Running Bear's May 2026 Coffee Shop

[RhB Michael]

My parcel came. The adapters fit great and allow a much wider selection of antennas.

 

[RhB Michael]

Well, what started as a quiet morning, has now gone to hell. Looks like today is the day for the local crop-duster to visit neighboring fields. While he doesn't get close to me while spraying, he makes his turnabouts over or near the SFW estate!
Pictures from previous years.
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His Dad before him in the early '80's, used to fly in under the power lines before some fields got fenced, thus tightening the clearance.

I'd give almost anything to get a chance at flying one of those. The HP to weight ratio when empty is incredible. Swinging a three blade prop, that TB-6 turboprop engine will almost go vertical and climb.

They dust around here too in the season. Two or three of them come in at a time and land at KSAR up the road from me.

About the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

 

[bnsf971]

Good afternoon. It's mostly sunny and 94.
Since the last episode with the computer monitor, I've been watching for a suitable replacement that's within my budget. Saturday, I found one offered online from a local-ish store. It was advertised as having upgraded port selection, upgraded graphics processor, double the amount of ram and storage of a stock model. We came to terms, and I headed over to the store to swap cash for computer. He set the computer up, turned it on, and went through the initial registration process. After all the obligatory clicking through all the terms and conditions, we finally got to the point where I could confirm everything.
Imagine my surprise when we discovered it was nothing more than the base model, with marginal graphics processing, minimal ram and storage, and only two USB ports. The salesperson was aghast, as the store had purchased it for resale based on the specs he provided me. I told him it was essentially half the computer he told me it was, and I didn't really want the base model, he was unhappy in the extreme. I stood patiently waiting for his response. He mumbled something about what they had in it. I continued to stand there looking at him. He again apologized profusely for misleading me. I continued patiently waiting.
He finally offered the thing to me for a little less than the price of a DCC and sound equipped HO diesel, and I accepted. I got home a few minutes ago with it, and ordered an expansion hub for it with a slot for an additional SSD inside it. I can't do anything about the ram, since it's not upgrade-able. It's currently transferring my files and settings from the old computer, and I'll migrate the files that wouldn't fit onto an external drive, which I'll install in the hub when it arrives tomorrow.

 

[RhB Michael]

After my short break the grass is cut and trimmed for another week or 10 days. I'll be making lunch in a few minutes, and then going to check out this new radio some more.

 

[RhB Michael]

Good afternoon. It's mostly sunny and 94.
Since the last episode with the computer monitor, I've been watching for a suitable replacement that's within my budget. Saturday, I found one offered online from a local-ish store. It was advertised as having upgraded port selection, upgraded graphics processor, double the amount of ram and storage of a stock model. We came to terms, and I headed over to the store to swap cash for computer. He set the computer up, turned it on, and went through the initial registration process. After all the obligatory clicking through all the terms and conditions, we finally got to the point where I could confirm everything.
Imagine my surprise when we discovered it was nothing more than the base model, with marginal graphics processing, minimal ram and storage, and only two USB ports. The salesperson was aghast, as the store had purchased it for resale based on the specs he provided me. I told him it was essentially half the computer he told me it was, and I didn't really want the base model, he was unhappy in the extreme. I stood patiently waiting for his response. He mumbled something about what they had in it. I continued to stand there looking at him. He again apologized profusely for misleading me. I continued patiently waiting.
He finally offered the thing to me for a little less than the price of a DCC and sound equipped HO diesel, and I accepted. I got home a few minutes ago with it, and ordered an expansion hub for it with a slot for an additional SSD inside it. I can't do anything about the ram, since it's not upgrade-able. It's currently transferring my files and settings from the old computer, and I'll migrate the files that wouldn't fit onto an external drive, which I'll install in the hub when it arrives tomorrow.

How much RAM did it come with?

Lenovo tried that soldered RAM trick a few years ago and finally relented with both slots being free to change out now. Still can't upgrade the processors like in the old days.

 

[bnsf971]

How much RAM did it come with?

Lenovo tried that soldered RAM trick a few years ago and finally relented with both slots being free to change out now. Still can't upgrade the processors like in the old days.

It has 8GB of ram, and a 256GB SSD.

 

[bnsf971]

Interesting--it still has Applecare on it, until the end of next month.

 

[migalyto]

Amazon still sends some stuff by USPS. Not as much as they used to.

It was UPS that ended the Amazon contract. Amazon still occasionally uses UPS if needed but it’s not a go-to shipper for them like it once was.

In my area, even on weekends, most Amazon deliveries are by Amazon truck or vehicle. But we have a huge Amazon distribution center 2 miles away.

I think Amazon uses USPS and other carriers mostly when the item is in a warehouse far away and their usual long haul routes don’t cover it to move it to a distribution center near you.

ETA: and in some areas for weekend deliveries.

I think your right. We don't hardly get anything from USPS anymore, just occasionally. Last year they opened a big distribution center north of us on I-39 and USPS deliveries dropped off almost overnight. I'm starting to see more Amazon vans running around town where as before we were seeing the white Penske and Hertz rental vans.

Its been great. Most of our stuff was 2-3 day delivery and now it has gone down to next day.

 

[chadbag]

I think your right. We don't hardly get anything from USPS anymore, just occasionally. Last year they opened a big distribution center north of us on I-39 and USPS deliveries dropped off almost overnight. I'm starting to see more Amazon vans running around town where as before we were seeing the white Penske and Hertz rental vans.

Its been great. Most of our stuff was 2-3 day delivery and now it has gone down to next day.

Yeah we have stuff that gets delivered same day or early the next day. Even when I order late evening it’s often next morning or next day.

When they started building the distribution center they were in a hurry. 24 hour construction with huge light arrays lighting the place up. I drove by at midnight once and all the bulldozers and other heavy machinery were out working in full force.

It’s been there and in operation for several years now. There are actually two big buildings. One is a warehouse with a billion loading docks and semi trailers (their own and every carrier you can imagine) and another building where I think they load the vans.

It used to be mostly personal vehicles and rentals driving Amazon with a few Amazon vans. Now it’s almost exclusively those Amazon Rivian vans though I think some of the very early morning stuff is personal vehicles.

I do occasionally get a USPS delivered Amazon. Which confuses me as I expect it to be on the doorstep after it says delivered and not in our mail box.

And occasionally UPS or FedEx delivers something from Amazon.

 

[RhB Michael]

It has 8GB of ram, and a 256GB SSD.

What will you be upgrading that to?

 

[bnsf971]

What will you be upgrading that to?

Both are not upgradeable. I have a spare 1tb nvme ssd that I'll be incorporating into the expansion hub. It's a thunderbolt 4 connection and hub, so accessing any data there will be nearly as fast as the onboard storage. Then again, the newest version still has 256GB as the standard storage option, though ram is now doubled to 16GB.

 

[troyphoto]

Terry, I've got a macbook pro with 8gb RAM and 500gb SSD

I keep most files off in the cloud except the current work and essential files. I still only have 171 GB available on the drive. Probably my pics and music that I haven't migrated to the cloud yet.

Had a fun 3.5 hours.

Wife said I could play with her oranges!

But that's not what she meant. Instead, I got to peel about 8ish pounds of mandarins, blanche them, and let her peel the stringy bits off them.

Much chaos ensued... Me using the waterbath canner...

The fruits of our Chaos!

I'm hungry and tired. Wonder what she'll have me make for supper?

 

[bnsf971]

Wonder what she'll have me make for supper?

Reservations?

 

[DeaconKC]

Good afternoon folks, slept in this morning [unintentional, but I guess it counts], LadyC has been making goodies for our Church Picnic tonight. The Church is providing burgers and hot dogs, so we are bringing baked beans and cookies. Decided to change the Fox Mesa section on the layout to an angled street layout, which will allow me to give a bit of backyard details up there.
Prayers up for those families who have lost loved ones protecting our Nation.

 

[chadbag]

Both are not upgradeable. I have a spare 1tb nvme ssd that I'll be incorporating into the expansion hub. It's a thunderbolt 4 connection and hub, so accessing any data there will be nearly as fast as the onboard storage. Then again, the newest version still has 256GB as the standard storage option, though ram is now doubled to 16GB.

I run an external SSD on my Mac mini (24 GB RAM / 512 GB SSD) and put almost all my personal files on it. -- music, images, dev projects, etc. I'm doing SW dev and I moved as much of that as I could (temporary working directories etc) onto the SSD as well. I was still running out of room as the system uses the disk for "swap" space and virtual memory backing -- ie, as apps need memory, it cleans out memory that hasn't been used in a while and sticks it on the "disk", brining it back in when that app is activated and needs it.

Periodic reboots (weekly or monthly or whatever fits your work and usage) helps by cleaning up all the swap space usage.

I also ued ChatGPT to help me figure out what and how to move stuff off the main disk and that cleared up a bunch but it eventually gets eaten up by "swap" usage. My current uptime is 32 days and it shows 30GB free. After my cleanup it was showing over 100GB free (512GB SSD) and has slowly eaten it up to 30 GB now. I'll reboot soon.

One thing that helps is to close apps you're not using and don't need to save state of and avoid Chrome. Chrome sucks up RAM and swap space.

I tend to leave apps open forever. Edit an image or phot? Just stick it in the background after use for a month until I reboot. I need to get better at it. While I have very few tabs I also have to use Chrome for one of my work flows since the video player the class uses didn't have sound on Safari. So that doesn't help.

If you're not editing images and doing SW development and similar workflows it should be a lot easier to manage. Just move all your media and other file heavy stuff to the SSD.

IIRC you don't like iCloud. But if you use it let it keep your media. Photos and stuff. Besides making a local copy onto removable media, you can let it manage your media and most of it won't be on your computer locally unless you need it. When you have 50k photos that's a big deal.

The new macBook Neo is only 8GB / 256GB and people work with it no issue for normal non-technical workloads. So say the reviews.

 

[troyphoto]

Welp... Dinner is done

Took the trash bag out to the bin. Our trash pick up day is normally Monday, but with the holiday it'll be tomorrow. So our trash smells extra citrusy tonight with all the orange peels.

Oh, and Dinner, for those of you wondering:

A rustic cast-iron pie, its golden crust cradling a robust tomato foundation of unpretentious character, crowned with a generous mantle of hand-pulled mozzarella. A triumvirate of artisan meats — pepperoni, a house-smoked ham of considerable distinction, and seasoned Italian sausage — nestled amongst the cheese in perfect harmony. The whole affair embraced by a molten outer rampart of Monterey Jack, kissed by the cast iron into a gloriously crisp, lacey frico crown.

 

[bnsf971]

The not liking 8GB of ram is a holdover from when I was creating websites and helping with some design work. One Windoze machines, having dual channel ram also helps with performance, since the system can use both channels, instead of leaving one idle while the other channel does all the work. It'll probably be fine--at least as long as this thing is useful. I'm also using 8GB, when the old one had 64GB.

 

[santafewillie]

A rustic cast-iron pie, its golden crust cradling a robust tomato foundation of unpretentious character, crowned with a generous mantle of hand-pulled mozzarella. A triumvirate of artisan meats — pepperoni, a house-smoked ham of considerable distinction, and seasoned Italian sausage — nestled amongst the cheese in perfect harmony. The whole affair embraced by a molten outer rampart of Monterey Jack, kissed by the cast iron into a gloriously crisp, lacey frico crown.

I never would have guessed that!

 

[chadbag]

The not liking 8GB of ram is a holdover from when I was creating websites and helping with some design work. One Windoze machines, having dual channel ram also helps with performance, since the system can use both channels, instead of leaving one idle while the other channel does all the work. It'll probably be fine--at least as long as this thing is useful. I'm also using 8GB, when the old one had 64GB.

In the A- and M- series chips the RAM is a direct channel to the CPU.

What CPU is this iMac? Is it an M3 or something older? The M4 starts with 16GB so I assume it's not that. The memory bandwidth on the M3 is 100GB/s while on the M1 it is 68.25GB/s

In a lower end PC with dual-channel; DDR4 you get 25.6 GB/s with the built in video. DDR5 is up to 38.4 GB/s. If the PC has a dedicated video card (vs built in) the VRAM can run faster. NVIDIA GT 1010 GDDR5 is roughly 48 GB/s for the Video ram while a 128GB buts like AMD RC 550 or GTX 1050 Ti is around 112 GB/2).

So your M- series iMac is generally a lot faster in memory speed than an equivalent PC.

 

[chadbag]

The not liking 8GB of ram is a holdover from when I was creating websites and helping with some design work. One Windoze machines, having dual channel ram also helps with performance, since the system can use both channels, instead of leaving one idle while the other channel does all the work. It'll probably be fine--at least as long as this thing is useful. I'm also using 8GB, when the old one had 64GB.

I get it. 8GB on your iMac is worth a lot more on a PC but it is still low for anything intensive airflow wise. It swaps a lot more with more memory constraint. But with the fast SSD it can cover that up for normal or medium intensity workflows. Just close the apps you're not using if you can.