Melrick

I don’t know who Brienne is but I appreciate the offer. lol

Off topic, but you guys… giving NZ a run for their money… 

And as every right thinking Aussie said at that announcement: About bloody time!

Sounds like a big pile of shit to have to deal with. I hope things improve for you somehow.

Jeebus Melrick.  Hang in there, things are bound to improve!

Okay, boobies do make most things much better, I’ll be honest.  Thanks @pippychick 

And we wonder why kiwi haven’t taken over the world. Yeesh. If that were true for humans, I’d have remained childless quite happily.

Or, if I need to shut off the machine, right now, but windows decides that’s a wonderful time to install an update… it’s like, damn, I don’t have to option to even defer it to the next boot.  (My desktop is dual boot, linux vs windows, and a quirk of the motherboard lets me use a slider switch to choose between the two.)

If you get fed up with windows, one can try one of the Linux distributions (Mint is a typical “safe” choice).  Mine, Gentoo, is very rough, however, it doesn’t mess around when I tell it to do something; ie, shutting down doesn’t bog me down with all those “do you want to save” or other dialogs, it shuts down as instructed.

No wonder I have a headache.  Microsoft is enough to give anyone a headache.

For a short while, with win 7 and 8.1, they seemed to start getting it right, so much so that I had switched my desktop to windows due to a rather intractable technical difficulty that made Linux really tough to get working properly (new hardware and something I hadn’t dealt with before), and this was after more than a decade with Linux.  However, they soon began pushing windows 10, very aggressively, effectively forcing the switch, and that told me enough to double my efforts to get Linux back.  Once I can afford new hardware, I’m divorcing the two, and will go back to dedicated separate linux/windows machines.  (I still need windows, from time to time, both for games and tax software.)

Ah… now I get the picture. *nods*

Just turning up to claim their salary, are they? Yep. Sounds like a group of politicians I know too. And a bunch of unelected idiots whom I will never, ever, meet. And if I did meet them, the title I’d give them wouldn’t be the one they were used to. With the possible exception of Lord Adonis, who is invariably an incredible disappointment every time you see his picture alongside his name. *sighs* I might be tempted into sarcasm with that one.

I’m just going  to say congratulations, Melrick, it’s fantastic news, and hopefully the politicians will be quick to put it into law, as the people want them to. 

They’re saying they’re hoping to have the legislation in place by Christmas.  Yesterday was a good day for Australia, actually.  Marriage equality, and Australia won its soccer match, thereby qualifying for the World Cup!  Woohoo!

Btw, the name “Darwin’s Law” would work on two levels.  The capital city of The Northern Territory, which is up the Top End where all the crocs are, is called Darwin.  Drop them off there and tell them it’s okay to go swimming in any of the waterholes in the area.  The reality is that only the insane would go swimming in anything vaguely wet up there.

Excellent! If we add whale hunters to the mix, we could intimate that there are whales in the water. Nice early pay off for the viewers.

Green whales, with lots of teeth.

I actually love crocodiles. There was a program on not long back here called Spy in the Wild, and they put two cameras in fake baby crocs, and left them to see what happens to real babies. And when they all hatched, their mother (who’s been waiting for them) picks them all up in her mouth and carries them to the water where they’ll be safe. They’re all there, peeking out of this weird natural cage between her teeth. Most amazing thing. Especially since when I was a kid, nature documentaries were still telling us all that crocodiles didn’t care for their young at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bVZeOt7bCw

I’ve seen that show.  Very interesting.  They used to think crocs ate their babies, because they saw them pick them up in their mouths, and they couldn’t entertain the idea that these giant, savage creatures could possibly be that gentle with their young.

Yup, that’s it, I finally had someone – I mean something – to do.

Let’s hope it’s not too long before you spend time together again. 

I hope so too.

So generations of Americans grew up never knowing the joys of dunking their soldiers in their soft egg yoke.  You poor underprivileged bastards!

My daft one pointed out that some of us have closer ties to the Continent, and therefore were raised with the knowledge of how to keep that freaking egg in place.

On he other hand, I have yet to purchase an egg topper.

Me neither.  Just use a knife.

The funny thing is, I didn’t realise Australia is doing as well as it is.  I guess I just took it all for granted.

It’s easy enough to do. There were periods in our history when we were doing well, and I think we all took it for granted, and expected it to continue forever. We forgot we needed to do our part, and that didn’t include being greedy and shortsighted. What I found interesting is that Australia seems to be far more proactive in anticipating future needs of the people, whereas we have become reactive and resentful.

Eh, when we implode, the daft one will have his Irish passport (hello, EU!) and we can feck off to a happier retirement.

Ireland sounds pretty a pretty good option.  And who knew our boring politicians actually knew what they were doing?  Certainly not me, that’s for sure. lol

Excellent idea.  Drop bears need love too!

And really, even though eighty percent of the flora and fauna might kill you, it’s a lovely place!

It just adds a bit of spice to life. ;-)

Omg what?! 

Well I know it can happen to women (although I don’t really know why) but not men.  It was a passing thing anyway, whatever the hell it was all about.

I am WAY too interested in nipples :-P

Power Line … see if your electric utility will do it, preferably for free (after all, if the tree falls on it, they’re fixing the line).

Cat…  My vet mentioned that there was the spendy cure and cheaper alternative treatments when she thought mine might’ve had it.  In my case, I would’ve gone with the cure (his temperament would’ve precluded the other options).  Fortunately, the vet seemed less convinced of it once we did a second weigh in and he was closer to normal.

That’s actually not a bad idea regarding the power company.  This is government housing and we’re both on a  pension, so they may possibly help.  Worth a try if I need to.

My vet said that there’s nothing that needs to be done immediately.  In about 3 months time, I’m to take him back to weigh him, and to keep doing that.  If his weight falls below 4kg (it’s between 4 and 5kg now) then something will have to happen.  Sadly for my cat, his thyroid reading was very high indeed, like 3 times higher than the acceptable maximum.  So we’re letting the cat eat as much as he likes, as often as he likes in hope that it’ll stabilise his weight.

I’d yell at you, but my last doctor visit was actually a quick trip to the emergency room, and a follow-up with a urologist to confirm that I do indeed have kidney stones, and they sometimes hurt.  So, I should shuffle off quietly, and not scold…

Warm washcloth as a compress and massage.  Feel better!

Thanks.

It's funny, when you're a child you think your parents are immortal. It's quite a shock when you finally realise they're not.

And when you realize how much you still need them, despite how adult you might be.

  We had them for a while, and they were great. I’ll always love my dad too.

But now there’s this waiting game, and damn is it stressful!  I need my computer to DE-stress, not add to it. 

Hope it doesn’t reoccur… there’s always the chance it didn’t cope well with the heat you had recently.

But you’d expect it to misbehave during the heat, though, not after it.  I’ve had it going for about 8 hours today and I haven’t notice it do it.  Weird.

If it’s hardware, then one possibility is a bad power supply.  (When those are bad, it can manifest itself as bad hardware across the board.)  I seriously overrated mine the last time I did a replacement, and it’s been good for 8-9 years so far, it even came with a free copy of windows 7, which was fairly new at the time.

Yeah, a dodgy psu is one thing I’ve thought of.  If it’s occasionally feeding incorrect voltage to things then that could certainly explain why I had two hard drives fail simultaneously.  Time for a thorough health check on my computer, I think.

It's hardware not software. Will have to take computer in on Monday. I'm typing this on my phone since I'll be leaving my computer off.  So a message to DG, i won't be on here to do my work for an unknown length of time.

Hopefully, she’ll get and feel the full benefit of the cooler air now… *hugs you both… after coming in from the sleet outside*

I know we have cooling centers here in the extreme heat, where the elderly and children can go to cool off in air conditioning. Is there any place there which might offer that for your mum’s sake?

I honestly wish I could channel some of our winter down your way, I really do. Those temperatures are simply madness.

If there is then I don’t know where they are.  Still, we’ve almost survived this summer now.  If this really is the worst of it over then I almost feel triumphant.  Mother Nature did its best to try and kill us, but it failed!

Oh, Melrick…

I hope you’ll be okay

True.  Touch wood!

Welcome Back.

Thanks.  Good to be back.

Seriously… I’d be pissed at the shop for not checking both HDs thoroughly.

Damn… sorry Melrick. From bad to worse

If you can, backup your data.

I generally find that when a drive dies, it dies, about the same SSD/HDD.  Should be doing backups all the time, regardless of drive type.  Especially true with the ransomware going around.  I've not had an SSD die, but my closet has plenty of dead HDDs.  YMMV.

The daft bugger lost everything on his SSD when it failed (heat), but I’ve been able to pull files of failed HDDs many times now, most recently with the Spawn’s HDD. If I ever use an SSD, it will be for things I don’t mind losing, like game files. I’d never keep all my stuff on one HD anyway, but still…

Then again, I still miss DOS.

On windows, I use UrBackup to my NAS.   In Linux, it's a periodic rsync to a local HDD (cron job).  But I'm otherwise on SSDs.

And I was right, not a wink of sleep last night.

I’m sorry you didn’t get to sleep. I will admit, in the heat of our summers, I do enjoy my air conditioning at bedtime, which is really the only time I want to be cold.

Yeah I much prefer things to be cold at night.  Oh, and that was a record high temperature last night.  At least tonight isn’t quite as hot.

And like a three-day old fish in summer, he needs tossing.