Archived News starting from 06-08-2020 and earlier
BlogWith the soon-to-arrive Xbox Series X, it's time to start purging my
excessive collection of Xboxes. It's hard to part with my years of acquired special edition consoles, but my recent purchase of the Focus RS helps me liquidate with a purpose. The actual
INCREASE in value on these things is also helpful. I'm always amazed when there are bigger nerds with more money than me willing to pay a premium for my old crap. Now that I'm pared back to minimum Xbox count, I'm ready to fill back up on the new version.
With my divorce behind me, and my need for a Focus RS never having been satisifed, I found a great deal on a
manufacturer buyback nitrous blue example in
beautiful condition. Already a fan of refurbished products, I figure this one has all the future problems fixed since a good 20% of the car has been replaced, but just to be safe I bought an extra 3 years on the warranty. Once it
finally arrived from Iowa, I removed the 5+ ridiculous stickers the dealer put on it, along with the front licence plate bracket. Of course I
upgraded the Sync version, although I learned the non-navigation head unit may not have enough memory to add navigation, so I played it safe and stuck with non-nav. I also got new shoes, since the existing factory tires had
plugs and
screws in them. It arrived with an almost dead battery and less than 2 gallons of gas, so the dealer was clearly determined to make it the worst possible experience they could. Once the battery was fully charged, I discovered the joys of auto-stop. After 3 minutes of being auto-stopped, the car
actually gets worried you don't know how to re-start the engine again. I enabled global windows and disabled the honk-on-exit in the PCM computer, but left auto-stop on since I actually like it when I'm sitting at a red light, and it's easy enough to disable via button. Now that all my customization was done, it was time to
scare my kids, but sadly the audio was disabled on the dash cam. At least I got their first reactions recorded for drift mode and launch control. It
fits nicely next to my Focus ST, and since Ford is no longer making cars I'm glad I have an example of each of their last hot hatches.
I decided it was time my kids each had their own dedicated PC for Coronavirus homeschooling. A
$100 PC deal naturally appeared, and after an SSD upgrade and the latest BIOS update, I had some
pretty capable machines ready for e-learning. With two new machines added, it was of course time to update to the
network topology diagram as tradition dictates. A recent Woot.com deal also allowed me to finally wire my home theater
properly instead of just a hole in the wall.
After finding
this article with detailed instructions on how to upgrade my
old and boring 2017 Focus ST Sync software to the latest and greatest, I decided to forge ahead despite the inherent risk of upgrading on April 1st. The process
went off without a hitch and I now have the
2020 Sync 3.4 system with the latest navigation maps. As a bonus, I also have a
redundant climate screen in case my physical climate controls melt away. This upgrade compliments my
global window and
double honk modifications nicely, in that no physical changes were required. My obnoxious bypass valve remains the only physical modification after my life lessons from changing everything possible on my late 1999 Mercury Cougar.
I decided it was time to
rejoin the distributed computing world since my
last adventure ended long before SETI@Home shut down. Since Folding@Home is
focusing on coronavirus, I decided it was a noble cause even if it does nothing to help the current situation. More importantly, I get to compete with my same nemesis from the last adventure, and his equipment is probably
just as superior this time around. Even with the client
maxing out my resources, my computer is still usable and
relatively cool. Work units are in high demand so there are lots of timeouts, but most of the time I'm
chugging along making the most of my
average specd system.
While my MSPaint skills shone strongly in my
previous network map, I decided to upgrade to a more specific software package for the
latest version. I also included my wireless devices, because when you've got topology tools as slick as this then why not.
With my neighbor consistently having tall vehicles filling his entire driveway, it was time to change my view from
obscured to
empowered. After a
quick trip up the ladder and some re-routing of wires, my south facing camera
rises above the noise.
After what I assume was an electrical storm shorted my blower motor in my HVAC, I decided it was time to add some surge protection for the most expensive electronic device in my house. The
Intermatic AG3000 fit the bill for $50, and is a much cheaper option compared to replacing a blower motor. After my
virtual electrician blessed my modifications, I flipped the breaker and basked in the confident
surge protected glow of the AG3000. I'm hoping the AC compressor is more resilient to power spikes due to it's much simpler (and logic board-less) design and can survive without one, but only the next storm will truly tell.
Bing Birdseye has finally caught up with my
solar panel installation, eliminating my need to borrow Steve's drone for some updated photos. I can now
gaze on their 3.14 kWh capacity glory whenever I feel like it without the need for ladders or drones.
With my trusty Samsung SDR-B74301N starting to show it's age with *only* 1080p video, I decided to jump on a deal for the Annke DT81DP. While not quite 4K, it uses the same analog video cables I already ran and has a significant resolution bump. It also uses the new H.265 HEVC video format that significantly reduces video size. The trade-off being the yuvj pixel format it uses is not yet widely supported, so I have to convert to yuv with ffmpeg before I can do anything with it. The 8 kHz, 64 kb/s audio is also apparently too low quality for Windows to recognize, so if anyone else has trouble playing downloaded the video I'm including the command to convert it below:
ffmpeg -i %1 -c:v copy -c:a aac -ar 48000 -b:a 176k -ac 2 -pix_fmt yuv420p -f mp4 %2
Today was also the coldest day of the year so far, and the handy HDD temp monitor reported 28°C. I'm curious to see what it will read in July
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