Unutterably Silly So what are you doing RIGHT NOW?

[Blossom]

Link please. We have had plenty Power outages last year. I now keep frozen ice in the freezer at all times.


Sent from my XT1528

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

My laptop only has a 128gb SSD and a 1tb HDD. WPS was quite big and I'm not likely to use it so I got rid of it, which was harder than it should be.

I'm a little startled. WPS Office should remove from the Windows Add/Remove Programs dialog. What did you have to do to make it go away? (This is the first system I've heard of bundling WPS Office, and the vendor may have done something weird.) Windows Updates do often require reboots, and sometimes more than one.

(On my Android tablet, a previous version of WPS Office called Kingsoft Office came bundled, installed as a system app. Those don't go away using the standard Android Add/Remove mechanism, and required a rooted device to eliminate. Mine is, but I have enough app storage space that I haven't needed to do so yet.)

On the 204GB SSD I boot from, Win10 uses about 37GB, and Program Files and Program Files (x86) use 12GB and 11GB respectively. MS Office 7 is 562MB, and Libre Office 5 is 467MB.

I have a slice of the SSD formatted ext4 and boot Ubuntu from it, but the SSD is still almost half empty.

I will use the SSD for the OS and my most used programs and the HDD for data and bigger programs, mostly games. It's my first computer with an SSD so I'm still figuring out how I want to set it up. But I do want one in my future desktop, but it will have to be a bigger SSD. I'm planning to buy it from a nearby independent store which sells computers they put together themselves. Which means I can change any hardware I want to. Their i7 desktop looks good, but I'll upgrade the graphics card and maybe the SSD.

SSDs are cheap and getting cheaper. The one I got for the current desktop was under $100 USD when I bought it, and I think the price is about $80 USD now. (A quick check where I got it indicates a comparable sized model from a budget manufacturer is < $40 USD now.)

You can get multi-TB SSDs, though the costs go up significantly. A contact elsewhere recently upgraded a server to use multiple SSDs. The server runs a database, and moving to SSD provided a phenomenal performance increase. Queries and updates are an order of magnitude faster. The significant things is that prices had dropped to the point where he could afford to do it.

The retailer where I shop has a DIY section aimed a gamers who build their own systems, and 1TB Samsung SSDs are popular components.

The major setup change I did here was telling Windows to put the pagefile.sys swap file on the HD. I also had to disable hybrid shutdown, which was preventing the machine from properly shutting down/rebooting, and fiddle with Properties on the SSD turn off write cache buffer flushing. Having thast on was causing the machine to hang a require a power cycle at frequent intervals. (MS seemed to assume everything was now on a laptop with battery life the scarce resource, and set defaults for that. This is a desktop plugged into the wall, with a whole different set of parameters involved.)
______
Dennis

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Posting an Amazon review, for soda-can sized flashlight lanterns:

How I saved Christmas, courtesy of these lanterns:

I ordered 4 four-packs (of the diffused lanterns; don't see them offered in four pack today), in three different colors, plus a single in the gold or bronze color (for me). 17 lanterns -- one for each member of the extended family, including kids.

Three hours after we all opened our gifts, we were ready to start our Big Dinner. The food was out of the ovens, and lined up on the counters in buffet style, and people were gathered. Wham -- the power went out!! (So glad the food was cooked, and even set out already.) Since everybody had a lantern, we pulled out 4 of them (and a 5th for the bathroom) and enjoyed a lovely lantern-lit dinner. With 17 people, we had several long tables end to end. 4 lanterns was perfect to see, in a somewhat candle-lit dinner style. We enjoyed dinner immensely; no extra noise, just a quiet enjoyable family dinner.

The minute dinner was over, when we needed to get up and clean up, and serve dessert .... the power came back on! No, nobody was messing with the breakers; power was out for the whole neighborhood. It was a total coincidence (or "a God thing", if you will allow). These lanterns saved the day and the dinner!

My family dubbed it "The Day Aunt Debbie Saved Christmas".

Sounds like either a transformer blew or someone ran into a power pole.
Both of which can take about that long to fix.

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'm a little startled. WPS Office should remove from the Windows Add/Remove Programs dialog. What did you have to do to make it go away? (This is the first system I've heard of bundling WPS Office, and the vendor may have done something weird.) Windows Updates do often require reboots, and sometimes more than one.

I one of two different messages when trying to remover program. One was when I selected uninstall in the program (as opposed to repair or another couple of options), it told me the remover was already in use (it wasn't). When I closed the remover and tried again I got the message that remover program was in use and it wouldn't even start the options screen.

After a two reboots it did go through with removing WPS Office. If you Google you can see that other people have had problems with getting rid of the program. Apparently it also comes/came with Dell systems.

[Bilbo1967]

It's become something of a family tradition to book our holidays for the coming year during our Christmas break.

We'd already booked 10 nights in Italy (a week in Tuscany and 3 nights in Rome) for our summer holiday, but we've just booked flights for a 10 day stay in Qatar in April to visit friends of ours who now live there; a 4 day break in Dubai in October; and a cottage in Shropshire over 2017's Christmas period.

Should be a good year.

[Rumpelteazer]

I'm looking for more book series to try. For several series on my ongoing list I only need to read one or two book to either finish the series or be up to date with them. Which means that I can get started selecting new series.

However, last year I read the first book of several series and although some were good I didn't read many that were good enough for me to continue with. Over the last couple of years I've become very critical about which series I want to read, which not to continue with and which to put on the "when-I'm-in-the-mood" list.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Link please. We have had plenty Power outages last year. I now keep frozen ice in the freezer at all times.


Sent from my XT1528

Here it is. It's a very nice little lamp, uses cheap batteries, and comes with the first set (3 AA's). When I bought it (Black Friday) the four-pack was the exact same lantern as the singles, and was four of all one color. Today the four-pack is a slighty different lamp and is a mixed set of colors. The lamps I got matched the single lamps on this page.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Sounds like either a transformer blew or someone ran into a power pole.
Both of which can take about that long to fix.

Yup, that's what we assumed.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Yup, that's what we assumed.

Where we used to live had underground transformers. Once about midnight, one of them blew. 3 blocks were without power for about 10 hours. The power company had to shut down power in the next section about 8 the next morning.
One neighbor in the next section started to whine about how she was cooking breakfast when the power went out. I told her she might not want to complain to any of the neighbors south of her because we had all been without power since midnight.
*No one lost any food because we all knew not to open the refrigerator for any reason.

[Blossom]

That's nothing. During the Blizzard of Winter 2008 a tree fell on our power substation. We were stranded in our townhouse for three days without power, heat or hot water. Now that was fun. This was before smartphones, ereaders, tablets. I don't remember what we did to pass the time. I think board games and we slept alot. Good times.

Sent from my XT1528

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Blossom

That's nothing. During the Blizzard of Winter 2008 a tree fell on our power substation. We were stranded in our townhouse for three days without power, heat or hot water. Now that was fun. This was before smartphones, ereaders, tablets. I don't remember what we did to pass the time. I think board games and we slept alot. Good times.

Sent from my XT1528

My aunt went two weeks without power after a hurricane. I think she was in her early 90's.
But then she knew what to do since she had been in that area for 50 years.

I only mentioned that one because I thought the whiny neighbor was funny.

Though did you know under certain conditions if someone hits a power pole with a transformer just right the boom can be heard over a mile from the impact.

[Blossom]

I had a transformer blow right in front of me once. I was walking to the mailbox and it went "boom" Sparks everywhere. My neighbor on the corner saw it from her driveway. We both said uh oh.
Hubby was in Korea and I was alone in base housing with just Maisy. It would be dark before they showed up to fix it. Military services can be slow as a turtle. Maisy and I decided on a nap to wait it out. It was late summer/early fall.

Sent from my XT1528

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I had a transformer blow right in front of me once. I was walking to the mailbox and it went "boom" Sparks everywhere. My neighbor on the corner saw it from her driveway. We both said uh oh.
Hubby was in Korea and I was alone in base housing with just Maisy. It would be dark before they showed up to fix it. Military services can be slow as a turtle. Maisy and I decided on a nap to wait it out. It was late summer/early fall.

Sent from my XT1528

Civilian services aren't much faster.
Oddest thing I have seen here was when the wind took out about a mile of power lines. I think it was 2 days before power was restored. Knocked out a Walmart and an HEB grocery store on pretty much half the town's payday.
Luckily both stores had other stores across town so the employees didn't get an accidental day off and the stores had the employees to handle the extra business.

[Cinisajoy]

Oh and what am I doing. Looking at little cookbooks.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Posting an Amazon review, for soda-can sized flashlight lanterns:

How I saved Christmas, courtesy of these lanterns:

I ordered 4 four-packs (of the diffused lanterns; don't see them offered in four pack today), in three different colors, plus a single in the gold or bronze color (for me). 17 lanterns -- one for each member of the extended family, including kids.

Three hours after we all opened our gifts, we were ready to start our Big Dinner. The food was out of the ovens, and lined up on the counters in buffet style, and people were gathered. Wham -- the power went out!! (So glad the food was cooked, and even set out already.) Since everybody had a lantern, we pulled out 4 of them (and a 5th for the bathroom) and enjoyed a lovely lantern-lit dinner. With 17 people, we had several long tables end to end. 4 lanterns was perfect to see, in a somewhat candle-lit dinner style. We enjoyed dinner immensely; no extra noise, just a quiet enjoyable family dinner.

The minute dinner was over, when we needed to get up and clean up, and serve dessert .... the power came back on! No, nobody was messing with the breakers; power was out for the whole neighborhood. It was a total coincidence (or "a God thing", if you will allow). These lanterns saved the day and the dinner!

My family dubbed it "The Day Aunt Debbie Saved Christmas".

Great story Deb. Sounds like a perfect Christmas.