efaardvark

Weather was great today so I went for a short hike at lunch. All the recent rain is still draining from the watershed area making the Arroyo Seco not so seco..

Which screen? The phone pic (upper) is a BIOS screen. The lower one with “cachyOS” is the install screen for the OS. The info in that window is sort of a system summary. This is a desktop system. They generally take more power so I would not expect the same CPU to be in a laptop. Not impossible I guess.

Just started the 3ep test on Kunon the Sorcerer Can See. so far.. "meh"

There's pictures in a book I have here on herbal remedies but of course a google search on "Calendula" is the newfangled way to do it. Most plants from the store will also have the species name on a tag somewhere nearby. If it says "Calendula" then you're ok. Anything else I'd consider sus.

Yes. Especially at today's prices! Getting a black screen or letting the magic smoke out would have been rather traumatic. This one had better keep me going for quite a while too. I did have one scare. The mb has 4 memory slots labeled A1, A2, B1, and B2. All my life I've started counting at "1". My alphabet goes, "A", then "B", etc. So of course this motherboard requires the memory to be put in slots A2 and B2 first. If you don't then it doesn't boot. Fortunately this motherboard also has an LED boot code diagnostic and the boot code was (paraphrasing) "you put the RAM in the wrong slots, dummy". At least it was a simple fix.

This topic always reminds me of that Costco bit in Idiocracy. Carry on....

Dog person here. As long as they're not the smaller breeds. I want to hear a bark, not a yap. I do get along with cats too - for the most part anyway - but they're too anti-social for me to keep one as a pet. Dogs are more communicative and cooperative.

I found some baby ghasts! This is the first time I've seen any since they were added to the game. I need to read up on the care and feeding before I do anything with them. (I also ran out of time.)

I've heard of several types of "marigolds" that are really different species with different effects on people. I think "Calendula" are probably safe. Those are actually edible by people and the petals are used in salads and anti-inflammatory herbal medicines for sore throats and digestion problems so probably safe for cats as well. I don't know for sure about all the other types but I've heard the ones called "French" or "garden" marigolds with bunchy, multilayered petals is slightly toxic to people. They'll give you an upset stomach but won't kill you. There's also a "bog" marigold that likes water and has thicker leaves. That one can cause diarrhea and ulcers if eaten by people and the sap can actually cause blisters if it gets on your skin. These ones you don't even want around people!

Finally got my new computer built and an OS installed.

I finally(!) got my new AM5 system put together and booting. It's been just a pile of parts in boxes in the living room for a couple of weeks now while I waited for some misc parts (fans, a new mouse, a HDMI cable, etc.) to arrive and some free time to devote to the project. But as of yesterday everything was here so today I put it together and got it booting to the BIOS. I'm going to test it out tonight and tomorrow but I'm not sure what its final form will be. (At this point I haven't even checked to see if I have the latest version of the BIOS on the mb.) I've got CachyOS installing at the moment but I might try a few different distros before I settle on anything.

For lunch I had lemon garlic chicken and some corn chips. And a cinnamon apple cookie for dessert.

There was quite a bit of rain here during the week but today it's back to mostly sunny．Still cool though．The thermometer says 62F but there's a strong breeze that pulls the "feels like" temp down to 57F/14C. Yesterday after the clouds cleared you could see a bit of white on the hilltops but that looks like it's gone today. Supposed to get down to the low 40s (~5C) tonight. Good sleeping weather.

Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan for rendering! Finally! This means a rocky road ahead for mods like Iris and the shaders they support. Maybe they'll even go away entirely. But transitioning to Vulkan means modern, common code on all the major platforms for accessing modern GPU hardware. It also (probably) means performance boosts and the ability to do things like shaders and ray-tracing in the vanilla game! Virtually all of the client-side mods that I use - such as Iris, Sodium, and Distant Horizons - are for performance and graphics enhancements. This would at least clear a path to moving most or all of those into vanilla. MSFT / Mojang are talking to the modding community to get their feedback on the transition too so that's a very good sign as well. https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/another-step-towards-vibrant-visuals-for-java-edition

Welcome!

Welcome!

Got cold here as the front moved in! It was 66F this morning before it started to rain. It is now 47F. Weather people say the snow level might get down to 3500' too. I'm a bit lower at 1800' but the tops of the nearby hills less than a mile away are at around 5000'. Might see some snow-capped peaks during tomorrow's commute to work.

Having been alive and a techie for the past couple decades I of course have a large number of various vintages of USB cables. Some of them are of dubious manufacture, doing data but not power or power but not data. So I finally went and bought a USB cable tester. This one reports the info in the cables’ eMarker chip (if any) but it also claims to actually test the cable. We’ll see. It should at least help me triage the rats nest of cables that I have and tell me which ones to get rid of.

I should have done that yesterday. It's raining here today.. not the sort of weather for grocery runs.

I do too. Thanks for the concern. I'm not too worried. Around here we have a system of debris basins to catch mudflows and storm channels to direct runoff from rain safely towards the sea. The rain just started last night / early this morning and so far isn't too bad. For now I think we're ok. The channels are flowing but flooding is unlikely to happen from just a day or two of rain. If the rain intensifies however, or lasts for a week or two, then things might get sketchy. Lately the city has been pretty good about keeping the basins and channels clear but flood control work crews can't safely get in to do maintenance and clear debris while it is raining and this storm is supposed to last for a bit. The main concern is that the fire has removed vegetation from the hillsides where the fire burned and the rain will create the conditions for mudslides that can overflow the debris basins and block the channels resulting in flooding. Worth a PSA to keep everyone alert and aware but not much of a cause for concern. Not yet anyway.

Welcome! GitS is one of my favorites too.

A bit overcast today but not bad. Yet. Got this PSA yesterday. (I’m ~5 miles from the Eaton Canyon burn area.) Sounds like it might rain a bit tonight..

I liked the whole Natsume series. That's unusual for me. Usually by the 2nd or 3rd season the deja vu starts to kick in and I lose interest.