....So, like a debit card?
Minor victory thread
- Thread starter Thread Necromancer
- Start date
I went to the local Target and they had a huge Easter display already.
Remember the joke in Mallrats about the Easter Bunny picture court being up since two days after Christmas? Yeah, not a joke anymore.
I'm surprised there is an Easter Creep, considering Valentine's Day is the next up and sells just as much worthless shit.
GasBandit
Staff member
True, but you don't bring your kids to the mall to have their picture taken with cupid. They're desperately scrabbling for reasons for people to continue propping up their atrophying, overpriced business model (says the radio guy).
No, you bring yourself to have your picture taken with Sexy Cupid (or even "Hunky Cupid").
...I'm just saying they're missing out on an opportunity.
--Patrick
Target had Valentine's Day decorations out the week before Christmas.
Bought a new duvet. It is soooo fucking comfortable and warm.
Man, I find that just one of the creepiest things about car shows.
fade
Staff member
My daughter just told me that I look 21 
I'm sure she's about to ask for something but I'll take it 
I'm sure she's about to ask for something but I'll take it A spanking is all she should get. You look 25, not a day over or under.*My daughter just told me that I look 21
*studies show women consider themselves most attractive around 25. If you feel another age is better, please assume I used that one.
Depends. Is she at the age where 21 is a compliment or 21 is "really, really old"?My daughter just told me that I look 21
Either way, be suspicious. Rotten kids.
oh shit! I didn't think of that.Depends. Is she at the age where 21 is a compliment or 21 is "really, really old"?
Either way, be suspicious. Rotten kids.
Did she specify the unit of time?My daughter just told me that I look 21
Finally upgraded my home media server.
It's been running on 6-year-old cobbled together parts, including an old HP case and motherboard. It really didn't need much. All it had to do was run Plex Server and hold movies and music.
But man, when it was transcoding for the Roku in another room, the thing labored. It would crank up the cpu fans so high it sounded like a quadcopter was inside of it. It didn't help that I had MS Server 2012 on it. But I only did that for the supposed ability to join two drives together--so as far as the OS was concerned, I had an 8Tb drive instead of a two 4Tb drives. Not that it actually worked in practice. As soon as I hit over 4TB on the merged partition, the drive would vanish from the OS until I booted to DOS via an old CD rom and wiped out the last file transferred. So, total waste of effort. Ended up having to split the drives up anyway.
So finally, I bought a cheap case, motherboard, cpu and memory for it. Spent around $200, so I splurged and got a 128gig ssd for it, too. Being a media server, it didn't need the added expense of a video card.
Modern parts are so simple to fit together. SATA cables only fit one way, unlike way back in the golden oldies when you could fit an IDE, RLL or MFM ribbon cable on the wrong way. And yes, way back in the day, IDE cables didn't have the little tenon-socket notch that makes them only fit one way, like in the couple of years before SATA. All of the drives slot into the case and connect via little twist doohickeys that don't require a screwdriver. The only PITA that hasn't changed is those little LED jumpers from the case--Power LED, HDD LED, etc. But at least they're labeled on the motherboard these days.
Got it built in less than 30 minutes. Got Win10 on it, and spent an hour transferring all of the plex metadata from the old machine. Boot up, and bam, all the rokus see it and all of my viewing history is intact. So nice. And it's soooooo quiet.
It's been running on 6-year-old cobbled together parts, including an old HP case and motherboard. It really didn't need much. All it had to do was run Plex Server and hold movies and music.
But man, when it was transcoding for the Roku in another room, the thing labored. It would crank up the cpu fans so high it sounded like a quadcopter was inside of it. It didn't help that I had MS Server 2012 on it. But I only did that for the supposed ability to join two drives together--so as far as the OS was concerned, I had an 8Tb drive instead of a two 4Tb drives. Not that it actually worked in practice. As soon as I hit over 4TB on the merged partition, the drive would vanish from the OS until I booted to DOS via an old CD rom and wiped out the last file transferred. So, total waste of effort. Ended up having to split the drives up anyway.
So finally, I bought a cheap case, motherboard, cpu and memory for it. Spent around $200, so I splurged and got a 128gig ssd for it, too. Being a media server, it didn't need the added expense of a video card.
Modern parts are so simple to fit together. SATA cables only fit one way, unlike way back in the golden oldies when you could fit an IDE, RLL or MFM ribbon cable on the wrong way. And yes, way back in the day, IDE cables didn't have the little tenon-socket notch that makes them only fit one way, like in the couple of years before SATA. All of the drives slot into the case and connect via little twist doohickeys that don't require a screwdriver. The only PITA that hasn't changed is those little LED jumpers from the case--Power LED, HDD LED, etc. But at least they're labeled on the motherboard these days.
Got it built in less than 30 minutes. Got Win10 on it, and spent an hour transferring all of the plex metadata from the old machine. Boot up, and bam, all the rokus see it and all of my viewing history is intact. So nice. And it's soooooo quiet.
Not that this has much of anything to do with your post, but how do you like Roku? We've been using the XBox One to stream stuff from Amazon, Netflix, etc. but I've been wondering if switching to Roku would give us anything better/different.
I used to stream from the ps3, and the DLNA support was clunky. When I learned that the PS4 wouldn't support it at all, and that ps3's were still staying over $250 retail after the PS4 came out, I got a roku 3 and set up Plex.
We liked it so much, I got one for the basement, the master bedroom, and for the playroom TV also. Got all the rooms wired for less than the cost of a single ps4.
I can't really speak to the advantages it has over the XB1, though. Some of the things I like: The remote is radio controlled, not IR, so you don't need line of sight. You can tuck the roku in a media center drawer if you like the minimalist look. It has a headphone jack directly in the remote, so I can put headphones in and listen to the TV when my wife's asleep..which has the added bonus of keeping me up to date with my show if I have to make a trip to the bathroom. I can watch Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, listen to Pandora, and stream from my own media center on it, plus a ton of other channels (horror channel, kung fu theater channel, etc). So it's nice.
Thanks @Tinwhistler. I wrote that out and then realized we'd have to keep the XBox Live Gold account anyway. Our son plays Minecraft via XB1 with his best friend who is now living in Okinawa (yay military kids). Can't take that from him, so having Roku wouldn't make sense for us right now anyway.
Many motherboards these days come with a jumper block so you can attach all those fiddly little cables to the block, and then plug the block in all at once.
--Patrick
I've had that once..it was nice.
But this case was like $39, with the PSU included. It didn't come with any bells or whistles
The internal speaker that usually is connected to the case, and only serves to make the "beep" bootup sound these days was a stand-alone part that looked like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128565
$45.00
Considering the chipset came out in 2009, I'm not surprised.I realize now you said MB..it was cheap too
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128565
$45.00
--Patrick
Still better than what I had before it
I'm glad that they delayed. Otherwise, I might've bought a single PS4 to go in the basement, and then not learned about how awesome Roku was, and been able to fill my house with them for the same price.
I have a not-unsubstantial marketing budget to spend every year. I work with media salespeople (Not unlike @GasBandit's cow-orkers) in radio, print, TV, online, etc. I also have to manage our portfolio of community giving. Over the two years that I've been at this new organization, I have developed a not-undeserved reputation for managing my budget closely. Marketing is such a quick way to spend money that I want to demonstrate the value that we add to the organization and that's hard to do if I'm making it rain dollars on every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes across my desk. Final expenses came in today and I was $4,300 under budget for the year. Considering some of the surprise expenses I had this year that got lumped into my expenses, plus some new product releases, I had actually suspected getting a sit down chat with the CFO about my budget projections being off. Today is a good day and I fist-bumped my team for a job well done.
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