching how long gas stays usable when left sitting in your car's gas tank. I've had my car a full year now and I'm only halfway through my second tankful! (FWIW, according to my calculations I've averaged 372.3mpg over the year!)
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So there's this gadget in the mall down the hill a bit from my office. It consists of 3 poles, atop which sit 3 arrows. The arrows have an LED matrix on the side that displays names of random stars, planets, and spacecraft. The poles spin around their long axis, and the arrows can spin as well, allowing the arrows to point at the named celestial body. Every 30 seconds or so the name changes, and the arrows on their poles do a little whirl which ends up with the arrow pointing in the direction of the celestial body currently displayed thereon. Kind of a mechanical performance-art thing.
Today I happened to be wearing my InSight hat (I have many hats
) and noticed as I walked by that one of the arrows was pointing at the InSight spacecraft (currently on the Martian surface), so I took a pic. The sun angle was wrong so I had to fiddle with the pic to make the names on the sides of the arrows visible and it turned the whole pic a little weird. But here you go:
(my cap ==>
)
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I got into the cap habit because my commute is straight into the sun both on the way to and from work and that sun visor thingy in cars always just annoys me without being terribly useful. The visor on a cap I'm wearing is easily positioned while driving so it works a lot better for me. (The other part of it is I'm also nearsighted, so I need glasses for driving, but I'm too cheap to get 2 sets of prescription glasses, one sun- for sunny days and one normal for not-sun.
)
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Moderately excited to hear about a feature-length Red Dwarf movie...
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I kind of did the same with Stargate. The first couple/few seasons were ok, but it succumbed to the mindset that said every season had to be "better" than the last and eventually went off the rails entirely. By the time the Ori came along I had pretty much stopped watching.
As for embarrassing media outlets, at least you don't have FOX.
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Setting up a satellite link in the parking lot at work for the Great Shakeout (earthquake) test. So if the zombie apocalypse comes I'll still be able to get to AF on my phone.
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Weird.. today I've had several people ask me if my car is ok, or if I'm worried about it.
Ok, rewind a bit for some recent local history. Over the past couple days my area has had some very dry, warm, high-velocity winds come through. In the past these sorts of conditions have caused power lines to get knocked down into dry brush and the winds whip up the resulting fire(s) into extremely dangerous wildfires. Fires, evacuations, and/or electricity outages have been a hot topic of conversation around here for the past couple days. The power companies' web sites have hundreds of thousand of customers in the area on notice for potentially having their power cut off, either by the power company itself, ostensibly for preventing downed power lines from starting said fires, or by the fires and wind taking out the power distribution lines.
So back to the strange question. At first I was like, "huh?". Did I not get a memo or something? Did I park somewhere I shouldn't have? Did they see my car on the news get run over or pushed off the road by a fire department bulldozer? (Sometimes this happens when the fire department needs to get access to a fire and their trucks or other firefighting gear is blocked by cars parked on narrow streets.)
In a word, no. Apparently people are concerned that people like me with electric vehicles might have trouble evacuating if they have to because of the power outages that tend to accompany the fires.
Again, "huh??", but with a different tone of voice this time. Thanks for the concern, but of all the stupid things to worry about that's .... not a problem.
First of all, I don't even have an EV. I have a pluggable hybrid. I do have an electric motor (or three) and batteries, and a charging socket on one side of the car. I also have the usual slot for gas (petrol for you crazy furriners) on the other side, connected to a gas tank and a somewhat normal internal combustion engine. Not worried at all here. I'm covered either way.
Second, if the power is out then gas cars would have exactly the same problem as pure EVs because gas station pumps run on electricity. No electricity, no charging (duh), but also no gas. I've actually had this problem before with my old (gas) car. In fact, standard operating procedure around here is if you hear that high winds or dry/dangerous fire conditions are in the forecast then stop at the gas station on your way home from work and top off the tank, just in case.
Third, that typically doesn't matter because gas or electrons, there's always going to be something left in the "tank". (Unless you're one of those people who is always running on "Empty", but that's a whole other discussion.) When the police/fire department comes pounding on your door and tells you to evacuate then you just get in your car and leave with what you have. Gas or electric doesn't enter into it any more than the color of your socks.
(That said, even if you're one of those "I'm not out of gas the car is still moving" people, chances are better your electric car will be at least somewhat charged. More than when you parked it anyway. Unlike a gas car, you can "refuel" an EV at home by plugging it in, and most take only a few hours at most to fully recharge. Assuming you're not so extremely lazy that you can't even be bothered to plug in your car when you park it in your garage, chances are that by the time the power goes out and/or you have to evacuate you'll have at least a partial charge on your EV. A gas car's gas gauge of course would still be on "E", and the nearby gas station that's out of power is not going to be able to help.)
There is one actual problem with gas cars however. It has even been reported on the local news, and warned about at press conferences with the fire department spokespeople. Sometimes when people wait a bit too long to evacuate there's so much smoke in the air that it can clog the air filter and cause a car to stall. Cars have to breathe too you know. At least gas cars that rely on oxygen in the air for combustion do. EV cars obviously don't have this problem. (And again, don't worry about me.. my hybrid has an EV-only mode that's only a button-push away.)
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Interesting, never knew people would think of something like that just because someone has a (semi-)electric car. Probably seems still unusual for them?
If Tesla brings out its 1 million miles battery out and graphene batteries really turn out to be all they are supposed to be (allegedly there already are car batteries that charge over 30x fater and go over 500 miles with one charge), or any other superior battery type, most gas cars will quickly become a thing of the past anyway. -
Apparently there was a "news" story citing losing electricity during an emergency as one of the drawbacks of EVs. Probably FOX.. they're always pushing the "burn, baby, burn", anti-climate agenda.
And yes, EVs are the future. Not only do they make city planning SOOO much easier, their TCO is much lower because there's none of the complicated or fiddly mechanical bits like crankshafts, timing belts, or transmissions to go bad. The writing is on the wall. Daimler ("Mercedes") has already announced that they're not going to develop their internal combustion engines any longer. Going forward all their R&D is going into electric drive trains, and eventually all their cars will be exclusively electric. Even planes will be electric in a few decades.
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I just love coffee so much. >just so long as it's super, super sweet<
