Canopyflyer

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 13 hours ago

My wife is a Rheumatologist. She actually had a patient attempt to use an article SHE WROTE to argue against her diagnosis. The article the patient was "citing" was not even applicable to the symptoms the patient presented.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

For some reason, when Cibola Burns came out, Jefferson Mays was unavailable, so another person narrated it. I think it was Erik Davies, but cannot remember, the book has since been redone by Jefferson.

I stopped and returned the book when the narrator pronounced "cumin" as something a teenager does into a Kleenex. Which, to be fair, is actually an appropriate pronunciation of the word, per Webster's dictionary, I've never heard anyone else pronounce it that way before. There were A LOT of other issues with the guy's narration. His cadence, voicing, along with pronunciation was absolutely atrocious. By far the worst narrator I have personally encountered.

Jefferson Mays needs to have someone go through and coach him on pronunciation. Otherwise, his cadence, pacing, voicing are all pretty good. Certainly not an S tier narrator, but pretty solid and he gives "The Expanse" books the tone that they need.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Large ships that ply the stars at super luminal speeds. These ships are equipped with massive energy weapons capable of pulverizing planets. Powered by systems that use anti-matter, or ultra exotic inter-dimensional matter.

Yet, for some reason the ship is constrained on energy and is unable to keep all the lights on, or the crew has to conform to "energy conservation protocols" (ST TOS), or there isn't enough power available to keep the ship at a habitable temperature (BSG).

Life support would not even be a rounding error on the power output of some of the systems described in Sci fi.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

55m here.

When I'd post on Reddit and started getting nothing but bots or trolls, or both I started to lose interest in it. The proverbial straw though was the API shenanigans. I used Bacon Reader on my phone, yes I know there were dozens of us, and the mobile Reddit app was crap.

So I did what any Gen'xer who was there at the dawn of the internet does... I searched for an alternative. Lemmy was one that kept popping up.

Been here ever since. Not sure how long ago that was no, 3 years? 4? I've slept since then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

High speed dirt man, high speed dirt.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

55m here (birthday is coming up next week so I'm owning getting older!)

Get the kids, I have two teenage boys, through University and send them off into life well prepared. At least as prepared as my wife and I can make them.

Retire before I die and at this point, I mean that seriously.

That's it. In my youth I had aspirations to be a pilot and an engineer... But my eyesight precluded me from doing the type of flying that I wanted to do. I wanted to become an EE, but made some stupid decisions in my youth and thought I could make money early, then go back to school. Turns out, to make that money you have to work alllllll the time. I actually didn't complete my degree until age 42. Really stupid of me not to stay in university when I was in my early 20's.

Things I did accomplish already:

Skydiver and attained both my "D" master license and "PRO" licensed. Though long retired from it, I'm quite proud of my time in the sky. There are a several people in the air today, because of what I taught them many years ago. They have gone on to teach others. While my impact on the sport is not as great as some, it is far more than many.

Found a life mate: Which is not something that I thought I wanted until my mid-30's when I met my future wife.

At this point, I just want to make it to old age... Well oldER without ending up in a gutter homeless.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Not just circuit breakers, but why are high powered circuits being used in the habitable parts of the ship?

Even modern cars no longer run high amperage circuits to the driver's controls. Back in the old days, you turn on the lights, the light switch carried a full 12v and a lot of current to control relays. Today, the light switch and turn signal stalk use a signal circuit to tell a body control module what to do.

The bridge of a Star Trek ship should have control panels running on the future equivalent of 5 volt signal circuits that tells a distant and well shielded control module to switch the ultra high powered circuits.

That leads me to the one thing that has always bothered me about Star Trek and its transporters and replicators. E=MC^2... When a replicator creates food or an object, it would take at least the same amount of energy to make, as it would if the same amount of mass were destroyed in a nuclear reaction. That DOES mean in areas where those devices are installed there ARE ultra high powered circuits (EPS conduits) in the wall. So high powered that they have the equivalent of multiple nuclear explosions flowing through them every second... YIKES.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Phone

SMS/MMS

Family Link

That's it. Everything else can wait till I open it up.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Told a janitor to not unplug the equipment rack in a closet to plug in their vacuum cleaner. Why they thought that plugging in their vacuum there, rather than just using the outlet not 6 feet away outside the closet is beyond me.

Further, why that closet wasn't locked in the first place. But this was almost 30 years ago and it was another time in IT.

I spoke with the janitor and she started plugging in her vacuum in the adjacent outlet. Then I went to the director of IT and got the capitol cost approved to secure all of the networking closets in the building, which there were 6, one for each floor. Only the one floor was an issue as that closet also house a sink and drain for the janitors to use. There wasn't another place we could move the networking equipment to without laying out a lot of money.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Farscape by a long shot.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As someone that literally spent 25 years driving a manual, including various stints in racing. Manuals have seen their day.

It used to be if you wanted better mileage, you drove a manual. If you wanted to be faster on the track, drive a manual (caveat there is drag racing.)

Today? The computer is just better at controlling a transmission. I drive a Camry Hybrid now and not having shifts is REALLY weird and the drone getting up to highway speeds is annoying, but I do like the 45mpg. Not to mention, when I sat down to learn how the Toyota Hybrid Drive works... It's a pretty clever system.

There are a lot of times that nostalgia gets the better of me and I wish I had a car with a manual. My oldest is possibly joining a skating team that is a 2 hour drive away. It's tempting to let him use my car and then buy an older manual for myself as a toy. I'd love to get a hold of another mid-80's Corolla GT-S. I autocrossed one back in the late 80's early 90's. It still remains my favorite car I've ever owned.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

That might be true at this moment. In another year? It will be used by billionaires to buy another island, or politician.

SS will be privatized, then that private company will go bankrupt in the next few years and all the money in SS now, will be "mysteriously" gone.

 

WARNING: In this post I talk about working on HIGH POWER electrical circuits. DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE BEEN TRAINED... PERIOD! The capacitor in the final photo is quite easily capable of KILLING YOU if you discharge it through yourself. The amp uses TWO of those in its power supply.

As a hobby, I pick up distressed amplifiers, receivers, and other audio equipment and attempt to bring them back to life. This has netted me some spectacularly great pieces for pennies on the dollar, to outright free.

This photo is a receiver I picked up locally for free. Both main channels were "out". It wasn't the internal amplifier that was the problem though, rather the input board had some dry solder joints. About 3 hours of soldering netted me a perfectly working receiver, which has been in my living room for the past two years working perfectly. If you want photos of when I took it apart, just let me know.

Below is an 8 channel McIntosh MC7108 that I bought off of eBay listed "for parts". While what I paid for it probably doesn't fit the definition for "budget", it was less than a quarter what the amp is worth... So maybe budgetish? It's works great, but I ended up not really fixing it. It actually worked for about a week after I bought it. I thought I had really scored, until it started up with a horrendous buzzing noise that came from inside the cabinet. The protection circuits also kicked in and the amplifier would not power up. Some investigation, again photos are available if you want to see them, revealed that buzzing came from a bad capacitor and relay in the on/off switch circuit. As I didn't care about the on/off switch, I simply bypassed it. Now, if the amp is plugged in, it turns on. I control it using a Zwave outlet (look at the power outlet and you'll see it) and that is what I use to turn on and off the entire stack you see.

Below the McIntosh is a Carver TFM-15B that needed the input pots cleaned and new meter lights. It's not a well built amp, but I've always loved Bob Carver's work and it sounds very warm. Bob was known for is ability to copy the sound of much more expensive amplifiers in his design, which he called "Transfer Function." In the case of the TFM-15B is copies the sound of a Classe amp, although I don't remember which one.

Below that is my wife's old Soundcraftsman amplifier that I put new power supply capacitors in. The caps in that thing are the size of coke cans.. Don't believe me? See the last photo...

At the very bottom is an old HTPC I built many years ago. It is retired as an HTPC and is currently serving as a low power server for my house.

Big honking Capacitor:

 

Channel 3000 Coverage

As of 1:50pm CST: 5 are dead, 5 more injured and the shooter is dead (not counted in the fatality count)

Absolutely unbelievable that this crap has come to Madison.

 

Sorry for the bad image quality.

The image is of the top of piston 4 and the cylinder wall in a Toyota 2AR-FE with 162,000 miles. All Toyota recommended maintenance was performed throughout the engine's life. I have the feeling those recommendations were written by marketing people and not the engineers.

Based on what the image shows, the engine needs a short block. Am I correct?

 

Probably a lot of these posts coming, but here's mine.

Just deleted and exported all of my Reddit comments/posts and exported them (hey, I'm old and can experience bouts of nostalgia.) If Reddit as a company cannot respect their users, then a user I will no longer be. Normally such things don't bother me. For profit companies are always behave as scumbags. We're their product and if the product doesn't behave, then it gets put into its place. That is what I have been seeing the past couple of months.

What finally did it for me, to jump ship, as the way the Admins started treating the Mods. People that actually grew and put in the effort to grow the various subreddits. You know, the people that actually did the work to produce the product Reddit, as a company, is trying to sell. It is not surprising that Reddit's management is so clueless. They want to make money, but the product they are trying to sell... Was built by someone else... FOR FREE. The Reddit execs think they have tons of content advertisers would love, when all they really have is a platform, which OTHER PEOPLE built content on. Advertisers don't care about the platform, there are tons of those out there. The advertisers are only interested in the content that will draw people to look at their ads.

My prediction is that the Reddit IPO will be successful, but as a company it will outlast the IPO about 3 years.

Sometimes things are not about money and it astounds me the number of people that just don't understand that fact.

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