What Did You Do Today???

Tony

Staff member
Had my new refrigerator delivered today, and lets just say, either they will be bringing me another one, OR... I will be getting a HELLA discount on this one lol. Waiting on a call back.
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
I performed a motherboard upgrade on my home PC... I went from an MSI B450 Tomahawk ( great MB btw ) to a Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro. I also upgraded my SSD from a standard 1Tb SATA M.2 SSD to a 1Tb Nvme M.2 SSD. I cloned the SSD first and then got Windows running on the new one since it wouldn't start up at first. Once it was running on the original MB, I changed out to the new MB. I had to re-activate Windows since a lot of the hardware was changed.

At some point in the future, I will do a fresh load of Windows on this system but for now, it's nice to not have to do that.
 

bigone5500

Well-Known Member
I don't miss anything about fiddling with PCs. If my laptop dies I'll just get another. I have grown lazy with them. I used to want to work on computers and loved it. I almost started a business many years ago. I called it quits after people started bringing computers infested with bugs and other things. Never again I said.
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
With the exception of the Framework Laptop which has a modular construction and meant to be user configured etc... laptops aren't really fiddled with. The majority have proprietary parts with the storage and memory being about the only exceptions. Laptops/notebooks are designed to be disposable which is what's wrong with that market. A standard desktop/tower is the opposite like what I was talking about upgrading and certainly much easier than a laptop. About every 2-3 years, I'll upgrade something in the ones I have at work and at home.

Of course, I'm probably an exception since I've been doing this professionally since the late 80's and have owned my own business since 2001. Since my home system isn't as critical as my work system, I often use it to test out new product so it's usually also upgraded with newer parts before I do the same with the work PC. This time, I'm having to be a bit frugal due to the pandemic... and I'm handing down the parts from my home system to the work computer instead of buying new for the work PC. My work system doesn't need much power, so using older components isn't an issue. I also game a little ( very little, also stream some ) on the home computer, so newer parts are better used there.
 

Blade 400

Active Member
With the exception of the Framework Laptop which has a modular construction and meant to be user configured etc... laptops aren't really fiddled with. The majority have proprietary parts with the storage and memory being about the only exceptions. Laptops/notebooks are designed to be disposable which is what's wrong with that market. A standard desktop/tower is the opposite like what I was talking about upgrading and certainly much easier than a laptop. About every 2-3 years, I'll upgrade something in the ones I have at work and at home.

Of course, I'm probably an exception since I've been doing this professionally since the late 80's and have owned my own business since 2001. Since my home system isn't as critical as my work system, I often use it to test out new product so it's usually also upgraded with newer parts before I do the same with the work PC. This time, I'm having to be a bit frugal due to the pandemic... and I'm handing down the parts from my home system to the work computer instead of buying new for the work PC. My work system doesn't need much power, so using older components isn't an issue. I also game a little ( very little, also stream some ) on the home computer, so newer parts are better used there.
Hi Randy,
I used to build, repair and upgrade PC`s in the 90`s but got fed up with issues (plug and play, should have been called plug and pray Lol) I also got fed up of people thinking that my very modest charges were OTT! Talking about games, I`ve been much happier since going down the game console route, games just run without any issues. I still have an original Xbox and the 360 and hundreds of games - I love strategy games. My first home computer was a Spektrum 48k and I was a huge Commodore 64 and Amiga fan back in the day - I still play Amiga games on the Laptop using a downloadable program called Winuae :biggrin1:
 

Rob Lancaster

Active Member
Had my new refrigerator delivered today, and lets just say, either they will be bringing me another one, OR... I will be getting a HELLA discount on this one lol. Waiting on a call back.

Refrigerator hell "A" Tony..
I got a story for you.
Several years ago we bought one of those small refers for the patio because space is limited in our regular refig/freezer unit in the house. If I remember correctly, we went thought 3 or 4 units from Sears when we called it quits with them. All of them were tweaked and twisted to the point the door didn't close. They must have dropped the whole pallet of them on the docks or something, LOL!

Ok so we go to Costco and buy an equivalent unit (different brand) from them. It worked great for 1 year and about 3 weeks before we started to have cooling problems with it too. Boy they got that 1 year warrantee thing down patt don't they.. Anyway they wouldn't warrantee it so I got cross and decided to see if I could repair the thing myself. The first thing I do Is bypass the thermostat; BOOM! She runs till she freezes. END TEST! (Its a bad thermostat)...

I figure if I order a thermostat for about 30 bucks and it works, I figure it'll be worth it. Not so fast pal. It was worst then the original, HA!
The good news is they warranted it. The bad news is; the replacement was defective! too. HA! LOL!!

Are you still with me...
At this point I thought they'd say I didn't know what I was doing and give me the usual hard time. But NO! They told me that all the thermostat units that were shipped at that time were defective. Everyone's bitch'n about them.

They went on to say, that their sending yet another unit from a different manufacture and if that doesn't work; they'd refund my scrips. Ok cool! Guess what? The third time was the charm! I installed it and for years now, my Becks have never been happier.. Not to mention all the pizza dough rising/aging and the plenty left overs, tasty!!

Oh hey I almost forgot.
The larger refrigerator/ freezer we had in the kitchen went south after that. This time the refrigerant leaked out. It was only about 4 years old or so. What a another POS from chinkna! Oops sorry...

Ok on to it's replacement.
The one we have now had to have the bottom shelves replaced because they were the wrong ones for our model. They would jam up bad! HA! LOL!!! When will we stop doing business with the enemy? It's just more and more Chinese comi crap landing on our shores...

So how's that for a story? HA! LOL!! Its true,, absolutely true. In these trying times,, you can't make this s$#t up... Good luck with you're mission, you'll need it.........
 

RandyDSok

Well-Known Member
Went down to work this morning to wait for USPS to deliver some Intel CPU trays to keep the old/used CPU's I get in... in this case these will hold 21 LGA 774 -1156 type CPU's. They can also fit some of the smaller PGA ( pin ) types by Intel but most won't be held up off of their pins, so not ideal but considering the age of these, not a big concern either.

The original plan while I was waiting for USPS, was to start to upgrade the MB and maybe the SSD in my work computer. Last night, I reconsidered it and decided to not use the B350 chipset as a testbed but instead use the B450 one that I brought from home. My decision was based on the fact that the B450 is likely to support more of the CPU's I'll see in the coming years. It supports from the Zen1 1000 series up through the latest 5000 series CPU's. On the other hand, the B350 supports the older AM4 A-Series and Athlons up through the Zen 3000 series CPU's. While the 2000 and 3000 series CPU's still retain value, the older ones like the 1000 series and earlier don't so if there were a failure on those systems, the labor would likely exceed the value of the hardware itself. Of course, the data on these older systems is where there is any value if anywhere and I can still recover that if the need arises. So my "work" day... was a simple hurry up and wait. I did move my Linux build/install over to the B450 MB with an AMD Zen 1 1500x CPU and 8Gb of DDR4 3200 memory... so it wasn't a complete waste of my time.

Once I got back home... I finally took the time to replace the missing rear wiper arm and blade on my Escape. A hailstone ( or few ) had taken it out in that last hail storm and the parts had to be special ordered in. They made it on Monday and I've just be either busy or procrastinating doing it when I did have time. It turns out to have taken a 1/2 hour to remove the old nub that was remaining. They just press fit a smooth bore aluminum sleeve ( in the arm ) onto the steel knurling and it didn't want to budge. It ended up taking a few squirts of WD40, a big screwdriver and a open end wrench ( so I wouldn't be prying on glass ) to finally coax it off. Once it was off, it only took moments to bolt down the new one.
 

bigone5500

Well-Known Member
I bought a 2021 Ninja 650 abs. Can't wait to be able to ride it now... LOL! I have to get my endorsement and then run it through the break in period. It's absolutely a beautiful machine.

21EX650M_44SGN4DRF3CG_A.2092116843.png
 

Tony

Staff member
I really miss my R6! It takes everything I have to not buy a new one. Just stay safe on it! They will kill you at the drop of a dime. And trust me, mine tried...
 

Tony

Staff member
So you decided to become an organ donor?
You could say that about anyone on a bike.

So it appears my statement was taken incorrectly and I do apologize for that. All I meant was to respect the bike. For me, when I got stupid on the bike, the bike tried to kill me. When I was nice to the bike, everything was just fine. I still hold my endorsement for the bikes, and am seriously thinking about getting another one. Just something about them that I really miss.

But Jared, congrats on the bike bro. They are a lot of fun, just watch out for that other driver as they do NOT look over their shoulder.
 

bigone5500

Well-Known Member
I know I came off a little harsh with my post but when everyone you talk to about it crushes your excitement with 'oh you'll get killed' or just simply 'don't do it'. I smashed into an embankment on a honda 250 4-wheeler at 25mph and suffered a 30 minute knock-out and many cuts and bruises. I've been in MANY more automobile accidents than anything, that given I have never had a street bike before. I do know that if you respect the machine you will be more likely to survive. Don't be stupid and watch out for the river of stupid that are other drivers.
 

Tony

Staff member
Absolutely. I will never try to talk anyone out of a bike, they are just plain fun to get on and ride when you have the time. And if you can go hit some twisties up and down mountains, it's even more fun. Trust me, I have some stories of my own, and how I never laid my bike over, I will never know. But go out and enjoy the road, just expect that girl on the cell phone (could be a guy, just using an example lol) that is in the middle lane, because she needs to get off at that next exit...

Congrats again. Never been much of a Kawi fan, I have always been a Yamaha fan or Suzuki fan (GSXR FTW), but hey, it's not a Honda :lmao:
 

bigone5500

Well-Known Member
They tried to talk me into a Honda ... I kindly said no.

I went to my neighbor's house for a while waiting on it to get a little dark as I wanted to try out the headlights. Man those tiny things (LED) are blinding. At least twice as bright as my truck.
 
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