XNMP & Irfanview Random Configuration

XNMP had some kind of fit which was curable by erasing the directory and reinstalling but then of course all the clever thingeys I’d done were gone. So for my future guidance at least I will present a few things I needed to do.

My XNMP Config

• Over the weary years, I’ve decided the simpler “XN” is better than the stupposedly more-elaborate XNMP. & I’ve realized most of these settings are clueless, but they’re still better than nothing — I can guess sometimes where the real settings might be, and what the heck....

• After wiping, it starts-up with bunches of no-doubt handy windows, some of which I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen before in my life. So I close everything except the browser and the tree display.

• CONFIGURE EXTERNAL EDITOR: Right-click in browser, open with, configure program, “add”, then I enter my paintmenu.bat which is my wonderful painting program menu.. It AUTOMAGICALLY assigns the first such configured program to ALT-1.

• HOT KEYS: Tools, Settings, interface, mouse? ... keyboard? shortcuts? “Mouse” seems to have the main hits. ... I want the mouse wheel to zoom the image, control-mouse wheel to move between images. And various other things. ... In latter days, I switched the mouse wheel settings so it’d goto next without control, and control’d zoom — which it turned-out I don’t use that much.

• In “Tools, Settings, Browser, File List” I can exclude pdfs and various other files....

• In the golden past, left-clicking on the viewer image aka “Drag” would temporarily set it to 100%. I can never get it back apparently, but with “Tools, Settings, Interface, Mouse, Left button” I can set it to “Zoomed selection” which is nice — but Oh Wait, setting the left button to “Move picture” provides the 100% effect! Oh rapture, oh joy!!!

• But don’t set “Tools, Settings, Interface, Switching mode, Use double click to switch between” to “nothing” — which made it so I couldn’t double-click in the browser to see an image! No, no, no, leave it “Browser <> Viewer”...

• The annoying tendency to try and read at least some coreldraw CDR files, leaving them with the current date & the archive attribute set, can be fixed by adding “CDR” to “Tools / settings / browser / file list / custom filter / exclude list”.

• Set the “sort by” to “date” — not “creation date” which apparently is an existential thing unlikely to be properly set in our times....

• Thumbnail captions: Settings, Brower, Thumbnail. Seems to be limited to two lines, which I set to Filename, File modified date.

• Since I’ve undoubtedly got this wrong in so many ways, I will provide xnviewGOOD.ini which is my actual working ini file, renamed to cause trouble, and I’m not going to tell you how to hack it. We seasoned amateur hackers use the free “everything” to find a desired file, in this case xnview.ini, and after renaming it or hiding it somewhere or something, replacing it with my GOOD file properly renamed etc. And of course then you won’t like what I did. ... And I see I’ve forgotten to solemnly threaten that all you hold dear and the entire universe of communists, republicans, & in-betweenists will be destroyed in a huge ball of flaming gas should you even THINK about downloading my dangerous xnview ini file —— you have been warned, in a ridiculous type face I hope.

My Irfanview Config:

EXTERNAL EDITOR: Shift E. Configured in xnview larger image screen — i.e., after you press ENTER in the browser — options, properties/settings, miscellaneous, “set external editors”. Then Shift-E or shift-1 will invoke it maybe. I of course put my paintmenu.bat there.

Amazon, Ebay, & Walmart — Oh My!

I used to have endless bullet points of perfidious amazon behavior — late deliveries, non-deliveries, lying. ... At 10/22/20 they seem to be going through the perennial next-day-delivery-oops phase, perhaps related to Jeff Bezos’s unrequited passion for the United States Postal Service, and the evil monster fascist president’s desperate attempt to destroy all mailboxes, to viciously defeat fair totally nonpartian unbiased mail-in voting. ... But other online merchants seem equally reliable.

It’s nevertheless so much better than actually shopping in a real store! Aside from the driving time versus one’s beloved home PC, there’s the human interaction — for instance, a Walmart “advantage” is that I can take my returns to the store. I ceased using the esteemed superstore some years ago after a particularly astonishing and extra-stupid checkout event, and I’ve only returned in the era of automated checkout which, at least, Walmart seems to be doing its best to support properly. But returning something isn’t automated, and still involves a lovely and gracious clerk, which poor creature told me my return was supposed to be in its original packaging (a shredded-to-pieces plastic envelope) and she didn’t know mumble mumble mild incoherent threats. In the event the Walmart robot credited the purchase without the slightest complaint but still ... there’s nothing like the human factor....

Ebay is the obviously preferable candidate, since it advertises itself as a super junk store....

Amazon Packaging Scams

I was fooled: I thought I was buying a tub of dishwaser pods, but instead I was buying a much-less-convenient giant plastic bag of such. This is the new frontier of online scammery, and it seems like there’s much room for ever-evolving fraud, but there you go — it is their fundamental cause, to steal, and ours, to avoid theft. ... And of course the “reviews” seemed a little dubious as is so often the case....

Amazon vs Walmart: the harmless summary

Wed 4/10/24 10:41 am. In the great amazon/walmart contest, amazon has consistently proved more scammy — of course I use amazon far more. But every month or so amazon’ll ship me something totally fraudulent, and refuse to do anything about it, forcing me to dispute the charge. This has never happened with Walmart; despite my whining, as noted the tragic laptop failure was largely, as is so common, usux™’s. ... & then again, if I’d just remember to specify the luxurious “prime” we pay ridiculous amounts for, amazon probably wouldn’t do those foolish things so much....

Amazon Fraud o’ the Week

I submitted this for a review — this is the second revision — but the kindly monopoly will no doubt find it simply too ghastly, so I will expose my pepto bismol afflictions in my technical memoir, guaranteeing further obscurity:

So there you have it — trust amazon, be fooled. A lesson for modern life.

“Renewed” Dells — aka Returned, Broken, Returned, Shipped Again

I’ve had two of those, foolish me, and I suppose it’s just my unstoppable cheapness, but they were obviously broken:

• The laptop frequently opens an error window complaining about “clr.dll” which is traife in some way. I could find the exact error message on the web, and Usux™ as usual provided various tedious ways to fix it, which were also obviously untested and didn’t work. I mean, it’s kind of an entertaining puzzle, but it’s Dell/Usux™ junk & I don’t like puzzles.

• The desktop is simpler: it just reboots 3 or four times a month in the morning ’cause it feels like it.

And after all, these computers are Windows, the vast mediocrity of our time, but still. I guess I just didn’t pay enough. ... Since then, even the amazon comments are scornful about the obviously broken returned “renewed” computers of many brands.

Renewed Excuses (not)

Then I just (11/22) bought a renewed Dell that worked good and really, so long as one can return the thing to amazon and one is a holy “prime” member, it’s not such a bad racket. But you do have to test the thing — but of course one should do that with any computer. ... & I neglect the innocent techno peasants; they probably shouldn’t buy renewed ’cause who can tell if the thing works, really? ... Unless you are a skilled geek like myself.

... Fri 3/17/23 12:26 pm. But then the beautiful machine wound itself to the wind and forgot the entire Windows 10 operating system — after all, kind-of desirable, but it also forgot the wifi selection menu and presumably other minor details. ... It still kinda works, but I’m afraid it will have to join my growing broken computer storage in the garage, so sad. ... And, mortifyingly, I realized it was my own stupid mistake, as is so often the case in the world of modern senescence, but my cranky machine had no way to restore “factory settings” or whatever it might be — a common fault of the renewed....

New Improved Renewed Excuses

But then again, the previous paragraph just reflects my growing ignorance in the new-age PC world where those restore partitions are apparently no more, but instead one must petition the manufacturer for restore media and in this, Dell still scores, since they exist and all that stuff, so I’ve got a 32Gb thumb drive that will supposedly restore my mutilated laptop to wonderful newness. ... We hold our breath. ... Worked like a charm! Along the way a couple of times I told it I wanted to reinstall windows but leaving my files; it appeared to ignore me, but then it seems to have done something like that!

Dubious Flash Drive Cloning Software

Doing this necromancy requires getting/installing a Dell program and supplying magic numbers which were writ on the bottom of my pitiful wrecked laptop, which got the program to copy the appropriate necromantic software to a 32Gb “Flash Drive” aka “Thumb Drive” what I supplied. And then of course I wanted to backup this sacred flash drive to another such, and therein lies a tale....

In the old days, son, we’d “clone” our pitiful floppy diskette with the MSDOS “diskcopy” or something like that, the point being you didn’t want to just copy the files, but also the boot magic aka necromancy. In our golden era this function is supplied by “cloning” software, some of which works, and all of which looks and is dangerous, being primarily designed to do exciting things to one’s hard drives, which is kind-of old-hat these days, since usux™ windows has adequate partitioning functions built into it, when it feels like it.

• Google for “AOMEI Partition Assistant”. Totally free, and actually worked. Very dangerous of course, but I was able to locate my two flash drives plugged into various orifices (on my working PC of course) and copy one to the other, and the copy worked to restore my pitiful laptop!

• BROKEN: “Ease US Partition Master” failed with typical cryptic error. Mandatory full screen.

• BROKEN: “sm-online” was the most broken. No mouse cursor. Mandatory full screen. Since there’s no mouse, it’s essentially broken, and I had to use the task manager to kill it.

So both my broken programs — and many others, no doubt — were highly recommended by various web technical experts, i.e. scams....

... & after all, the stupid restored laptop didn’t work, ’cause usux’s gotten really annoyed at networks these days (like this). ... Or just collapsed in sizzling mediocrity....

Amazon Default Address Totally Without Effect

When we repair to our pitiful cabin in the frozen north, I must of course continue ordering junk from Amazon and in the past, I’ve had numerous junk delivered by accident to my tropical estate, so this time I decided to take action and set my default address ahead of time! ... I won’t describe how to do that, because IT DOESN’T WORK. It’s just there to fool you!!! The only way to change the destination of an amazon shipment is to change it, manually, on the order where, indeed, it will, thankfully, “stick” for the next order and so on. At least it has in the past. Which is how I will no doubt accidentally ship stuff to the frozen north after we return to the transcendent beauty of the south....

Amazon Salted Caramel Doubleshots

One of the things murican companies like to do is “diversify” a product, with the goal of making it impossible for the consumer to ever find it again, but at the very least to fool it into buying the wrong offensive totally-annoying “diversified” product in “error”. Amazon naturally goes along with the scam enthusiastically, so one time when I asked it for “Starbucks” or “Doubleshot” or something and it showed me the wonderful new taste sensation which I of course bought in “error” — i.e., scam worked. ... I suspect by the time it gets to amazon it’s only used for defrauding poor senile idiots like myself. ... It doesn’t taste that bad but it doesn’t taste like the real stuff and probably has more sugar....

Walmart Scam o’ the Week

Restored Dell Latitude E6540 HD 15.6“ Intel Core i5 4300M (2.6GHz-
3.3GHz) 8GB Memory 500GB Hard Drive DVD-RW Windows 7
Professional Laptop (Refurbished)

Thu 8/4/22. I bought a $379 Windows 7 Dell laptop from Walmart, and they shipped a brick, approximately: A Windows 10 crate, probably upgraded from Windows 7, probably by a customer before returning it, with a broken WiFi. So Walmart joins the “renewed” scam — note the description above says both “Restored” and “Refurbished”, perhaps a hint of the resulting brickiness. ... And Walmart’s making it difficult to return: their return info is a “QR” code that I could take to any Fedex location — not. ... Apparently only selected Fedex locations take them, and I may try again, but I’m figuring even if the ridiculous QR code “works”, there’ll be a $75 “shipping & handling & fraud” fee which I’ll refuse to pay. So Walmart joins the murican Merchants of Scam, and I disputed the charge....

And today (8/4/22) I made my last QR journey, to a local Walgreen’s which did indeed have a QR reader, or at least the obviously clueless checkout clerk said it was, and it rejected my QR code utterly. One could almost suspect Walmart of deliberately using flaky technology to prevent their customers from returning flaky/broken products! ... Gasp!

In truth, Amazon has been better than this, mostly, recently, although there was one broken camera a year or so ago which one of amazon’s “these sellers” tried to scam off on me, which took considerable furor to defeat.

8/8/22. Finally, in a wild excess of innovation, I took my Android PX5 phone out to the garage and pointed the camera at the “QR” code, which dutifilly showed a meaningless multidigit number, which means the QR code was readable, at least by my phone. This does not necessarily mean the Wahlgreen’s scanner was broken, ’cause the meaningless many-digit # suggests there’s supposed to be some clever software involved which’ll know what the number means, but obviously at that wahlgreen’s that day, there wasn’t. And that suggests, to my paranoid outlook, that some clever fellow at Walmart was preserving a “wall” between the buyer and the Walmart-style “these sellers”, so the buyer couldn’t sneak around and contact them directly. And by golly, the scheme worked great! ... & I kind-of hope, but not so much, that’ll I get to keep the broken Dell which, at $0, would be not unlike many of my other derelict computer hand-me-downs, and suitable for pointless merriment and hackery. ... But que será. ... & then I figured I’d wildly entertain you with a picture of the QR code with its meaningless multi-digit translation — but my pixel5’s embargoed screen shots — they can be so embarrassing u know? ... So I turned to my special bought-for-this-pointless-purpose QR scanner, and voila! — the meaningless multi-digit number reads “276334526504”! Much better now, eh?

8/18/22. So yesterday, after the kindly UPS store where I have returned so many things without onerous incident, thoughtfully directed one of my returns to the real Fedex store and indeed it was a place filled with competent fedexers plying their innocent trade, and so the next day I went with my computer box and its QR code and the fedex lady read it without incident or alarm and now at last I am free of my pernicious annoying broken walmart computer....

Wed 9/21/22 9:43 am. Since then I’ve learned to my sorrow that the “broken” wireless was probably a glorious side effect of the super-omerta Usux™ Ethernet Jihad. ... Too bad for stupid merchants to keep fraudulent usux™ secrets so carefully....

My Stellarium FAQ

It’s a beautiful free planetarium which has anti-documentation: a combination of scientific insiderism + french inherent snobbery + written for the Macintosh of course you dolt makes practically everything start at incomprehensible and go on from there.

But let us not carp! The Windows version is a thing of beauty once you master a few primitive carefully-concealed tricks:

• No mouse cursor. F11. It starts at full-screen, and no mouse cursor, which has apparently been that way since 2004 or who knows. F11 will make a normal window, and restore the cursor. I despise full-screen programs, but if you want that, you can’t have it and a mouse cursor, and the program probably can’t be operated without a cursor.

• Save settings. Apparently, to make any of this stuff “stick” and do the same thing next time, I have to “save settings”: move the mouse to the left and a translucent menu flies out, and click the “settings” button — the fifth from the top, a wrench — and then click the “save settings” button on the main tab. And maybe “save view”? And then click the upper-right “X” to close the window....

• No stars during the daytime. Move the mouse to the left and behold the translucent menu fly out. When you hover over the things, little “tool tips” will tell what each does. The third from the top is “Sky and viewing options [F4]”, which you click, goto the “Sky” tab, and in the “Sky” section, uncheck “Atmosphere visualization”. And then of course save settings....

• Can’t see stars below horizon. Same routine as before, but select the “Landscape” tab, and under “Options”, uncheck “Show ground”. Incidentally, the default landscape, which shows-up after a little while on my machine, is allegedly some place in France where Stellarium was born, although I am suspicious of the empty field — near where it was born, no doubt. And since I don’t actually use the program for anything, I leave the lovely landscape on....

• Too much information. When you click upon a star (sung to the Disney tune), it displays vast data about the thing & updates it continually, and sometimes seems to do that just for fun. Right-clicking on the sky seems to stop it.

And voila-a-rama, it works like I want it to. ... Too bad their donate page is in vive la French....

The Imperishable Beauty of the Duraflame Fake Fire

DANGER DANGER Wed 2/19/25 9:51 am The most recent duraflame I purchased has NO WAY to disable the heater with the trickery I describe below. If you switch the power off/on, it doesn’t restart the heat — but I’m not sure that’s good enough; I may still return it to amazon ...

— oh wait! Oh Happy Happy Joy Joy! I foolishly didn’t hold the button for the full TEN SECONDS — and that seemed to work, and subsequently if I operate the heater button, it flashes instead of turning-on the heat! The flashing acknowledge DIDN’T occur for the 10-second press, but it still occurs when I press the heater button briefly....

To DISABLE the electric heat in my beautiful duraflame DFI021ARU electric log insert gadget, I held down the topmost “heater” button on the unit — not on the remote — for 10 seconds, and the imitation fire lights flashed 4 or five times in acknowledgment, and afterwards using the heater button on the unit or the remote’d just do the flashing and not turn on the heat. The instructions erroneously claim the procedure is with the remote’s heater button, which was probably the way it was with the first one of these things I got. ... And doing the same thing will enable the heater again, which I don’t want to do because I just like the silly fire display and don’t want to burn my pitiful abode down.

... But I must sadly report the imperishable part is maybe not so much, when one of my herd started emitting a rhythmic “clacking” which is quite unacceptable in a fake fire: random “crackling” yes, rhythmic clacking, no. So eventually I took it apart which isn’t so difficult and poured half a can of 3-in-1 oil — a lot, anyway — into the motor/gear thing — setting it on its side so the oil’d creep into the motor when I squirted it vaguely at the shaft, and it actually seems to have cured the clacking at least for a while, no doubt leaving a pool of oil on the floor — but no, it didn’t do that either. It has got a metal box enclosing it. ... But then after a week or so, it woke up one morning without flames — the stupid wheel stopped turning. So I guess this is definitely a defective unDuraflame here; a casual impact adjustment set it going again. ... And then another day, and the flames went the wrong direction! Which is indeed a failing I have known of old in a crummy antique fake fireplace which long ago had trouble starting, and today will only go the wrong way after I beat it. But on the next day the duraflame returned to right-way flaming ... for a little while, at least....

Phishing, & the Poverty of Apple

8/17. One of the reasons phishing scams work so well is that it’s so easy to imitate the security pages of, for instance, Apple, the most moneyed corporation in the universe. Apple’s page is astonishingly crude and difficult to navigate; I could probably make a pretty good imitation with Komposer and my other crude tools. This is presumably because it would be so expensive to make something more svelte. ... Or, perhaps, because they’re too stupid to switch it to stupid-iThing-mode so their pitiful crude idevices could use it. Or perhaps it works great on the ithings and the Mac, and I was just experiencing intentional degradation for Windows. ... But that’s no explanation for the jejeune “security questions” answers I’m supposed to concoct. ... Right it used to be you could tell scammy emails and web sites by odd bits of crudeness but of course that doesn’t work when comparing to Apple’s site, apparently prepared by interns....

Whatever; my delightful experience ended quickly without major injuries and I’ll just have to learn to ignore all emails supposedly from Apple. ... And it was in the bright morning, when I’m usually awake!

JGOMENU

6/17. For some mysterious reason I haven’t posted the beloved jgomenu so, if you’re annoyed at computers and life and would like to see them all obliterated permanently in a fiery ball of incandescent gas, you could download the thing! With obsolete Delphi version 7 source! Wildly configurable with an INI file! Unintelligible help!

Windows Firewall Control

1/17. I see that all through through this beautiful web site I keep referring to “my firewall” or other equivalent sentiments, without actually explaining what it is. I googled “Windows7FirewallControl” and the first hit was http://sphinx-soft.com/Vista/ “Windows 10 Firewall Control” which looks OK; actually it appears to be the inheritor of my beloved Windows7FirewallControl program. http://sphinx-soft.com/Vista/order.html has a comparison chart between the free/pay versions. ... On the one crate where I installed it — because my beloved traditional Windows7FirewallControl wouldn’t start anymore — the “Windows10” flavor wouldn’t start either at least easily, but that was stupid me mistakenly using the portable version! The regular version seems to work great! ... And you can ignore the “windows 10” sobriquet; he doesn’t claim it’ll run on vista anymore, but it does run on windows 7....

Forever Firewalled

Please understand, since Vista, Windows has come with a firewall, but it’s wonderfully polite and in particular will definitely let anything Usux™ desires talk to anything.

... So I’ve installed the thing on every computer I got since Vista — a disturbingly endless herd — and it seems to work. And by “work” I mean it pops-up for practically everything you do or just by itself, asking if it’s OK for some program you’ve never heard-of to contact the internet, and you must tell it yea or nay, whereupon it will allow it or block it as per your orders and not bother you anymore. And if your “no” was incorrect, something you prize and love will cease to function.

If you think you’d enjoy that sort of thing, it’s the firewall for you. ... Historically I got involved with firewalls after I realized some ancient win98 (?) crate of mine was enthusiastically dialing home presumably as part of a denial-of-service attack network, presumably not very effectively with my pitiful modem, and I only discovered it because I could notice the modem doing things when it shouldn’t’ve, because it had little lights on it or something. I don’t really remember, but I do want a firewall so not only can I notice things like that, but so I’ll also notice all the stupid Usux™ and other vile programs that want to chat with mother for reasons ranging from squalid to criminally pathological....

Pathological Setting

I should include here a tip/trick, that whenever I install my beloved firewall, I set options that make it useless by accidentally checking the “disable” box as shown in the picture, while furiously checking the setting I intended-to, under it, which stops the endless barrage of log balloons showing even more useless information about the mysterious programs I’m exiling into outer darkness...

Autoruns

In addition to the firewall of course you have to have some way to stop stupid programs from starting, which for me is the beloved autoruns. From Microsoft! Sometimes you must run it elevated, so it can discipline particularly annoying menaces, but it seems to be able to do that for itself these days. ... Although it is better to suppress with firewall than cripple with autoruns disables — the program gets upset when parts are missing and won’t run, while the internet being unreachable is perfectly normal, or at least they must kind-of work like that. Usually. Not of course Adobe products, which won’t work without an intimate internet connection....

Another dangerous favorite is procexp, particularly useful for the feature which lets me click on something and procexp’ll tell me what program it is. So, for instance, I can add it to my hand-dandy all-purpose Killadobe.bat procedure....

Bluray Stinks

Well it’s probably perfectly useful for stealing Bluray movies, but then again, nobody won the bluray/hddvd battle — everybody streams their movies from somewhere or copies to hard drives or something. But basically your average bluray disc contains 25 very slow gigabytes, at least slow to write in drag & drop fashion, but costs 50c while a 32Gb SD costs around $12 this week, price to fall no doubt as the weary eons pass us by. But a USB SD read/write gadget costs around $12 also, and many modern PCs have SD sockets already. Except of course Apple abandoned them.

The bluray drive can be got for less than $100 but, of course, doesn’t actually work with random file writes. ... Actually in my pitiful experiment, when I wrote stuff to an LG WH16NS40 drive with a single program it seemed to work — very slowly — but when I tried to write simultaneously with two programs, definitely keeled over. And cranked the disc. ... And a firmware update from LG reliably failed.

Drag & Drop

An alternate “steal bluray” mode copies all the files you want in a huge chunk and is probably more reliable, but I’ll never know, because it’s useless, unless you happen to regularly need to save 24Gb chunks of data — or of course steal bluray movies. I don’t. ... And you can’t rewrite bluray discs any which way, unlike SDs. And in terms of future compatibility, nothing’s particularly likely, but SDs’ll probably last longer than the slow write-once don’t-work nobody-uses-anymore blurays. ... Of course my simple interests inevitably wander towards the antiquarian which is probably why I even bothered with these things — well that, and simple ignorance. ... Despite my vast technical accomplishments which, of course, like the bluray, became obsolete a few eons ago. ... So now the drives, attached by the totally-superfluous speedy USB3 on two desktops, are my gee-whizziest newest antiques.

... So see by my outfit than I am a programmer, and hear my sad story....

Broken Old Pendulum Clocks

The trouble is, they can’t be fixed. Unless they’re expensive broken old clocks. Because it’s not worth it to fix a cheap broken old clock, in money or time. The internet is awash in helpful fellows who’ll give you detailed instructions on how to meticulously disassemble your intricate clock works, carefully clean it, reassemble it, and then it’ll work just like before, i.e. not at all. Because it’s old and worn-out, just like so many of us....

Many fancy clock repairers are equally helpful, and will happily waste your time with a day or two “estimate” and then tell you it’ll be $3500. Our experience is, if there isn’t someone knowledgable you can communicate with, i.e. who speaks whatever language you speak and knows something about clocks, i.e. not some pitiful ignorant drone — don’t waste your time. Or theirs for that matter, not that I care....

Once I had a clockwork looking something like that and the pendulum’d just stop swinging. We took the clock to a guy in a mall who actually knew something, and he managed to get it going, but the magic only lasted for a year or so. I bought a replacement action at Amazon which proudly boasted it was made in India, and didn’t work any better — it was probably a “pull” from an Indian goverment mechanical clock that had served many wonderful years in the jungle, as ours had in upstate NY somewhere, but both were the cheapest possible mechanical wall clock of the era, and they just get old and fall over.

So I went and got a battery wall clock and put it into the old case and it is good. And I got a little battery phoney-pendulum mechanism and stuck it in there too, in the wrong place but it wacks back and forth so industriously. I had been thinking of doing some kind of hi-techery like a pendulum prosthetic that’d kick it every second or so to keep it going, but the wall clock route was just as stupid and much less work. ... If I get real bored someday, I can take apart the orginal or Indian clockwork mechanism and seriously repair it to destruction.

... But in the event, about a year after throwing-away the impossible-to-repair (for me he whimpered) metal clock works, I embraced the apostasy and bought a beautiful electronic $11 clock works at amazon which’s got a slowly-moving second hand, so chic! ... So now as I traverse the laboratory on my important daily tasks, I can gaze upon my “zombie” clock, with its antique box and its cuckoo electronic brain, counting the hours and seconds, gazing out at me....

Learn Clock Repair in Your Spare Time at Home!

I mean if you really want to acquire a valuable part-time hobby/living out of clock repair, a cheap broken clock is probably ideal. ... But I don’t....

Solar Lights Don’t Work (?)

At least the decorative flavor. For all I know the giant solar panels the survivalists and other lunatics erect work perfectly....

The ~$20 Signals catalog “Light Bulb Solar Garden Stake (HU6272)” was particularly impressive. It actually managed to produce its feeble illumination for two nights in a row — but then, it rained. So sad. I mean, the “bulbs” had visible water on the inside! And of course their electronic innards — well, one of the two still flickered briefly when I flicked its switch.

So that’s about five decorative solar lights I’ve encountered here in Paradise — where after all we have quite a supply of the solar stuff — and they all failed after it rained, of which also we have an adequate supply; I think some have lasted a week or two! ... I couldn’t “fix” — restore to operation until the next deluge — the Signals “light bulb” — well, I didn’t try very hard; there were no screws or obvious way to take them apart, and the sight of tainted water rolling around inside the “bulb” was disheartening. ... But I have managed to whack several of the others so they work. Until it rains again.

Amazon Bogus Reviews

And then I thought I should try an Amazon product, with good reviews! ... But no dice; all such I found were the crooked kind, where at least Amazon admits the reviewer was given a free sample to do the review. Actually, the presence of such bogus reviews is a fairly reliable shoddy product indicator, so I suppose I won’t complain. But no actually positive reviews for solar lights, although I only spent a few minutes.

Moonrays 91381 Payton Solar LED

(6/16) So then I persevered and found a positively-non-bogus-reviewed product which I’m sure’ll work perfectly. ... And actually they did work good: all eight of ’em’ve lasted at least a week — three months! — through numerous patented Florida deluges! Finally after a 100 days, one of them seems to have lost its way, so before attempting a probably-hopeless repair, I bought another bunch for <$40 what I’ll keep around as spares. ... However I lucked out; in the interval its availability has shifted occasionally to the dreaded “these sellers” for different numbers & vast sums but it was available when I wanted it.

... But chances are, the solar lights you buy won’t work; heck probably my new batch won’t! — but of course they did, and the defective unit looked to be an intermittent DeOxit case: when I brought it in, it immediately flashed on, presumably as I jiggled it, and then I DeOxited the thing, but I had already replaced it with a new unit so the definitive DeOxit test awaits time and tide and the next hurricane. But the obvious superiority of the product design was striking: the rechargable battery compartment faces down, unlike the obviously demented competition — so the water runs out, instead of forming a pool in the battery compartment....

... But do try the amazon good-reviews route, and don’t be fooled by those “free product” reviews, which are clearly labeled if you scroll to the bottom of the review. Which is probably why they’re all so lengthy, so they get a shortened presentation and the pitiful scamee might miss the paid-for part....

Eternal Moonrays

(12/16) ... My Moonrays lasted so long, some of the NiCD batteries wore-out! This is unheard-of; all the solar lights I had before were so wretched they’d never wear out the batteries, unless you count being designed so that any rainfall would submerge the batteries destructively. ... No, the Moonrays went on shining for months and that’s 30 discharge/recharge cycles per. Wikipedia claims 2,000 cycles, but they also claim 10%-per-month self-discharge, which was never approached by my cruddy NiCDs — more like 40% a week. ... And it explains something; the lights come with the batteries charged and a little piece of cardboard preventing their discharge, which I thought was a trifle high-rent but now I understand: it’s a cunning quality-control scheme, where they buy cheap NiCDs, test them in the actual solar light, and throw-away the failing NiCDs. ... I tested three NiCDs from non-lighting lights in my fancy battery recharger, and it certified ’em dead. Replacements are cheap-enough — & I’ve been upgrading to NiMHs! — and on we go into the night....

The Way of All Things

NiMH batteries used with cameras, for instance, can last a long time, months, if one avoids the stupid super-bright LCD illumination. And then can be recharged, and they’ll go on for 500 or more of that kind of usage and will last many years, probably longer than the camera. ... Solar lighting, however, has the highest possible duty cycle: the things discharge more-or-less completely every night, and recharge every day. That’ll still last for 100s of days, or a few years, but they’re still a consummable in the application. Which, when I realized it, I found a depressing intimation of mortality. ... But still, years....

The Betrayal of the Printers

Usux™ Upf--ks Printer Sharing

So we can all enjoy throwing away our equipment and getting new stuff which of course Usux™ gets no kind of kickback on, how could I think such a thing!?!? ... Anyway, after two hand-me-down (from LOL) canon laser printers refused to connect a month or so ago, I bought a Brother HL-L2350SW Laser Printer from amazon @ 7/16/21 and, in the great march of mediocrity which is modern murican technology, it refused shared connections @ 10/16/21, right after an especially enjoyable Usux™ upf--k, producing the usual obviously-irrelevant error messages and stupid ridiculous fixit suggestions, in the grand tradition of “are you sure the printer is plugged-in?”. The canons, aside from both having broken hinges, produced no error messages, but wouldn’t print. They all of course were supposedly “shared” with my little fleet of aging PCs, but then they weren’t. ... And in its turn, the Brother refused to share, but at least it complained — with obviously irrelevant error message which, however, specified that I couldn’t share that printer you bad man. Once wirelessed-up, the brothers still occasionally complain that the connection is broken and offer to do a diagnostic, which I’d guess it just another attempt to get lovable advertising onto my machine, but doesn’t seem to fix anything — this, as the printer happily printed my requested junk despite the diagnostic’s denial. ... Today. ... I’m hoping the diagnostic procedure will go away if I let it happen enough but who knows. Eventually I de-accssed BrotherOfflineChk.exe which seemed to shut it up — but still printing! Actually I think the bogus OfflineChk complained about a scanner which I’m pretty sure this printer don’t got....

My guessology is that wireless connections, and perhaps direct ethernet (plugging an ethernet cable directly into the printer) are now the secret officially preferred method, although the banditti at Usux™ will never admit anything, but I could print on my brother printer — for 3 days in a row, now! — by installing it as wirelessly-connected printer with brother’s 218Mb installation program, what you’d better download so it’s not yesterday’s model. ... And who knows? Maybe it’ll print tomorrow. ... Well it did, mostly, by 1/2/22. ... The jury’s still out on my

~$150 Epson XP-6100 Works Sometimes

1/2/22. Well at first I connected it with USB, but then of course I couldn’t use it from a different computer. It “worked” wirelessly — but only for a little while. I assume the software was written yesterday in Japanese, but perhaps it will print tomorrow, after I reinstalled it today as USB.

But the inneresting part was, it still printed through the wireless on another computer! ... Ain’t life amazin’?!?! ... Of course there’s always tomorrow....

Camelot Dump Hours

The Camelot Forest Conservation Association, Inc. — a lovely private vacation spot in Blakeslee PA — has a sworn mission to keep its dump hours def con 5 level secret. However by clandestine underhanded methods I have discovered the following unreliable info.

• The “events” page at http://www.camelotforest.org/events.php — I suppose garbage is an event? — @ Tuesday, August 2, 2016 3:04 pm claimed “Spring/Summer Dumpster Hours // Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday // 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.” aka FRIDAY-MONDAY + WEDNESDAY. No suggestion is supplied as to what dates the Spring/Summer hours begin or end at.

July 2022. Experimental tests indicate the dump is indeed open on Wednesdays. ... Tuesday, July 12, 2022 3:13 pm and amazingly, we dumped today! ... Next, Thursday! Ad astra! ... Friday, October 14, 2022. And then unbeknownst to me but apparently old hat to the lovabable LOL, it turns-out the stupid dump is open 7 days a week, with its new robot gate and video cameras!

• It is my suspicion, not substantiated by any tests, that Camelot “Winter” is from 9/15-5/15 or so, and Winter hours are FRIDAY-MONDAY only, omitting the Wednesday (and Tuesday, Thursday?). This is totally uncorroborated rumor. ... But Lo! Come a few stapled pages in the mail at 10/16 reporting Camelot affairs, within which is printed in black & white that “fall/winter hours are Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday ... 8:00a.m. - 6:00p.m.” Which to my limited perception appear to be the same as the summer hours. But perhaps another newsletter will reveal the latter have modulated also....

• The beach days/hours, however, are totally secret. After a week or so @ 9/18, we were stunned to see it “open” & a lifeguard on duty on Labor Day. ... Not that we — or anybody, much — swims there, lifeguard or no — occasional swimmers pay no attention to the lifeguard’s absence. Although @ Labor Day, as well as an unprecedented lifeguard, there were actually 3 or four people in the water. ... And as the sign says, what I finally noticed when the beach entrance was closed with a gate, the beach is supposedly open from memorial day to labor day — but that presumably denotes when the gate is open. The innocents who wish to flounder without the benefit of lifeguard in freezing water could sneak around easily — but not drive their cars in, outside the permitted period....

So I guess an “open” beach is one with an open parking lot. The presence of the lifeguard is a separate and far more clandestine issue....