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2:00 PM
on SU we need to get users to simply identify what the symptoms of their PC troubles are, and then let us tell them what we think is wrong... otherwise they will be obtaining "solutions" to things other than what the actual problem is.
well, if you don't say virus, and just talk about symptoms, it often works better
I guess if you wanted to nuke all localized questions about PC troubles, you would nuke even those questions where someone just simply provides their symptoms and asks for a recommendation on what to do and what the likely diagnosis is
but then we'd become a Wikipedia clone
only canonical articles !
"My computer is running slow, I have these specific wierd processes..."
@allquixotic: like the video cable problem! ;p
@JourneymanGeek sure... but I always thought SE Q&A sites were somewhat of a hybrid of wikipedia and HV forums... we have canonical questions/answers and fairly localized stuff and not-really-localized-stuff-that-wouldnt-be-noteworthy-of-an-article-on-wikipedia
(HV = help vampire)
2:02 PM
I should dig through our obsolete cable cabinet and rep cap Hennes for a week to get that wiki rolling :P
@Tanner: I'd LOVE to do a blog post on that at some point, when I get out of my current audiophile period
@JourneymanGeek ohhhh, you're becoming an audiophile? what you up to?
I've been one a while
just got a major upgrade to my kit
I'm becoming a prismatophile (is that even a word? loves colors)
i want one of those color calibration sensors for my Surface Pro and laptop
@allquixotic: I've always been a gear snob
I love good stuff that works as it should
2:05 PM
@allquixotic reminds me of priestophile
this isn't just gear; this is personal -- THIS. IS. COLOR!!!!!!!
@Tanner: got a new amp (well it reached me) last week, getting new headphones
@JourneymanGeek amp for...?
@Tanner: its a headphone amp
@Tanner hearing loss ;)
2:05 PM
@allquixotic I have a few of those! =D
its feature is to provide hearing loss, so he can listen to music louder, and need a bigger amp, etc
eventually he'll have a 35000 kW amp in his inner ear canal
@allquixotic: odd thing that. My average listening volume is down about 5 db according to my phone between my old setup, and the one with the amp
I CAN crank it up, of course... ;p
getting new headphones as well
@JourneymanGeek you mean -5 dB of maximum?
always thought software volumes were measured as an attenuation of 0dB (where 0 = DAC can't go louder)
@allquixotic: 5db of whatver the hell androsensors picks up ;p
I've lost about 30db in my right ear. At this point I've decided to just let that one go, so I put an ear plug in the left when I'm playing.
2:07 PM
woah this stuff is scary
@Tanner :(
and I do have it quieter. the 'right' volume went down
I do turn it up for one or two tracks tho.
my hearing is pretty uniform between my two ears and still somehow at the low end of normal, I escaped terrible ear infections when I was young without too much damage
what's fscked up are my eyes
one of them is like "I'm blind" and the other is ... bad, but serviceable
@allquixotic: ugh, that sucks
@Tanner I first read that as "I've lost about 30 lbs" and I was like "whoa, awesome!"
2:08 PM
I'm short sighted
@allquixotic fsck I wish...
@JourneymanGeek you probably mean near sighted :D
@allquixotic: losing 30 pounds in a ear would be bad
I've gained 40 in the past year >_> silly IT job...
@allquixotic: short. sighted ;p
2:09 PM
short sighted == you take decisions that only help you now but will screw you over later
@allquixotic: its hard being a dog ;p
@JourneymanGeek oh OK so we're going to pretend we're animals again
(we call it short sighted here for some reason. but ya, yer right ;p)
in that case, meeeeeeeeeeeeeeYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYr! hiss
@allquixotic: running joke!
ah hah!
Myopia (, muōpia, from myein "to shut" – ops (gen. opos) "eye"), commonly known as being nearsighted (American English) and shortsighted (British English), is a condition of the eye where the light that comes in does not directly focus on the retina but in front of it. This causes the image that one sees when looking at a distant object to be out of focus, but in focus when looking at a close object. Eye care professionals most commonly correct myopia through the use of corrective lenses, such as glasses or contact lenses. It may also be corrected by refractive surgery, though there ar...
2:10 PM
short sighted is a britishism
yep, not shortsighted lol
we are on the same page
not literally though
@jokerdino I was gonna say, "journeymangeek" might be on the same page of the user list as "jokerdino" -- they're both jo
(dog that's my ava can't see very far. we're not sure if its a westie/snauzer thing, or being kinda short, he relies on hearing and smell)
2:14 PM
hah i have 500 more rep than Atwood does on SU
@allquixotic: I'll likely get a colourimeter eventually. I just don't have a good enough monitor to justify it
@allquixotic i think we are
@allquixotic you have more rep than Jon on SU
and I THINK you guys missed the snarking we were doing about that verge article ;p
@allquixotic: onlycreative.it <- this is definately NOT the amp I have ;p
translate.google.com/… got one of these.
@allquixotic: about 50 db out the soundcard , vs 45 db out the amp
room is at about 20db
very quick unscientific test, just held my phone to one cup with androsensor turned on ;p
if my DAC had a true lineout, I could probably do better A/B tests
Anyone changed the memory in a Lenovo tablet (I have an x200 tablet)? Wondering how painful it is
I had to remove the keyboard from my last laptop to get at the ram
@BenBrocka by "tablet" you mean "small ThinkPad laptop"; the X200 is not a tablet in the sense of a Nexus 7 or even a Surface Pro
2:29 PM
looks like it's just a panel on the underside though
@allquixotic OG tablet
those X/T/W series are still much more maintainable than fully discrete proper tablets
but usually on thinkpads there's 2 slots for memory
There were tablet PCs long before iPads
2:29 PM
one's internal, you'll need to effectively take apart the whole damned thing to change that
I know; I have an X61T
there's a second bay, thats on the underside, that you can just open up, add ram and close up, easy as pie
this PDF should answer all possible questions you could have about maintaining your X200
end of story, more or less. ;p
I mean it's completely comprehensive
2:31 PM
yeah, thats a fine ol ibm tradition I hope lenovo dosen't kill
@JourneymanGeek Looks like I should only need to access the underside one, I think
ya, very likely
I just desparately need to get it on 8 GB so it stops using page file
/me did a hard drive swap on a R60 today
then installed lubuntu on it. damned thing is pretty damned snappy
@JourneymanGeek Heathen! :P
2:34 PM
@JourneymanGeek lubuntu too blue
Looks like two of these should do the trick? amazon.com/1066MHz-DDR31066-PC38500-KTL-TP1066-4G/dp/B001PS9UPM
I haven't bought laptop ram in years
@BenRichards: you've just not seen the light ;p
I'd double check to see if the x200 uses DDR3 to be sure
@jokerdino: amusingly? Its mostly used via SSH
gave dad an account, set up putty for him.
2:37 PM
@OliverSalzburg :O
oh it's PuTTY
@BenBrocka page 69 of the HMM
only 40.6 GB
obviously I need to make the transitions longer
you remove the battery pack, loosen one screw, remove some others, then install the RAM
@JourneymanGeek :P
2:38 PM
if I were to upload this to YouTube, would anyone here be interested?
i would watch it from start to end
most people who watch nyan cat would
the sarcasm.. it burns!
file's so big VLC is buffering every 6 seconds
reading from the local HDD
I appear to have lost the audio.. fml
@jokerdino there's KiTTY
I just needed something I know works
2:42 PM
the whole reason I set up linux was to give dad a environment where stuff in his sqlite tutorial would work as designed so that I would have less work to do ;p
forgot to tick audio when rendering
@JourneymanGeek lazy
@Bob how long did it take to render ?
@HackToHell 45 mins
2:43 PM
@jokerdino You are supposed to say good
most was probably the HDD dying
@jokerdino: better potato peeler ;p
it's a laptop :P
also swapped the HDD with a spare I had so i didn't need to back up the old one
just deleted 40 GB
my free space just doubled
2:44 PM
you had 40GB free space before deleting it. I can do math!
i have a camera. First box ticked.
lots of bad photos
I'm two for two!
@Bob yeah I dont even need to try for that.
2:47 PM
ok, I'll be gone for the next hour while this renders :\
now, where to put my laptop so it doesn't start a fire
@allquixotic Found that same info via a search actually (the manual is neat in theory but a pain to search)
Looks quite simple, I'll just go ahead and get the ram
@HackToHell Instagram it, it's quicker
Even though I have an SSD, any time my laptop uses the pagefile it grinds to a halt
@OliverSalzburg I thought that was describing the process of Instagram?
@Bob : in the fireplace?
@BenBrocka: eh, thats not normal
2:49 PM
@Bob Good point :D
@BenBrocka at least you have a SSD :P
@JourneymanGeek Yeah, I don't know what it's deal is, but it seems to be the problem...disabling pagefile it goes fast
Q: Are diagnostics/troubleshooting issues on-topic and not too localized?

allquixoticFollowing on from this question. I made a comment there: By the same token, we shouldn't automatically close any question that says "virus" anywhere in the subject or body, because it may be that the user is mistaken in believing that they have a virus, when in fact, it's just good old fashio...

boot times are still fast
@Tanner @OliverSalzburg ^^ probably TLDR but it was buggin me a bit
2:50 PM
video rendering with a crappy HDD (literally the slowest I've seen in the last half a decade) = Firefox lagspikes every five seconds
with the lag spikes lasting up to ten
...I think I'll just use my phone
I can reproduce that with flash videos,
Tried a different SSD (one that works fine on my desktop) and I still get the lag spikes. So I don't know what the deal is
@jokerdino Flash. 'nuff said.
@Bob doesn't happen on Sandy Bridge or later (or shouldn't, especially if you have some free physical RAM)
a few specific changes in architecture should've fixed that
I wish flash could use my GPU/multiple cores. I record video game videos and BF3 on Ultra settings doesn't stutter, but stupid flash games do
2:52 PM
@BenBrocka dunno about multi-cores, but it does use your GPU in some respects, just not completely
@BenBrocka: badly written apps are.. badly written apps. I've seen something bog down my desktop (16gb of ram, ssd, ivy bridge core i7 3770), with resources to spare
@allquixotic I'll probably answer that some time later
@allquixotic I know it doesn't use multiple cores (one core will always be at 100% in flash, rest idle). Wasn't as sure about the GPU, but it certainly performs like it's software rendering
@allquixotic rendering
as in, After Effects rendering to an uncompressed AVI file
A: Why are some USB chargers slower than others?

Compro01Lies, damned lies, and equipment specs. I can print up a lovely sticker that says it'll output 1000A. Doesn't mean it'll output that. It's significantly cheaper to make a low-power supply than it is to make a high-power power supply. Making the latter means you need a bigger transformer (with...

2:54 PM
FF is lagspiking due to the disk access times (Task Manager is reporting up to 6 second latency)
CE mark is faked
@JourneymanGeek I know Flash games aren't designed for super performance, but still it's pretty universal on an otherwise solid problem
@HackToHell: on what?
@Bob HDDs are the great satan (but lovely backup/dumb storage drives)
yeah, any marks are fakable ;p
@BenBrocka: eheh. I need a new one, my storage drive is dying
2:55 PM
@HackToHell looool?
Aha! Finally figured out how to kill an RDP session with xrdp remotely! SSH, find running X11rdp instance, and kill that. :D
It stopped responding for some reason.
@HackToHell: check out the article on fake apple adaptors
@jokerdino no.
2:56 PM
@JourneymanGeek I have tons of drives now
Good progress today!
@OliverSalzburg yay
@BenBrocka: I don't have enough :/
The only problem is making sure they actually back up, I found stupid windows backup hadn't made a backup in like 2 weeks
Tempted to try and replicate what @oli did
@JourneymanGeek There was this presentation program from a school, developed with some old Macromedia program. It literally locks up a CPU core in a tight loop doing nothing.
hot pink slugs lol
@JourneymanGeek I have 2 120GB SSDs, 2 2TB HDDs and an external 3TB HDD (and a couple other externals to backup the PS3 and laptop)
@JourneymanGeek cool
2:58 PM
@OliverSalzburg Nice!
Replicating it in OpenGL might be easier
adds to his to-do list
Looks much cooler animated, but it looks horrible no matter how I encode it :P
@BenBrocka I'm convinced Windows backup has been getting worse every release.
@BenBrocka: 2 40 gb sata drives, 1 250gb ssd, 1 250gb hdd, one 320 gb hdd, one 1tb hdd that's dying, one 500 gb and one 1tb externals
@Bob: IMO, it got better until windows 7
Didn't it start in Vista? I like it in theory, and when it works it's mostly fine (I want to store more system images though), but when it doesn't back up, doesn't tell me and doesn't retry until the next scheduled...WTF
