The Official Status Thread
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Status: Boring meetings with people bloviating about things they barely understand. Stayed up way too late, so that doesn't help either.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
Status: Boring meetings with people bloviating about things they barely understand. Stayed up way too late, so that doesn't help either.
I usually push the chair way way down and blend in the background and a catch a quick 5 minute nap. It has to be a meeting with at least ten people for this to work though.
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@stillwater That would be too obvious. I've gotten pretty good about just putting my mind in neutral and letting it idle though.
The worst part is that they were discussing things that actually matter, just in a very verbose, rambling, ineffective way.
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@blakeyrat said in The Official Status Thread:
@pie_flavor said in The Official Status Thread:
they'll remove Control Panel.
You really are young.
The only reason they removed the Windows 3 version of the Fonts control panel in Vista is because it wouldn't run on a 64-bit CPU.
That said, Microsoft has removed both Briefcase (also back in Vista, IIRC) and Home Group, so maybe it's a "new Microsoft". We'll see.
I don't think briefcases were so much removed as never made it into the NT line in the first place.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
The worst part is that they were discussing things that actually matter, just in a very verbose, rambling, ineffective way.
This is way worse than discussing completely useless things. You at least know you can zone out fully unlike your situation.
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@Weng said in The Official Status Thread:
I don't think briefcases were so much removed as never made it into the NT line in the first place.
I'm 87% sure Windows 2000 and XP still had briefcases. But not 100% sure.
A lot of times Microsoft will just kind of hide things in the UI instead of removing them. Like that Windows 3.x Fonts control panel. It wasn't removed, just no links to it were put in accessible locations.
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@blakeyrat said in The Official Status Thread:
I'm 87% sure Windows 2000 and XP still had briefcases. But not 100% sure.
7 had Briefcase too. Either 8 or 10 removed it.
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@loopback0 According to the wiki, it's still around but requires hacks to access:
The Windows Briefcase was introduced in Windows 95[1] and was deprecated (although not removed) in Windows 8 and completely disabled (but still present and accessible via modification of the Windows Registry) from Windows 10.[2][3]
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Status: So I stopped by the performance shop I use yesterday to talk about some supporting modifications to add about 70 wheel horsepower to my aftermarket-supercharged car. I was estimating about $2k for the parts, and maybe $1k for the tune and labor. The goal here would be to breathe some new life into the car while the next generation depreciates in value to a more affordable price over, say, the next 3-5 years.
While those numbers weren't that far off, since my car has well over 100k miles, they recommended I beef up the valvetrain at the same time, as the original parts have likely fatigued over the years and adding a lot of power can be risky at that point. Add another $1k for rocker arms, valve springs, and pushrods, and several more hours of labor. Suddenly, a $3k job turned into a $5k job. They also warned me that risks are higher the older the powertrain gets, and told me that my car was actually their highest-mileage supercharged car for that make/model, which is kind of nifty, but also a little unsettling. (Not that they had a lot of failures, but most of their customers don't daily drive their cars and/or get rid of them sooner.)
With this quote in hand, it was time to do some research, bearing in mind that $5k is a significant fraction of the price of a new crate engine ($8-10k plus install).
What if I were to outright buy the car I wanted next today? I hop on the manufacturer's website, build a lightly-optioned one and come out to $65k plus taxes and fees. Yikes. Even with $15k trade-in on my current car, that's a $50k loan (assuming taxes and fees are paid out of pocket, which are not insignificant to begin with). They also offered me a generous 9.9% APR for 60 months. I
'ed and then found out my bank would offer me a loan at less than half that interest rate for a used car.Okay, so new is out of the question. Let's see if there are slightly used ones. The cheapest is a model year 2017 with < 10k miles for $55k. That's better, and illustrates the power of depreciation. With a $15k trade-in, that's a $40k loan, plus taxes and fees. Not terrible, but not great either.
Now, let's assume that my $15k trade-in dwindles to $10k N years from now, and $55k for a used one comes down to $45k. If I were to go ahead with these modifications at $5k and buy in year N, I'd basically be no worse off than if I were to buy used today. And if the depreciation is even steeper, all the better.
Maybe expensive maintenance on the paid-off car ain't so bad after all.
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@Groaner said in The Official Status Thread:
Maybe expensive maintenance on the paid-off car ain't so bad after all.
This was my conclusion as well. My somewhat-ancient pickup truck cost me $10K in repairs last year, which seems like a ton of money until I look at the prices of new pickups and the amount of maintenance issues the new ones have.
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@mott555 said in The Official Status Thread:
@Groaner said in The Official Status Thread:
Maybe expensive maintenance on the paid-off car ain't so bad after all.
This was my conclusion as well. My somewhat-ancient pickup truck cost me $10K in repairs last year, which seems like a ton of money until I look at the prices of new pickups and the amount of maintenance issues the new ones have.
Given that it's very easy to spend $50-70k on a new diesel pickup, can't say I blame you.
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@Groaner Pushrods? LS?
What kinda blower?
And yeah, life in the high performance high miles club is rough. IMO the speed shop guys are too angsty about mileage. Modern metallurgy is pretty fucking good.
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@Weng said in The Official Status Thread:
@Groaner Pushrods? LS?
Good guess! Specifically, an L99.
What kinda blower?
Edelbrock E-Force, TVS2300 rotors with 5.5 psi at redline.
And yeah, life in the high performance high miles club is rough. IMO the speed shop guys are too angsty about mileage. Modern metallurgy is pretty fucking good.
The car has seen ~100 passes down the dragstrip at 100+ whp over stock (in addition to ~60k miles boosted), so I have a feeling things are pretty solid at current power levels. The only thing I've had to replace so far was the differential, which was giving me driveline vibration at high speeds at WOT, and produced a cup of metal sand when we changed the fluid at 110k miles.
I'm debating a pulley change as well, but I don't want to go above 7-8psi if I do, as that's when people seem to start having problems. It's also possible that the planned mods (basically, air path bolt-ons) may not require touching the pulley, depending on how much restriction they add or remove.
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Status: For this hack day, I decided to see if I could improve our support for $proprietary_language_1, by giving you the ability to find references to variables.
I think... I might be dying.
IVsSimpleLibrary2is apparently the best way to do this thing, but it's very C++ish, and I cant find any documentation saying there's a new way to do this. My mind is breaking. Breaking. Breaking. Brea
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@Groaner If you don't have an interference cam (a quick shufti around the Internet only gives me the usual ignorant Chevy Guy bullshit where they misunderstand the term, I hate working on SBCs for this reason), I'd skip the valvetrain and leave it until either:
- Something breaks
- You end up hitting valve float during the tune.
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status: whoever the motherfucker who put the switch backwards I want to smack with a clue bat so hard right now.
Power supply went out partially and couldn't tell why half the network was kinda working.
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@Weng said in The Official Status Thread:
@Groaner If you don't have an interference cam (a quick shufti around the Internet only gives me the usual ignorant Chevy Guy bullshit where they misunderstand the term, I hate working on SBCs for this reason), I'd skip the valvetrain and leave it until either:
- Something breaks
- You end up hitting valve float during the tune.
That term's a new one to me. I can only find results for "interference engine," which from what I can tell means belt-driven and subject to PTV if the belt breaks. That shouldn't be an issue. Now, this engine does have variable valve timing, in the form of a cam phaser that allows 52 degrees of travel - is that what you were after?
The only concern I'd have about waiting for something to break is if it turns into major engine damage. But I do like the idea of looking for valve float. I'd think that if the springs were already suspect, wouldn't we be able to detect that on a dyno even in my current configuration? Maybe I'll ask about that.
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Status: So, our school's request for 350,000€ was granted, this means a migration away from our current shit software and some hardware upgrades (switches, projectors, some new PCs,...).
My school has several buildings and around 500 PCs which means that the migration will take a bit of time. Would've been great if we had been able to use the full six weeks of summer holidays for that, but the grant was a bit late. Thus the new plan was for the migration of one house in the last two weeks and then a solling migration for the next months. Not ideal but we have to spend that money until year's end.
So, everyone is now in the process of returning to school and we were waiting on a status update from our IT company who are supposed to do the migration.
It seems that the agency responsible for signing the contract and handing out the money was sitting on their asses the last weeks. As a result, nothing has been done.
Great. :(
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Status: Apparently my eBay account was pwned. Probably. Maybe. No suspicious activity (that I can see, they may have already reversed it) is showing.
It's Ok. I'll just tack on an extra ! at the end...
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ESO is free-to-play for the next 6 days. It's a 90 GB download.
The disk my game library is on only has 71 GB free.
Steam says that over my crappy network connection it will take almost 21 days to download.:(
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@HardwareGeek What kind of network is this? That seems super slow.
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Status: I believe I've beaten @Polygeekery in terms of drawing @blakeyrat's ire.
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Status
fucking Wordpress.com
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@stillwater said in The Official Status Thread:
That seems super slow.
It makes Milwaukee PC look speedy.
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We need the email address you want to use as the 'from' address for these notifications
Please use WTF Business Customer Services
This one? WTF Business Customer Services<wtfbusines@globalmega.wtf>
The address is misspelt BTW
We didn't think to check thatIt's a customer facing email address
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Status:Aluminium is the worst of the worst.
Work wanted plugs in an aluminium prototype part welded and asked if I could TIG it. I've done loads of mild steel and stainless, how hard could it be?
First try looked great but every weld was porous at 40PSI. Grind and try again and 1 leak. Next attempt, 1 leak...but in a different place. And so on.
It's now about 50% filler rod but the sodding thing has finally stopped leaking. Never again.
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@Cursorkeys said in The Official Status Thread:
Aluminium is the worst of the worst.
I'm told that titanium is worse than that, in that it can't even be safely welded in nitrogen and needs argon…
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@Lorne-Kates said in The Official Status Thread:
Status
fucking Wordpress.com
Hope you're using protection
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@loopback0
Do you know how much extra cost that lastsadds to the e-mail address? IT managers have much more important priorities for their monetary spending than vanity e-mail addresses.
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@JazzyJosh said in The Official Status Thread:
That reminds me of my grandfather-in-law's handwriting. Beautiful, and totally illegible even if you knew what it said.
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@Cursorkeys said in The Official Status Thread:
Status:Aluminium is the worst of the worst.
Work wanted plugs in an aluminium prototype part welded and asked if I could TIG it. I've done loads of mild steel and stainless, how hard could it be?
First try looked great but every weld was porous at 40PSI. Grind and try again and 1 leak. Next attempt, 1 leak...but in a different place. And so on.
It's now about 50% filler rod but the sodding thing has finally stopped leaking. Never again.You should use aluminum instead.
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@Cursorkeys said in The Official Status Thread:
Status:Aluminium is the worst of the worst.
Work wanted plugs in an aluminium prototype part welded and asked if I could TIG it. I've done loads of mild steel and stainless, how hard could it be?
First try looked great but every weld was porous at 40PSI. Grind and try again and 1 leak. Next attempt, 1 leak...but in a different place. And so on.
It's now about 50% filler rod but the sodding thing has finally stopped leaking. Never again.I am SO not looking forward to learning to weld aluminum. Especially because the only purpose I have for welded aluminum is fluid containment.
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@Cursorkeys said in The Official Status Thread:
Status:Aluminium is the worst of the worst.
Work wanted plugs in an aluminium prototype part welded and asked if I could TIG it. I've done loads of mild steel and stainless, how hard could it be?
First try looked great but every weld was porous at 40PSI. Grind and try again and 1 leak. Next attempt, 1 leak...but in a different place. And so on.
It's now about 50% filler rod but the sodding thing has finally stopped leaking. Never again.I recently bought a cheap multiprocess welder. It can do stick, TIG, and plasma cutting, although I initially bought it just for the stick welder. Then I did some research on aluminum and TIG because I could find some things to do with it, and found that you are supposed to use AC TIG on aluminum but my machine is DC-only. Some guys say it can be done but it's tricky.
Am I TRWTF if I go ahead and try to learn DC TIG welding on aluminum, having never used a TIG before? (I do have lots of oxyfuel welding experience, which apparently is also weird and possibly a WTF.)
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@mott555 get some scrap steel and make yourself some abstract art to get a feel for how TIG should go. DC TIG on aluminum will be... Not that. It's doable, but it's a fight.
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Status: I've never had a black dot for the status of my performance & Health....
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During luggage drop-off: the flight is a bit late, expect a 10min delay.
At the gate, 5minutes before original departure time: plane arrives.
Filed under: #optimisim
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@Tsaukpaetra You do not have a computer and all other conditions are vacuously satisfied.
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@cvi said in The Official Status Thread:
optimisim
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@pie_flavor mobile. :-(
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@pie_flavor It's a simulation of optimism
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@hungrier Sounds like We Happy Few.
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Status: updating UEFI.
C'mon, why does it take so long! I swear if the power goes out I'm gonna be upset.
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@anonymous234 maybe just a little flicker? slight brownout? how hot is it out there?
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@Gribnit Too late, it rebooted and works just fine!
Hopefully no more random black screens now, but the audio is still not working.
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@anonymous234 said in The Official Status Thread:
the audio is still not working.
You'll need to boot up DOS and load the SoundBlaster16 driver to set the IRQ from 3 to 5 first.
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@mott555 said in The Official Status Thread:
Am I TRWTF if I go ahead and try to learn DC TIG welding on aluminum, having never used a TIG before? (I do have lots of oxyfuel welding experience, which apparently is also weird and possibly a WTF.)
I would say DCEN seems possible but your material is going to have to be ridiculously clean. I'd be wiping the filler rod as well as the work with acetone.
I found I was having to use up to 50% cleaning action on material I thought was cleaner that I'd normally get stainless for TIG. I don't think I used less than about 5% cleaning even on finish passes.
I started on TIG with thin wall stainless (because that's the only stock I had). Looking back I don't think that was a bad idea, you learn power control quickly because otherwise you just blow though and stainless puddles are very well behaved. Plus you have to get it cleaner than mild steel so it makes mild seem really easy when you try some of that.
I'd love to try oxyfuel, I've only used it for heating things and one very brief go with cutting. Cutting was fun.
Edit: Aluminium has a really fun property that would be even more fun on DCEN, if you accidentally stick your tungsten in the weld pool it immediately crawls up and coats the end of the tungsten with aluminium and then proceeds to blow clouds of aluminium oxide and soot into the work. I found lanthanated tungstens work better than ceriated too...when you aren't dipping them
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@Tsaukpaetra I'll need to RMA this ASRock piece of crap is what I will.
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Blizzard is making new beakman episodes!
