Running Bear's May 2025 Coffee Shop

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Well, howdy there internet peeps, and those who's internal body drives are more SSD (Sorry State of Disaster) than Solid.

It's Troy again.

Did some hobby yesterday. Trying to get half-finished projects off my desk. I WANT to paint my American Civil War soldiers. But, I've got too many other projects in the works taking up space. So, in addition to finishing up the fantasy men at arms (still need to do shields and basing), I got to the almost done stage on some 14mm ACW Union troops.

My goal is being able to run Day one of Gettysburg at our HMGS (Historical Miniatures Gaming Society) convention this Oct. Not sure If I can make it for all the battles, but the McPherson's Ridge and Woods defended by Gen Buford (played by Sam Neil in the movie) and Reynolds' division/corps will be the initial goal, then expand out to the NE and Ewell's division N of town.

Here's the beginnings of that force: 3d prints from the Sundered Union line. I'll be mixing these with 15mm Blue Moon, and other 3D prints in the 15mm height scale.
501872776_18498951805035711_8387051123746342513_n.jpg

501546348_18498951787035711_2619443372896249737_n.jpg

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Still need to pick out some details, and add some drybrushing for highlights. Then some flock on the bases.

These are sized close to N-scale, but a tad bigger. They're in between N and HO scale.
 
Morning all,

52° and mostly cloudy high of 71° later and storms overnight.

On this date in 1983 I married a beautiful woman. We're still together and how the heck she's put up with me this long, I'll never understand.

Swal: Terry is correct that 16 should be the minimum for anything other that surfing the web or reading email. SSD is stable technology and in many cases makes machines less likely to fail. My machine at home has 32Gb ram just because....
Congratulations!! Through the years you have found that a happy wife makes a happy life!!

Cheers to many more good and happy years to come🥂 🥂
 


Well, howdy there internet peeps, and those who's internal body drives are more SSD (Sorry State of Disaster) than Solid.

It's Troy again.

Did some hobby yesterday. Trying to get half-finished projects off my desk. I WANT to paint my American Civil War soldiers. But, I've got too many other projects in the works taking up space. So, in addition to finishing up the fantasy men at arms (still need to do shields and basing), I got to the almost done stage on some 14mm ACW Union troops.

My goal is being able to run Day one of Gettysburg at our HMGS (Historical Miniatures Gaming Society) convention this Oct. Not sure If I can make it for all the battles, but the McPherson's Ridge and Woods defended by Gen Buford (played by Sam Neil in the movie) and Reynolds' division/corps will be the initial goal, then expand out to the NE and Ewell's division N of town.

Here's the beginnings of that force: 3d prints from the Sundered Union line. I'll be mixing these with 15mm Blue Moon, and other 3D prints in the 15mm height scale.
View attachment 220515
View attachment 220516
View attachment 220517

Still need to pick out some details, and add some drybrushing for highlights. Then some flock on the bases.

These are sized close to N-scale, but a tad bigger. They're in between N and HO scale.
Very nice your painting is good and sharp between colors. Looks great to me and look forward to seeing them all highlighted and weathered from battle
 
Good Morning All. Partly cloudy and 64° with a cool north breeze which means that today's high might not even reach 80°. Slight chance of thunderstorms late this afternoon after the wind shifts out of the east. Those conditions are rarely severe weather concerns. Otherwise, mild weather continues through Saturday.

Yesterday, I started over again to pump the rainwater off the top of the pool cover, it didn't quite finish so I will resume this morning. Even though everything is wet as can be, I did pick Radishes from the garden, Lettuce is waterlogged and useless. Except for a few remaining Radishes, the early spring stuff is done. I need to be harvesting Onions the rest of the week. From the planter box, I picked Parsley and froze it for future cooking; and picked some fresh Cilantro. That doesn't keep long and there is no ideal way to preserve it.
Still too wet to mow, especially with the super-heavy dew this morning. Clippings tend to clump up and block the discharge chute. I might be able to get the higher ground on the NW part of the yard this afternoon if there is no rain. HD is supposed to deliver my new window A/C unit for the train shed today, still have to wait until Saturday for my SIL and grandson to come up and help install it. I first have to clear away some stuff that's stored in the way under the 7' overhang in front of the train shed. I installed the old one years ago by myself but this one is bigger. Old one is a 11,000 BTU that runs on 115v; new one is an 18,000 BTU that requires 230v. I'll buy an appropriate breaker and outlet tomorrow while on the grocery trek; there's already an unused 12/3 gauge Romex cable installed between the breaker box and outlet location. Specs on the A/C show amperage draw at 7.5 startup. The unit weighs 130# which I can't lift safely by myself.

Out in the train shed yesterday, I mainly puttered around with small tasks. I cleared out the area in front of the A/C for Saturday's install, now I have extra stuff in the aisles for a time. I found and replaced the McHenry couplers on three more freight cars that were on the list, and discovered another quite by accident, which I also reworked. Hmmmh! That means that there was an error in my database! I have one more that I know of to do and I know the general area that it could be in. Just ran out of time yesterday.

Kusojiji - Sweet Potatoes in a raised box should be an interesting experiment. The vines on the Sweet Potato varieties that I grow here are generally 15'-18' in length. And they take a full 4 months of moderately hot weather before maturing. Let us know the results.
Tom O - Have a safe trip to Vegas and best wishes to your brother with his surgery. I've heard that hip replacements are easier to recover from than knees.
Joe - Great to see progress on your layout.
Patrick - Happy Anniversary.

Everyone have a great hump day.
 
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I really need to change the oil in my car. It's a year and 3 months old and barely has 4000KM on the odometer. I did the dealer oil change at 500KM, so the oil really only has 3500KM on it. But, oil doesn't get better with age.

When I change oil, I rotate tires and scrub the brake dust off the insides of the tires and rims, which normally don't get washed.

I do this at home with jack stands and a 1 ton floor jack. I need to find the jack stand hard points on this car yet. I usually suspend the rear by the rear axle. Not sure where to put the jacks in the front.

The base takes my used oil and filter for recycling, free of charge. One of the bennies for being a retiree.
 
I really need to change the oil in my car. It's a year and 3 months old and barely has 4000KM on the odometer. I did the dealer oil change at 500KM, so the oil really only has 3500KM on it. But, oil doesn't get better with age.

When I change oil, I rotate tires and scrub the brake dust off the insides of the tires and rims, which normally don't get washed.

I do this at home with jack stands and a 1 ton floor jack. I need to find the jack stand hard points on this car yet. I usually suspend the rear by the rear axle. Not sure where to put the jacks in the front.

The base takes my used oil and filter for recycling, free of charge. One of the bennies for being a retiree.
If it's a front wheel drive car, the jack/lift points are generally on the pinch weld along the bottom of the rocker panels. There should be a mark of some kind there, usually a notch or reinforced area on the pinch weld. Lifting by the axle on a modern car is usually not recommended.
 
Kusojiji - Sweet Potatoes in a raised box should be an interesting experiment. The vines on the Sweet Potato varieties that I grow here are generally 15'-18' in length. And they take a full 4 months of moderately hot weather before maturing. Let us know the results.


Willie, I'm doing the same thing with my Okinawan sweets. I planted some in half of a wine cask and some in the ground at my mom's house.
It will be an experiment to see if sweets will grow in our climate. This is regular potato farm country, but I have never seen a sweet at the farmers markets.
 


Good Morning All!

50F @ 64% and clear. Got to 83F yesterday, pby same for today.

Welp, the kids got outa here about noon with trailer in tow. It actually went pretty smooth and was not the cluster expected. The animals were all in there beds about noon:30 as they were worn out from all the activity - petting, throwing ball/sock/toy ( dogs ), cats from watching and getting out of the way. Jayden is a non-commericial dump truck driver for a dirt company in Ballard. Had to teach him how to back a trailer - imagine that. He got it after a few practice attempts even with the very short uHaul. Trailer was a little less than 1/2 full, so we did not worry about weight balancing. His grandma probably drove the whole way home anyway - 450ish miles. Talked her into going up to US2 ( switch over from I90 at George to WIlbur ) as they would not have to deal with Issaqua, and I405 or I5 going North; along with that they could get on the top end of I405, then the Mukilteo Speedway at Monroe, so don't have to go through Everett and deal with I5 South.

All of the Micro$oft crap seems to be bugging y'all. So what if there are no updates for W10? Do you think the sidewalks are going to roll up on the drop dead date? As long as you are behind a good firewall you don't need to worry about anything getting ya from the outside at least. I still have a laptop with W7 on it and use it every-once-in-awhile. It has not deleted itself...yet. Ya, windoz tells me that the OS is not supported, but do i care? Nope.

Machine I am on right now ( W10 ) is using 12% Memory with only Firefox running ( 5.8G of 48G total ). Firefox is a hog - has 17 processes running with one tab open. When I get busy with it I could have 5 to 7 windows open using 4 or 5 apps, switching between them without minimizing and have only seen 30G of memory used ( no swap ). Pretty sure that would not work with 16G! Just for giggles and grins, I need to take a look at Memory and Disk performance when KiCad is auto routing a PCB. Fans go faster at that time and more heat is generated. All my workstations are Zeon or Dual Zeon. This one is dual 3.6GHz - 16 threads ( cpu's ). Just noticed that the first load was 2020 - so time to start thinking about new HDD's - probably will go with SSD's this time just to see the performance boost, well that is if any of the SSD's are SAS; haven't looked.

L8r
 
With Microsoft no longer supporting Windows 10 this year I'm going to buy a new computer in the next week or so. I don't play games, so I just mainly want it for banking etc. I bought a refurbished Dell Windows 10 for my bedroom last year for only $98.00 to mainly bet horses on but I'm looking for something to use as my main desktop. Anyone here have any ideas on this.
Swal
I wouldn't buy anything with less than 32GB RAM or a hard drive smaller than 1TB. You can always upgrade, but why bother?

If you are not opposed to refurbished, check out Amazon's refurbished desktops. They come with a warranty and Amazon will stand behind it. $300-$400 will buy a lot for a desktop computer. Make sure it comes with Windows 11. You can even spend less, but you get what you pay for.

On this date in 1983 I married a beautiful woman. We're still together and how the heck she's put up with me this long, I'll never understand.
Happy Anniversary! Don't ask questions that you don't want to know the answer to, just be grateful. 😁
 
If it's a front wheel drive car, the jack/lift points are generally on the pinch weld along the bottom of the rocker panels. There should be a mark of some kind there, usually a notch or reinforced area on the pinch weld. Lifting by the axle on a modern car is usually not recommended.
It's a suzuki every wagon, rear wheel drive. It's a box. I don't like to lift the car by the pinch welds as I believe that's how the base autoshop damaged my last one. The sliding door wouldn't close easily after I had them do the safety inspection. They probably slammed the lift into it or dropped hard. I didn't put 1 plus 1 together at that time. It's probably ok as that's what they are made for, but still...

When I do my lifts, I try to find frame. Rear is easy with the rear axle. Front, not sure yet. I haven't crawled under the car to actually do a deep dive. Will have to do that someday to install the power cables for my blaster horns. I don't particularly care for the "uh, excuse me" beeper that the car comes with. :)
 
With Microsoft no longer supporting Windows 10 this year I'm going to buy a new computer in the next week or so. I don't play games, so I just mainly want it for banking etc. I bought a refurbished Dell Windows 10 for my bedroom last year for only $98.00 to mainly bet horses on but I'm looking for something to use as my main desktop. Anyone here have any ideas on this.
At least one of my machines is still running Windows XP. Just because something isn't supported doesn't mean it doesn't work.

I always buy from the Dell Refurbished/scratch and dent site. https://www.dell.com/en-us/dfh/lp/outlet
I look for units where the "savings" is higher than the cost. Ha!

As someone else said no less than 1TB hard drive, I agree. I also usually get more than one hard drive, one for system and one for data. And of course Solid State are sooo much faster than the spinney kind. I always get 8GB memory per processor. So if it is a quad core that would be 32GB. Also consider the memory cache size and if it had dual memory busses. But of course, most people aren't having their machines doing prime number decompositions either, so this could be overkill.
 
Thank you Everybody for the Birthday wishes!

My wife already had given me a 5-year subscription to Baseball Digest, print and digital edition. Which includes the digital Archive, every issue since 1942, I love it!

This morning, I woke up to find a beautiful heartwarming birthday card and two DVDs.
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Since she woke up, she has been asking me "What else do you want?" I have her, what more could I ask for? I asked for hotdogs for dinner anyway, yes, I am greedy! I still have the hotdogs my son cooked on the grill. Perfect for this rainy and raw day! I don’t have to go outside!
 


But, oil doesn't get better with age.
I actually read a study that basically said the age of oil itself doesn’t really affect its effectiveness. It’s the actual use (read “mileage”) of the car. A car with oil that’s one year old but only went 500 miles can safely go a lot further miles even if the oil is over a year old.

In other words, modern synthetic that supposedly is good for 10k miles or 12 months, can say go longer than 12 months if your at 3500 miles or so at 1 year.
 
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