BoxOfFeet

Pretty much like the title says. Please excuse the dirty stove. This is my A team. I've used them all at least once this week.

• #8 Wagner (lower right), still rocking the vintage seasoning I bought it with. It just needed a little chain mail to get some crusties off.

• #8 unsigned, single notch Lodge (Lower left). This is my number one guy. Perfectly flat, just the right texture, and the seasoning turned out absolutely perfect on it. So non-stick. I have a slide-y egg video of it somewhere. And it's just Crisco, nothing fancy.

• #10 unsigned Wagner (Center). The big guy, 11 3/4". My man for big tasks. Frying chicken tenders, cooking two steaks at once, searing a whole tenderloin. Seasoned with canola oil.

• #3 unsigned Wagner (Upper left). The only pan I have left that was seasoned with flaxseed oil. That was really big on the cast iron subreddit for a while, but this is the only pan I used it on that did not completely flake off. No idea why this one worked, but it's still in good shape so far. Perfect for skillet cookies, tiny cornbread, or just for melting a whole stick of butter quickly.

I also have a nice deep #5 Griswold in the backlog waiting for seasoning, and a couple of camping dutch ovens. Then, there's my enamel dutch ovens. One of which is my oval 7 qt Le Creuset which is my all-time favorite Christmas gift from my wife. But these guys are my work horses. My best pan boys. I tell them how good they are when I wash them. Tell them that they are good pan boys when I rub them down. After they are clean and dry, they get to spend the rest of the evening out on the stove for admiration before they go back in their drawer.

My fridge has been very loud for probably a month. I was pretty sure it was going to be the compressor, because Samsung fridges are lousy with compressor issues. The the type of sound was a loud, mechanical buzzing. After playing around with a frequency generator, it sounded about 120 Hz. That wasn't a diagnostic tool, I looked it up just now to try to convey the noise to you.

Anyway, after pulling the fridge out and getting my ears back there, it was clearly not the compressor. But it was coming from the bottom of the fridge. So, it pretty much had to be the blower in the freezer. The hardest part was getting the drawer out. I saw tutorials where they just lift out the plastic bins, and there was no way I could get mine out. Mine did not fit out when the drawer was pulled out. I checked the manual. It says they just lift out. The manual also had dimensions of the drawer when pulled out, and I found my drawer was short by 6 inches! The stupid telescopic rails were stuck! I gave it a really good yank, and the drawer pulled out the entire 21 inches. I have no idea how long we have not had full drawer access. Makes getting ice cubes out a lot easier.

So, got it pulled apart, found the blower. Tested that it was the noise. It was. And I looked for a replacement. The OEM blower assembly was $143! I was taken aback. I found a third party blower on Amazon for $25. Went with that. That came last night, and I installed it during lunch today. Took 45 minutes.

I have a neighbor with nearly the same fridge, that had nearly the same issue. Except it was the circulating blower in the upper fridge portion. His wife insisted they call Samsung to come out for the repair. It cost them $1000.

I have been playing with FreeCAD since before 1.0, but I couldn't say when I started. I hated it. I come from Siemens NX, and the workflow made no sense at all. It couldn't do what I considered simple tasks I use all the time for work. I want to make one base sketch that I can make multiple features or bodies from, it was super frustrating not to be able to do that. Arrays didn't make sense. I needed to 3D print a replacement part for something of my daughter's, and didn't have my work computer with me. It took me 2 hours to make this part that would have taken about 10 minutes in NX. Or even SolidWorks (which I am also not a fan of, but used it professionally for several years). I could have driven to my office, picked up my laptop, come home, and designed it faster than FreeCAD 1.0.

I tried 1.1 yesterday after watching some videos on it recently, and most of the major problems I had with it seem to have been addressed. Sketching was better, making features from those sketches was better, things just seemed to make more sense. I made another rather simple part in about half an hour, and I think that time will come down as I get more familiar with it. I wish I had my SpacePilot Pro hooked up for it, it's been a while since I've had to rotate things with my mouse. But I have previously had the 3DConnexion driver working with FreeCAD, so I'll be doing that in the future. Fun fact, you can also do anaglyph 3D with FreeCAD if you want do design with those old-school red/blue glasses.

Anyway, here's what I made. It's a base for a Lundby doll house chair for my mom. Originally, it would have had an Eames style base, with a central metal post and legs coming out like a desk chair. I made a tulip-style base, and inserted a metal pin down the center for stability. It was super easy to design and modify in 1.1, with one main sketch revolved. Then, I created a second sketch for the angled top, extruded that, and did a boolean subtract. Super easy, and actually pretty fun to make. Completely different from my previous FreeCAD experiences. I will be coming back to it again, for sure.

Here's what the original would have looked. She doesn't have the footstool, so I figured I could take some design liberties. The Eames's work is fantastic, so is Eero Saarinen's. Why not mash them up?

I recently breathed some new life into this crappy old Nextbook Flexx 10 I have had for years by trying out some lightweight distros. I have Lubuntu on it currently, and I am really enjoying LXQt so far. I was surprised at how good looking you can get it.

That leads me to a minor inconvenience. I like using my old imac USB mouse with it. It's small, has a short cord, and works on just about any surface. The click is also very satisfying. The problem is, it only has one button. On Mint and Windows, that's been an easy fix with built-in accessibility settings. Just long click to right click. But I cannot find that anywhere in Lubuntu. Am I just missing it somewhere? Is there an easy way to implement it?

This is my third DSL. I love these things. It's the most I've spent on a busted one so far, at $30. The last one I bought was 12, and the one before that was 5. All this one needed though was a new shell and a digitizer. Both screens are in excellent condition. The shell was very yellowed and busted.

Anyway, I had just learned recently that eXtremerate made DSL shells, and I decided I needed to try one out. I am a huge fan of the Switch Lite shell I have from them, it feels nearly OEM.

The DSL shell, not so much. The plastic is pretty soft. That's kind of nice, since I have had issues with previous aftermarket DS shells cracking. The bottom screen bezel is molded in, which I also like. It's hard to get the adhesive ones off without ruining the digitizer. The upper shell does not have the dual square DS logo molded into the top, which is also appreciated. The fit is also very good. No unexpected warping, everything fit together fine.

But the plastic is so soft.. I'm afraid it is going to scratch very easily. Plus, it's painted. I thought it would be gray plastic with some UV printed logos, but it is white plastic painted gray with UV logos. Sort of disappointing. If I ever re-shell it again, I'll get one of their transparent ones. But yeah, probably the best aftermarket DS shell I've seen so far, overall.

Did you know there's a decent DOS emulator for the DS? You aren't going to be playing Doom, but you can play Oregon Trail! Or Jetpack! And lots of other earlier stuff. Bind the buttons to keys, use the stylus for mouse input.

Just figured out today that the dates for 1970 line up with this year. When my grandfather moved to an assisted living facility, he let his grandkids go through and pick things from his house. I chose a pinball machine, a bike, a chair, some tools, and Hilda. I love her. It makes me very happy to be able to re-use these. With 1970 being one of the earliest ones he had, I am going to be set for a while.

I found an old, sealed media center remote at a thrift shop. But not all of the keys work out of the box. When I run evtest, it definitely recognizes all of the key presses, and identifies the keys correctly. But how do I assign them to things? Any help would be appreciated.

I am running Mint, by the way.

I'm planning on finally retiring my Logitech T-BB18 trackball. I'm getting a white M585, and putting a T-BB18 ball in it to make it look more like the T-BB13 I had in my teens. I've already tested this, it works. What would really set it off (other than seeing if I can dye the scroll wheel red) would be to get a nice little vinyl sticker of the old Logitech logo. But I can't seem to find anything.

I thought about just getting another T-BB13, since it was actually USB. But, I remember what a pain it was to take out the ball and clean it. I'd rather get a new M575 that is both Bluetooth and dongled USB.

T-BB13

T-BB18

M575S

Old Logitech logo

I'm hoping somebody can help me out here, refresh my memory. Earlier this year, I was having an issue where whenever I opened a couple apps, they would prompt me for my password to launch. At the time, one was Firefox. It was something to do with the keyring. And I used nano to edit some configuration file for each of the two apps to change a line that fixed the issue. But I have no memory of what I changed, and my browser history is no help. Did I change something to trusted? Did I change some authentication requirement to basic? I honestly have no recollection. But if anybody has any idea what I'm trying to say, I would love some assistance.

The group is a bit smaller these days, just one buddy. We're doing some XP gaming. I got Battlefield 1942 running here, with the Battlegroup 42 mod. My Dimension E510 can really handle up to BG42 version 1.35b, but apparently they aren't hosting that on ModDB anymore. I had to find it on some shady ancient Russian file hosting site. But I got there in the end.

This is the first time out for my Precision 690, I've been working on it for about a month. I rescued it from a rage room, it was going to get beat to scrap. I asked, and they gave it to me! I swapped the single Xeon 5160 for Xeon 5355's. 2gb of ram for 32gb. The crappy display adapter for a GTX 980TI. It is an XP era powerhouse. I have not gotten XP x64 running on it yet, but it's running Mint 22.1 like a champ. I put an XP theme on it until I can dual boot the real thing. I am super stoked this thing is running. Mint might be the better option for it, actually! Good 32bit compatibility with Wine and Lutris, and full use of the 32gb of ram and 8 cores.

I saw the movie in high school, when it came out on VHS, and I loved it. I bought the book, and couldn't put it down. It was perhaps my favorite piece of sci-fi for a while. I thought John Travolta was delightfully hammy, and that the movie was extremely quotable and fun.

A coworker of mine were just talking about musicals this morning, and my strong dislike of Hamilton. For some reason, it popped into my head that I would love a musical of Battlefield Earth, and John Travolta should sing in it. This sentiment was not shared by my coworker. So, yeah, that's it.

The TI-86 is my absolute favorite calculator. I find it a pleasure to program for, I love the custom menu buttons, and I love the screen compared to that of the 83/84. I love the design, the uniform buttons and dark color scheme look very professional. This is my second one, after the screen died in my original baby that got me through high school and college. Which leads me to another thing I love about it, they are dirt cheap on eBay. Most are under $20.

Back in my college days, I saw somebody online had modded theirs with the frontlight from a GBA SP. The AGS-001, not the AGS-101. That was brilliant. I did a ton of calculator programming and math in low-light conditions at the time. Lounges in the dorms, during lectures. A calculator with a lit screen would have been awesome. I know all three major brands have options like that now, but it was pretty novel at the time. I think the only one out with a backlight was the Casio 9860 Slim, which was quite pricey. Unfortunately, even a broken GBA was outside of my broke college budget, and those tri-wing screwdrivers were not common yet. So, the dream faded.

Until, for some reason, a couple weeks ago. I do not know why it popped back into my head, and I could not find the source of the mod again for the life of me. But I knew I had to do it. And these days, you can get aftermarket GBA parts super easy and cheap. I still had my old 86, and I took it apart for proof of concept work. I tried every single test point for something that just turned on and off with the calculator, and could not find a single thing. Well, at least not anything without a signal from it. So, I resigned to just using a switch. Which I remember is what the original mod also did. I hid it in the battery compartment. It works fantastic. I wish I did this 20 years ago. There are a few specks of dust on it, and the frontlight makes them hugely visible. I'm going to get them off, but I'm out of Rodico at the moment. Anyway, just thought I'd share.