Personal computing discussed

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Redocbew
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Re: dymt reloaded

Mon Dec 01, 2014 4:27 pm

I'd like to spike this one, and the sooner the better... :evil:
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The Egg
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Re: dymt reloaded

Tue Dec 02, 2014 1:03 pm

Is anyone else bothered by people using the word "screensaver" when they're talking about desktop wallpaper? This misuse is beyond rampant, even among knowledgeable people.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: dymt reloaded

Tue Dec 02, 2014 2:25 pm

I don't think I've ever heard someone use that word in that context. My wife and most of my friends call it their "wallpaper", which is a Mac term, but basically correct. Windows calls it the desktop background. I think usually I call it the "desktop wallpaper" which really makes a mess of things, but any of those makes plenty of sense. Screen saver makes none - it's the opposite if you happen to have a CRT laying around.
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Re: dymt reloaded

Tue Dec 02, 2014 8:31 pm

I've never heard anyone refer to the wallpaper/background as a screensaver either.
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idchafee
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Re: dymt reloaded

Tue Dec 02, 2014 11:28 pm

lady at work had some really **** news today.

her mom lives with her sister, has early Alzheimer's. Sister called, said she got called home from work by the fire dept, her house burned down and mom was killed. My co-worker was just talking before I left for Florida a couple weeks ago about how she was frustrated that her sister wouldn't get daytime assistance for mom while sister was at work. I don't think I've ever heard someone in that much anguish when she was taking that call. :cry:
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Re: dymt reloaded

Wed Dec 03, 2014 12:08 am

Wow... that sucks. Everyone's probably gonna be doing a lot of second-guessing now, and all of it will be counter-productive. "I told you so" doesn't fix anything at this point.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: dymt reloaded

Wed Dec 03, 2014 9:53 am

Oh man. That's terrible. :( :(
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idchafee
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Re: dymt reloaded

Wed Dec 03, 2014 8:02 pm

so the mom story is potentially much worse
she lived in a 3-flat
the basement neighbors were in the process of being evicted, and that's where the fire started. The mom's unit wasn't damaged.
the morgue took the body for an autopsy
they are thinking that the basement tennants maybe set the fire
I think the question is, did mom die by accident, or did they do something to her first

Terrible
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Re: dymt reloaded

Wed Dec 03, 2014 9:55 pm

Smoke inhalation?

If the downstairs neighbors intentionally set this fire, I hope they don't see the light of day for a very, very long time (if ever).
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derFunkenstein
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Re: dymt reloaded

Wed Dec 03, 2014 10:03 pm

No kidding. That is absolutely terrible. :( :( :(

Hit a deer tonight. Well, clipped one. We are ok, car is ok, no idea where the deer went. Mostly just banged up the right headlight and lost the grill.
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idchafee
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Re: dymt reloaded

Thu Dec 04, 2014 12:21 am

http://chicagosuntimes.com/news/smoking ... rly-woman/

So I guess we're back to "accident" now. I know my co-worker said that mom smoked and that was one of the things she was worried about. Gonna be a tough time in that family
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The Egg
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Re: dymt reloaded

Thu Dec 04, 2014 9:29 am

idchafee wrote:
they are thinking that the basement tennants maybe set the fire

For their sake, I would hope not. If someone dies as the result of an arson, I believe they would be charged with murder. At the very least manslaughter.
 
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Re: dymt reloaded

Thu Dec 04, 2014 6:43 pm

Hmm, an interesting article with a point out of left field that I didn't see coming.

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/future-of- ... ploration/

The Ming-era treasure voyages of Zheng He were the 15th Century equivalents of Apollo in both cost and daring. I can see that, and I can also see the similarity to the end of Apollo.

For those that read Vernor Vinge, the concept of Zheng He is fully part of the Zones of Thought universe.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
Captain Ned
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Re: dymt reloaded

Fri Dec 05, 2014 7:02 pm

To quote my (departed) father-in law: Jesus H MF'n Christopher Crotch.

I bought a new fridge last week. Tonight the oven won't light. The bastards talk to each other.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
notfred
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Re: dymt reloaded

Fri Dec 05, 2014 9:14 pm

Just been troubleshooting my reclining 3 seater sofa. The outer ones were reclining fine but the middle one started reclining all by itself. I finally got it to go back up and now it will not recline.

The middle seat is controlled by a couple of metal touch studs. Turning it upside down I found a box labelled "Limoss" that controlled it and opening that up there's a circuit board inside labelled HC227. That all matches up nicely on the web and I found a site that would sell me a new one for about $80. That's above my tinker threshold but makes a nice backup plan if I fry it so time to dig a bit further in to the circuit.

There's 2 big relays on the board and just below them are 2 copies of the same circuit with a little 6 pin IC labelled "1010". That turns out to be an Atmel AT42QT1010-TSHR with a datasheet available from Atmel giving full details. After 5 minutes with a multimeter I can declare the one on the channel that doesn't work to be dead - it has power, ground and connections to the touch terminals but the output never goes high. Also if I jumper the output high (after checking the datasheet says the pin will take it) then the relay clicks and the recliner moves.

Digikey has them in stock and only $8 shipping, so a quick order there and I should be ready to roll. My only problem is going to be soldering on surface mount SOT23-6, a work colleague has a decent setup at his desk so I'll probably do it there rather than on the kitchen table. I bought 4 of the chips as they are $1.60 each so if I screw one up with the soldering I get another chance and with $8 in shipping I might as well. Any spare can be used to fix the other channel when it dies.

Tonight the son admitted he had been getting static zaps off of it. The circuit has a resistor in to help with the ESD but I guess he managed to get enough of a zap to kill it.
 
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Re: dymt reloaded

Fri Dec 05, 2014 9:34 pm

Maybe you should've also ordered some ESD protection diodes and modded the circuit to protect the inputs to the chip!
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notfred
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Re: dymt reloaded

Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:21 pm

There's a bunch of ESD stuff in terms of resistors to the terminals and capacitors to ground. I don't want to mess with the circuit as it uses RF pulses to detect the touch and I think diodes for ESD would change the capacitance. It's easier to talk to the son first and then ground him when he does it deliberately next time. :D
 
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Re: dymt reloaded

Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:28 pm

notfred wrote:
There's a bunch of ESD stuff in terms of resistors to the terminals and capacitors to ground. I don't want to mess with the circuit as it uses RF pulses to detect the touch and I think diodes for ESD would change the capacitance. It's easier to talk to the son first and then ground him when he does it deliberately next time. :D

Yeah, ground his ass! (Literally...) :lol:

Didn't think about the fact that touch sensors rely on very subtle shifts in capacitance. However, there are ESD protection diodes designed to be used with very high frequency circuits (think modern USB devices and such...) which out of necessity have very low inherent capacitance.
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The Egg
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Re: dymt reloaded

Sat Dec 06, 2014 3:05 pm

Dumb question, but have you checked the outlet to make sure it's grounding out properly? I recently found a couple in my place which were not, and I didn't expect to find that sort of issue. I even had one outlet where one side was grounded and the other was not (maybe physical wear?). Beyond that, I'll dive out of the conversation due to lack of knowledge. :P
 
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Re: dymt reloaded

Sat Dec 06, 2014 3:12 pm

Even if the outlet is grounded properly, a hefty zap directly to the touch sensor will probably fry something if the sense circuitry's ESD protection isn't up to snuff. Since it is capacitive there may even be only a single sense wire running up to the sensor (no ground, so nothing else for the charge to jump to).
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DancinJack
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Re: dymt reloaded

Sun Dec 07, 2014 5:02 am

Blah. Was just awoken to the sound of my computer....doing something bad.

WD Black failed. It's at least 5 years old, so that sucks. Only good part is that it was just my Steam drive. I'm in the process of building a new computer and already have a new "game" drive sitting on the shelf in the form of a 500GB 840 EVO. Might just have to throw it in my old build.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: dymt reloaded

Sun Dec 07, 2014 9:20 am

At least Steam and its games are mostly portable so you can just toss it in the new build and have your games straight away.

We got a new puppy in September. Last night he went berserk at like 1am so my wife took him out to do his business. At 3am he was going nuts again. So instead of taking him out again I just went in and yelled at him to be quiet. Figured he was hearing stuff outside maybe. At 4am he did it AGAIN except this time I found that he had completely messed the blanket. Barfed on it and had the runs. So that was a good morning. :-/
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Redocbew
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Re: dymt reloaded

Sun Dec 07, 2014 8:47 pm

DancinJack wrote:
Blah. Was just awoken to the sound of my computer....doing something bad.


Having to engage your sense of smell when that happens never turns out well either.

Just pulled the trigger on an ROG Swift monitor. Merry Christmas to me! :)
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derFunkenstein
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Re: dymt reloaded

Sun Dec 07, 2014 11:18 pm

Congrutalions!
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idchafee
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Re: dymt reloaded

Tue Dec 09, 2014 10:47 am

idchafee wrote:
lady at work had some really **** news today.

her mom lives with her sister, has early Alzheimer's. Sister called, said she got called home from work by the fire dept, her house burned down and mom was killed. My co-worker was just talking before I left for Florida a couple weeks ago about how she was frustrated that her sister wouldn't get daytime assistance for mom while sister was at work. I don't think I've ever heard someone in that much anguish when she was taking that call. :cry:


So, the final info is in, and the mom caused the fire, smoking. Which is one of the things that my co-worker was worried about when she wanted daycare. The sister (who nixed daycare) lost everything in the fire and is living with my co-worker. I can only imagine the anger and guilt in that house right now
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BiffStroganoffsky
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Re: dymt reloaded

Thu Dec 11, 2014 4:35 pm

Thankfully, my mom didn't smoke but I did make sure she learned to use the microwave and thermo-pot instead of the cooktop to mitigate this potential issue. Induction cooktops are your friend when taking care of the elderly. Full-coverage insurance is also a good idea.
 
Captain Ned
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Re: dymt reloaded

Thu Dec 11, 2014 6:56 pm

Just replaced the ignitor on the oven. Talk about a dirty messy job while crawling into the beastie.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: dymt reloaded

Fri Dec 12, 2014 9:51 am

Is Amazon slow for anybody else? It routinely gets "stuck" and doesn't load the page. All other websites seem fine. If they're just under load, i get it, but wanted to check with you guys.
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Captain Ned
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Re: dymt reloaded

Fri Dec 12, 2014 9:54 am

derFunkenstein wrote:
Is Amazon slow for anybody else? It routinely gets "stuck" and doesn't load the page. All other websites seem fine. If they're just under load, i get it, but wanted to check with you guys.

No issues here.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: dymt reloaded

Fri Dec 12, 2014 9:56 am

Thanks Ned. I remoted into a server at work and it's fine, too. Weird. Must be something between them and my ISP. The PCs in my house have this problem.
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