Internet On again!

I don't know what knocked out the cable modem, but someone did a little magical checking of things and it's back on. Yay!
 

Internet Out!

Internet modem not getting a connection. Looks like it'll be out for 2 days until a tech can get out here.

Uninspired lack of updates gets some motivation

So what happened during the Month of May and June? Well, I gave up trying to figure out which other capacitors in Mom's Magnavox MX 36 inch CRT still need replacing, which in all equalness would likely end up meaning I needed to find another part to replace, something other than a capacitor. As my luck would have it, at the beginning of May, some electric company line workers came to the door to let me know they would be shutting off the power towards my end (and the house in turn) for about 15 minutes while they worked on the transformer on the pole. My only thought was "My Mom's TV won't survive being off for that long..." even though I've been woken up in the middle of the night due to a storm-induced power outage, pleading for the electricity to recover some hit points and come back. Which it did.

This time, I wasn't that lucky. The MX wouldn't turn on long enough to stay on. So like back in February, I got on Craigslist, and unfortunately the other 36 inch CRT TVs I had seen weren't on there anymore. I had to settle for a 32 inch Magnavox TV for a pittance. Let's summarize it this way: I'm not ready for a widescreen LED or LCD or whatever TV just yet, and I'm not in that financial league to afford one anyway.

This TV had been stored away for a while, unused. It's compatible with my current Magnavox remotes, so that was a big plus. It is also 4 years newer than my mother's TV, so it lacked some features I will miss, and some we used for an all too brief time. Picture in Picture was nice. The Over the Air Digital TV Guide stuff was neat, but since the switch to digital TV, is now sorely obsolete, which is a shame. I had finally figured out how to set the ZIP code so it would get the right program info to display.

At least now if I should happen to want a 36 inch TV, my Exploder has enough room for it. And it's best to transport a TV with the picture tube facing towards the back seat and across the width of the vehicle. Otherwise it'll flip over to the face of the tube as soon as you make a left or right turn.

There were several times during the month of June I felt like posting an update, but for some reason I felt it not that important. Maybe there's something to copypasta from my Foosebook postings. Oh well.

The main reason I felt like writing something was discovering how to soft-cook or it could even be called poaching an egg in the microwave.

You need:
1. Egg
1 Tupperware plastic hamburger keeper (sold in sets with the press handle)
1 slightly bigger thingy to put over the keeper

Break the egg into the keeper. Do not stir or scramble. Instead, quickly puncture the yolk. Bonus points if it doesn't begin immediately to leak out. I like some pepper on my egg, so season with pepper as you like.

Carefully place into microwave. Hopefully you have a turntable. Cover with the slightly bigger thingy. You want to keep whatever steam is released during the cooking time in with the egg so it doesn't dry out.

Here's the tricky part. I have no idea what power level the microwave beams its energy into the cooking area, but suffice to say this. I set it to cook the first time for 11 seconds, then lift the cover to see if the white of the egg has begun to coagulate due to the cooking energy. The edges should have cooked first. After inspection, cook for another 11 seconds. More of the white should now be cooked. Then I cook for another 11 seconds.

Now at this point, you could have all the egg white having cooked and turned white and the egg yolk yellow is no longer visible. It could be only slightly jiggly at this point but somewhat hot. IE you have a "cloudy" egg and not Sunny Side Up. If So - You are done! I typically assemble into a sandwich with mayo and cheese on one side, and the egg, carefully pried out of the burger keeper thingy and laid face down on the other slice of bread. The yolk is sufficiently cooked but still a bit liquid. Sometimes I can get it to just creamy but not solid. I've yet to have a problem with getting sick, so take that as you want.

If the egg is still Sunny Side Up and jiggly, cook for about 9 to 10 more seconds for a 4th time. I've tried blasting the egg straight through in one go, but I ended up with a bit of uncooked egg white in the middle somewhere. Doing it in short bursts appears to work best.

So there you have it. My version of poaching an egg in the microwave.

The sort of shocking thing I didn't expect

Going through some of my burned DVDs and finding out that some, especially my older discs, have developed some sort of foggy residue on the data side. It wipes off with some spray cleaner and tissues (and air duster for the resulting detritus) and the disks still play. It may be due to the plastic chemical makeup for the cases used, as it affected all the different brands of media used in the cases. Some of my more recent cases and burns haven't yet shown signs of this odd fogging.

DVDs in cake boxes and the single slim trays don't appear to be affected at all.

At any rate, I finally found some place offering scratch protective adhesive inserts much like the one I got in the jewel case for my  Sailor Moon 1st season BGM CD. I am of the opinion at this point that the fogging can be prevented by keeping the data side away from the plastic case.

I'll be getting more supplies to clean the other fogged DVDs. Even though the single slim trays are ideal, I like to label my discs with printed inserts. It's a tradeoff I'll have to figure out.

Various things and whatever (I'll come up with a title later)

Still trying to start up my computer services business. Right now I have a sick Win7 desktop that is going to get a HD clone and transplant, then I have to fix a corrupted user profile. The HD going bad likely was the cause of that and I have 2 ways to get that user profile to work again. If I just restored the profile without a new drive, it would just go bad again.At any rate, IT'S MY FIRST NON-FAMILY, NON-FRIEND CUSTOMER!! Yay.

I still have a little work to do on the laptop I've been working on. The parts got here and the flux pen did its magic on the one broken off post I wanted to re-attach. Now to get the energy to remove the varistor, clean up the area and work on getting the new varistor fluxed and tacked in place. I have the thermal transfer stuff for the heat sinks. I truly hope after the time I spent on this laptop that it still works.

I need to get another O ring for the DVD drive I was handed to work on because the size of the one I got in the first place doesn't offer enough grip for the motor and mechanics to disengage the magnetic disk clamp from the top of the drive housing. So it needs to be smaller.

And then the power supply board for a DVD player a friend dropped off got the capacitors replaced (the originals had leaked everywhere) and I have to check more of it because when I put it back in place, the player wouldn't turn on. So I missed something though I'm sure the capacitors were installed and soldered in correctly (they're polarized electrolytic caps). It started out not being able to eject the DVD... I was hoping that the problem was with the power supply board and fixing that would help. One problem at a time.

But I'm more excited about a Flash Video file I was able to grab. It came with closed captioned subtitles. At first I thought I wasn't going to be able to grab the data for it, but I found the link for that data. A simple Java application turns it into an SRT file, and then I was able to turn that into a stylized subtitle file. Subs, got.

The video file was more of a pain in the butt. VLC played the video just fine, but conversion to AVI with one tool I like resulted in the video playing too slowly and got out of sync with the audio but somehow the subtitles remained in sync with the audio. Odd. I ran it twice before trying something else, after making darn sure I told it what I wanted it to do.

So I used another tool and got a raw MP4 from the original file, but that tool saw it necessary to insert 70ms gaps in the audio it converted, so the later parts of the conversion played out of sync with each other. But I was able to convert that to a subbed AVI where the subs were in sync with the video. I figured I'd do what I've done before - grab the audio from the original file as an MP3, remux with Virtual Dub and it would fix the problem with the audio - Which It Did!

So now that I can make a final subbed video with everything where it's supposed to be, I will spend some time fixing up the subtitle file. I got to about the 36 minute mark and ran into something that needs another style defined. By that point, I was too tired to continue, so I'll finish that soon but not now.
 

I might be able to fix this, too.

Working on my 2nd laptop so far. It's a Dell Inspiron 2200 found in the trash. With a replacement power supply and a DVD ROM drive put in that was found with it, it powers on and the screen is good.

Today the replacement hard drive arrived, and so I plunked it in and let Windows XP Home Edition do something with it. The BIOS saw it and knew the capacity (40GB). So I let the installer format the drive. It gets to 86% and then the power drops dead.

Problem: I knew the DC power jack was loose, so this was no surprise as it finally got warm enough with a hard drive in to affect the thermal expansion properties of loose power jacks. So I decided that I'll get the thermal grease later - I want at that damn power jack! So I get it apart and the last step - getting the motherboard out - was stumping me. The Internet Archive kept a copy of the Dell service manual for the 2200, and wouldn't you know it - one glance at it, then back to the motherboard and it lifted right out!

And the culprit - nearly no solder on any of the power jack bits on the circuit board! I also saw one other bit that broke off and will fix that, too. Now to remedy this and get it back together to the point just before putting all the heat sinks on it so I can get Arctic Silver on it.

I want to see this machine work.

Fixing it looks pretty good right now

I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE IT TURNED ON AGAIN!

And all I changed (so far) was a single capacitor.


I had done extensive reading to determine what was wrong, and many times a 100uf 200V capacitor next to a transformer would be a good place to start. I bought one off Mouser.com because Radio Shack didn't have the part in a local store (as usual) and the price on Mouser was excellent.

At least I managed to save Mom's TV, for now anyway.
 

Fix it or replace it?

So for the past so many months or so, I've left the Magnavox MX big screen on all the time due to the last time the electric went out and I had a hell of a time trying to get it to turn back on. And wouldn't you know it, the generally fucking unreliable Ohio Edison managed to drop power for about 4 minutes last night and the TV was off and unwilling to stay turned on this morning when I got up. It does its click, light up the green LED for half a second, click back off, and a "thub" sound from the speakers when I try to turn it on. The backup supply that listens to remote signals is working, it just isn't staying on.

I realize this thing is 18 years old, but it still works fine. Well, the picture was just fine. I still want a big screen tube-type TV. Extensive research online yielded info in that the TV has some stupid circuit protection feature. It's supposed to protect the unit in case of over voltage conditions, but in this case, it's an under-voltage condition. I've strongly suspected a capacitor (or 3) that have aged and are off their measured values as capacitance is concerned.

There's one by the high voltage transformer in the power section. Lots of notes that turn up specify this very capacitor's uf and voltage rating, and this is certainly in that spot. I wish I could find precise schematic and service manuals for free on the web.

"Why don't you replace it with a flat screen?" I really don't have the kind of money that a flat-screen TV requires and I'd like to avoid putting one on a credit card. I want something with composite video input and there's no guarantee the model I'd want for my price range would have that.

As it is, I could find suitably sized tube-type big screens on Craigslist or perhaps local pawnshops, having found a couple of candidate TVs online. One of them is 5 years newer than this one. The prices aren't so bad either. It just requires a fair bit of driving to get them and the needed muscle to get it inside and placed.

The parts I need, should I need more than one capacitor, run from $2 to about $20 or so. It seems televisions, even the newer flat screens, all get power supply problems and capacitors usually are the components that go bad because the manufacturers use cheap ass capacitors with shoddy formulations. And in some cases, they just dry out for some reason. I'm trying to avoid thinking about other components that I've seen replaced in some videos I watched online.

Fix it or replace it? Both options are available. I'm going to try fixing first, then when it's not so cold and static-electric prone, re-check my replacement possibilities if that's too tricky.

I just wish things would stop breaking or dying around here.

How to read Japanese 1.2mb formatted 3.5inch floppies

1. Get some Japanese 1.2mb formatted floppies (Wedding Peach Screensaver, for example)



2. Have a floppy drive that can read these floppies. For this purpose, I selected the TEAC FD-05PUB 3.5inch USB floppy drive since the Japanese company website explicitly says it can.



3. Have a computer with a BIOS that understands and mentions such formatted floppies in the CMOS setup screen. Make sure the Administrator password is cleared or you'll not be able to change the floppy reading setting or enable reading 1.2MB floppies.



4. If using Windows 98SE, find the drivers for the FD-05PUB. This drive exists in other designs, so my drivers came from an Imation website page.



5. Copy driver files onto Win98SE hard drive, plug in USB floppy and have Win98SE find and install the driver.



6. ?????



7. Profit.

Thank you, Melody.

I guess I'm lucky she lasted as long as she did after getting sick suddenly at the end of July. Throwing up stomach-fulls of food for 3 days in a row, followed by a sharp drop in appetite. At first I struggled to figure out what was wrong and just did everything I could to find something Melody would eat consistently. Some things were on and off, most things were one taste and she walked away like she was afraid of it. August was like that while I didn't want to think the worst. She went from a decent weight to some loss, but after September there was still some loss of weight but it wasn't very fast. October was when I worked hard to give her the food she needed and medications required. I often stayed up late, sometimes 3 or 4 in the morning just so I could give her the 1/2 tablet that helped her stop throwing up. I thought things were going in the right direction the first day I watched Melody have a bowel movement outside - at least it wasn't coming back up. Quite unlike the peas I gave her over 3 days in September when I was trying anything to get her to eat - they came back up in 2 puke piles, one large and one small.

The last time I had to deal with a vomiting episode I gave her some rice with chicken broth - Melody didn't exactly care for rice by itself, having eaten it once to calm her stomach. That passed quickly and she was back to eating normally for her eating habits.


November was when she started turning down her favorite crunchy dog bone treat after coming in from being outside to do her business. Much of the time I had to make sure she had something of food in her since she refused to eat willingly - the things she did eat on her own were foods that weren't exactly good for her - potato chips, for example. She'd wait for a pizza crust and I'd offer it. Usually she'd accept it - it was her favorite thing on pizza nights.

December was when there was a dramatic loss of weight, and the past 2 weeks she was unable to keep anything except water down. I even tried giving her some gelatin dessert. It seemed to stay down, but nothing else would. It ended up with her still eating the mint-flavored dog dental bones but throwing them up less than an hour later. There were a few days she figured out how to get outside of the fence and enjoyed some extra activities but came home when I finally yelled for her and she heard me.

I took some photos and you can see the yellow jaundice in the whites of her eyes - it faded at one point but there would always be some amount of yellow there.

Considering the dog Melody was before she suddenly started throwing up, I would not put it past her to have eaten some pieces of death cap or other similarly poisonous mushrooms that I had seen growing in the yard. I should have gone out there with gloves on and removed them but they got mowed down before I could remember to do it. Melody has been known to just eat little bits of whatever that she smells and finds, but her habit of just eating anything remotely edible probably was her downfall. There was no way she'd get anything bad for her in the house. I refuse to believe that some dogs are just genetically prone to just getting suddenly sick like that. Just flip a switch and presto, the liver shuts down? Bullshit.

At least this time there's some explanation to why, so I'm more able to accept Melody's passing. It never gets easier, and there's pain. An emptiness in my heart that I hope doesn't stay that way for long. Marmalade will miss his friend - he liked to lick her ears clean, and he did that up until last year or so when Melody suddenly snapped at him in a way she never had before. Oh well.