analog_kidd

http://www.upworthy.com/an-artist-counted-every-atomic-explosion-on-earth-and-shows-them-all-in-a-matter-of-seconds-3   Holy Cow! I knew there was testing of Nukes in the past, but I didn't know there were that many  :eek:   Give it a minute or so into the video and it really gets going.

America is full of interesting or odd-ball people. Every town I've ever lived in has had it's share of people that everyone knows of because of their odd behavior. or the way they look, etc.   We have a older gentleman here in Oak Ridge that can be frequently seen walking down the various street of the town.Not sure how old he is, but he has a long ZZTop style beard that is white as snow. I have no idea what his name is, but everyone in town calls him the Silver Bullet, partly because of his long white beard, but also because when he walks, it is like he is power-walking. He walks everywhere, and always does it in this very fast gait. The rumors are that he is not very friendly. He won't acknowledge you if you say hello, and I've heard people have tried to interview him and he gets mad at them.   Someone created a FaceBook page about him called the Oak Ridge Walking Man. I'm sure he has no idea that thousands of people are talking about him on the Internet. One of the really funny things that people do on that page are snap pictures of him wherever they see him around town, and then post the pics. People then take those pics and photoshop him into other famous pictures, such as the Beatles album where the band is walking across the street.   Who is your local interesting character?

My wife gets mad at me when I point out one of these types of folks at Walmart and say, "Look, that poor person must not have any mirrors at their house." Otherwise they would have seen how foolish they look before they left.

I started with a pipe a few years ago. Used to do cigars, but the wife was not a big fan of the smell. She actually asks me to smoke the pipe because she likes it so much.   She got me a Meerschaum pipe a few years ago, that I really like. It's shaped like a hand holding the bowl from underneath. Its started getting the cool patina from using it, and really looks nice.   Last year i bought a Missouri Meerschaum corncob pipe kind of as a joke. Turns out it smokes really well and I really enjoy it. The stem is kind if cheap and I've mis-shaped it some by holding it in my teeth, but it's a nice pipe. I tend to hold my pipes with my teeth rather than my hand.

A guy at work couldn't remember the term polar vortex and was calling it the "Arctic Swirly". I thought that was funny.

Oh, and "TRY" to go with Windows 7. It will still be supported for patches for several years now, and it will be a familiar interface for her. Good luck finding a PC with it on it now though. Windows 8 had been around over a year, so any new PCs were built with that O/S in mind. You could buy a PC with Windows 8 and on it and wipe it and install Windows 7, but you may discover that the PC does not have drivers for Windows 7. If a company makes a PC designed just for Win8, they won;t give Win7 a second thought. Plus, you'll have the added expense of having to buy a copy of Win7.

  This is what I was going to suggest too. A laptop gives you flexibility over where you can use it. Use it at home, on travel, on the couch, or where ever. You can still use a desktop monitor, mouse and keyboard. Just make sure that the laptop has a plug on the back for her monitor.   Although if her monitor is several years old, you may consider upgrading that too. A nice 23" LCD flat / wide screen would be great for work. Be aware that many laptops now come with an HDMI or DVI style port, and older monitors have a VGA style cable, so they won't fit. They make adapters for a few bucks. Most new monitors support the HDMI or DVI. Some of them even still have a VGA cable too.   If you can find a laptop that comes with a docking station, even better. You can leave the monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc. plugged into the dock. If you remove the laptop and then return later, just plug the laptop into the dock and everything else is already connected.   Laptops come in several styles, but mostly they boil down to somewhere between ultra portable and desktop replacement. The ultra portables are very light and usually smaller, with no DVD or extras to weigh it down. A desktop replacement is going to be heavier, bigger, has an internal DVD, and lots of ports for connecting peripherals. The Desktop Replacement is perfect for someone who mostly wants to work at one desk, but occasionally go on the road. That is what I would recommend.   Most of the big names, like Dell, have a refurbished section on their websites where you can buy laptops and desktops. You are pretty much limited to the machines they have on the site, in the configuration they list it. Most of these are machines folks have bought with their own specs, then decided they didn't want it, or it wasn't the PC they were expecting, and they sent it back. So, the company sells them as-is. Still you can buy extra stuff and add it on yourself, like memory, or peripherals.   Good luck.

I'm kinda on the side with TMF. I don't think I would like it as an adult, I certainly would not have liked as a teen. This could have been a great opportunity for a father and son to have an adult conversation. Instead the dad doubles down and makes it worse. Don't get me wrong, it's funny as hell, but I bet it wasn't to the kid.   When my son was a teen, I realized that telling him "I love you" in front of his friends would be embarrassing. I told him I wouldn't do that to him, but I was going to tell him I loved him somehow. I told him I was going to use a code, and every time I said to him "How 'bout those Titans", what I really meant was "I love you". I used to yell it out of the car at school when I would drop him off, and he'd yell it right back to me. 

If everything works, and you are not popping breakers, then you probably have it wired correctly. Is the new fixture pulling more load? If so, there may be arcing going on inside the switches. Take off the cover plates and flip the switch several times. Do you smell ozone? That would be an indicator of arcing.   If the switches are old and cheap, you may want to just go ahead and change them out.   There are several ways to wire a 3-way, and they depend on where the source is coming from. Your diagram didn't indicate where the source is.

I think real estate is still a pretty good investment. Property costs are still low and I don't see them really going back down now. Your real money maker will be in investment property (rentals), and not so much a residence. Buying a house as a residence is still a good idea, especially if you are renting now, but a residence is not going to make you money, unless you downsize at some point. Your residence may increase in value, but you'll likely just transfer that value to another house if you decide to move.   Real estate will hold its relative value if hyper inflation ever hits us. For instance if everything doubles in price over night, a $100k house becomes $200k, but $100k in a bank is still $100k. If the cost of everything doubles, I can sell the house and still buy the same amount of goods as I could have before the jump.   The beauty of investment property is you put out a little bit of money to buy the house and then someone else pays the mortgage for you. Plus, the value of the property increases over time so that is an added bonus.   I've got two rental units where on each I invested a little money to fund the down payment and repair costs. They were both fixer-uppers, and when I got done, they were worth a lot more than what I had in them. Since I worked in all that equity, the bank let me refinance all of my costs and I was able to pay myself back my initial investment. At this point I have not payed anything out of my own pocket. The loan on the units are half of what they are worth, and someone else is paying that mortgage. The rent income on each is way more than double the mortgage, so I have a plan to pay off both houses in just a few years.

One article I read said something like: Funny how these Global Warmists who set out to prove how bad fossil fuels are, went off on a fossil fueled expedition and now have to be rescued by a fossil fueled mission consisting of multiple ships and helicopters.   Major fail.

You can also do something like this:   http://www.instructables.com/id/Use-your-cell-phone-through-your-home-phone-wiring/   It uses a Bluetooth gateway to connect your cell phone to the house lines. You don't need any kind of land line service at all, just pay one time for the gateway and your monthly cell service.   I should say that I have never used one of these, so I can't comment on how well they work. I just knew that they existed and thought I'd throw it out there.

I thought Gravity was pretty good. It had me on the edge of my seat the entire movie.   For some reason I really liked Oz the Great and Powerful too. I guess I liked the way it tied into the old classic.

I just started looking for the parts for my receiver. This is my first build and looking forward to the learning experience. Quick question: I see that the parts are listed as either Mil-Spec or Commercial-Spec. I'm guessing you probably ought to decide up front which way you want to go. Which is the better route?

Man, not only can Chuck hold up 11 soldiers with his hat, but he can fly around carrying two jumbo jets tied to his feet. Pure awesomeness!

I really thought Juice was going to eat a bullet and let Jemma put all the blame on him. He's got a thing for her and has been looking for a way to check out anyway.

Wow, I didn't see that season ending happening. It was a bad year to be a regular cast member, they are dropping fast.

We had two very tall trees in our back yard, and the wife was always concerned that they were going to fall onto the house and wanted them topped off. I looked at the trees, and thought I could do it myself. I'd seen my dad cut trees when I was younger. How hard could it be? I went out and bought a chain saw and climbed the first tree. It's amazing how those branches look low from the ground, and not so much when you are way up there holding a motorized instrument of death.   I called for my son to help. His job was to stand on the ground and watch, holding the phone, ready to call 911 if I fell out of the tree. I cut the first branch and the tree swung violently. I barely held on.   About that time, a man pulled up in a truck to the next door neighbors house, which was vacant and the owner had it up for rent. being the nosy neighbor that I am, I called down from the tree  and asked if he was interested in looking at the house. He said no, that he was here to cut down a tree at the owners request.   I took that as a sign from God that I was not supposed to cut the tree. I asked him to come see me when he got done. He came over and gave me a quote to top the trees and leave the branches for me to cut up and haul away. Very reasonable I thought, so I hired him.

I agree with Tanker, but I'd try another trick before I opened up the drive as he suggests. Remove the drive from the PC, and hold it with two hands, oriented so that its side is facing up. You want to do a motion like you are casting a fishing line, kind of moving down and twisting at the same time. If the platters are stuck, this will sometimes free them up. Do this move several times, then plug the drive back in and see if it will boot. You don't need to mount the drive in the bay, just lay it on top of the case. Time is of the essence, you don't want the platter to stick again.

I don't get this country. We can have zero-tolerance for a 5 year old boy who makes a gun shape from his peanut butter sandwich, who clearly does not understand what he has "done", but this kid breaks all the rules about drinking, driving, and ends up actually killing someone, and we have to have compassion. If zero-tolerance is such a good idea in some areas, why not the ones that really count?

Unplug the PC, and open up the case cover. Remove and replace every single card from its slot. There is a lot of heat going on in that case and sometimes the cards expand and contract and will work their way out of contact. Reseating the cards will ensure they are in properly. Take this opportunity to use come compressed air and clean out all the dust, especially in the heat sinks and the power supply.

  I haven't heard from them yet either. I can't find them online either. Does anyone have a phone number and address for them?

News is saying speed was a factor, and that the car was engulfed in flames. Bodies were burned beyond recognition. Don't these celebrity deaths usually come in three's?

I always create two partitions on my computer hard drives. The first one is for the O/S and programs and is usually around 100 GB. The second partition is for data and is the rest of the free space. I wipe and reload Windows whenever it feels like it slows down. I only have to reformt the C: drive. When the O/S is reinstalled, all my data is still there. Of course I back up too, just in case.

You can find Windows 7 DVD's with license keys on ebay. I Saw a few for $70. Not sure if that is in your budget or not. If you go that way, make absolutely sure it comes with a license key. Many people sell cheap copies, but they are for folks who lost their CD, but have a key code on the sticker on the PC   Be warned that your PC very well may be so old that there are no Windows 7 drivers available for some of the hardware. You might find that it loads, but the sound card or network card won't work.   You might be better off scraping a few extra dollars together and buying a good deal over the holidays. You can also look for a newer but used PC on Craigslist. I see them there all the time for $50 or so. Make sure the used PC comes with a Win7 reinstall disk and just wipe it clean and reload a fresh installation of Windows. Transfer your files over and turn around and sell your old one and maybe break even.