Men Live To 77. Women Live to 83. So, If I Start Transitioning At 76 ...

Well, it's a plan. Not a good plan; but a plan never the less.

Sorry, just not a lot going on around here. Unless you count the rain. Been raining (mostly) all week. It is WET outside! Even the Dog has decided that he's only going outside when his bladder is causing physical discomfort. Or he thinks he'll make it wetter inside than out. I don't know. He's a Dog and you never really know what a Dog is thinking until it doesn't bite you. Don't get me started.

Been pulling together all the Game/Program Demo disks my father-in-law gave me trip before last, giving them a try, and if they've been interesting enough, I make a .iso file out of it and throw out the actual disc. I mean, these games/programs are from the 90's from, like, Computer Magazine and such. Remember when they sent out those demo discs? Yeah, he kept every one for the past 35 years.

And, I gotta admit, some of those old games brought back memories of how it was WAY BACK WHEN home computing first started. Remember having a 50 lb monitor that showed a whole 4 colors whether you used them or not? Remember going from CGA to EGA to SVGA but you had to take out a loan against your kids college funds. (If you had a college fund for your kids. Or even had kids.)

Twin floppy systems were cool because you had TWIN floppies for gosh' sake. I was proud of my  twin floppies. I invited friends over to see my twin floppies. I don't know how the Police got involved ..

Er ...

Posted some videos on my Youtube that I captured playing on the Quest 3. (Can't believe I have 145 videos and 36 subscribers. 36!) I am enjoying the HELL out of that Quest 3!

Eco-worthy had their ECO-WORTHY 400W Solar Panels 4pcs 100 Watt 12 Volt Monocrystalline Solar Panel Module on sale for less than $200 so I bought one. (4? Well, one order of 4 panels.) Then bought a MPPT controller for them. I just couldn't pass up that deal even if they are the old Monocrystalline and not the new poly-stuff. They'll probably outlive me. So now I'll have 7 new(er) 100 watt panels and 4 (way) older 100 watt panels to play with. Next I'll save up for one of them sun-tracker things to mount them on. Need some micro inverters too. Hmmm...

Last Date Day SWMBO was going to take me to Sheri's in Silverdale but when we got there it was closed. Permanently. Damn! The one in East Bremerton was closed a long time ago. We stopped by the IHop just down the road from Sheri's but wasn't impressed when we walked in and left. Then she (SWMBO) told me she really wasn't hungry anyway so we made a quick stop at Burger King (cause *I* needed something to eat!) and made our usual stop at WinCo before heading home. Tucked her into our bed and even wrapped her in a heating blanket. So, success! Got my girl into bed at the end of the date.

I'm so lucky!

In 40 Years Of "Playing" With Computers, This Is The First Time I've "Bricked" One.

And it was a sight to behold! I'm checking it out but have absolutely NO idea what the hell I did.

Put my datadrive and another drive in. Booted up just fine. Everything was where it was supposed to be. Every program I ran worked. Added the DataDrive & Workdrive directories to the /media directory; then edited the fstab and put in the UUID, etc. Triple checked the info. Time to reboot. (Get used to seeing that word.)

Only "problem" was my old monitor (VGA) wasn't being seen (or working) so I decided to go into the CMOS setup during the reboot. Done it a million times. Found the setting I was looking for and clicked on the box to activate the onboard video.

I think that was my mistake. Even though my present (old) computer has that setting just so.

Saved the changes and let it reboot.

THIS COMPUTER IS PROTECTED BY HP SECURE BOOT

And ...

Sat there for 10 minutes. Nothing changed until I pressed the esc key then got into cmos again.

What the hell?

Rebooted into cmos. Turned off Secure Boot. TMP and anything else I thought might be the problem. That didn't even stop the THIS COMPUTER IS PROTECTED BY HP SECURE BOOT.

So, rebooted. Changes. Rebooted. Changes. Rebooted. Changed everything back to 'normal' and rebooted again.

Hmmm... Shit STILL ain't happening like it's supposed to happen.

Rebooted. Esc into cmos. Reset to factory defaults. Rebooted.

Watched the computer eat itself.

It now seems to be trying to boot. Runs for 3 seconds then shuts down. Never gets to POST. Repeatedly. No human input.

Did that for 20 minutes (which is really pushing my patience!).

Unplugged it. Plugged it back in. Same-O Same-O.

Held down little cmos reset switch while plugging it back in. Nada.

Took EVERYTHING out that I'd added. Rebooted. Didn't work. Still doing the reboot thing.

Fuck It! Reassembled my 'old' computer and set the 'new' one aside until I don't feel like using it for target practice.

So, I'm back for awhile. The Joy.

Not That Anyone Would Notice: May Be Offline A Couple Of Days...

Or I may not. Depends.

Need to rebuild my system. Completely upgrade the OS (Linux Mint XFCE usually), sooooooooo

My present desktop is a SFF  i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz with (DDR3) 12G ram (8 cores) (according to lshw). GeForce GTX 1050 Ti video card. Has an Internal DVD (laptop quality) and I added an external Blu-Ray drive. Haven't had any problems with it until recently (random lock-ups needing hard reboot) and it's done everything I have (reasonably) asked of it. With the NVIDIA video card it even rips and converts movies fairly quickly. Been up and running about 3 years. (1998 motherboard.)

The "Windows" SFF I bought to (badly) run MSFS is an i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60 GHZ with (DDR4) 30G ram (8 cores). GeForce GTX 1050. No optical drive at all. 

And, really, about the only important difference between the two is RAM.

But still: Hmmm...

I mean; I gotta reinstall the OS anyway, why not upgrade the hardware at the same time? I have it and it ain't doing anything but gathering dust.

Downloaded and burned the latest Linux Mint to a thumb drive. (Do we still call them that?)

Killed Windows (felt SO good!) by installing said Linux Mint XFCE and installing/re-installing everything I usually use. (Leaving out things I've installed but hardly ever use. We'll see how that goes.)

Now comes the tedious part: setting up e-mail and all the 'online' stuff and password files and all that. Reinstalling the Virtual Machine 'stuff' I use often is going to be a pain. Sometimes just getting the  3 monitors I use to show up in the right order is a pain. Computers are a pain! Why do I subject myself to this? Aaarrrrgggghhh!

Er

So, tomorrow sometime I'll shut down the 'old' computer, pull my data drive out, unplug it and set it off to the side. I know I'm going to have to start it up someday and see how something was installed/set-up and instead of reinventing the wheel...

THEN put my data drive  (and maybe one other (12 TB I'm not really using elsewhere)) in then begin the reconnect everything part of the evolution. Ugh. So many customization's to redo. Hell, Thunar alone will take an hour or two. (But, maybe not. I did find the uga.xml file with all the custom settings and MaY be able to just copy it over.)

So, I may be offline for a day or two.

Just Not A Lot To Post About

Unless you're interested that it finally started to actually rain around here. So, no getting outside for the next 5 months. Don't get me started.

Gas Prices on our trip. We're paying $4.20 here now.

Spent the week still getting caught up after our month+ trip to Ohio. Got pretty much everything done outside except for mowing the front yard (it'll keep) and digging up my side of the tater patch. Think I'll move the tractor up closer to the garage for "just in case" but otherwise not much left to do out there.

Inside is another matter! I have enough 'projects' to last the Winter over and then some. Starting with getting the basement in order ...

Thinking of buying a vertical wall planter (not particularly this one, but close) and setting up another hydroponic garden in my bathroom again this winter. Something just big enough to grow some more bok choy and smaller things. (I like growing things.) They do have some where you can drip irrigate top to bottom. (Which seems to work best for drip irrigation.) Add a tank of grow chemicals and you're suddenly cooking with gas.

Ran a load of banana's and strawberry's through the freeze dryer. Then, because I had an empty tray and an experimental nature, I poured 3 cans of V8 juice in the tray and froze it before putting it in a load going through the freeze dryer. 

It worked! Now I have V8 juice powder. Pretty tasty too. Seems enhanced. Haven't tried reconstituting it, yet. Now I know what to do with cases and cases of V8 SWMBO's friend gives us a couple times a year. (She needs to learn to not order so much!)

Date Day was El Sombrero's and Walmart. Somewhere along the way we got old ...

Anyone Else Occasionally Wear Their Meta Quest 3 To Poop? Come On, Raise Your Hands.

But only cause I was really into the virtual tour I was on. Still, I guess if you're going to be just sitting there ...

Busy week!

SWMBO took me out Monday to do some shopping for things that go bad in the fridge when they just sit there for over a month. The milk was especially lumpy and 'odd' tasting and no amount of shaking or stiring unlumped it. Found a half-head of lettuce that had made it's own gravey. The Joy! Pretty sure that green fuzz ain't supposed to be growing in the left over potato salad.

Sticker shock at WinCo was not quite as bad as it was at Meijer's(?) in Ohio. Still not like it was 4-5 years ago though. I think our freeze dried stores will come in handy over the next couple of years. Pork Loin was on sale again so I bought one. Made lots of thick pork chops and a couple of pork roasts.

Reassembled the tractor (put the bucket & land-plane back on) and spent a day getting the grass out of, and the gravel back to the top of, both driveways.  The lower driveway was particularly grown over. That spendy land-plane sure does a good job. Down to 1/8th tank of fuel in the tractor so ought to go get some more. Still need to buy some gravel though. Think I'll go for the white colored kind this time ...

Had to charge up the battery on the rider mower before getting on the lower-front & back yards. Cut them higher than normal because the grass was so long and my usual setting wouldn't have worked very well. But, it's all done. I like to do a circular pattern that probably (hopefully) looks like a bullseye from the air.

Filled the truck with gas. Well, not the whole truck; just the gas tank. $4.09/gal! Almost $90. For gas. Don't get me started.

Friday we went to the Exchange & Commissary on the base for the first time in (guessing) 5-6 years. The Exchange continues to be NOT for the lowly E-3 through E-5 place to shop that it was back in the day. Sure, the electronics were mostly up-to-date (or the latest 'must have') but still spendy. I could find each of their items for cheaper online or just by driving to a couple of different stores in town. OR the enlisted folks make way more money that I ever thought of back when I was an E-3/4. (I am old. My first paycheck in the Navy was $52)

The Commissary was fair to middlin' for their prices. Selection wasn't as good as, say, WinCo, but not bad. I'd say it was borderline for being the place for the younger/lower Enlisted folks to shop. If you lived on base or it was a long drive to a civilian store ...

SWMBO took me to Denny's for late lunch/early dinner Date Day. She likes their Bourbon Chicken plate and I had the 55+ Salmon dinner. Yes, I'm 'at that age' where the 55+ menu items pretty much are enough to eat at one sitting. Been taking way less home to go bad in the fridge before I throw it away because I never got back to it.

Having way too much fun on the Meta Quest 3. Bought a ping pong program that I can spend an easy hour letting the 'robot' send me some serves. Learning the paddles, etc, before playing an actual person. Then I found a bowling 'game' that's a lot of fun. Have to put the controller straps around my wrist though cause, sometimes, when I release the ball I also release the controller and it goes flying across the room. Surprised I haven't broken it yet.

One 'game' I really like gives you a pistol and a pendulum target. That's it. Fifteen shots and you're scored and started all over again. Simple, yet, you get to shoot shit. Now if you could put a face on that target ...

Tried watching a movie (from our NAS) in the 'Bigscreen" app (where it simulates a theater experience and you can invite friends) but would rather just throw a movie up on my monitor or go into the living room and watch one on the real 'big screen.' Way more comfortable.

Anywho, had meatloaf patties (fried in an iron pan like they ought to be), baked taters, and reconstituted beets for dinner. Must have been good sincee SWMBO and I ate every last morsel. Next I'm going to go through the MANY cookbooks I have and pick out some new things to try. My cooking is getting boring.

Speaking of which: SWMBO told me she doesn't like having my $11 breakfast (egg over easy ON toast (for her), bacon, and a tater patty) every morning and wants to switch it up with Oatmeal some mornings. OATMEAL. I tend to forget sometimes that she's from Toledo.

I still want to know who's bright fucking idea metal handles on pot lids was.