What first world problem did you have today?

[Red Squirrel]

I've been tasked with testing the new PCs they are deploying to make sure all our stuff works. When I had it sitting at work overnight it just blanked out and basically stopped responding. I figured maybe it was because I forgot to turn on the app that stops the screensaver and it probably went into standby then froze, which is normal windows behavior if standby is enabled. I did another test but made sure the screensaver stop app was on and it was fine for a few nights.

I am now testing the system here at home as I'm schedueled to work from home on my next day shift and figured I would actually use it in real time as a better test, if something fails at least there's other people who can take my calls.

Well a few hours in sitting at home all the screens just turned off except for one, which went black, and the system is no longer responding. The fan was revving up so I suspect it's related to an update, but the fact that it will just randomly do this and never actually recover does not bode well. I had to hold down the power button to get it back up. I'm not actually on shift right now, I just figured I would let it sit as a test, and I wanted to make sure all the monitors and such work for when I do start work in a few days.

 

[BoomerD]

If you have access to your medication by mail jump on that! I get 90 day supplies by USPS.

Me too. Convenient as hell. (and free with my Med Advantage plan)

 

[BoomerD]

I guess the closest I have to a FWP today...goes back almost 25 years. Fucked up my neck in an equipment accident. Got bounced out of the seat so hard, the seatbelt let go and I smashed my head into the ROPS so hard it broke the suspension of my hard hat. A few days later, I started having pains in my right arm. Thought it was related to a muscle I pulled when moving some timbers...Nope, when I hit my head, I blew out a disk in my cervical spine...and it was impinging on a nerve. Arm kept getting weaker and weaker...pains moved around the arm like they were on a track. Finally, my primary care doc wrote me a script for amitriptyline...an anti-depressant that, at low doses, can help with nerve pain. Sure enough...after a couple of weeks, the pains went away. (didn't help the weakening in the arm...that required an epidural)
Moving forward, the "mystery pain" in my arms has happened a couple of times since then. Back on the amitriptyline...pains go away.
Started up again a week or so ago. Can't get into my new doc until July...so I dug around in my pharmacy box... woot! found a couple dozen pills...from 2007. Hopefully they are still potent enough to do the job.

 

[Chaotic42]

Why is 4x4 lumber 3-9/16" by 3-8/16"?

 

[iRONic]

What planet are you buying that fucking board from?! 3.5 x 3.5 is the nominal size of a 4 x 4 post!

ie… 3 1/2" x 3 1/2"!

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

In my world, 9/16 and 8/16 are essentially equal to 1/2

 

[Red Squirrel]

I want to start my own sawmill where we ship out proper dimensions, with blackjack and hookers!

Actually the smaller locally ran saw mills do in fact ship the actual sizes, ex 2" x 4". They call it rough cut, what you get at Home Depot is planed so the planner takes about 1/4" off each side.

 

[Chaotic42]

In my world, 9/16 and 8/16 are essentially equal to 1/2

I want to start my own sawmill where we ship out proper dimensions, with blackjack and hookers!

Actually the smaller locally ran saw mills do in fact ship the actual sizes, ex 2" x 4". They call it rough cut, what you get at Home Depot is planed so the planner takes about 1/4" off each side.

Animals! Filth!

I know those numbers are pre-consumer, it's just so weird that one side is 3.5 and the other is 1/16th longer. Oh well, at least I can buy wood today. Might not be that way forever.

 

[snoopy7548]

8/16...

 

[IronWing]

Canada is supposed to better than America. Why is there no train from the airport to downtown Montreal? That's LA stupide.

 

[BoomerD]

Why is 4x4 lumber 3-9/16" by 3-8/16"?

View attachment 123987

err...3 8/16" is 3 1/2"

 

[Chaotic42]

err...3 8/16" is 3 1/2"

I know. I have to suffer and so should all of you.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I setup my work PC at home and had to redo lot of the wiring to make everything work, and in the process I seem to have misplaced one of my EID emulator dongles. Windows 11 still has not fixed the bug where if you turn off a monitor it completely makes everything go haywire so those dongles are needed. 2 of the monitors are going through a KVM so the KVM solves that issue, but the other two monitors are stand alone. I have one using the dongle but missing the dongle for the other, so I can't turn it off as long as the work PC is on or it messes up everything.

Went ahead and ordered more of those dongles.

 

[KLin]

I have a fedex package coming that has had no scans since 5/11 in Colorado. Should have been in California by now.

 

[IBMJunkman]

I have electricians installing the power for my EV battery charger. I never know how to act when I have people working on the house. Don't want to watch TV because I don't like the "here peasant, you work while I sit here and do nothing" vibe.

I recently had a small concrete job done. 3 guys, 7 hours. About an hour in I offered them water. Perrier! I would periodically check on progress. About 4 hours in one of them had gone for coffee. They offered me a cup. I had already had my fill for the day. When they were done I gave the boss an extra $100 and told him to buy the guys beer and pizza. I know he told them a cause I saw him show the other guys the money. Work was excellent.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I ended up finding the dongle I was looking for. At least i got my work PC going now and I can actually turn off my monitors without messing anything up. The other dongles will be spares and may come in handy later on, it's something good to have on hand.

Also ordered 4 mini DP to HDMI adapters, since right now I'm using mini DP to regular DP then DP to HDMI, and then the dongle. That's a lot of different connections and sometimes they fail. It's a really touchy setup.

 

[VashHT]

Capcom finally re-released power stone 1+2 and Capcom vs SNK2 and they released the damn arcade versions for some reason, annoys the crap out of me I've been waiting for them to release a collection with these but I want all the extra stuff the console versions had.

 

[KLin]

Ask for an up close pic of a corner of a card being sold on ebay and get told no. wut?

 

[thestrangebrew1]

Our rep had negotiations with City Council last night. We had asked for some pretty minor stuff that all got approved: An extra step increase, increase in our boot budget, longevity pay. The only thing we asked for that we didn't get was management hours since we're salaried. We currently get 72 hours. We asked for 96 which is what some of the other jurisdictions offer, but got talked down to 80 hours by our city manager. Got shot down by the council. Boo...

 

[Red Squirrel]

I managed to last 2 shifts on my new work PC, as I'm basically testing it before it gets rolled out to everyone. I was having some display related issues at first which I solved, it was mostly because of sketchy adapters and such but as long as I didn't breathe on it too hard, it was ok.

The new adapters I ordered showed up today so I decided to install them and it makes for a much cleaner setup without so many transitions and failure points and they all plug into the add-on GPU now instead of all over random ports mixing between built on and GPU. Decided I should probably leave it on to test this to make sure it doesn't die or act weird after a while.

Sure enough all the screens went black after like 10 minutes. I thought maybe I forgot to activate the nosleep app so tested again and it died fairly early again. Great did I spend all that money for nothing? Started to do a bit of troubleshooting and long story short I think it's the GPU that's overheating as the fan is barely spinning. It starts to spin then dies then starts up again and so on. Testing again with a portable fan pointed right at GPU just to rule out cooling being an issue. I kinda hope that is the issue since that's an easy fix.

 

[IronWing]

I have been tasked with…

Over a decade ago we had a client who died (not our fault). This week I have been tasked with returning a deposit we have been holding since the time before the client was dead. Getting past the WTaF stage I set out to find the survivors. I found the obituary and it listed the survivors and even a law firm for the children’s trust. “This is a piece of cake”, said I, thinking that the law firm probably handled the estate. The law firm is defunct and the principal is older than Keith Richards. FML

 

[Red Squirrel]

That sounds like a pain, never crossed my mind as to what happens when a law firm just goes tits up. Like what about people that have wills and such? That could suck if all of it just ends up void. You'd think there would be some process where stuff gets transferred to another firm.

As for my work PC it must have been a heat issue as it's been good for several hours now after I added a fan. I kinda had to macguyver it in there but it's a clean macguyver. The only power connector that was feasible to tap off of was a 12v 6 pin molex connector, similar to a GPU connector so I crimped 2 wires to a connector that will plug into it and then soldered those to a fan adapter I cut then plugged the fan in that. Shrink wrapped it. Used zip ties to put the fan near the GPU.

I will bring it up to my boss though as this may be an issue that will affect others and we may want to find a more permanent solution. I'm not sure how well that setup is actually cooling as it's just blowing random air on the GPU, it's not really forcing it through the heat sink shroud or anything. It might be keeping the temp down just enough to avoid locking up.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Well good news the PC lasted the night! I guess it's safe to say it was in fact a cooling issue. The IT guys will either be impressed or horrified when they see my fix. I'm tempted to just leave it though, if they insist on changing out the whole GPU I might end up with a different model and I rather not touch it now that it works and that I got the appropriate adapters for it too.

 

[lxskllr]

Can't you just close the ticket, and say it's working now?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Didn't open one yet, I discovered this after my shift was done so figured I'd do troubleshooting myself since my next time working is nights, so I'm kinda on my own anyway. So yeah I might just leave it as is since I suspect their fix would be to replace the whole GPU and I rather not have to change that out.