Toadfish Monastery

DreamHost force updated PHP.  This may be the end for the monastery.  If I touch the code it will probably crumble.  So sorry!

Any tips for presbyopia?  Sometimes I seem to eat different things and it's worse but I am not sure what.

Hi,

It's time to renew the hosting plan for the monastery.  It's $353 and I just don't have it.  Donations are accepted.

Edit:

If you'd like to donate please PayPal darren_dickerson@innostorm.com.  I have a $50 pledge already.  If you'd like to post here and receive credit for your donation please do so.  If you wish to remain anonymous then I'll just post a "thank you" here with the amount so we can keep track of where we are.

Thanks,
MB

Hi,

Anybody got any thoughts on removing soot from an electronic circuit board?  I have an XBox that was in a fire.  I'm pretty sure it's toast but some of the parts might sell as-is if I could get the soot off.  I Googled it but nuffin really caught my attention.

MB

This is funny...

My old pal organized a backyard jam with some folk artist.  The first was a group of three ladies from Vintage Wildflowers.  That was the only one I knew about that was performing.  They were awesome.  They're performing at the Kennedy Center sometime soon they are so good.  Some of their music is on their site to listen to online.

After they were done we all got together and helped pack up.  There was this older guy with a guitar there and of course my old pal had his guitar out and they were going back and forth playing folk music.  My old pal is good but the older guy was awesome.  He looked very familiar.  He was playing songs that were incredible musically and lyrically.  Between songs I mentioned that he should record some of his songs because they were awesome and I'd never heard them before.  He said nothing.  It was getting late and most everybody was gone.  The turn-out wasn't great unfortunately.  About thirty people didn't show.  They missed out. It was an awesome show.  It was pretty dark out and the old guy put away his guitar and handed out some CDs.  I said, "Awesome! You have recorded some stuff."  I looked at the disk and the artist was James Taylor.  You know that feeling you get like your insides are getting sucked out when you've been really retarded and it's glaringly obvious you're a moron?  Well I decided to just shut my mouth and shook his hand and thanked him for the performance.  

I felt better later.  It wasn't James Vernon Taylor although I'd never have know the difference because I hadn't heard him perform lately and I don't even know how old James Vernon is nor could I picture what he looked like.  This artist name is James Michael Taylor.  So I'm not a total retard... Right?  

Just when you thought it was safe to shop on-line...

Here's the latest stuff I have for sale: http://myworld.ebay.com/darren.dickerson

Anybody feel like making some art for a T-shirt?  I need the logo that shows when Microsoft Security Essentials is in the "Potentially Unprotected," state with a caption of the same...  Looks like the little tent but orange.

Dumb Question:

"Display" is to video as X is to Audio.  What would be a good word for "X" ?

It amazes me the horrid state of American Industry these days.  Forty years ago we were sending people to the Moon.  Today American Industry hires a sea of telephone support personnel (mostly out-sourced I imagine) who seem only to be overly grateful for everything, (thank you for breathing) and offer nothing but apologies in return.

Got the Sager NP in a few hours ago.  It's an older one, and not actually an NP, which was a little disappointing.  Still it has an ATI Radeon 9700 in it which was the ultimate laptop gaming video option of it's day.  I was worried that it had been worked on but it clearly hasn't.  No tool marks of any kind.  No screws with marks from a screwdriver.  It's nearly immaculate and built like a Rolls.  There were a few stickers on it which left unfaded paint here and there.  Gonna talk to my paint guy and see what he thinks but I probably won't worry about it.  Doesn't have the original power supply.  It came with one of those adjustable power supplies.  Not about to use that.  Found a replacement for $70.00.  Gonna look around and see if I can find an original.

Edit:
Okay it's a NP 3790.  The part numbers are weird.  You have to cross it from the number on the machine itself...  Still way in the money.  The motherboard and LCD are worth $800 alone...

I'm pulling laptops apart and cleaning them up.  Sometimes they are just filthy inside.  On some of them the heatsinks are totally choked and there's some sort of reside on the heatsinks which I assume is tar from cigarette smoke.  I dunno, that's just a guess.  Anyway, I'd like to dunk them in something to clean them off.  Maybe something acidic, rinse them in water and then dip them in some sort of chemical to protect them or at least keep them from corroding.  What should I use? Usually they're copper or at least some sort of copper alloy.  Other times they appear to be aluminum.

Hi All,

Sorry for the impromptu announcement.  No worries!  If you are having trouble with the forum log out.  Check the Joomla side and see if you're logged in there and log out if you are.  Log back into the forum and you should be good to go.

On a side note, I'm not quite sure the bridge is working so just to be sure log in on the forum side.  Simple Machines ended support for the bridge long ago and I read something about them encrypting the password so no Joomla bridge would work.  It won't be around too much longer anyway.

If you have any trouble post here...

Thanks,
MB

My neighbor's bother just drowned.  It was awful.  Anyway something strange happened to my neighbor and I want to ask about a diagnosis.  She had a very strange fit.  It was like an epileptic seizure but she didn't pass out or anything.  She was shaking uncontrollably but fully conscious.  No cold sweat, no insulin or food.  It just went away.  Any ideas?   

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_russia_plane_crash

OMG!  I bet Poland is in utter turmoil right now. So, terrible...

New Solar Cycle Prediction

QuoteMark your calendar for May 2013, but use a pencil.

Y'all gotta check this out...

http://sleeptalkinman.blogspot.com/

Hallooo!

Hi All,

Sometime soon, probably this weekend or sooner, the Monastery will go back up at DreamHost temporarily.  The Monastery will probably be a little flaky until the DNS settles down.  It will probably be a little slow too.  I expect the Monastery will be back up on the server in a month or so.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

Thanks,
MB

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081022/ap_on_re_us/rove_accosted   

Wow that took guts!  That's a real patriot there.

Hi All,

There's a tropical storm in my area which may affect the Monastery. Tropical Storm Fay is expected to become a weak category one hurricane and hit somewhere along the west coast of Florida. At some point I expect that the site may go down due to power being out. If you see the site is down over then next few days that will be why. Other than that I don't really expected any problems.

Thanks,
MB