The completely gratuitous complaint thread
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I've had it do that too. I feel you brother.
Apparently Daz isn't the only shop that sometimes has math problems. This would have been a great deal on Lands' End clothing:
Wow! What a deal!
Dana
...oh and TJohn, haven't forgotten. Yeah I know, a day or so late into the station and a few quid short, but wanted to do something a little special for your B'Day.
Really miss PSI's picturesque birthday cards (don't have any cool aircraft in the runtime like he does), so instead I had Leela round up a few of her friends to help me wish you the very best.
Happy (somewhat belated) Birthday TJohn.
Speaking of CMOS button batteries. I bought 4 brand new ones a couple weeks ago because I knew I'd be having some machines on the operating table and it would be convenient to change them (some of them are over 10 years old). Unfortunately, I appear to have lost the new batteries. All four on a single package.
I discovered this fact when I went to replace the battery in my old primary machine a few days ago. I looked high & low. Even in boxes I hadn't touched for years (quantum tunneling, you know) I looked in every drawer, behind the crap in cubbyholes in my desk, with flashlights behind my desk, the kitchen silverware drawer, the refrigerator, under computers & keyboards, even in my bag of batteries. Gone, just simply gone. They apparently slipped into the black hole that a single sock will find. Or they've quantum tunneled 200 feet to the left and are sitting out in the horse pasture to the east of me. I did end up replacing the battery in that old computer but it was a loose unpackaged one that I found in a tiny drawer of computer parts. Who knows how many years it's been sitting there. But it tested better than the one I was replacing, so I used it.
I've been exporting an FBX of a scene I'm working on for well over an hour at this point, and I realized too late that I didn't need the figures at all because all I'm planning to do is mess with the environment.
Non-Complaint: I've been able to get my naked motherboard computer system running a fully upgraded Win7 Home system. Yay!
Then I connected to Microsoft and downloaded the Windows10 Home DVD iso file and burned it to a blank DVD-RW disk using the DVD drive connected to the motherboard (proving that all that mechanism is functonal) And "yes", the installation code did fit on one DVD, just barely. (I suspect that Win10 Pro might not fit, but haven't checked).Then I swapped out the hard drive for a different one and used the Win10 Installation DVD to build a virgin copy of Win10 Home on the new hard drive. I've been through a few updates (not as many as the Win7 took) and now I have a completely updated Win10 Home system. And since I have both a Win7 drive and a Win10 drive I can use whichever fits my fancy.
Although I suppose I could put both OS's on one drive and add a boot app that selects which one to use (something I've only done once, 8 years ago), but that's another project for another rainy day. Or tomorrow if I continue to be bored.
And the best news is that I haven't had a bluescreen of death in the several days that I've used it. The on-board LAN doesn't work, and It's still not the fastest rabbit on the farm but it no longer kicks up its heels and freezes in mid-motion like one of those genetically aberant goats.
Complaint: The problem with this setup is that it occupies 4 square feet of desk space, has loose wires snaking all over the place, and is majorly inconvenient and ugly looking. I guess I could do something silly like, oh let's say, putting it in a case, but I took it all out a case 6 months ago and used the case for my new spiffy DAZzing machine.
...and then DS locked up anyway, so I have to start over.
Thanks to you and all the ladies!
reminder for me to read the forums at Renderosity.
Non-complaint: Wheee... although still somewhat bored, I dug into my boxes of old computer parts and finally found a PCI bus LAN card to replace the dead on-board LAN socket. I was hoping for a modern PCIe-x1 bus LAN card but I must have used them all. Regardless the PCI bus LAN card is 10/100/1000 capable and my motherboard has one PCI socket, and Win10 was able to find a driver for the card. That meant that I could remove the dual-channel wireless USB Network dongle, put it back in its box and save it for a customer or another rainy day. While scrounging through my box of old cards I found three old 10/100 LAN Linksys PCI cards and their installation CDs. Unfortunately, I tried them all. None of them worked in my machine, because no suitable driver could be found for Win10. Those cards dated from the early 2000's during the WinXP era. I kept them, because I have two old Dell WinXP systems that I keep around for gaming and geekish nostalgia, and they just might someday need their LAN card replaced.
Now I'm considering scrounging through my old video card boxes to find a graphics card that has DVI and/or HDMI outputs to supplement/replace the existing on-board VGA output. Not that it's absolutely necessary but it finds a use for an old card that is otherwise just going to end up in the recyclable trash soon.
I contacted a local computer repair shop and asked if they were interested in any of my old parts. The only things they showed any interest in were my four small SATA hard drives (320, 160, 160 and an 80GB). I'm not a fool, so I kept my 4 or 5 SATA hard drives that were 500GB and above. I'd offered them my plethora of ancient EIDE (PATA) hard drives (a couple 160GB and several 80GB drives) but they weren't interested. I wonder why?
Actually, I'm looking for a 320GB EIDE drive to put into an empty external EIDE case that matches the 320GB one that I already have. I like to keep my dual off-line backups in identical external cases. I have several pairs of external cases
All in all, my week of scrounging through parts boxes, and consolidating my hoard into fewer boxes has been pretty successful. I now have a pile of a dozen or so empty boxes ready to be cut apart and taken to the recycling station. I have one box of old electronic crap that can be recycled. My individual boxes of various types of cables has been thinned out to a reasonably sized hoard and consolidated into fewer boxes. I've learned how to power-on a naked motherboard using a screwdriver. I've "fixed" an old computer and given it new life despite it being homeless without a case to hang out in.
Update: I found a PCIe-x16 EVGA Nvidea GeForce GT430 graphics card with three ports (VGA, DVI & HDMI) in my spare video card collection. I installed it and turned the system on. It took a while, but after several minutes the system finally recognized the card type and found a driver for it. Yay! What I have now is an apparently healthy middle-aged computer, naked and homeless. It's a little slow but with an SSD instead of a hard drive it might be acceptably zippy. Still naked and homeless though. And once I have no need for the backed up data on one of my removed, small SSD drives, I could repurpose the SSD drive as the system drive for my poor naked machine. Wheee, another computer in the house.
"I think I'll name him George, and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him..."
I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay.
Bloody hell! It's back!
... Queue Psyco music.
Yes, I'm talking about he Premiere Artist Festival.
As long as you're not cc..cut..cccut..cccuttting hair.
He's a lumberjack and he's OK
He sleeps all night and he works all day...
... [much deleted] ...
..."♫ just like his dear papa.♫"
The continuing saga of the naked, homeless motherboard: Boredom is a terrible thing, but easily cured by browsing Amazon and NewEgg on-line catalogs, then spending money one doesn't have. Now that I have a perfectly functional computer again, albeit naked and homeless, I'm browsing for a suitable home for it. Then brilliance poops in my brain and I says to myself. "Self, why not put the poor creature (George) back into his original home?" It has it's original power switch and original little indicator LEDs for disk activity and power, and has the original front panel sockets for USB2, audio, and various memory format slots as well as even a Firewire socket that is currently unused by the current occupant of the case.
That of course would mean that I would get to spend money that I don't have, to buy a new, bigger, better case for my DAZzing machine currently crammed into that old micro-ATX HP case. And the process of dehousing the DAZzing machine, and moving it to a larger, new ATX case, then rehousing the old HP motherboard (George) and its ancillary guts back into the original HP case would give me days of shipping anticipation and hours and hours of busywork. The advantages would be that "George" would have a home again and be given a purpose. Also, moving my DAZzing machine into a bigger home would give it more room to grow and more room for a bigger graphics card and more fans. The possibilities of financial overstretch are dizzying!
($$$)
The Problem: I now find myself browsing the catalogs for a suitable ATX case. I've given up on finding one with the window on the right side (as opposed to the left side, although I know they are possible because my HP cases have their removable side on the right) The difficulty in picking a case is that I read the buyer's reviews.
Also, I look at the price tags.
Why must this be so difficult?
The money that I don't have that I'm willing to spend is in the $50 to $100 range, I want two USB3 ports on the front, along with headphone and microphone jacks, power switch, power LED, disk activity LED, and reset switch, with room for 4 hard drives, and a DVD drive. I realize that DVD drives are passe and I may have to have an external one but none of the cases I found look as if they support any sort of internal DVD drive. Although I have dropped my requirement for an internally mounted floppy drive.
Decisions, decisions.
Current portrait of George with his new LAN card and Graphics card:
Getting very concerned about Misty. Is anyone connected through another site or social media? She hasn't posted in the Carrara forum yet.
Get Well, Misty
Yes, I really hope she is OK. According to her profile she still hasn't posted anywhere on the DAZ site for at least 10 days (since 21 August), which isn't like her.
Maybe she's staying with a relative while recovering and isn't being allowed Internet access?
Dana
oh wow, the Daz website is very slow today. TMy Google Chrome browser even displayed a message saying the server had timed out. I'll log off and return in an hour or two.
Today's exciting discovery:
Back in 2014, before Dell's quality and support went to heck, I bought my daughter a really low-end laptop. She only uses it for You Tube, since her more-recent (but still old) Ipad runs rings around it. It's held up well -- only problem it had was a failed hard drive which conveniently died just before the 4-year warranty ran out. So I've never had to open it up myself
.About a week ago it started giving the ominous 7-beep code for a CPU failure. Fortunately, it appears to have been in the sweet spot where parts are old enough to be cheap but not too old to be available. Got a new mobo with CPU cheap.
Today I took it apart to replace the mobo. All went smoothly until I was removing the heat sank. "Strange," I thought to myself, "the fan cable isn't plugged in." Then I noticed there wasn't a fan. Googled and immediately discovered I wasn't the only one who had discovered the same omission on this model. It doesn't say that it's passively cooled. One person even had Dell support tell him "it's a very quiet fan". Can't get much quieter than no fan.
Anyway, put it back together and it all works, and indeed runs pretty cool.
That model is supposed to come with one of these:
Maybe your "sank" sunk?
The OMG Department: A fanless CPU? You mean they do exist?
Complaint: Postal woes.
Regardless of the debatable cause(s), my postal delivery of packages has significantly degraded. I've been buying a LOT of things via the web lately and right up until a month ago everything was hunky-dory. But the last four orders have been at least a week late. Way over the "promised" delivery time which has previously always been spot-on-the-money (within 24 hours and sometimes early). Even after I get notice that items have been shipped and delivery date is announced, my items seem to visit the twilight zone for days & days. Just sayin', it's not gone unnoticed.
I'm still waiting for an order of glassware shipped from Oregon two weeks ago. And I wonder how that order of fresh salmon is doing?
Up here in the land of maple syrup and mooses, amazon has started using a new courier service, it's crazy how fast they get packages. Like 3 days. They send an email the morning it's going to arrive as a heads up. My only complaint is that they just leave the packages on the front porch, snap a pic with their cellphones, then drive away. Then an email comes with the pic saying delivered. If electronics arrive on a rainy day, that delivery method can be problematic.
If you come home and not find the package there. What's to prevent the possibility of the delivery guy having taken the picture, sent the proof that it arrived, but then steal the package himself?* Oh, what a terrible world we live in that those thoughts would even come to my mind.
When I was growing up in this teeny-tiny town in upstate NY during the '50s & '60s, nobody locked their doors or windows and often had them wide open during the summer. Not so anymore.
* Well, it is the 21st century so I guess those who can afford it and are adequately techo-savvy would have video cameras covering the front door as required equipment for living in the 21st century.
And as for the rain... Those with houses should consider "package shelters", often called "porches". I have a little porch, about 6 foot square and it has a cute pointed roof over it where the birds and sometimes bees find a home. Yeah, rain and snow can get in from the front and sides if the wind's blowing but usually my packages survive well enough.
Good thing Mixamo animations don't take up much hard drive space, because I just downloaded about 400 of them.
My second prepaid debit card account closed without warning! I didn't even receive an email. I only had $10, but still. Many people are complaining on the financial forums too. :( shame because the service didn't charge any monthly fees.
Nostalgic Mutterings: Regarding porches in the '50s & '60s. Back in my day, porches were used for sitting upon during good weather and hot weather. One would sit on one's porch and wave at the neighbor as he/she walked (yes walked) from home to other places in the little town. Conversations would often arise from street to porch and sometimes people would join you on your porch and partake of the drinks and snacks that for some strange reason always seemed to be out on the porch too. Now everybody is shut up in the air-conditioning and you don't even know who your neighbors are anymore.