Necroposting

OMG,I cannot believe that this is actually something that some people freak out about. WTF! Get over it! If you post something on a site after ten or so years of no activity, I get it. The poster probably should have read when the post was first made and figured out that maybe the subject is no longer valid but freaking out after six months of inactivity?

Maybe it's because I began posting when I used to use Linux more than Windows and issues were common. Answers usually were not readily forthcoming because in a lot of cases there were no answers. It wasn't unusual for somebody to finally find a solution six months, a year and sometime even two years down the road. Posts that finally solved issues were welcome, no matter what the time frame.

I get it, people post something and then a week later, they move on and no longer care if they get an answer or not. But when it comes to solving issues that are still relevant then it makes sense to have one thread and not a hundred different ones regarding the same issue. I have a feeling that there may be more behind this necro posting than people will tell you.

Some sites thrive on the number of posts and if you only have one or a few posts regarding an issue, then the site appears to be mostly inactive. Sites like that are driven by social desires more than anything else and are usually useless for actual problem solving and finding solutions. What these misinformed individuals don't realize is that even though a post is too old for them to consider posting to, those posts all still come up during a search. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to solve an issue and a search reveals over a thousand results. If this is your policy for your site, well it's your sandbox but you can keep it.

There are sites like this I belong to but once I get wind of their overuse of the necropost accusations, I usually leave and if possible, terminate my membership. If you find something I posted ten or more years ago, you are welcome to reply and you may even receive acknowledgement but a necropost warning? Nah, not from me.

Some "Experts" Need To Stop Giving False Advice

 I watch a fair amount of youtubers, some I subscribe to and some I just happen to watch the odd recorded stream if their content happens to catch my eye. There was one person I used to watch on a regular basis because I found his advice helpful and I enjoyed his computer building videos. I had a regular subscription and waited eagerly for each new stream. Lately, however, his streams were becoming tedious as whenever somebody expressed an opinion that differed from his, he would go on an endless tirade stating how his opinion was the only one that mattered as he was the expert.

Fair enough, you are the expert, you have made your point many times in the past and going on for a half an hour or more about it, gets tedious after a while. Just ban the person and let's move on. Yeah, he will be back but you have a ton of moderators who will jump on his butt so ignore it. No, it seemed he relished the opportunity to complain about it some more and kept threatening to make his live videos only accessible to paying viewers. When I noticed he was handing out special membership to paying supporters I decided that unlike him, I would not carry on for over a half an hour about how I felt it was unfair that only paid subscribers could watch live feeds, so I cut him loose, I wanted to watch somebody build computers, not whine about the criticism.

As I said before, this isn't about his YouTube and streaming practices and his treatment of mostly unpaid subscribers, this is about something far more serious. Giving out advice that sometimes is not in the viewers' best interest.

Whenever this guy built a pc, regardless of the CPU, whether it be Alder Lake, Rocket Lake, Comet Lake or whatever, and maybe it doesn't make a difference but his opinion was that regardless of the processor, one should always get the latest Bios and install it.

Apparently, this is not always a good idea with AMD CPUs. Now, to be fair, this guy uses mostly intel CPUs but he has built some AMD computers in the past and his practice regarding the Bios is the same. A few months back, I replaced the motherboard on my computer because I was having heating issues with my computer due to the proprietary case and components and I saved what I could and replaced what I couldn't reuse.

I followed what I believed was standard practice and updated the Bios to the latest version. Every now and then, my computer crashes and according to the LEDs on the MB, it's due to a CPU issue. It's possible the CPU is bad but I was careful when handling it and as this wasn't my first build, I knew what I was doing. I've been searching for a solution and in my search I read that if I used a Bios built for a newer CPU, I could have problems. I checked the manufacturers page for CPU compatibility and read that for my CPU, I should be using their two year old BIOS and nothing newer. Hmmm.

So here is my point, it's great to be an "expert" but user beware. What is good advice for the streamer, may not always be good advice for the viewer. I downloaded and installed the older Bios and during a subsequent boot, I still had a CPU crash so I may be looking for a new CPU tomorrow. I will hold off for a bit as this might have been a crash due to something else but it's not looking too good for this CPU right now. At least I solved the BIOS mismatch and perhaps today was the last time my computer will crash but time will tell.

Humans Love Labels

We all love to use labels because we love to make sense of our world and labels mean that everything is neat and organized. We have labels for sexual orientation, genetic sexuality, skin tones and various human races and it's all just a big pile of labels. The problem is, labels cause discrimination. If you are in one box and you see somebody in a different box, oh boy, obviously anyone in your box is vastly superior to anyone in the other boxes. People who try to fix the problems with humanity are always going to run into the issue with boxes. In order to get rid of discrimination, you have to lose the boxes. Period.

In order to demonstrate how things should work, I will use sexuality and the whole X versus Y genetics to try and make my point. In nature, most creatures, including humans, are set up with two sexes for the purpose of regenerating the species. The thing is, nature is always messing with genetics in order to try and make the perfect example of each species. while some changes improve the species, others are just experiments and don't provide any benefit, or are actually detrimental to survival. So lets focus on one species (yeap, put em in a box!), to try and explain in more detail.

I am struggling at this point because there are words (labels) I am trying hard not to use.

We have human males and human females and this was set up by nature to allow for the mixing of genetics, one sex provides one half of the genetic material and one sex provides the other half in order to create a complete set of genes. I'm not going to get into how one thing creates blue eyes or dark skin or whatever, you can find all sorts of information about that on the internet. The idea is that as time progresses, you have humans popping up, some male and some female. Unfortunately, even with two sexes, we are already creating labels.

So let's throw out the labels and put in a slider, on one end we have extreme males and on the other side we have extreme females. The extreme males have all male parts with no female attributes of any type, including sexual preference and on the other end we have extreme females with no male attributes, and here is a bit of a variable; even though the males are drawn to having female sexual partners and females having male sexual partners, during times of growing up or even due to availability, males and females sometimes have sex with same sex partners just because. I'm not going to finish that statement because there are too many variables.

At one end of the slider are males and along that slider are males with varying amounts of female attributes, including sexual preferences and at the other end are females with varying amounts of male attributes. So, this would wipe out the transgender labels and almost make everyone equal again, at least theoretically. Instead of using male and female labels lets just drop sexual orientation all together and call males and females and all those in between, human. Yeah, I know, it gets complicated and makes the language ambiguous, but perhaps it's a way to try and solve the mess that's been created.

Yeah, probably won't ever happen but it's fun to speculate.

This Burns My A$$

 So, nobody commented which is fine, apparently me "winning" something and having to send a message using the program listed was nothing but a scam. Yeah, another one of many on the internet. Well, it's okay, I was able to install the legit program required on my computer which means I bypassed installing risky software from where-ever, and which also meant I was able to completely remove same software which didn't work as intended.

On to the big gripe of the week:

WTF Microsoft? It's not enough that you charge people a ridiculous amount for your Professional Operating System (Yes, I am using Windows 11 Pro) but you feel the need to advertise your crap in settings? By the way (BTW), that advert you see for 365 is clickable as if you feel that everyone should have this software? I don't need it! I don't want it!! If I did, I am sure that I could do a google search and find it without any difficulty.

Oh and BTW, after the last update, you felt it necessary to try and trick me into resetting Edge to YOUR settings, not MINE? Why the F... do you think I changed those settings in the first place? As I have said so many times in the past, I use Windows because the games I play require it. Mark my words, as soon as I find enough games that I like that will run under Linux, Windows will be scrubbed permanently from all the computers I own.

So, keep pissing me off, the more you do, the more determined I am to switch back to Linux, I used it before exclusively for two years and it was only because I wanted to play a particular game that I installed Windows, but as for everything else that I use my computer for, I m more than comfortable doing so in a Linux environment. That includes sharing files on my computers without having to resort to cloud access. OMG, file sharing on a Windows network is the biggest PITA I have ever seen, and it's still a huge PITA! You want to really have some fun, set your computer up for dual boot and try and access Linux files from Windows. It's much easier accessing Windows files in Linux.

Okie Dokie, that's all for today folks, I've made my point and nothing will change so stay frosty!

Blues Be Gone

Didn't take long to bounce back, I'm not one for sitting around and moping about what I could have been or done or had, I picked up my guitar today, turned on my amp, used my distortion pedal and played along with some blues backing tracks that made me feel a whole lot better.

I've come to realize over the years, it's not about what guitar you have and what it sounds like on its own, although that's pretty much what you get with an acoustic. I do have an acoustic that I like to just grab and play from time to time but when I'm in the mood, I like to rock out with an electric.

With an electric, I'm sure that different woods, electronics in the guitar, the amp and speaker quality all play various roles. I've seen lots of videos where sound comparisons were done with various instruments, amps and accessories, to show how much difference each component makes but the bottom line is, an electric guitar is just a piece of wood, with some sort of inductor to pick up the sounds and or vibrations of the strings and fed into an amp, with or without various effects pedals altering the signal being amplified.

Component prices that should make the biggest differences don't always perform as expected, a poorly made expensive guitar, amplifier or effects pedal can sound worse than an inexpensive but well made guitar, amp or effects setup. If you eliminate the overly pricy or cheap trash, you'll discover that you can pretty well get whatever sound you are looking for with whatever's available. Of course, there is another factor that needs to be taken into account and that is the skill of the musician. The best equipment available isn't going to make a beginner sound anything else than a beginner.

For somebody to get the most enjoyment out of playing, and that should be the ultimate goal, not trying to impress people or make a career out of it, but just to play for self enjoyment, one needs to have gear that makes the experience enjoyable. I used to play a Gibson Les Paul deluxe but I have to say that I enjoy playing my Squire Telecaster, which costs less than one quarter the price, much more. It's a lighter guitar, with slimmer neck and no nonsense controls and a joy to play.

So, for anyone looking to start playing, I would say, try a few different ones in you budget range, avoid the hype of more expensive is better and find something you feel is the most comfortable to play. Don't worry about the sound or components, those can always be changed, just find something comfortable and that looks well made. Taking along someone more knowledgeable about guitars is helpful but don't let their prejudice about different brands influence your final decision. After all, once you get home, you'll be the one playing your guitar and not them.

Feeling a bit down right now, apparently I won a random pick on a YouTube channel, but I need to text the person using a format I am not familiar with and apparently it only works on a phone. I have a cell phone but it's a really basic model that lets me receive and accept calls, which, surprise, is the only reason I have a phone. I don't have a data plan, as I have enough trouble seeing stuff on my 22 inch monitor. So, even if I won a really special prize, I cannot contact the person using the format they requested and as such I have to give it a hard pass. The sun will still rise tomorrow and as I wouldn't have had this item anyways, I will survive. Kinda wonder what I would have won though. Oh well, time for bed, nite all.