I've always had a certain amount of respect for RCA. The kind of respect you might have for an old man that lives next door, a distinguished scientist perhaps, or a retired elder statesman. After all, I did start studying electronics with the RCA Receiving Tube Manual and the RCA Radio Designers Handbook. I've seen their logo on enough pieces of older equipment, and while a RCA jack may seem horribly outdated next to a fiber optic ST connector, the warmth of nostalgia is there.
Or rather, was there.
You see, I bought a cheap voice recorder. RCA VR5320R-A to be exact. And while I was excited to get it for ~$20 Cdn, courtesy of my local Princess Auto, I am considerably less thrilled to discover it won't connect via USB.
A little research uncovers that these units are notorious for USB failure, and the best solution is to re-record the data via a male-male 1/4" patch cord.
Data transfer via audio patching?
Oh RCA, how you have failed me...
Effort without Thinking, #65789:
Moved the dish I use for Internet access 43 kilometers. Hung it on my new house. Trees blocked my line of sight. My house is sunk into the forest. There isn't enough clear ground to play baseball for kilometers in any direction. Google Earth can't see my rooftop, or for that matter, my driveway, my front yard or even the road I live on.
So I spent a ridiculous amount of energy cutting - nay, hacking - a channel through the forest.
End result?
Wrong satellite, wrong line of sight. Six weeks off the 'Net (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
Post effort analysis: ten minutes with a cup of espresso checking my calculations might have saved me ten hours running the saw.
...At least my winter wood is cut up.
This article on penguins using air bubbles to reduce their drag makes me think of the supercavitating torpedoes reputedly in use by the Russian Navy. Now, apparently part of the problem with the supercavitation approach is that its difficult to keep the torpedo traveling in a straight line, as the torpedo wobbles back and forth inside the large - and apparently irregular- gas pocket blown by the cavitation. If the penguins can make do with micro-bubbles, I wonder what the actual airflow rate would be necessary to lubricate an RPV...and if that amount of gas could be stored in a compressed cylinder on board. Will have to make some calculations. Hard part might be skinning the RPV with pores.
Recent events have made me aware of the amount of time I spend repairing my computers after virus & Trojan Horse attacks.
I've spent an average of four hours a month on these problems for the last several years: ever since I got broadband internet access, although I will admit the 'Net seems a lot more hostile than it used to be.
Extrapolating over forty years more the Internet use ( assuming, of course, that the Internet is still around in some form, forty years from now) means I'll expend 1920 hours. 1920 hours spent in 8-hr 'standard-working-day' segments is 240 days.
Twenty days short of a Standard Working Year.
I don't know what my yearly income will be in forty years, but I can guess that dealing with this bullshit is going to cost me the labor-equivalent of around
thirty thousand dollars.
In today's dollars.
I've spent an average of four hours a month on these problems for the last several years: ever since I got broadband internet access, although I will admit the 'Net seems a lot more hostile than it used to be.
Extrapolating over forty years more the Internet use ( assuming, of course, that the Internet is still around in some form, forty years from now) means I'll expend 1920 hours. 1920 hours spent in 8-hr 'standard-working-day' segments is 240 days.
Twenty days short of a Standard Working Year.
I don't know what my yearly income will be in forty years, but I can guess that dealing with this bullshit is going to cost me the labor-equivalent of around
thirty thousand dollars.
In today's dollars.
Sixteen hours to repair that Trojan's damage. It would actually have been quicker to not even try to remove it, and just re-install the OS. I spending nearly a man-day a month now, dealing with virii, which is insanely frustrating. Maybe I switch over to an OS running off of ROM - the irritation of dealing with that has got to be less than the irritation of dealing with this.
End of mini-rant. I hate posts with zero novel information content, but here I am, effectively saying nothing and wasting everyone's time, including my own.
End of mini-rant. I hate posts with zero novel information content, but here I am, effectively saying nothing and wasting everyone's time, including my own.
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