YES
[Rant] Tech Whine Like a baby thread
- Thread starter DarkAudit
- Start date
Since tomorrow is payday, I may have also ordered a processor upgrade on eBay so I can upgrade the new one from dual-core to quad-core once it arrives.
...help me...
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
I'm getting really sick of Netflix spitting back an error most of the time I try to start playback again after pausing the video. I have to restart my browser in order to get it playing again, and sometimes restart my computer.
Their home base is actually located maybe 10mi from where I work, and it’s down to what’s basically a one-man operation these days. I, too, am sad to see their COVID-hastened decline. Soon they will join the likes of Sharkey’s Extreme and Xbit Labs in the history books.
—Patrick
I got a sexy new gaming headset that has both a usb connection and a regular headphone one. Ideally, one uses the usb one to allow for surround sound and colour changing. (I loved the idea of pink glowing headphones lol). They don’t work at all with the usb cord. With the headphone cord, and the volume cranked, I get a faint tinny sound. Grrr. It took ages to get anything.
Not cool for an expensive headset. Piece of %#}€€£¥¥?!
Not cool for an expensive headset. Piece of %#}€€£¥¥?!
With USB, they may require audio drivers and switching your output to be the headphones instead of the onboard audio.
With the headphone cord, there may be batteries that need charging in order to power the headphones? USB can provide power, headphone cord cannot.
--Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
Well, it's been about 3 days now, and I rebooted this morning, and it still seems to be draining awful fast.
Too complex. I returned them and got ones that just work.
GasBandit
Staff member
Yup yup yup, here we go again... Google's finally getting around to dropping that other axe they promised to drop -
Supposedly they'll let hangouts users migrate to google chat (their version of Slack) so I can still make calls on my PCs that way (and honestly that's my preferred way to do so at work)... but who knows how long til they decide to axe Chat, right?
Supposedly they'll let hangouts users migrate to google chat (their version of Slack) so I can still make calls on my PCs that way (and honestly that's my preferred way to do so at work)... but who knows how long til they decide to axe Chat, right?
GasBandit
Staff member
Apparently lots of people are complaining that their Pixel's battery life has plummeted with the android 11 update.
Some people say deleting the TuneIn app restored normal function. I don't even have that app.
Some people say turning off Bluetooth helps. Seems shitty to me that I should have to hamper my functionality (I use bluetooth constantly in various vehicles over the course of my day) to get back performance from a previous version of android.
GasBandit
Staff member
Even without getting an update, my battery usage is pretty much back up to as good as it used to be. Don't know what it was. Maybe the "2 day settling period" is now a 3 week settling period.
But now for some reason none of my discord/hangouts/texts whatever are making noise or vibrating, even though I've verified I've got all that turned on. Agghh...
Do you keep your phone face down? It might be going into DND mode.
GasBandit
Staff member
Yeah, unfortunately, sometimes phones get stupid and you have to
Musical tech whine.
With covid, I haven't been able to get out and play tunes with friends...from 9 times a month to twice in 10 months.
So, my friends had the bright idea to stream a session using low-latency software called Sonobus. I'm in luck--I was once in a band, and I have all of the hardware I need including a low-latency hardware interface for the pc.
So, I pulled everything out of the basement, set it up, and....can't do anything, including test it, until everyone else buys hardware.
So sad.
With covid, I haven't been able to get out and play tunes with friends...from 9 times a month to twice in 10 months.
So, my friends had the bright idea to stream a session using low-latency software called Sonobus. I'm in luck--I was once in a band, and I have all of the hardware I need including a low-latency hardware interface for the pc.
So, I pulled everything out of the basement, set it up, and....can't do anything, including test it, until everyone else buys hardware.
So sad.
The iCloud 2FA when signing into the new phone bites a lot of people, too.
--Patrick
So I'm slowly dragging all my data (as I come across it) onto the NAS I built pretty much for that purpose. This frees up my externals so I can repurpose them for other stuff (usually as machine-specific backup drives).
Last night I found the drive that has all my old Minecraft world snapshots on it. Well, not all of them, just the ones since v1.3.1 (c. 2012) since all the ones before that are still on my older PC. And I lassoed the folder full of snapshots and dragged it over onto my NAS. "Estimated time 3hrs for 96.25GB," it said.
It.
LIED.
For anyone who has not had to back up a Minecraft save, the world format involves a myriad of folders containing a myriad of files. The ones on my other computer are all in solid .RAR archives, so they're easier to shovel about. These, though? They're just raw dumps of the world and .JAR files, copied over as I upgraded to each new version. Plus in the last few I added a mapping mod that shows an interactive map of the world which generates tiles to show the map, ballooning the file count even more.
Why is this important? Well, y'see it takes longer to copy a bunch of small files than it does to copy a handful of larger ones, even if they both take up the same amount of disk space. And this means I'm moving over FOUR MILLION tiny files from this external->through my laptop->through the LAN->into the NAS. As I watched, the time estimate climbed...and climbed...and climbed. What is it sitting at now?
THREE
DAYS
Why didn't I bundle those saves up into .RARs when I moved 'em in the first place? Whyyyyyy???
--Patrick
Last night I found the drive that has all my old Minecraft world snapshots on it. Well, not all of them, just the ones since v1.3.1 (c. 2012) since all the ones before that are still on my older PC. And I lassoed the folder full of snapshots and dragged it over onto my NAS. "Estimated time 3hrs for 96.25GB," it said.
It.
LIED.
For anyone who has not had to back up a Minecraft save, the world format involves a myriad of folders containing a myriad of files. The ones on my other computer are all in solid .RAR archives, so they're easier to shovel about. These, though? They're just raw dumps of the world and .JAR files, copied over as I upgraded to each new version. Plus in the last few I added a mapping mod that shows an interactive map of the world which generates tiles to show the map, ballooning the file count even more.
Why is this important? Well, y'see it takes longer to copy a bunch of small files than it does to copy a handful of larger ones, even if they both take up the same amount of disk space. And this means I'm moving over FOUR MILLION tiny files from this external->through my laptop->through the LAN->into the NAS. As I watched, the time estimate climbed...and climbed...and climbed. What is it sitting at now?
THREE
DAYS
Why didn't I bundle those saves up into .RARs when I moved 'em in the first place? Whyyyyyy???
--Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
I hear you. I used to be company IT guy.
Now that I'm a programmer, any time any computer either at work or at a client site is malfunctioning, I can't WAIT to get SOMEBODY ELSE to deal with it. The only thing left to get working at my current project is the client's PC hooked into the video system. The problem is, it has a DP output and an HDMI output..... the HDMI works fine, but anytime I plug anything into the DP at all, all video dies.
I have no time to troubleshoot this nonsense. Tomorrow I'm going to tell the client his IT department needs to have a look at the PC.
I know some cards/screens are very picky about DP v1.1/v1.2, if they're stuck.
Or else it's the cable.
Hey, remember this?
So that Minecraft backup? Yeah, it's finally done. Ten days later.
During that first copy (which ended up taking five days, btw), I accidentally brushed against the external sitting atop my laptop, knocking the drive off the laptop/over the edge of the table. Luckily, the USB cord arrested its fall. Unluckily, the momentum also unplugged the USB cord when the copy was about 89% complete.
Sooooo yeah, I copied 'em all over to my PC, RAR'd 'em all up like I said I should've done in the first place (which took about 40hrs), and then copied the mere twenty-two resulting files over to the NAS. Total copy time? About 12 minutes.
I guess what I'm saying is, measure twice, cut once, or something.
--Patrick
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GasBandit
Staff member
Programming has changed so much in the last 20 years and I hate it. I miss just running one program, and that was my editor and my compiler.
Now in addition to Visual Studio Code, and the extension for VS Code, I have to install node.js so I can install a special utility CLI and also so I can install yarn oh but not THAT version of yarn, you need this old version of yarn, and if you install the new version of yarn you're fucked up forever because it never properly uninstalls.
Oh and by the way, almost none of this extra crap you need is installed the old fashioned way, no, you have to just execute "NPM install whatever" and the computer goes and finds it itself and installs 100,000 2kb files, which drives OneDrive absolutely batshit insane, and it makes me wonder what happens if somebody just takes one of your 50 nested dependencies down because you don't have installer files for any of this.
I never thought I'd miss Visual J++.
Now in addition to Visual Studio Code, and the extension for VS Code, I have to install node.js so I can install a special utility CLI and also so I can install yarn oh but not THAT version of yarn, you need this old version of yarn, and if you install the new version of yarn you're fucked up forever because it never properly uninstalls.
Oh and by the way, almost none of this extra crap you need is installed the old fashioned way, no, you have to just execute "NPM install whatever" and the computer goes and finds it itself and installs 100,000 2kb files, which drives OneDrive absolutely batshit insane, and it makes me wonder what happens if somebody just takes one of your 50 nested dependencies down because you don't have installer files for any of this.
I never thought I'd miss Visual J++.
GasBandit
Staff member
And I'm not done whining. As previously mentioned, I'm trying to root out the "wrong" version of yarn from my pc, and I found that yarn leaves a bunch of stuff in each project folder. So I figured It'd be best to delete all my projects and start over, since I only had two. Well, one of those projects was a project I started and literally did nothing other than name it and implement yarn on it. It had over 500 files in it. Five. Hundred. Files. Just to get to the part where I can START coding... it doesn't even do anything yet.
Then I went to delete the crestron sample project I had installed, which is the most barebones simple UI that only has 3 buttons, one analog gauge, and a single text entry field.
Over FIVE THOUSAND FILES.
Everything is fucking bloated now. WTF, modern programming.
I remember laughing at how some programs in the 80s and 90s were just an Executable.EXE and a massive Data.dat file. Ok, that's bad too... but IMO, this is WAY worse.
Then I went to delete the crestron sample project I had installed, which is the most barebones simple UI that only has 3 buttons, one analog gauge, and a single text entry field.
Over FIVE THOUSAND FILES.
Everything is fucking bloated now. WTF, modern programming.
I remember laughing at how some programs in the 80s and 90s were just an Executable.EXE and a massive Data.dat file. Ok, that's bad too... but IMO, this is WAY worse.
As someone on the "other side" of the IT fence (server admin, specifically end user computing/virtual desktop infrastructure (EUC/VDI)), having to support that kind of extraneous software installs is a major pain too.
I personally long for the days when Office was patched with the OS - if you're on Office 365, which a large percentage of businesses are anymore, the version of Office is no longer patched through there - it's patched through the application. The old way stopped primarily with Office 2016 being the last one...
Teams on VDI? You have to manually download the installer every time you patch, uninstall first, then reinstall with the specific VDI command line to allow all users to use it instead of installing it in the user's profile. I'd love to smack whomever thought that was a good idea (app in the profile). It definitely was not someone who supports EUC/VDIs where we want the profile as small as possible for fast loading so the end users don't complain it took them one minute to log into their virtual desktop.
Then we get to patch all of the various applications (Chrome/Firefox/Edge Chromium, Adobe Acrobat, etc.) all through their own application. Plus any company-specific app patching that might be an installer (if we're really lucky)...
Yes, there are apps to help automate that type of stuff, but most companies (I'm in consulting) don't want to pay for them to make it easier to manage.
Then there are days like my yesterday - 8.5 hours troubleshooting/monitoring/fixing that something got removed from a Group Policy that broke the connection to almost every virtual desktop after they reboot and no way to track how it got removed (because that costs money too). With everything else I worked on, I had an over 11 hour work day... Monday night I was up until 2:30 AM (Tuesday morning) fixing something else for another customer then had to be up and ready to work again at 7:30 AM (Tuesday morning) to make sure everything worked correctly. I will be working again later tonight and plan on hopping out of work early tomorrow as long as everything's good (salaried, so no overtime).
Most mail apps get your settings by phoning home to some server. Sometimes those servers are out of date or even the server's location has changed (especially if you're using older OSes/apps).
--Patrick
I bought this laptop new YESTERDAY.