The startup procedure is similar to two stroke powered hand held landscaping and chainsaws.

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No fumes here other than at the power stations...

And at least that is minimised with overnight charging...


Meanwhile, no sunshine here today.

Plus icicles forming on the end of your nose if you dare stop for any chatter!


... And for my next fix: We have two standard parts that don't fit together on the standard interface... So much for standards?...

(To be fair, the problem is with a wrong assumption for the surrounding housing... And then that doesn't accommodate the second part that is at the maximum size that is specced...)

Pause for thought over a hot brew for that one...

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
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Posting on a grey Hump Day morning as the sun begins to rise and it's 15C with 23C expected along with showers, rain and possibly severe thunderstorms being served up again.

Well I won't have to water my veggies again today.

Anyhow it must be time for another coffee.

Cheers.

Well this morning's clouds buggered off to give us 2hrs of sunshine taking us to a steamy 22C (feels like 23C), but those clouds are very quickly forming up again.

Cheers.

It's dark and chilly Arctic frigid over here...

And the Food Desert is desolate...

Is everyone still on holiday or is there really no one else here?

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Good to hear!

;-) :-)


Enjoy your alternate desert?!!

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

In the early 1990s, when I was a teenager that was our family car; one of the most powerful (60 to 75 hp) and best cars ever made in the East. Its price was twice that of a more simple East German Trabbi (with robust but primitive two-stroke engine), the most common car, we had before. In the past you had to wait at least 15 years to be eligible to get such a new Lada...

Mr. Duck, we lived in a very different world. In the early 90's I drove one of 4 cars. A Jeep Cherokee, I had the all white limited edition, a Dodge Ram 250 diesel crew cab 4x4, a Ferrari 308GTSi or my wife's Cadilac Escalade. Funny the fasted car had the smallest engine. Rated by speed and driving performance, the Ferrari wins with its 3-liter V8 that produced about 250 hp. The Jeep had a 4 liter straight 6 with about 190 hp, the Cadilac's 5.7 liter V8 rated at 332 hp. and the Dodge had a 5.9 diesel engine with 325 horsepower. A 75-hp car on SoCal Freeways would have almost been a hazard.

PS: My Facebook account has been hacked. Still working to reclaim it. I can be reached at BlueSky as coastalguy007.bsky.social

My Facebook account has been hacked. Still working to reclaim it.

Another reason I don’t trust Facebook.

Thor’s outside doing his nasty stuff. Heavy sleet falling with thunder. Hoping it is just a glaze as the weather dude says. A quarter inch at most. 3:45am and it looks slick outside and getting worse.

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Damn, by the early 90's I'd had 4 kids took on another and been through at least a dozen cars of many types, sizes and configurations along with a few motorbikes. There's been quite a few more cars since then along with a few more motorbikes. I don't have any motorbikes now, but I've had my 30yr old 4L 6cyl station wagon for the last 24yrs now and the sedan version of the same year model I've only had for a couple of years since it was given to me. Large family cars suit my long frame well and I can even comfortably sit behind myself in the wagon not to mention being able to stretch out in it for a sleep.

Well we reached a muggy 26C (felt like 25C) before Thor started his stomping around the area again, thankfully we've only had a few raindrops land so far, but he's still out there making a racket and now lighting up the night sky while it's down to 16C (feels like 15C) with 14C expected in the morning.

Cheers.

Over here in the UK, I've been mobile wireless internet for a long time now. I've also got a choice of three different aerials depending upon where I'm perched. Of those, the cumbersome Yagi is thankfully only needed occasionally!...

Works very well especially for my random working!!


... All for beautifully cheaper than the old dinosaur 200-years ago telegraphy wires monopolist...


All lost in the ongoing dull grey mist and rain...

Here's hoping for some positive action for the day!!

(Managed a beautiful fix yesterday and nicely glowing from that still...!)

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
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The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

A 75-hp car on SoCal Freeways would have almost been a hazard.

Hah, a 75-hp car on any socialist country's motorway (to be honest: here a pre-war autobahn, still with the original pre-war concrete roadway in the early 1990s) was the fastest shark in the pond. My dad once overtook an old Porsche... what a triumph. How that? Westerners (only they owned Mercedes; Porsche, or Volvo) on transit motorways between West Germany and West-Berlin were meticuously harassed by police to charge them fines which they had to pay in Western currency on the spot (valuable 'valuta' for the socialist economy). So Westerners normally paid close attention to any speed limits: 100 km/h (62 mph) on motorways, 80 km/h (50 mph) on highways.

[...] I say "saw" as that was only possible when it was approaching me; it trailed a disproportionately large smoke screen when moving, said smoke screen would gradually envelope the vehicle behind when standing at traffic lights - ah the joy of burning 2-stroke oil instead of petrol....

When I was a teenager, at least half of the cars here were such Trabants, the typical family car (btw.: 595cc (36 cui), 2 cylinder, 26-hp); many of the larger 'Wartburgs' too (also 2-stroke engine)... not to forget all the Barkas minivans (2-stroke too) (no private owners: only police, ambulance, administrations, companies, ...).

Admittedly, there were half as many cars than today (it wasn't just about insufficient income; but also about knowing the right people; bartering with used cars and spare parts; help with repairs in the many inofficial workshops (illegal small private business) in the large garage colonies (photo) next to socialist housing areas: small flats in large multi-storey (photo, btw: no elevators in 5/6 storey ones) prefabricated buildings.

Now imagine hundreds of Trabbis on your hometown's streets... I didn't perceive the bad smell back then; it was 'the daily normal'. I remember the smoke from lignite, dried and pressed as briquets and used to heat houses in all villages and smaller or old houses in towns was worse, especially when weather conditions blocked the smoke (I think its called 'inversion'). Today, when there's one of the few surviving Trabbi oldtimers on the streets in summer: I can smell the nasty stench from a hundred meters away.

As with the smoke screen: a qualified car mechanic who perfectly adjusted the carburetor according to the manual could reduce the smoke significantly; but then the engine would often stop unexpectedly when the car stopped, run 'unevenly' with misfires, or start poorly. So, owners instantly grabbed a screwdriver and adjusted the carburetor until the engine 'sounds' acceptable (more smoke). They even did that immediately after they collected the car from a mandatory technical checkup in an official workshop.

32f up from 23. We may get some fresh snow tomorrow. A small amount of last week's snow remains.

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Posting on a Thorsday morning where the sun has again risen behind an overcast sky and it's 17C with 24C expected along with more showers and storms.

Anyhow it's time for a coffee.

Cheers.

... Stymied by an unreachable bureaucrat...

The bureaucracy is as is to be expected... However, that can alluringly engranden certain bureaucratic types...

... To a frustratingly great waste of time for everyone else!

All 'just' a game?

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Well the weather coming off the coast is still backing up at the escarpment keeping us up here under an overcast sky and while the temp has reached 20C that moist easterly breeze is making it feel like 18C, but that breeze is soon expected to turn into a wind shortly.

Anyhow I'm just enjoying an extra coffee for the morning before I go out and harvest a few butternuts to take up to the pub for my usual Thorsday LLB and small pizza.

Cheers.

Now you guys got me thinking about food. Guess it's time to cook.

....Netgears warranty is 90 days, I bought the R6700AX in June 2024, it's now out of warranty,....

There's a minimum of 12mths warranty on anything new here, 90 days is for refurbished, but that could be extended to up to 5yrs if it's deemed within its "lifetime" of expected use under Australian law.

Anyhow I've had my LLB and I'm about to see how much of this small pizza that I can devour while the temp here reached 23C (felt like 21C), but it's starting to backslide now.

Cheers.

In Germany we typically use FritzBox routers (made in Berlin [EDIT:] completion of products; boards of course manufactured in Asia) or models supplied by the large Internet providers which often are rebranded FritzBoxes too (different case color or a totally different case); but some providers also force cheap stuff from China or Vietnam on their customers. Some bold ones like Vodafone even order their cheap stuff with a design award winning fancy aluminum case. What the heck? I want to have a high-quality router which runs without stretching my nerves, not a shiny brick of aluminum with stainless steel foots. Fortunately since a couple of years there's a law which forces providers to accept any (technical fitting) customer device. So they can no longer force you to take their routers and modems. With your own prefered router there's no provider support, of course. But FritzBoxes aren't known to make trouble.

They come in different flavours for VDSL, Cable, Fibre or LTE/5G, some without a modem (to attach to 3rd party fibre "modems"). These routers are increasingly conquering the entire European market (more and more localized versions (language localizations, previously technical differences for ADSL2+/VDSL17b/VDSL35, different local DSL, POTS and ISDN standards; specific "Annexes" to standards which differ for European countries). The company, which started as a startup ~20 years ago... then offering the best (also best selling) ISDN cards (to connect computers to the previous ISDN digital phone network (2 x 64 kBit/s), now has >1,000 employees. Their stuff is rather expensive but offer the largest range of functions. The manufacturer provides support for 5 years (current firmware; new features), basic support goes far beyond that (~8 years) and for certain common models even ~10 years to fix severe security breaks. The hardware rarely fails before they are ~8 years old. You typically replace them because of outdated WiFi standards.

There is a functioning second-hand market on eBay; devices are valuable, even 3-4 year old ones fetch a third to half of the original price. The integrated VDSL modems (100/40 MBit/s and 250/40 MBit/s) degenerate somewhat with age; signal quality gets worse; which typically is no problem as providers overprovision their tariffs (you pay for 100 MBit/s but get 120...125). One can monitor degeneration over the years as anomalies in graphs sent within report emails (a straight line capacity reading degenerates over the years to some kind of seismometer output with frequent lowering of signal quality). At some point DSL sync starts to break down now and then, which is becoming more frequent. I don't know about electronics; perhaps some analog components are degenerating. Then you need to replace your router.

5:15am and hypothetic outside.
Fair
13°F (-11°C)

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Cloud, overcast, mist, drizzle... Still no sunshine for a few days now...

And pause for thought over a pint of hot brew.

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)