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ludi wrote:

a huge factor

I've been following/enjoying this discussion. But, as is too often the case, I tend to disagree with the consensus brewing (pardon the pun). My strategy has always been to buy a brand new car, or at worst, one that's just off a short-term lease that comes with an outrageously long warranty. I have several friends who have gone the opposite way, buying (occasionally getting free) beat out old cars, or well worn used cars. Over ~30 years at 50-100k (think-o, I meant) 15-25k mi/yr, I've spend less (not including all of full collision insurance, but definitely including towing and repair costs) on cars than they have with either of those strategies. Plus, newer cars tend to be safer. Older cars can be a great/fun hobby if you have a garage, lift, and the right tools, and especially the time. But $100 -$200 per hour for a good mechanic plus ridiculous prices for parts, I just don't see it as a win.

Leasing, i.e., CaaS (Cars as a Service) still doesn't make (economic) sense to me, but there are some advantages.

MarkG509 wrote:

Over ~30 years at 50-100k mi/yr, I've spend less (not including all of full collision insurance, but definitely including towing and repair costs) on cars than they have with either of those strategies.

Unless you typo'd your mileage in a grand fashion, that's an atypical usage rate and it pretty much requires driving new or nearly new vehicles -- who has time to learn about, say, flushing a cooling system after spending 3+ hours on the road every day?

ludi wrote:

flushing a cooling system

Cooling and brake systems, full flush every 3 - 4 years. New battery, whether there's any indication of need or not, every 5 years. Full tranny flush and filter depends on whether the fluid is full synthetic or not. Preventative maintenance is good.

But, yeah, sorry, that was a crazy think-o on the miles (been a tough day). I'll edit above too, more like 15-25k/year.

My wife and I have spent 5 hours after work the last 2 days doing household repairs (mostly scraping and painting).

Today is jello shots and bbq. Such a nice chnage.

What about BBQ sauce Jell-O shots? Get some flavorless gelatin, add some vodka and a little Sweet Baby Ray's for flavor. NOM NOM

It looks like I'm going to have to install Windows 7 on my computer soon. Debian 8 has a kernel version that doesn't support the bug fix I need to play any game on it without crashing.

DrDominodog51 wrote:

It looks like I'm going to have to install Windows 7 on my computer soon. Debian 8 has a kernel version that doesn't support the bug fix I need to play any game on it without crashing.

Care to elaborate on that? There's probably a workaround, the question is how painful it will be to implement...

just brew it! wrote:

DrDominodog51 wrote:

It looks like I'm going to have to install Windows 7 on my computer soon. Debian 8 has a kernel version that doesn't support the bug fix I need to play any game on it without crashing.

Care to elaborate on that? There's probably a workaround, the question is how painful it will be to implement...

Intel DRM keeps on getting stuck on a render ring. I probably would end up installing Windows 7 on my hard drive even if this bug didn't exist because some of my games are DX only.

Edit: I just finished installing Windows 7 Pro on a secondary 2.5" drive that I salvaged from a friend's broken laptop. I'm glad I bought this Windows key from a (former) Microsoft employee for cheap a few years ago.

Edit 2: New record! I managed to f*** something up with the drivers in less than 7 hours. Now I remember why I like Linux so much. I guess I'm just going to do a reinstall and possibly upgrade to 10 Pro.

Quote of the day:

I don't know how I got all these viruses. All I did was download Google.

We just gave this man his new work laptop yesterday. Today it has Conduit, AnyProtect, and an assortment of other crapware.

MaxTheLimit wrote:

Quote of the day:

I don't know how I got all these viruses. All I did was download Google.

We just gave this man his new work laptop yesterday. Today it has Conduit, AnyProtect, and an assortment of other crapware.

At my last job we had a guy who let his son (who was in middle school IIRC) use his work laptop in the evenings. All I can say is, that kid was most defnitely NOT just using it to do his homework!

cheap car is not always the best way to go. Something I couldn't do myself is replace struts/springs on the front end and realign, so I just paid someone $700 (including parts) to do it.

derFunkenstein wrote:

cheap car is not always the best way to go. Something I couldn't do myself is replace struts/springs on the front end and realign, so I just paid someone $700 (including parts) to do it.

Long ago, I helped a friend do a front-end struts job on his Honda, I'm guessing it was a mid-to-late 70's model. We were eventually successful, but it was a real pain.

MarkG509 wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

cheap car is not always the best way to go. Something I couldn't do myself is replace struts/springs on the front end and realign, so I just paid someone $700 (including parts) to do it.

Long ago, I helped a friend do a front-end struts job on his Honda, I'm guessing it was a mid-to-late 70's model. We were eventually successful, but it was a real pain.

On the other hand, it seems like for every story I hear like this, there's someone who barely maintained their car and got good life out of it. My dad's coworker bought a Subaru (Impreza?) for a few grand a while back, almost completely neglected the maintenance, and got it from 100K to 200K. Definitely not common for it to go that well though.

Of course, I don't have a huge budget here, so I have to get a cheap, older car.

MarkG509 wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

cheap car is not always the best way to go. Something I couldn't do myself is replace struts/springs on the front end and realign, so I just paid someone $700 (including parts) to do it.

Long ago, I helped a friend do a front-end struts job on his Honda, I'm guessing it was a mid-to-late 70's model. We were eventually successful, but it was a real pain.

These days, if you have a mainstream model like a Civic or a Corolla, you can typically buy quick-strut kits for $350 or less off eBay. That saves the trouble of buying all the replacement bushings and then compressing the springs.

I got the quick struts from Napa for $300+tax (got a discount through a friend, they normally sell for $350), had to get a tire replaced because it was cupped (which was another $100, and I knew it was bad), and paid a garage $200 for the labor, plus another $75 for the front end alignment since the one tire was cupped so badly on the inside. After calling around and getting quotes of $700 before the tire and alignment, I jumped on this one. Hopefully this work will keep it on the road for a while. I drive so infrequently, but when I need to drive my 1998 Contour, I need to drive it.

Should have explained better, I felt like $600 for the actual work plus replacing the tire was a good deal.

ludi wrote:

compressing the springs

One of 'em let go before we had it under control. One of us very nearly lost something important. The bang from the spring compressor letting go was loud enough that his wife came running out, sure that Armageddon had commenced. Prior to that 'event', I think she'd have believed (reality no longer mattered/applied) that there was nothing my friend and I, working together, could not have accomplished.

Years later, mid-to-late-90's, this same guy (still married to the same wife who no longer liked me) bought my 1980.5 Fiat Spyder (first model they made with fuel injection), which always ran perfectly for me (~100k mi), never once even hiccuped. Though it needed a new ignition key receiver in the dash about every 30k miles, I kept breaking off the window-crank handles every year or so, and somehow, cranking the stereo I added (Blaupunkt) would caused the brake light bulbs to blow out (don't ask, I have no clue, but it was easily repeatable). They got a good month or two out if it before it started having problems, and took it to a mechanic that was clueless about Fiats. German cars (I've owned 3), you threaten with a sledge hammer; Italian cars (one was enough), you have to cajole to tell you what's wrong

I'd guess that the stereo problem was back EMF into the car's electrical system, or some similar phenomenon that big power supply capacitors would've solved.

I don't recommend buying/selling cars to friends or family. When the car inevitably has problems, it can create hard feelings. The exception would be if the car was free.

The Egg wrote:

it can create hard feelings.

It definitely did, I'll never do that again - just not worth it.

My previous car, I really wanted to take to a crusher. I only found one place that would actually crush it while I watched (somewhere in The Bronx, NY). Too inconvenient, so wound up just trading it in for my current car.

The Egg wrote:

I don't recommend buying/selling cars to friends or family. When the car inevitably has problems, it can create hard feelings.

It can go the other way too. My dad (retired, and by no means well-off) tried to give me money back to replace the tires on the car he sold me. I had to decline (politely) several times; I just wouldn't have felt right doing that, especially in light of the fact that he sold me the car for substantially below market value.

Does anyone here still do rc flying hobbies? I know there used to be a pretty good crowd for it.

As soon as i can get home i'll be picking up a dji phantom 3, really looking forward to it. I'm going to be incredibly careful with it.

I've been flying a blade 350, had some ups and really fast downs learning with it. That includes splitting one in half by flying it upside down, full speed, through a tree. Next i'm planning to pick up a mini fpv quad of the racing variety, although i don't actually plan on racing anytime soon.

How did I miss the whole "Google Deep Dream" thing? I guess you had to be on Reddit to be in the loop on this one?

One of the better GDD slideshow galleries I've found: http://flavorwire.com/527360/the-most-m ... -dream-art

And a bit of the theory behind it: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2015 ... eural.html

Its penchant for sticking random eyeballs all over the place is... ironic, given that it's a Google project.

Edit: Cliff Notes version of the theory (at least, my limited grasp of it) -- Some engineers at Google were trying to figure out how to better tune and debug neural networks used for image recognition. Someone had the bright idea of adding code that essentially allows you to ask any layer of the network to render a modified image, based on what it THINKS it is seeing. Then, someone (same person? someone else?) decided to see what would happen if you took the resulting image, and repeatedly fed it back through the network to further reinforce the features that the network was recognizing.

Edit 2: And WTF is with all the dogs? Are there REALLY that many dog pictures on the Internet?

Heiwashin wrote:

Does anyone here still do rc flying hobbies?

Not any more. I tried. Bought myself a Walkera V120D02 Helocopter a few years ago. First flight was in my living room, crashed it and broke the tail rotor. Bought the replacement parts (about 3c of plastic that cost me about $10 delivered), but even with a magnifying glass, got a headache trying to rebuild it. Gave away the whole kit-and-kaboodle, and went back to MSFT's Flight Simulator.

just brew it! wrote:

sticking random eyeballs all over the place

And dog faces. Interesting, but creepy (gee, just like Google).

Is there a reason that electronics designers have such a hard-on for putting LEDs on everything? Nearly every self-powered device has at least one LED, and nearly all of them are completely useless. It seems like I spend half my life cutting pieces of electrical tape to cover them. They're almost always too bright, and many of them obnoxiously blink the entire time the device is operational (as if that were giving you some useful information).

Am I alone in not wanting to see 14 different colors randomly blinking at me under the TV during a movie? I hate these things!

The Egg wrote:

Is there a reason that electronics designers have such a hard-on for putting LEDs on everything? Nearly every self-powered device has at least one LED, and nearly all of them are completely useless. It seems like I spend half my life cutting pieces of electrical tape to cover them. They're almost always too bright, and many of them obnoxiously blink the entire time the device is operational (as if that were giving you some useful information).

Am I alone in not wanting to see 14 different colors randomly blinking at me under the TV during a movie? I hate these things!

Especially the eyeball-searing clear lens blue ones. The num/caps/scroll lock LEDs on my RK-9000 keyboard are capable of illuminating the entire freaking room! Woe be unto you if you happen to lean over and accidentally look directly into one of them...

Edit: Just to make my point...

Selfie taken with an inexpensive point-and-shoot camera (abysmal low-light performance), hand-held (camera was not on a tripod or propped on anything to steady it), with the only source of illumination being the num/caps/scroll lock LEDs on my keyboard:

just brew it! wrote:

Woe be unto you if you happen to lean over and accidentally look directly into one of them...

A few years ago, I went on a search-and-destroy mission for LEDs and especially beepers in my place. Motherboard connectors for power and disk LEDs were unplugged. All LEDs on devices I couldn't just disconnect were covered with 4 to 6 layers of blue low-tack painter's tape (or 2 layers of duct tape). At the time I used MSFT Intelimouse Optical's - opened them up and clipped off the tail-light LEDs, and while I was there, ground-down the spring-loaded arm that engages the detents on the scroll wheels. I also clipped off the silly smoke-alarm-type piezoelectric buzzers on 2 UPSs. Finally, I installed F.Lux on my Windows machines and Redshift on my Linux boxes.

It all made a huge difference - I could actually fall asleep again, and stay alseep knowing that if I heard something that sounded like a smoke alarm, it would be a real smoke alarm, not just a glitch in the mains.

Some ASRock motherboards have a "Good Night LED" setting in the BIOS that shuts off all LEDs shortly after the machine is booted, including those in the network RJ45s. Highly recommended!

just brew it! wrote:

Especially the eyeball-searing clear lens blue ones. The num/caps/scroll lock LEDs on my RK-9000 keyboard are capable of illuminating the entire freaking room! Woe be unto you if you happen to lean over and accidentally look directly into one of them...

Edit: Just to make my point...

Selfie taken with an inexpensive point-and-shoot camera (abysmal low-light performance), hand-held (camera was not on a tripod or propped on anything to steady it), with the only source of illumination being the num/caps/scroll lock LEDs on my keyboard:

I think you were going for "These LEDs are GD bright!" but hit "artsy social media selfie" instead

EDIT: this image is seriously making me laugh...TR memeworthy?

I want a T-Shirt with JBI's face from above on it.

FroBozz_Inc wrote:

I want a T-Shirt with JBI's face from above on it.

Please, no!