The tank is up and going.
There is one problem fish: one of the giant danios was having difficulty — hanging near the surface, trouble breathing; and I feared she was not going to make it—even considered icing her down (the humane way to euthanize a fish) during the move; but I gave her the chance in the highly oxygenated and hyper-clean water of the new system, and she was swimming with the other two this morning before the lights went on. She’s back at the surface now, but there’s hope that, if it’s gill irritation and not some systemic problem, that it might heal. Holding out hope for the creature. She’s voluntarily leaving the surface periodically. This is improvement.
We’re going to get more plants. I had a pic for you but it’s too big a file for this program. I’ve got to figure how to deal with that problem.
Meanwhile I have a game recommendation for you: a crazy thing called No Man’s Sky, on Steam (a gaming network)—which is an odd-ta (one damn thing after another) adventure of a stranded astronaut. You have to solve problems and fix your ship and get moving…. fun but kind of watch telly while you do this sort of solo game.
My Asus computer is finally giving up the ghost—it scarily overheats, and with the problem of some batteries catching fire, I’d say that heating so much the keys are too hot to touch during No Man’s Sky—is a sign this computer is Not Safe to Use. I am going over to a Lenova Idea Pad. Much more stable machine.
So, something like The Martian, where you are playing the part of Mark Watney? 😀
Getting a replacement computer is good. I just retired my 8 year old desktop and replaced it with a computer that was turned in at DH’s shop because IT was replaced. Motherboard 5 generations newer than my old one, all solid state drives and moar memory; I have to deal with Windows 11 now (grumble), but the tradeoffs are acceptable.
I have to carefully watch finances for a while. In the last 6 months we have had to have our sewer system cleaned out twice(!), with the last time necessitating getting the main drain relined. This, along with the 2 trips we had prepaid for and an upgrade to our solar panel system, have largely tapped savings. We were able pay for all of it with what we had, but for the next year or so there will be little room for frivol.
I am totally enjoying your saga of the fish, CJ. My younger brother kept tropicals way back when. I remember many of the fish would come to the front of the tank when he entered the room.
@ chondrite, good that you got the replacement computer. At my age I still am slightly surprised at how much I depend on mine. So fortunate that you did not have to go into debt over repairs. I currently am on a fixed income so I sympathize.
I’ve been “transitioning” from a windows 7 machine to a windows 11 machine. Have two monitors, did have them both hooked to the windows 7 machine, now straddling with one hooked up to each computer and two keyboards, mouse, etc. I had a 1 TB second drive on my W7 machine. Went with a 10 TB plug-in drive for the W11 machine as it has squat in the memory department. The 10 TB drive is more than enough to hold pictures, graphics, music and what-not. Also have a 5 TB plug in drive for backup for the irreproducible stuff. I get email on the W11 machine which has built in WiFi and Bluetooth. The W7 machine has dongles for WiFi and Bluetooth. I hate W11. I’m going to have to spend days setting up Word on the new machine to how I like it, and transferring all my fonts over, etc. Groan!
@CJ, if the keys are hot, then it’s a laptop. OK, then the problem is certainly a fan clogged by dust (and cat hair). It’s a fiddley thing to do (“Don’t try this at home.”), but it can be opened-up and the fan cleaned out. It’s cheaper than buying a new computer, and often easier doing without for a few days while it’s in the shop, than configuring a new one “just so”.
As to image files; they ARE almost always big. But exceptional resolution of minute detail is rarely required. You can reduce the size to around 25% by resizing it to half as high and half as wide.
10 TB? The mind BOGGLES! When I was learning the computer craft, it was commonly said the IRS & Sabre Airline Reservations system were the only things working with 1TB of data, and much of that was on 10.5″ magnetic tape reels.
p.s. ASUS makes good stuff, my preferred manufacturer. I have several salvaged ASUS motherboards in stand-by service.
Paul, I worked on the SABRE system when it was on the old 7090 system and then transitioned to the System 360 in all its various iterations. The 7090 tapes were backups, drums were high speed disks and disks were lower speed than the drums. IN fact the drums were first used in SAGE, a military setup.
Drums were fast, but they were tiny! The System 360 2301 drum held 4MB.
Yes, but they held a small subset of the database that was accessed heavily. Went from the 7090 to a 360/50 and so on.
Asus got into real trouble on the gaming machines. There was a program called ArmourCrate that was supposed to interface seamlessly with the Asus and improve its handling of graphics, etc. specifically for gaming. Asus seemed to APPROVE this idea.
So I installed it. So did a mega-lot of other users.
ArmourCrate messed with everything—accelerated the machines. Installed its pieces where it wanted to put them. And generally everything that used to run smooth as silk—now didn’t. And in some cases didn’t run at all.
People began trying to uninstall ArmourCrate. This was problematic. There was an ArmourCrate Uninstall program that didn’t really uninstall. It left pieces of it here and there.
I began running Taskmaster (I think you call it…Task Manager?] to try to detect these random pieces and locate them. I cleaned things out of various places. This helped.
OTOH, the other evening when I ran that software it turned up two program pieces I am relatively sure I nuked once. If they’re back, that’s a problem.
So is the overclocking. And I’m not sure whether serious overclocking is Asus’ fault or something that was done by ArmourCrate. I blame the overclocking for some of the heating issue, and I’m not sure how to fix it.
One can hardly blame ASUS. As I see it, the real problem there is M$ paranoia. Wiping the drive and reinstalling a clean OS from scratch would fix its wagon. But now one doesn’t get an installation CD. (It’s one of several reasons I got off the M$ train as soon as I could.)
And of course, that wouldn’t clean the detritus out of the fan.
Is it possible to get a clean O/S direct from Microsoft to avoid all the, um, stuff that manufacturers put on their systems? You’d also need drivers from Asus I guess. I’m a Mac/iPad guy, haven’t touched any Microsoft software since I retired.
As I said, I too got off that “stuff”, though I have to keep a little refurb box with W10 just to run TurboTax for a few weeks or a month. So I don’t have the whole story and am quite intolerant of having “stuff” on MY computer that I don’t use, stealing cycles. But last I knew M$ was adding (being paid to add?) “other stuff” to distribution CDs. I know there’s a lot of “stuff” on this W10 box that I didn’t want and have tried to remove. (I don’t have to have stuff read to me! I can read for myself.) So I’d say there’s no way to get a “clean” M$ distribution CD.
I understand the stress of losing fish. I lost an entire 55 gal fresh-water tank of tinfoil barbs, which are hard fish to kill! because the thermometer shorted out and the fish died of cold. I was visiting my daughter in another state and had a dog sitter feed and watch the fish. She called me all panicked thinking I’d blow a gasket. I just told her to be calm, I’d take care of it when I got back. I got a new thermometer, cleaned the entire tank, even the gravel, and special ordered a new school of fish. The new ones are still there. Tinfoils live a long time.
I’ve not tried No Man’s Sky yet, but my sister got me on Steam for the first time this year specifically to play Project Zomboid which is a weirdly charming, low-res, hybrid zombie/Sims type game set in 1990s Kentucky where you can play solo survival games or multiplayer community games. And it’s not all bopping zeds on the head. The Sims style home building, clothing, and cooking is the draw for me.
I tend to die a lot by myself, but in multiplayer I become a very fashionable carpenter who is good at tailoring too so I’m valuable to the team. After the Freeze in Texas and the current heat and constant power supply issues some of this game is starting to feel like research. If nothing else I feel think I can supply the community with books. And much like in the PZ-verse… reading is good for mental health stats.
It can be a bit much to play because of the dying all the time, but there’s a whole genre of youtube videos with streamers who set up scenarios and play out stories with their buddies that often become massive base building while enjoying the ’90s Kentucky vibes. I find the streams of other people playing relaxing.