So recently, the AT&T provided UPS for my modem been flaking out on me lately, and it’s the ONLY thing from AT&T that wasn’t leased. I got a new battery for it (as I never did up to this point, mind you, I had my U-Verse service much longer than I been a member here…) and it still failed randomly on me at some point. When I really looked at what the light was telling me, I needed to replace the unit, but it was much than I wanted to pay right now. So I talked to tech support, and asked for a normal power cable so I can at least hook it up to my own UPS for the time being.
Then couldn’t send just the cable, so they have to send out a tech…
I was on the subway today, and there were several high school aged boys at the other end of the car, talking about anime and manga. One boy had long blue hair. I could not hear much of what they were saying until they got a little loud. The boy with the blue hair mentioned a show and called it “the greatest anime ever made”. A couple of the other boys agreed with him. And what is the name of the “greatest anime ever made”?
[spoiler]Avatar: The Last Airbender!
I almost fell out of my seat when I heard that! LOL It just made my day!
Wow Wicca, just reading that from you and imagining actually hearing it from them… I never knew that it was possible for my ears to actually want to melt from my skull.
:blink::pinch:
In other news, my landline based internet was down today since a group of thieves decided to execute a heist on several 100 feet of fiber optic cabling in multiple locations. It was down until 5:30PM PST, and I don’t know when it was first discovered. These thieves are getting more and more brazen. This is the first time that I have seen a major area outrage due to this… won’t be the last either. Heck, my aunt’s home AC unit got ripped off for the copper in it just a week ago back in Cali.
Just placed an order through amazon and they charged me sales tax for the first time. If I didn’t have a year left of prime then this would have ended my amazon use. No more prime for me though.
Not entirely Amazon’s fault. They have had to deal with all the states that charge sales tax which have been pressuring them, and the US Congress, to force collection. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did for them.
If you want the status quo ante ( or way it was ) of a tax free Internet then vote to replace you state legislators with tax free Internet friendly ones and vote to replace your congressmen with the same.
So the power switch on my case is flaky now… It randomly sends a signal to my motherboard at random, causing it to turn on and off randomly (even during BIOS screen)
My motherboard does have a power switch built in, but that will be a pain in the butt in the long run (yeah, take off side of case, reach between a PCI card and the PSU to turn my computer on… fun…)
I have a UPS that has a feature that allows some devices to turn on and off with the computer. I have my speakers on there, so my computer turning itself on and off this morning was causing them to pop. This was about 5 am. I turned it off via the power button this morning, then later heard it come back on. I cut off the power using the switch on the PSU.
Some debugging later in the day, and I ended with just pulling out the connector on the motherboard from the power switch on the case.
Is this a home built system? You may be able to get a replacement for the power button, they are not that hard to remove & re-install if it is a “generic” case.
Yep, home built. I’m not sure if it’s possible to just replace that one bit or not. Lot of metal in the area, and where I have my computer, not easy to take the front off.
And now that I typed that, I just noticed a fatal flaw with my new case for my planned new system…
The cooling fan in my power supply is dying. Most of the time I go to turn on my system the fan makes a terrible noise. I literally have to smack the side of the power supply to get it to balance. I’m going to get a new computer in the next week so this isn’t too much of a worry. The damn power supply is locked into this case so replacing it would be very awkward.
:dry:
After my last post, I had did a search to see if I can find a replacement power button, and Google, after typing in my case model (actually, there’s a chance it kinda ignored the model and only used the brand name), when I typed in “po”, the suggestion had “power button issue” first… And a site that easily listed a part (though I don’t think it was the part I needed, let alone for my case), the first comment talked up about the fact plastic was used being an issue, and they bought three…
Next time I have a day like Saturday, I might just move the innards into my new case, and figure out what to do with my original plan of keeping two computers so I can reformat one and still have a usable backup computer during that process. This one site I’m using to track my part list did list other colors I could get for the case I have.
[quote=“mgosdin” post=176154]Not entirely Amazon’s fault. They have had to deal with all the states that charge sales tax which have been pressuring them, and the US Congress, to force collection. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did for them.
[/quote]
Sadly, Amazon was lobbying for online sales tax, while eBay was against it as it hurts the little guy (and thus eBay). Amazon’s “nexus” is only here because they got special breaks to build it here. Reminds me of a quote about it isn’t about electing the right people so much as making the wrong people do the right things.
For a while, and arguably still now, redistricting left me w/o a Congressman. Made me realize that 435 is just too few to actually represent 300+ million people.
Interesting thing about Amazon Prime that I just noticed a few days ago (although, I’m not entirely sure how long it’s been around)… It seems that Amazon wants to sway their Prime members to not use their free two-day shipping. Apparently, when you order something that is eligible for free 2-day shipping with prime, you can choose no-rush shipping…
here’s their little blurb on it:
[quote]About FREE No-Rush Shipping
Choose FREE No-Rush Shipping and we’ll automatically apply a $1 Amazon Instant Video credit to your account once your order ships.
You can use this credit by logging on to Amazon.com or going to the Amazon Instant Video app on your smart phone, tablet, TV, or streaming video device. You can choose a movie or TV show from our catalog by clicking Rent or Buy.
Your order with No-Rush Shipping will arrive in 5 - 7 business days. This No-Rush credit expires on October 31, 2014. Terms and Conditions apply.[/quote]
So, they’re basically paying you $1 to not utilize one of the big selling points of Amazon Prime, but they’re going to charge you more money for it. Oh, and don’t forget, if you don’t use your $1 credit by the end of October, it expires. I think I’ll just use my free Two-Day shipping.
5 - 7 business days is probably a little high of an estimate though. When I used to choose super saver shipping before I had prime, I would still get stuff in 3 - 5 days. So it’s not too bad of a deal if you’re someone who orders a lot of things you don’t need right away that you would normally frequently order, or would normally buy a lot of. I could see buying a bunch of cheap office supplies like pens and paper, and just buying them in separate orders a day or so apart, and just accumulate a bunch of video credits. That’s the only way it would be worth while, since most of the $1 videos on Amazon aren’t that great.
The rate I buy physical goods online, Prime doesn’t make sense to me. Currently, the Prime membership would account for 70%-90% of the amount I would spend.
[hr]
Fractal Design Define R4 (black)
Anyway, for the fatal flaw I noticed, the little stand I had bought for my current case (as it was the first case I bought with the PSU on the bottom, and I have carpet in my room…) has this little bit that stick up a bit where the door is. That stand is a case me of buying something and the purpose of said item wasn’t design for what I’m using it for
What is with the world’s propensity for needing everything to connect online? Computers are tools, not toys, and the glorified Nintendo Gameboys and DS garbage that passes for computers today…
I can do more with that 486sx 25 mhz machine and its 100 meg HDD than most of these stupid pad devices can do, because I have full control of it. I control the vertical and I control the horizontal! Also the programs were designed with better GUIs for it, clean simple and not cluttered with random icons, but simple words. It can scan and OCR documents, as well as many other productivity applications.it isn’t todays modern Gameboy masquerading as a PC, but a tool.
You know all this, but in general with how the world works…it just makes no sense to me how people think a computer can only function is it connects to the internet.
It also starts up quicker than most modern computers do as well. Moore’s law be d****d, because the faster computers got, the slower they work because too much crap is added to them.
That’s a nice looking case. Makes me want to do another system build, but I’ve sworn off of those for now.
I have had a habit of buying whatever the local Tiger Direct ( ex-CompUSA ) store has on hand. The cases have been good, but the ones that came with power supplies I just ended up replacing. Those were too cheap to even bother with.
