soldier_ph

Its still a decent ish device. Looking to upgrade from my XR to the 16 when it comes out in September.

iPhone X. New battery, new screen. Cool phone for $100. 
 
I use it as modern iPod touch, iCloud services device and 4K camera. Yes it is slippery device 🙂

Recently acquired a 36" Trinitron. It's got component and S-Video inputs, so I picked up:
- Wii component display cable
- PS2 S-video display cable
 
N64 just gets regular composite. Was originally going to get S-video for the N64, but I also use the PS2 as a DVD player

Horribly overpriced for a serpentine belt but I needed it that moment and despite having at least 8 of these 88-98 chevys as farm trucks there wasn't a single belt in storage

Bought a lil laser printer (the HL-L2370DW) for a whopping $40 because it's been our display model since about Q1 2018. Only printed off 11 pages before my ownership. Just need to clean up the remainder of the sticker residue plus the sticker residue on the back right corner from one of our ancient signage dealios we had on it.

Portal 2 was my favorite out of the franchise. Definitely a game that is worth a look.

5 more CF cards to join the pack... but most importantly they came with a FireWire 800 reader
I have to use my old LaCie HDD that has all the ports as an adapter to daisy chain it and use it with my FW400 devices (don't have anything natively 800) but it works!
 

 

 

 

Apple TV 4th gen for $15.
no power cable but i have one.
 
this thing STILL GETS UPDATES

Well, at least there's no bottle of hand creme and box of tissues. 😄

I got a pretty good deal on a WD Black SN770 to use as a second SSD for my laptop. And I got some more RAM that I haven't installed yet (and probably don't even need...).
 
I also got some Steam games on sale. I guess a weird mix of things, but I'd never played any of the Half-life games, and I lost access to my old Steam account which had Portal on it. I wanted to try the new version of Dwarf Fortress, and have been meaning to pick up RDR2 now that I have a computer that should be able to play it.
 
 

A new PSU to replace the old one, I had been using for the past decade or so. New one brings me up to specs with ATX 3.0, PCIe 5, and the must have features in a new PSU, them 12VHPWR melting connectors!  /s

I was running into some issues with my windows randomly getting stuck to my cursor. I picked up a new mouse, a Logitech MX Master 3S, to see if that was the issue. So far so good. I'm still getting used to the horizontal scroll; I like having it, but keep forgetting about it.
 

got the new board installed and running on the system , couple of things to note .. the side  mounted power connectors are a pain to connect the atx 24 pin to , as you can see in the pic , the cable has to turn 90deg to plug into the motherboard , probably going to get one those 90deg connector , so the cables wont be bent like that .. and one of the two internal usb c headers cant be plugged in because of the gpu(xfx 6800xt), another 90deg connector time .. overall the board is good minus the two small issues i mentioned ..
 

2-3% faster than the regular 14900K under "optimal conditions", whatever that means. Still not as fast in games as the 7800X3D though.

Just bought 14900KS. It's most likely to be a dud tho, so an inevitable return is on hands

F U Microsh*t
That's the only appropriate reaction to anything Microsoft does

I am still struggling with the fact that they made "new teams" and updated the "old teams" but left the "old teams" installed as separate application where, whenever I need to run the Teams, it first turns on the "old teams" asking me if I want to use "new teams". But whenever I search for "Teams" in Windows search, it opens the "old teams" all over again. It's unnecessary annoying mess.
 
The worst is, the in-browser version works way better and smoother.

Summary
 The built in Microsoft Teams app in Windows 11 will now support work/school accounts, you will not need to have 2 different Teams apps anymore.

 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
Out of all the things wrong with Win11 when it came out, the Teams app was probably my biggest gripe.
 
For the simple reason being that there was absolutely no F***ING reason why the built in teams couldn't do work/school accounts. 
To top it off, it took 3 years to make a simple quality of life improvement like this. 
 
Sources
XDA-Dev Article

9-day cruise to Alaska. I got another cruise to Bermuda in late August. I will be taking roughly 4 vacations this year. 

Business is booming
 
/s

Yes, it counts in that situation.

It has to be at least one of the parents of the child is a citizen, that's where "By Blood" comes into play.
If not, then it doesn't happen.

If one isn't a citizen and is one of the child's biological parents, yet the other is a parent of the child but is also a step-parent to the child, that doesn't count since it's not "By Blood" concerning both parents of the child.

If the child was born on U.S. soil that does count though inspite of the situation of their parents, step-parent or not.

No, it's about money. It's always about money.

Summary
Apple plans to allow some developers to distribute their iOS apps directly from websites in EU countries. However, developers must follow Apple's strict rules and meet notarization requirements to protect the integrity of the platform. Users must approve the developer in the settings of their iPhone and a system window will display information that the developer has submitted to Apple for review. Only major developers who meet specific criteria, including one million first annual installations in the EU, will be able to use this distribution method.
 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
The fact that this is limited to only big major developers is such a shame, since this means that the ability to distribute iOS apps via websites will not available for 99% of all developers. Also, it's worth discussing if most users will even care to go trough the hoops of approving developers from websites just to avoid the App Store. Once again, Apple has made the option of distributing and downloading from outside of the App Store such a painful process for both developers and consumers that I doubt that the DMA (Digital Markets Act) from the European Unionen will have much effect at all in the end.
 
Sources
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/12/24098334/apple-ios-web-distribution-eu-app-store-changes 

Not really a purchase but i got a few bits from my Uncle the other day when I went over there.  I won't share all the pics cause they're pretty generic looking but I'll snap the two things I'm keeping.
 
Generic internal 56k Modem PCI
 
A Trust 511 5.1 PCI Sound Card with a E3DX 6Channel chip  
 
 
A(nother 🙄 lol) Black Sata DVD Multi drive (I have quite a few of these kicking around now)
 
An IDE DVD Rom drive in Beige (might keep this cause of the colour but it won't be going in Frog)
 
Now the good stuff..
 
A StarTech.com PCI425USB 4 port add-in card
 
 
and a wonderful Liteon 40x12x48 IDE CDRW.  So paired with the Hercules CDRW (with the weird card readers built in to it)  I can finally have two CD drives both the same colour in Frog 🙂 
 
 

Logitech MX vertical