So let me get this straight… Microsoft demanded all PC manufactures change their keyboards to add a new key that is only useful in Windows (at a considerable cost to manufacturers), and now that key doesn’t do anything? No wait, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Don’t you just hate spell-checkers changing your words?

I’m certainly not the type to get out on a bike and ride 50 miles a day, but on the other hand despite spending a lot of time at the computer I also spend a lot of time working on projects and moving around. Just this week I started cutting up the steel to build a new utility trailer so I certainly move around a lot, but my body still hates me.

I wish this helped me, but my back always starts hurting when I go for walks… although it’s more my middle-back rather than lower. I try to get in a 30-minute walk at least twice a week, plus of course things like going to the grocery store and mowing the lawn add a lot of time. Never seems to be enough to help though.

Funny, I try to block anyone in my department that wants to purchase a Lenovo. My most recent experiences with them have been a faulty battery driver that was known online for at least six months before it was brought to my attention that the model I purchased for someone (their choice) refused to recharge, and Lenovo continued to deny any problems on their side… We returned the laptop as unusable because the only way to charge it was to boot into the BIOS screen. The last time I dealt with them, the corporate rep I worked with was right on top of emails and phone calls until we made a purchase, then refused to answer my contacts after that. After a month of trying to get in touch with him I finally called the main line, and the person I spoke with said “oh he just walked by my desk, let me grab him”. The excuse I was given was that he had been too busy to respond.

Basically every time I’ve been forced to purchase a Lenovo for someone, there has been zero support provided and half of them had to be returned. Granted, I haven’t bought any since COVID but I really hope I never have to deal with them again.

I’m still trying to figure how anyone (including Musk) ever thought he was a genius? Like ok so he has a lot of money that he throws at interesting problems, and those problems attract actual geniuses to solve, but what has Musk himself ever done except be an employer? It reminds me of all the talk about how Edison was supposed to be a genius, when the reality was that he ran a sweatshop to steal other people’s hard work.

Nice, thanks for the link. I might have to grab a couple to see what else I can do with them.

Sorry, yes! I’ve got my head in another non-electronics project right now and was thinking of the wrong thing.

We’ve been seeing these electronic tags on sale items at Walmart for the past few years. It’s been a few months since the last time we were in the store, but last weekend we noticed ALL items now had small two-color OLED price tags on them. I don’t know if that means we’re just lucky enough to be one of the first to get the new tech, or that the chain had already started rolling them out well before the article, but they’re definitely out there. I’d actually love to get ahold of some just to play with them, although seeing the prices of OLEDs on ebay makes me wonder how any store is saving money by using them.

There’s also the issue of very little (if any) used EVs on the market, and in an affordable range. Most people are looking for a reliable used car for around $1000-$2000 US, and the cheapest EV I have seen is around $7500. And there’s always the question of what condition the batteries are in – if you had to replace all the batteries in a used EV then you easily doubled the cost of it. Fortunately it seems like Tesla is the only manufacturer asinine enough to seal their batteries, other manufactures allow replacement of individual cells which will really help in the used market.

Oh I came clean. We were actually trying to figure out HOW it happened so we could try and prevent the same issue in the future.

How many times can the same person post the same damn question in a ten-minute period? Seriously, you had to post that other question four times with very slight changes in wording? Just ask your shit ONCE and be done with it.

Worst thing in the office place was when some idiot left their window open in the middle of Winter, temps fell below 0F with high winds, and froze the 2" sprinkler pipes running over their office. Flooded most of the 2nd floor then started running through and raining out onto the 1st floor (and then into the basement). And it happened during covid lock-downs so it was fortunate anyone was even in the building to report it.

My own personal oopsie was checking network cabling in a small room, bent over to check things low and then wandered out to check elsewhere… Then noticed there was a LOT of commotion on the sales floor. Turns out I hit the power switch on one of the phone cabinets with my ass and shut down half the phone lines.

The ZX81 wasn’t too terrible, and I was also using Apple ][ systems at school at the same time. I think the worst part was the small size, but at least it still had a slight amount of feedback, and you could actually navigate it at a decent speed. Personally I would rate the idea of typing on a phone screen as the absolute worst thing I’ve ever tried to use.

Sounds like the term used by Amazon? I picked up eight 18TB “renewed” drives that have been in constant use for over a year now under a ZFS filesystem. Not a single error yet and the pool is about half full. At the time I bought them, they were about $100 cheaper (each) than brand new drives so that saved me quite a bit of money, but they were also a fairly new line of drives so there couldn’t have been much previous use on them anyway.

Y2K would like to have a word…

Interesting, I’ve never seen something like that!

Well yeah, but oddly some people are offended by it. Like, do you not know how to eat sweet corn?

If there’s a stick of butter on the table, an ear of corn will get rolled right across the top. How’s that for efficiency? 😆

There are no limits to anything you’ve mentioned, it seems more like you’re just ready to give up on life?

Career changes can come at any time, the older you get, the more knowledge you have, and the easier it is to do something else unless you wasted your whole life playing video games. Look at the things you’ve learned through hobbies, surely something would apply to a job?

Why do you think a healthy love life would ever end? I’ve known many people who are great-grandparents, lost their partner, and met up with others who are in the same position. Now they have two huge families instead of one. If you can’t get past thinking about sex, they make lubricants specifically for older people.

What do you mean by an active friend circle? Everyone changes their activities as the have a family and grow older. You adjust what you do as the body can’t keep up. That doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, it just means you find new things that you enjoy. Hell some lady set a record for parachuting at the age of 104 last year, and the guy she took the record from got back out a couple weeks ago and set a new record (he’s now 106). If you think you’re ready to roll over and die in your 50’s then you’re not even trying.

Quite frankly I’m in my mid-50’s. In the past year I actually decided to look at where I’m at for retirement because I intend to enjoy the hell out of it. Doing a little shuffling of my finances to try to boost some of my funds over the next 10-15 years, but otherwise I feel like I’m in good shape to kick back, do some traveling, and work on a bunch of projects. Retirement just means you get to start playing without work getting in the way. Even before then, I’m planning on building a trailer this Summer and cleaning up the motorcycle so I can get out and start riding again soon. There’s no such thing as life being “over” before you actually die.

Interesting, I wonder where I got that from? Ah well, thanks for the update.