Subj : Too many? :) To : Ky Moffet From : Barry Martin Date : Fri Oct 23 2020 09:22:00 Hi Ky! > Hey you won't belive this: the landline is down again!! Autumn's father KM> Barry! stop chewing on the phone line, you're not a squirrel! But people have said I'm a little squirrely! Did have Metronet install their phone option last Wednesday. A couple of minor settings issues and appears now need to dial the area code but overall happy. Did find an interesting quirk in the CenturyLink wiring. Originally I had created my own 'demarc' after the official ones (there's the one outside and there's something that looks like a doorbell chime and a male outlet in the center. I had installed a 2x2" surface mount box so if there was a problem with the house wiring could simply disconnect and plug in the 'emergency' phone. Also had a sub-panel for feeds to various parts of the house. Anyway, AFAIK all of the house went to my demarc, so should be unplug from the box, plug into the router, done. From CenturyLink to Metronet in one easy step. Well, all of the house switched over except up here in the Computer Room! Had a vague clue as the phone line to the Computer Room was separate as needed to be unfiltered for DSL. And there are two lines that originally went to the 2x2' demarc box, one had been filtered, the other not. But there is this mystery gray plastic thing which CenturyLink had installed some time back. Ended up the Computer Room phone line went to this gray thing and it continued into my demarc! Apparently wired directly to the CenturyLink source, so in the past when I had telephone issues and 'disconnected the house' up here was still connected! So trace the Computer Room line, yup, goes to this mysterious gray box, and on into my demarc. Double-check. OK -- deep breath - and snip! Check: Computer Room now dead, rest of the house still on-line - whew! Wire the Computer Room feed to a phone jack (RJ-14), into the splitter the house is plugged in to -- have service to the Computer Room again, service to the house still works. Yea! > KM> I have the 286 (and wish I'd kept the souped-up XT, oh well) and > KM> a few from the late 1990s in the basement, but the ones in > KM> regular or even intermittent use ... well, > I'd probably have more interest in repairing and playing with my old/ > antique computers if someone else was around to appreciate. Another KM> Yeah, old hardware is kind of a group hobby And I had originally figured I'd be using the XT or maybe 486 as dedicated to the X10/Home Automation, etc., stuff. Not necessary as the new computers and OSs easily handle multitasking, multiple windows, etc., so no need for separation. > computer geek of sorts. I can appreciate, don't need to do something > for someone else's approval, but my 'need for speed' is overriding the > need to repair. Don't need a separate computer just to run the X10 / KM> Same here... hopefully Silver and Fireball will be good for a few KM> years, at least if the ever-growing CPU cycles sucked up by the KM> everyday web don't keep expanding!!! Yes, higher resolutions, reliance on exterior sites (thinking of when I look at the Hy-Vee grocery ad on-line they provide the items on sale and the prices but AWS probably provides the pictures). > KM> Bullet is the oldest > KM> everyday PC, with a 2008 motherboard and a quad-core, and the > KM> oldest laptop still in occasional use is the same age. Anything > KM> below a 3GHz Core2Duo is just too slow these days, and anything > KM> below an iX is increasingly painful online. > Yup. Similar to I could wait for the computer to boot/reboot but I > don't want to so spent a little extra money and put the OS on a SSD. KM> SSD does help, even with faster PCs. I could sure tell the KM> difference on the i7 systems -- probably about a 30% everyday KM> performance boost, especially with disk-busy OSs like current KM> Windows. That 30% is probably right based on my limited experiences here. The system I'm on currently is hybrid: OS on the SSD and data on the 'rust drive'. It boots in less than a minute - used to be less but then added links to the NAS, etc. The MythTV Backend has a similar motherboard and CPU (only because of issues with this system originally where appeared the CPU was one step over what the motherboard really could use so got a new CPU - what am I going to do with the old CPU?). It boots from a hard drive and is significantly slower. > When I buy the new motherboard and Intel CPU it will be fast, towards > top of the line, but to show off, but I don't like waiting for the > computer, plus I know I don't replace them all that often, so today's > upper line is next year's mid-line. KM> Yep. Let someone else take the depreciation hit. I'll get KM> trailing edge or used and be no worse off. Right. I appreciate someone else doing the work for me and figuring out the quirks. KM> I'm kinda eyeing a new DFI board (still in beta last I asked) KM> that takes a 9th generation i7 ... tho by the time I can justify KM> the cost, the board will still be about $260 when the CPU is down KM> to 5 bucks! (they only have two left in stock of the previous KM> model, it's still $260 but yes, the CPUs it supports start at 5 KM> bucks!) It is kind of funny how both parts are needed and sometimes the motherboard is cheap while the CPU is epxensive and other times it's the other way around. > KM> Bubbles has been around a while > Oldie but goodie! ...What's a keypunch? What's a tape reader? Dot > Matrix -- is she a character on Netflix? KM> LOL, yeah :D Bubbles (an old friend from L.A.) is an old-time KM> programmer... he did one of the early text-to-speech readers, a KM> DOS commandline util that ran on a 286. I still laugh at how it KM> pronounced "spaceman" so it sounded like "spazzie man" :D :) Darn quirks in the English language! Phonetically 'space' is proably spelt 'spaas'. > > Never tried a filename with a leading exclamation point -- doesn't > > follow my naming rules. > KM> We all have our weird quirks. > But we're loveable because of (or is that despite?!) them! KM> Dunno about you, but I use them to frighten the neighbors. Here we're almost the friendliest! Neighbour to the south is a grump: barely waves when waved to. Neighbour on the other side of him keeps to himself, has security cameras outside, and no one has seen his live-in girlfriend for a couple of months though her car is in still there. Neighbour to my north is a older single lady who never goes into her yard except to/from her car. She will initiate a wave hello and will chat. > > > /home/barry/File Cabinet/Recipes/ > > > |-- aa_Cooking Tips > > > |-- aa_Food Timeline > > > | |-- Food Timeline: food history research service_files > > KM> Food timeline, fish: Fresh, Stale, and Stinking in 3 days. > > How'd you know that was what was in there?! > KM> I looked in your fridge, and got food poisoning. > Ah poo: got those bags mixed up! It was supposed to be the gone-bad > food from the power failure was put in grocery bags and refrozen until > the night before trash day -- kept the trash from stinking and > attracting maggots. KM> Good trick :) Tho today I'd just need to toss it outside... KM> question is, would it freeze first or would a raccoon haul it KM> away first?? Here might be the racoon! Used to have one living or at least sheltering under the garden shed in the back yard. Haven't seen him probably since Spring. ...Haven't seen Chippy -- the chipmunk, of course! Had several, at least one lived under the decorative garden pond. Last year about this time would see one or more running along the house with fat cheeks: carrying food to their nest for the winter. > Yes, like my DEC Rainbow 100 had 892 KB of RAM. (Seems like mine had > more but that's what I found.) At that time that amount was HUGE, and > semi-costly. Now the remote that comes with the TV probably has more. KM> Or the IBM1620 (first computer I ever touched) that had something KM> like 4KB of RAM. I was trying to find how much memory was in a Caller ID unit just to compare. > > From what I've read the Raspberry Pi will be using a 64-bit ARM > > instruction set soon. :) > KM> About time! > The beta is available now; the other day downloaded a current Raspbian > (which is now called something like Rasp OS) and saw it was available. > Right now don't have time to play with beta. KM> I don't usually bother anymore either. I just want workee. I don't mind a little fiddling and tweaking but at this point I have to many other projects and quite frankly my knowledge level isn't sufficient to be that helpful to those creating/working on the main job. > KM> New distro: Rip Van Winkle OS :) > Takes twenty years to boot and then it goes to a Desktop scene of a > forest? (Hey: if Microsoft can have a field in California then RVW can > have from a hamlet in New York!) KM> Haha... or a pic of the moon, with sheep jumping over it. Hmm: could use a a sort of calendar: spring and the sheep are shorn so really short coats; winter and some clutzy sheep slips on the ice and lands in a snowpile.... Man in the Moon laughs..... > KM> Yeah, and while Synaptic and some commandline magic can get around > KM> it, why do all that extra work? > Because I enjoy pounding my head against the desktop? Actually did KM> Explains the dents. In my head or on the desk?! > ..    I can see clearly now, the brain is gone...    KM> Explains that too. Makes cleaning the wax out of my ears really easy! ¯ BarryMartin3@ ® ¯ @MyMetronet.NET ® .... Stove's only good for 1 burn. Is a WOOD stove. Metal stove last longer. --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47 þ wcECHO 4.2 ÷ ILink: The Safe BBS þ Bettendorf, IA --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1) .