Spring is coming · 2:10am Mar 14th, 2019
Or else it’s just the lull before second winter.
Anyway, I’ve been a bit behind on things as y’all surely have noticed, and gone partially radio silent over the last week or so.
I’ve had a lot on my plate.
But it’s warming up, finally. Now instead of the van slipping on the ice when it tries to get out of the driveway, it sinks in the mud. That’s an improvement.
I took the thermal curtain off my bedroom window and got to enjoy actually waking up to the sun, until of course the powers that be moved the sun an hour and now it’s dark again when I get up.
We’ve been busy at work, but we’ve got a new guy. And to my benefit (less so, his), the manager is now taking out much of his alpha-maleness on the new guy rather than me, so that’s pleasant.
Story-wise, y’all should stay tuned this weekend.
And that’s all for now; I’m back to editing.
Also a question--my stupid computer resets the volume level to 67% every time I reboot . . . is there a simple fix? Running Windows 10.
Good to hear from you, Biscuit. You take care and enjoy the lack of attention from your boss.
5027480
Thanks!
I intend to enjoy the peace while it lasts.
I love the layout of your "dinner table" place-set.
5027477 That's a weird one. I'm sure that Microsoft will have that fixed by the release of Half-Life 3.
I run Win7, but I found a few things that I'd try, after discovering lots of similar complaints about this:
If I lived nearby, I'd just come over and bang my head against it. Metaphorically. That usually works.
Good luck!
That first picture, The breakfast of Automotive Technicians everywhere!!!
So are you ending The Haunting this weekend? This is turning into a real tear jerker.
5027501
Not this weekend--those are all new projects. But The Haunting is getting close to an end.
So... you were wanting to make a longer post but you clutched?
(Don't get torqued. It's just my oh-pinion.)
5027477
Windows 10 is one headache after another. With some tweaks to make it more Windows 7-like, it works fine, but you have to dig around the registry and assume ownership over system folders to do that.
I mean, there's no excuse to not be able to change the generic startup screen wallpaper without digging into the system files to brute-force it or using the policy editor.
And don't get me started on the fuckers taking out the option to remove the recovery partition when making a USB recovery disk. That's half a gigabyte wasted, and even if you force-wipe it with diskpart, they stuck it at the front of the disk so you can't extend the main partition to use the freed up space unless you boot to a gparted disk to radically shuffle things around.
5027477
Try this:
https://pastebin.com/QtAB3hYx
Save as "whatever.bat" (use double quotes so it's saved as .bat file not .txt) in notepad, right-click it and "run as administrator"
i.pinimg.com/474x/22/01/1c/22011ca9e6054c2dfced3ac2f40e3ceb.jpg
I believe you're right; spring has officially--
"Winter is coming."
We've had second winter, false spring and a few other occurrences as well here.
5027561
You're lucky; our winter began and ended in mid-January. Not kidding, we had four or five days when the temperature barely dipped below freezing at night, and since then, I don't think it's gone below 45 degrees.
Well, pleasant until the new guy quits, dumping his workload and the manager's attention back on you.
I'm a bit of a pessimist, can you tell?
5027566
as the usual for my area we had a few nights close to -40 but most of the "winter" was either bitter cold with no snow or snow that lasted 2 days at best before melting. (aside from the snowbanks but I don't count those)
5027507
That's not very PUNNY!!!
5027570
It became the usual here too in the last years. *sigh* so much for skying.
(You’re in Toronto, right?)
Fun fact, -40 is the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit.
5027639
Close enough, an hour South. Also you stole my fun fact... you monster.
5027659
Sorry about that, I got bored doing equivalencies in my trigonometry class so I did equivalencies in my shitposting instead.
Oh yes, I remember, somewhere west of Hamilton. You mentioned it at some point in Silver Glow’s comments.
Hmm. Well that's good stuff then.
5027670
Not West of it, in it. Good memory though.
I almost got stuck in the mouth of my driveway after I stopped to pull the trash bin back in after pickup.
Above freezing and liquid rain almost makes the ice patches worse. And I'm definitely seeing oil in the water after spinning my tires to get in. I checked the level a couple days ago and the dipstick said it was fine, but I'm pretty sure I'm leaking.
5027633 What can I say. I didn't have the spark... plug.
5027869
I do have to salute your engine-uity!
5027492
Thank you!
Admiral Biscuit That's a weird one. I'm sure that Microsoft will have that fixed by the release of Half-Life 3.
I’ll give ‘em a go and see what happens.
I once got a printer to start working by threatening to throw it through the window. It started printing right as I picked it up off the desk.
5027495
I know, right? We’ve been doing a lot of brakes the last few weeks. Which I don’t mind; it’s generally easy money.
5027507
5027508
Which is something I don’t have the skills or confidence to do.
My old Windows 7 Basic machine, you couldn’t even change the desktop background, which I didn’t much like.
I have legit no idea how to do any of that, so that’s something that I never would have noticed.
5027513
I have an idea that if I tried that, my computer would never work right again, and I’d have to find one of my tech-savvy friends to fix it.
If I had more free time, I’d set up one of my other boxes and start poking at it to re-learn some of the skills I had back in the 90s, but Lord knows I haven’t got time for that. I was hoping that there’d just be a menu where you could set default sound volume.
I’m having other sound problems, as well, which I think is caused by insufficient RAM for all the tasks I’m trying to get this poor Lenovo to do. Maybe next time, I won’t buy the cheapest computer I can.
5027519
Last week for us was cold and snow, warm and rain, tornadoes, then cold and snow again.
5027567
I anticipate that happening in less than a year.
I’d call it being a realist.
5027692
5027857
My trash bin got stuck in the driveway, lol.
It honestly doesn’t take much of a leak to put a bit of an oil sheen on water. Could also be trans fluid or power steering fluid, a couple of drops of that would do the trick, too.
Or, if there are any leaks anywhere, rainwater/meltwater running through the car could pick them up and deposit them in your driveway.
5029254
Thank you for giving me hope that she might not be as far gone as I feared. At 96,000 miles, she's due for new struts and transmission check, and with the various rust patches, repair costs are probably getting close to exceeding whatever trade-in value she still has.
5029249
It's 100% safe, basic script that temporary stops 2 audio services,
https://ss64.com/nt/net-service.html
remove their saved settings (Windows 10 corrupts them quite often) and starts them again (computer restart will do that too). On start they recreate default audio settings (like in a new PC).
https://terrehbyte.com/resetting-windows-7s-volume-mixer/
One more indication of possibly corrupted audio settings in registry.
5029252
[headpat]
5029263
Honestly, depending on where you live (and what you’re driving), 96k is only getting broken in. The majority of my fleet is 200k plus, and rust is the big killer in Michigan.
Of course, I’m generally the last owner of my vehicles, so I never consider things like trade-in value.
I’ve had multiple vehicles with a negative value, according to N.A.D.A bluebook.
5029433
Ah, than that won’t work, most likely.
One of the problems I’m having is that the audio driver gets corrupted and starts to make static, and I think it’s from memory allocation problems. I actually heard it happen one time when the computer lagged ‘cause I had too many pages open and YT audio playing. The solution is to uninstall the driver and restart.
I’m thinking that if I add more memory to the machine (it’s only got 4gb), this might not happen. Also if I limit myself to under a dozen tabs simultaneously. :P
5030004
Yikes. 4GB isn't nearly enough RAM for a Windows 10 machine, especially if you're running multiple programs simultaneously, or opening multiple documents or browser tabs. Realistically, you need at least 8GB; otherwise, Windows will be constantly hitting the swapfile as it tries to free up RAM by swapping memory pages on and off the disk.
5030034
Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard.
I didn’t think of it when I got my machine (the idea that 64k is sufficient is still at the back of my mind), and it honestly wasn’t until I was watching some YouTube video or another where the mention of how much RAM you need for Windows 10 (ideally) came up, and that got me to thinking about how that might be one of my problems.
I don’t know all that much about upgrading--I haven’t done anything like that in a long time, just been treating my machines as mystery boxes that do what they do. But if it’s got enough slots--and I’d imagine it does, Lenovo probably uses a resonably standard board for a whole group of computers, I ought to be able to shove a couple of 8gb sticks in there and make this thing sing.
I’d imagine it’s DDR3 memory in, it; is there any way of knowing besides either opening the case, or somehow finding the specs for my particular machine online? (and in regards to opening the case, would I be able to tell if it was DDR3 and not DDR2 or something else with the casual glance of a luddite?)
5030488
Realistically? Probably not, especially if you're not familiar with them. One SIMM looks very much like another; usually, the most obvious difference will be the size and speed printed on the label, but they generally aren't so obliging as to simply say DDR2 or DDR3 anymore; now you have speed ratings like PC5200 and the like.
But, since yours is an off-the-shelf PC rather than a home-build, there is an easier solution.
Go to www . crucial . com, click "buy memory", then put in the manufacturer and model where it says "Select your computer or motherboard model to find compatible SSD & DRAM upgrades." It will then tell you what they have that will fit your computer; you can then either buy it directly from Crucial on their site, or click "where to buy" and see if Amazon or Newegg carries it if you prefer to buy from them.
I highly recommend Crucial's stuff; they may be a touch more expensive than some other brands, but it's high quality and very reliable. (Crucial is actually the "finished products" division of Micron, which is one of the bigger manufacturers of RAM and flash memory chips in general, so they know what they're doing, and they're not just repackaging commodity parts from whoever's chips fell off the back of the truck this week.
)
I wonder where you live, my car is just about due for a brake system check. I really wish I lived in a place with my own garage. Doing oil changes at my parents house is easy enough, but I lack the tools and know-how to do my own brake work.
5031314
Just did that, and it looks like I’ve got two slots that take DDR4 memory, and the computer can handle up to 16gb.
It looks like their price is comparable with Corsair memory over on Amazon--which I’d assume is also a brand I could probably trust.
5031367
I live in Michigan, in the southeast part of the state.
If you’re motivated enough, you can do brake work in a backyard or on a gravel driveway, but both of those options really suck.
5031706
I have a new problem now; while replacing a bad tail light I discovered the wiring harness has a short. So that's going to need to get looked at. sigh.
5031806
Nothing says fun like wiring repairs.
More and more, I’m moving to electrical diagnosis rather than mechanical diagnosis.
5031704
Corsair is also decent, although I'm not sure if they make their own chips, or if they just OEM them from a different manufacturer and have their own logo put on them.
5032935
I’d imagine that Corsair gets them from somebody else to their spec, but I don’t know that for a fact.
Only reason I bring it up is that I’m old and suspicious of the internet and more importantly sites that want your credit card number who I haven’t dealt with before. I can get Corsair RAM from Amazon--and it’s comparatively priced to the Crucial stuff--but I don’t know them or their website.
Given that, I probably will go with them ultimately, since you recommended it and odds are that you know more about modern computers than I do.
5033716
Well, like I said, once you find the matching parts you need on Crucial's site, there should be a "where to buy" button where you can check and see if Amazon or NewEgg has the same part. (NewEgg is also reliable; they've been around since 2000, and were selling computer gear online while Amazon was still just an online bookseller.) That said, I've ordered directly from Crucial several times, and never had any trouble with them.