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When was the last time you felt like a non-techie?

carlsson

Veteran Member
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
6,274
Location
Västerås, Sweden
Yesterday I purchased some plastic boxes with lots of compartments to sort my small stash of loose components into: small bags and boxes of assorted surplus resistors, diodes, capacitors, connectors, ICs etc. In particular the selection of kilo and megaohm resistors is getting bigger than I expect to get use of.

Anyway, sorting resistors after colour code is relatively easy but reading values off diodes and capacitors is more tiresome so as the number of slots got fewer I decided on a very non-techie approach: sort those components after size, look and overall colour! :shock: Of course it means I will have to dig through a small pile of stuff everytime I look for something I may not even have.

Part of me is ashamed for this sorting approach but since I rarely need something from the box, I figure it is a better storage solution than keeping plastic bags loose in drawers. Now it is your turn, did you recently have a similar non-tech moment, when you went against your principles to simplify a task even if the end result was not 100% of what it could have been?
 
Part of me is ashamed for this sorting approach but since I rarely need something from the box, I figure it is a better storage solution than keeping plastic bags loose in drawers. Now it is your turn, did you recently have a similar non-tech moment, when you went against your principles to simplify a task even if the end result was not 100% of what it could have been?

Heck Anders,

You should see my parts storage area. I've got stuff all over the place. I DO know where everything is though...at least for now.

Of course to answer your question you are assuming we actually HAVE (tech-) principles in the first place. :blush: It's so much more fun just lurching from crisis to crisis :)

Tez
 
Ok, I'll admit to one.
I now solder projects like a bull in a china shop.
You see my vision is nothing like it used to be when I was younger. I can't even read newsprint without some magnification anymore.
I 'should' go out and buy me a lighted headband type magnifier.
I clumsily soldered this little toy motor thing yesterday. I couldn't see what I was doing but the wires are tight. What would you call this? Impulse power soldering :)

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I guess it's ok, since the wires aren't falling off - yet :)
 
Hm. That is not far from what it looks like after I had a go with the soldering iron, and I consider myself to have mostly good eyesight. I will make myself a mental note to lock the iron into a safe when I reach 60 years old.
 
Ok, I'll admit to one.
I now solder projects like a bull in a china shop.
You see my vision is nothing like it used to be when I was younger. I can't even read newsprint without some magnification anymore.
I 'should' go out and buy me a lighted headband type magnifier.
I clumsily soldered this little toy motor thing yesterday. I couldn't see what I was doing but the wires are tight. What would you call this? Impulse power soldering :)

One of the drawbacks of getting older. In my younger years I never had a problem assembling Heathkit projects or soldering printed circuit boards. I can certainly get the job done now, but it takes a well lit work area and a decent magnifying lamp. I haven't tried the headband magnifier. Last time I was at the dentist a couple of workers were using special glasses with the magnifying lens built in. They were probably expensive.
 
I 'should' go out and buy me a lighted headband type magnifier.

Vint, definitely get one. They are great! Mine aren't lighted but I can tell you my close-up vision is now so bad it would be impossible for me to do any stuff like soldering or working with circuit boards without them.

2009-03-18-magnifiers.jpg


Tez
 
I've got a set of 4 of those, from 4 to 10 power as well as various hand magnifiers and loupes. They're not horribly expensive, compared to the damage that can be done by poking around half-blind. I'd love to get a set of binocular compound optics as used by my dentist, but those really are expensive.

I'm still on the lookout for a good inspection microscope, however.

If you do get a binocular loupe as shown, get one with glass optics--not much nore expensive and worth every penny.
 
Well, my eyes aren't as good as they used to be either, but I'm still really near sighted. That is a great advantage when looking at small things. When I take off my glasses it is like a person with 20/20 using a 5X magnifier. I can read the small writing inside old watches etc. :) Of course, to see the rest of the world I wear MINUS 5s.

@Anders: Don't fret over your filing system. My filing of books is even less logical most of the time. Any loose books are always filed on the lowest pile. Unfortunately with that system there is no way to backtrack because the lowest piles eventually become the highest.
 
Actually, to speak directly to the title of this thread: every day!

This last week, every time i go by the radio in my sitting room I feel like a non-techie. It has always been a little intermittent on one side but has stopped responding to a swift kick in the grommet. A technical person would take it apart right away and fix it. So, I hang my head in shame. Others can probably relate.

Hey! Isn't New Years coming up? I could make a resolution or something - and see if that helps.
 
It's already New Year's in Tezza-land and other places on the other side of the international date line. We've still got a bit a 16 hours to go at the moment.
 
About right now. I just ordered a SATA hard drive off TigerDirect. I waived the $25 warranty for it so i'm hoping I don't screw up somehow when I try install it and I was nervously wondering whether or not they'd changed the way the things hook up into a PC since the last time I upgraded my computer.

SATA is still SATA, right? It looks easy enough. Slide out the little plastic drawer after unplugging the SATA & power plugs, slide the hard drive out of the little plastic drawer. Pop the new hard drive in the drawer. Put it in there. Plug her in.

TigerDirect offered after an installation of Windows plus MS Office after I hit the "add to cart" button. It was something about buying a new license for a new computer I'm putting together. I hope I didn't need to pay for that as well considering my computer already has a Windows XP serial code on the box.

I'm sitting here have all kinds of feelings about what might go wrong!!! I don't usually mail-order stuff. I'd feel more comfortable going to a store and buying something but the selection at stores is always less & more expensive than I could find online...

Why am I buying a new TB drive? Because my Windows partition has only 25 GB devoted to WIndows XP with 3 GB leftover. My computer keeps crashing when I run it on Windows. I'll have a lot of copying around to do after I get the drive installed. I just wish my games ran on Ubuntu... I also wish I could watch YouTube videos on Ubuntu... :(
 
Actually I guess it was during the holidays when I wanted to run a quick game on the AT&T 6300 to show it off. It sat there, floppy light constantly on doing nothing. I reboot and hard drive bootstrap wasn't found. Grr.. IBM DOS I'm not as familiar with. I left it off for a few days fearing the worst and figuring I'd probably have to find an IBM bootable disk and maybe sys c: it and figure fdisk /mbr is too new to be useful. I turned it on a few days later and it was fine.. so I wanted to chkdsk and do a sector repair. chkdsk in this dos doesn't have any help or /? argument and there I sat feeling kinda dumb and end userish. I did chkdsk /f to fix things and it did restore something into a large file that I won't be able to use but without a manual or net I wouldn't (still haven't looked it up) know how to do a full chkdsk anymore.

I dislike the feeling that I'm losing my early dos skills although soon with a few more shelves I'll hopefully restore those memories.
 
I dislike the feeling that I'm losing my early dos skills although soon with a few more shelves I'll hopefully restore those memories.

John,

Yes, I know what you mean. I used to be quite a wiz at MS-DOS but the memory of these things fades with non-use. Actually I've been using a raw MS-DOS box to decompress and write kaypro floppies with Kaypro files and images. It's a non-techie thing to say but there is something to be said for point and click! :)

Tez
 
Why am I buying a new TB drive? Because my Windows partition has only 25 GB devoted to WIndows XP with 3 GB leftover. My computer keeps crashing when I run it on Windows. I'll have a lot of copying around to do after I get the drive installed. I just wish my games ran on Ubuntu... I also wish I could watch YouTube videos on Ubuntu... :(

They do make flash player for *nix... Unless you have a different issue, I don't see why YT would not work in ubuntu.
 
facattack: I also wish I could watch YouTube videos on Ubuntu...
It should be a no-brainer, but I'm not on my own computer, and I've got a memory like an oyster. IIRC this should work:
Code:
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
sudo apt-get install libflash-mozplugin
You should be good to go. :) If I got it wrong PM me and I'll get it right.
 
facattack;125683I just ordered a SATA hard drive off TigerDirect. I'm sitting here have all kinds of feelings about what might go wrong!!! I don't usually mail-order stuff. I'd feel more comfortable going to a store and buying something but the selection at stores is always less & more expensive than I could find online... I'll have a lot of copying around to do after I get the drive installed. :([/QUOTE said:
Installing a new hard drive is easy especially with the free installation software from the manufacturer. If you get an OEM drive, just get the software from the manufacturer's website. I have needed to get a new drive for my "everyday use" computer for awhile now. I have hesitated because all of the customer reviews for the 1TB and greater drives show failure rates at 20 - 25%.
 
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