quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur
Back in the late 1990s, not long before I left Australia, I had a co-worker from Hong Kong who was always bringing back interesting things from HK. VideoCD players (and loads of great HK movies), my first DVD player – region free, of course – a NES clone with a bunch of those yellow Chinese…
RFC1149 (A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers) was the April Fool’s RFC in 1990. A co-worker who works with WiFi a great deal, and who therefore travels with various kits of WiFi diagnostic gear, has been enamored of the possibilities of this RFC for some time. Thus, as a random…
It’s been a while since I last posted a Beetle repair article. In the intervening months, I’ve visited LKQ Pick-A-Part junkyards in Southern Florida many, MANY times looking for parts on my list. (I’ve also relocated to southwest Indiana, where the nearest LKQ is three hours’ drive away). Unfortunately, in the intervening months, the mostly-plastic…
With the soon-to-be-nationwide Covid-19 school shutdown in the United States, and need to move to e-learning (either formally or informally), and/or to work from home, there are a lot of people in my immediate circle who find themselves suddenly needing computing devices for every member of the family, and not necessarily being able to afford…
With widespread closures and restrictions of population movement and retail commerce in force (and likely more coming), one of the stimulus items being bruited about most loudly is a direct cash payment. The exact amount(s) vary from “$1000 per American” to “$1000 per American adult and $500 per child”, and both a one-time payment and…
I am not a smart man. I have ways of doing things. Those ways are not always the best ways. So when I compare, as above, a dollar bill to the size of my mini-wallet (license, 3 credit cards, and a small cash pocket), I see this in my mind’s eye: Clearly, a dollar bill…
My travel kit until recently has been a 13″ MacBook Pro (work computer), a ThinkPad T460S UltraBook running Ubuntu (personal computer, mainly used for email and also running Quicken inside VirtualBox), and a 5th-generation iPad (an unwise impulse purchase used primarily for watching movies inflight). Naturally, all the chargers and various other cables and so…
Four months ago I was pleased to have put together a reasonably useful gaming system from mostly junkbox components plus an ancient Goodwill chassis. Unfortunately, on Monday June 24th I noticed that the machine was running extremely slowly. It should be noted as a matter of interest that this occurred after the PC had been…
This is a “raw asset picture dump” post. It is a fairly un-annotated dump of pictures taken while archiving a vintage asset. Click any picture for the full-resolution version. The title indicates the asset catalog number. Raw notes for this asset: “Occasionally gives correct FG/BG color screen with random colored text garbage, usually just black…
Let’s buy a Cheeseburger, a Quarter Pounder and a Big Mac all at once, unwrap and bite into each one, and take pictures, comparing the craftsmanship at two different McDonald’s restaurants. This is what the Internet is all about. Be advised that I fully intend to repeat this activity with different pairs of fast food…