What first world problem did you have today?

[Red Squirrel]

Think AT&T was mostly involved in long distance originally in the states. Here in Ontario it was the rail road company, they already owned lot of land going between towns so it made sense to run long distance lines along it. Fibre still runs beside the tracks to this day.

Northern Electric and eventually Northern Telecom was also well involved in the manufacture of equipment such as the DMS switches which to this day are still operating. Eventually became Nortel. Too bad the company went under because product wise, their stuff was solid. All Canadian.

There was also electromechanical stepper switches but that's a little before my time. Would have loved to see one in person though. We actually had one operating maybe a decade or so ago in one of our offices. Now it's mostly all DMS100 and DMS10 everywhere. They've been trying to phase out all copper but I think it will still be around for another few decades. Tons of legacy stuff on there that's too hard to switch over.

 

[lxskllr]

The skittles from my mre are all stuck together :^(

 

[Chaotic42]

It's a brutal 70F/21C in the house and I need to invest in a wearable electric blanket with a big battery pack so I can work downstairs in comfort. I'm not sure why the sun has forsaken us, but with each passing day I can feel its love wane.

 

[lxskllr]

70° is the temp my scale shows as "hot". I'd have to look at the thermostat, but I think it's 59° in the house. I only closed my bedroom window 2 nights ago. Still no blanket on the bed.

 

[Chaotic42]

I'm under an electric blanket set on high. Need some of those jobby jobs in the desert. None of my winter clothes fit anymore - guess it's time to go shopping.

 

[pete6032]

Covid vaccine has really knocked me down. Got it this morning and can barely sleep tonight. Crazy fever dreams

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

After three days of dark and rain, none of my solar lights are working. No sun, no charge.

Maybe today ... tonight ....

 

[lxskllr]

I went to make a breakfast sandwich, and found I was out of vegan "sausage" patties. I had 1 left, but needed 2 to fill the bread. Thought I had another bag in the freezer. I had to use 2 mystery meat links with the patty. Links are inconvenient to use on a sandwich. Turned out ok, but was more of a hassle than it needed to be.

 

[Red Squirrel]

This is ongoing but seems to be worse lately. My black cat has chronic diarrhea and he's constantly using the litter and he makes such a huge mess in there because instead of just burring it and moving on he spends like 10 minutes in there spreading it everywhere. It breaks up into smaller chunks and stinks up so bad. I end up cleaning it like 5-10 times a day if I'm home because of the smell.

Tried everything like different medications, food etc and nothing really helps. Spent a few grand on various tests etc.

 

[lxskllr]

Bummer. My boy gets bouts of diarrhea. Average is probably once every two months, and it lasts about a week. I just deal with it. I've considered the vet, but it seems like the kind of thing that can turn into a money pit with no answers.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah for him it's chronic, he's never actually had normal stool. I pretty much exhausted all the vet things too, anything beyond this is getting into the thousands of dollars and even they figure it's not really worth it.

Think I'm going to try wet food with probiotic powder again to see if it at least helps a bit. It didn't do much last time, but one thing I did not really notice is frequency of using litter box, if I can at least improve that part that's something. Right now he's going like 10 times a day, if I'm home I'm constantly cleaning it since it stinks so badly when he goes, imagine you added tires to a septic tank, and then set it on fire. That's basically how it smells when he goes.

 

[VashHT]

Maybe try adding some more fiber? Apparently pumpkin puree is really good for that for cats, I've seen stuff in stores for that. I feel for ya, our younger cat had some bouts of diarrhea when he was a kitten last year, turned out to be the wet food we were giving him. He'd do the same thing in the litter box, knocking it all over the place so it was impossible to scoop out. He has long hair too so it'd get all over his back legs and he'd be tracking it everywhere, it was nasty.

You said you've done tests at the vet so I'm guessing they checked for this, but giardia will cause diarrhea too, our older cat had that as a kitten and it was pretty gross, went away after a round of the medication though.

 

[Red Squirrel]

One thing I'm fortunate about is he seems fairly clean, once in a while it gets all over his paws because he might step in it, but generally it doesn't happen. There was a plastic cover on the litter box that I removed since he would stand on the edge then end up doing it all over himself but since I removed that cover he comes out clean now.

I have tried the pumpkin stuff, but might try it again. At this point don't think it will go away completely but if I can maybe reduce the frequency it will at least help.

 

[Red Squirrel]

As a side note, it beats puking... my old cat used to puke all over the house constantly. It was so gross and annoying having to deal with that all the time.

I think they do puke once in a while as I have had to clean some up a few times, but I think they clean up after each other more often than I realize... lol. Kinda gross but saves me some work lol.

 

[Chaotic42]

I've finally been using the GoPro 9 I bought years ago and while I like the time lapse, I don't really love much else about it. Its battery life sucks, it gets hot, the focus is way too wide, the UI kind of sucks, keeping it plugged in while using it means the huge flap has to stay open, and the picture quality isn't that great.

It's not terrible, but it's definitely underwhelming, even compared to my phone from that time period.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I find the same with my Gopro, if I'm going to use it for time lapse I pretty much have to connect it to a battery bank which means it's no longer really a waterproof solution. I find the battery drains fast if it's left unattended too. Which reminds me I should probably charge mine as I have not used it in a while. Yep, completely dead. That's not really great for the battery to go completely flat like that.

For short spurt videos it's ok I guess, and probably mostly what it's meant for. Made this random montage a while back from shorter videos and a few time lapses were I did use the power bank but for the video it was on battery. It is fun that you can put it under water.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

A week ago, I put something on a list. 20 pack of the item for $14

When I went to place the order, I forgot about the item on the list. I searched for it again and found a 10 pack for $10. Since I needed 12-15 of the item, I ordered two 10 packs.

Paid $20 instead of $14

 

[BoomerD]

Bell Telephone Company - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

AT&T merged with Bell in 1899. So, no, AT&T did not invent the telephone.

Hell, I remember when the local telephone company was Bell Telephone, long distance was through AT&T. (and it was fckn EXPENSIVE!)

 

[BoomerD]

One thing I'm fortunate about is he seems fairly clean, once in a while it gets all over his paws because he might step in it, but generally it doesn't happen. There was a plastic cover on the litter box that I removed since he would stand on the edge then end up doing it all over himself but since I removed that cover he comes out clean now.

I have tried the pumpkin stuff, but might try it again. At this point don't think it will go away completely but if I can maybe reduce the frequency it will at least help.

If you can get him to eat it, there's a product called Bernie's Perfect Poop for dogs. It's basically probiotics and fiber...and works wonderful for doggie diarrhea. I looked at their site. It's not made FOR cats, but won't hurt them...and IF you can get them to eat it, it works just as well for cats as it does for dogs.
It's tiny little bits that you mix into the food. Bacon or cheese flavor.

Perfect Poop: Digestive & Gut Health Supplement for Dogs

We know good health starts in the gut and that's why we're the ultimate gut health supplement for dogs. Healthy dogs lead happy lives!

www.bernies.com

 

[sdifox]

office 2016 32bit uninstall doesn't cleanup after itself, prevents me from installing the 64 bit version

had to switch to 64 cuz I am hitting memory limit of 32bit excel

hopefully SaRA can clean it up. not holding my breath.

edit:SaRA worked. installing 64bit office 2016 now. maybe I should just upgrade to Office 2024.

 

[Red Squirrel]

My work computer got rebooted overnight so had to deal with that, and when I started opening all my stuff I realized one of my monitors was all blurry. I went in the monitor properties but then it dropped it down to HD instead of 4k, and the 4k option was not even there. Had to reboot again and fiddle around with it until it detected as 4k. I find this new windows 11 PC often gives me grief with monitors. I actually had to change my setup around because it refused to detect my top monitor no matter what I do, so ended up adding 2 4k side ones instead. At one point it was doing the same to one of the side ones too, it would just be black. Thankfully a couple reboots solved it... But it seems every time I move from work to home it's a mystery if things will work the same. The solution to this would be simple. Just let us work from home full time. I think they are going to go the other direction though... our union contract expires in 2026 and pretty sure we'll be back in office full time after that.

 

[mikeymikec]

office 2016 32bit uninstall doesn't cleanup after itself, prevents me from installing the 64 bit version

had to switch to 64 cuz I am hitting memory limit of 32bit excel

hopefully SaRA can clean it up. not holding my breath.

After 'uninstalling' 365 recently, I had to go around deleting registry keys because the standalone version refused to install until 365 had been properly exorcised. It was a new experience for me.

---

I went bargain-hunting on musicmagpie/ebay the other day and picked up a load of BRs reasonably cheaply. The 'Training Day' disc had a neat inch-long scratch at least going from the outside of the disc towards the centre and MakeMKV was predictably not happy about it. I thought I'd have to return it, but I thought I'd try a bit of spit and polish with my finger which also predictably didn't make much visual difference to the scratch, but MakeMKV read it perfectly after that!

Also, the DS9 boxset I bought off ebay recently had some interesting stuff on some of the discs, it's not easy to photograph:



But there are what appears to be some kind of substance dribbled parallel to the edge of the disc. I got out a toilet wipe and had to wipe away at each patch several times before MakeMKV could read the discs properly.

 

[sdifox]

Hell, I remember when the local telephone company was Bell Telephone, long distance was through AT&T. (and it was fckn EXPENSIVE!)

Dude, I remember going to the telephone office and line up to make long distance call.

This was in Buenos Aires mid 80s

 

[Chaotic42]

I'm really starting to hate Firefox. Right clicking now has AI crap in the menu which doesn't get drawn at first, so I right click, start to move the mouse, then AI crap features pop up into the list, throwing off my flow. They're supposed to be "the good guys" and their product is just circling the toilet bowl.

 

[lxskllr]

I'm really starting to hate Firefox. Right clicking now has AI crap in the menu which doesn't get drawn at first, so I right click, start to move the mouse, then AI crap features pop up into the list, throwing off my flow. They're supposed to be "the good guys" and their product is just circling the toilet bowl.

It can be disabled. On my phone right now, but look it up. I'm still on an old version cause debian, so I haven't gotten it yet.