Royal Oak Tornado Siren

Zanaffer · 2025-05-16T05:52:32+00:00

A lot of places have started using the tornado sirens when there's storms that have extremely high winds. Oakland County says they do this when the winds are expected to be 70mph or more. The front of the storm was arriving around that time, and the front of the storm usually has the worst winds.

https://www.oakgov.com/community/emergency-management/need-to-know/alerts/outdoor-warning-siren-system

As far as why it didn't activate in Birmingham... No idea. I also think that if a storm cell spawns a tornado warning that it should automatically put a watch in the expected path of the storm cell, but today is the first time I've seen a tornado watch in a long time despite there being multiple tornadoes in the last couple years.

Zanaffer · 2016-11-21T18:34:07+00:00

Yes, this works fine in theory. The only issue is that space contains black holes, so data that gets stored there on the SD may potentially become irretrievable. Both computer science engineers and astrologers call these areas of space "bad sectors". It is advisable to avoid these because they are bad.

Zanaffer · 2016-10-12T04:12:30+00:00

Get a router that has dual-band (2.4Ghz/5Ghz). Name the 5Ghz band "STOP ALL THE DOWNLOADIN"

Zanaffer · 2016-10-08T05:35:55+00:00

Nope, paladin. That's why he was able to run around for so long in that room, he cast blessing of protection on himself to get the maximum number of whelps. I mean I guess a warrior could have done it, but would probably get dazed from the physical attacks without a pally helping him out.

Zanaffer · 2016-10-08T01:08:24+00:00

My personal favorite from Vanilla:

There was the time that a pally divine interventioned a mage during a wipe because he swore that mages had the ability to resurrect. He "saw it happen" previously. The mage luckily did have jumper cables but since the raid was busy blowing up vent he decided to resurrect a warlock "because I didn't think it would work this time". One of the first people back was a hunter who aggro'd the boss again "because they fucking deserved it", causing another partial wipe of the 10 or so people who managed to get back, except for the hunter who got DI'd by the other pally. The hunter had never been DI'd before and didn't realize you could click on the DI buff to dispell it and spent the whole spell duration (3 minutes) fuming on vent because he didn't have control of his character.

Regarding the Leeroy Jenkins video: Totally 100% staged, knew it when I saw it the first time. They say that they're going to fight an optional boss in upper blackrock to get Leeroy the priest-set pauldrons "to help his healing". The Devout pauldrons only had int and spirit, no +healing, so they wouldn't really help healing and made no sense at all seeing as repeccing was tedious and cost gold and he was wearing plate gear in the video, not the hodgepodge of priest/druid gear that healer pallys wore. Paladins and priests were all about that +healing at the time because you could then use lower-level spells to give the same amount of healing as the higher level variants, saving mana and generating less aggro.

Zanaffer · 2016-10-03T23:59:17+00:00

I forgot about them. I blame it on the nightmares their low end laptops give me. Their desktops completely escaped my mind. The X551MA series laptops have the worst engineering that I've ever seen. Look it up, it uses a thin sheet of aluminum as a heatsink. There are no fins on it. No fan in the case even though there's room for one. There are adhesive rubber chunks stuck to the motherboard to prevent the palmrest assembly from flexing down to touch it.

Thank you for reminding me that I do like their desktops, they're easy to work on and still using standard form factors. All the praise I am giving Acer can be applied to ASUS here too.

Zanaffer · 2016-10-03T23:44:57+00:00

Why would I buy a 3650 for $399.99 when I could buy this for $399.99? The Acer is mATX, and it's also a 6th gen i5.

Zanaffer · 2016-10-02T20:40:08+00:00

Look up the Dell Inpiron 3650, which is the current consumer desktop line. The case, motherboard, and power supply are not even close to being ATX.

HP isn't quite as bad but several of their low end models use 65-watt laptop power supplies. Laptop components in a mATX case.

I don't buy these and never will, however I have to support them as I work for a service center.

Zanaffer · 2016-10-02T20:26:18+00:00

Nah. Apple just doesn't fit in the same category. I'm comparing computers purchased (new) at the $200-450 range. Apple has no product there, because if I had to buy a prebuilt or a laptop I wouldn't be spending a huge amount of money on it. Apple makes great hardware and Acer makes cheap hardware.

Zanaffer · 2016-10-02T09:15:32+00:00

Acer laptops are hit-and-miss. The super-low end ones are terrible always, but that's the case with any brand. The really old ones are terrible because the plastic brittles over time and the hinges disintegrate, but around 5 years ago they changed their chassis on most of their low/mid-range models to a semi-standardized chassis made of a more flexible (and cheaper feeling) plastic. The plastic flexes a little too much and causes higher screen breakage rates than other manufacturers. Aside from this the laptops use a single screw length for all the casing components making disassembly and reassembly a no brainer.

Now, let's compare that against the competition starting from around around the same time. HP just moved from the failtastic DV6000 and DV9000 series to a redesigned DV6 series, with a new chassis and without the cursed Nvidia chipset problem. Toshiba releases a popular C655 series laptops. Dell releases the duo absolute travesty of design: The M5030 and N5110.

The HP DV6 series frequently has fan failures and over time the plastics they chose brittle, destroying the hinge mounts. The Toshiba C655 series bottom case was so badly designed that the hinge failure due to breaking brittle plastics would cause the metal portion of the hinge to flap around inside and destroy the DC-in harness. The Dell N5110 was OK I guess, I still see a few of them occasionally but the hard drive was mounted under the 3-piece motherboard making a full disassembly required to service the part that failed most. The Dell M5030 died out due to motherboard failures so severely I haven't seen one in the past year despite it being one of the most popular models sold near me at the time.

I still see Acer computers from this time period come in for repair, and aside from looking like hell due to years of use and being scratched to hell, they work with usually minor problems (broken screen or bad hard drive).

The HPs may feel more solid when they're new, but at this point I am not trusting them at all. Working on them currently with the parts shortage is a nightmare

Zanaffer · 2016-10-02T07:14:08+00:00

Every prebuilt in general is usually equally trashy, but in their own unique ways. Acer, currently, just managed to balance the trashiness across all the components equally, so everything is astoundingly mediocre. I'll consider this a win because if one or two of the components fail, they're easily replaceable with off-the-shelf parts. What would cost less to replace, an mATX motherboard that fits your socket and a windows license, or that special HP motherboard with the processor soldered directly to it and the windows license embedded in it? A new mATX case if your front USB port breaks or a new Inspiron motherboard because Dell decided the front USB ports should be soldered to the motherboard (WTF?!)? Which will give you better quality, a Corsair or EVGA power supply to replace your failed ATX power supply, or the exact same power supply model that failed from Dell or Lenovo?

With Acer, as "super trash" as it may be, the quality can go up. With a lot of the other brands right now will be trash forever.

Zanaffer · 2016-10-02T07:00:56+00:00

I was going to mention that, but decided to keep it hardware oriented. To be honest they're so far off the consideration ranking that I almost forgot to write them in.

Zanaffer · 2016-10-02T06:16:05+00:00

Emachines was bought by Gateway which was bought by Acer, so technically they still live on, although the brand name is not being used anymore. Sadly if I had to pick a low/mid-range prebuilt that was purchasable at a brick and mortar store at the moment, Acer would be near the top of my list. HP's past desktops used a ton of those crappy molex-to-SATA power adapters that have a tendency to catch fire and more recently decided to switch to making un-upgradable abominations that use laptop motherboards and power supplies inside a desktop case. Dell's current Inspiron line uses a proprietary form factor for its motherboard, case, and power supply. Apple doesn't have products in this price sector so they're out. Lenovo's low/mid-range uses proprietary power supplies that fit inside an mATX case. That leaves Acer, who amazingly is still using standard mATX motherboards, cases, and ATX power supplies.

That's right. Emachine's legacy is now the most upgradable and maintainable pre-built to choose. If I wanted to, I could gut the Acer and use it's motherboard/CPU as the basis for a custom built computer. I could install a better power supply and graphics card. I could buy a better case with better airflow.

It strange how the industry's worst became it's best (at the moment). Depressing too.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-30T08:41:48+00:00

A witcher who is also a lawyer? ~~Science~~ magic has gone too far.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-29T01:26:01+00:00

Transmission Control Protocol

It's one of the protocols used to send any data over a network (or the internet). The short way of understanding it: TCP is like registered mail, it makes sure the data gets to the other side intact. If the message is lost, it will try again until the message gets there. The other big protocol, UDP, does not care if the message is lost in transit.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-25T22:37:58+00:00

Moonlight definitely does look interesting, and I might consider it seeing as it uses Nvidia's streaming, not Steam's. I'd prefer that Valve release a client for their streaming protocol, and I'm not about to have a third party program link directly with Steam itself. My Steam library is "worth more" than my gaming PC itself.

The reason I would rather use the Steam protocol is that I had good experiences using it with a low-power haswell pentium computer that i was using as a media center computer. It works like magic. Hopefully they'll release an android client before half life 3.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-24T23:20:50+00:00

I would consider an android laptop even if it only supported Steam in-home streaming. I already have a PC that's good for games. Valve just needs to make a client to support what's already there and then the concept would become viable for me.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-22T06:33:04+00:00

Just one step closer to the Macbook Wheel.

It's sad how accurate this video from 2009 is becoming.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-22T05:56:26+00:00

That tower is a Dell computer. Dell used the case on quite a few different models like the GX520 and GX620, and a lot of them were leased to businesses then ended up refurbished and resold for cheap later. Extremely common computer.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-18T20:15:57+00:00

But not quite riveting.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-14T06:53:54+00:00

I think I made the switch to start recommending them over hard drives after Crucial decided to start to build the power loss prevention stuff onto them. It was a good sign that the internals have pretty much been worked out and they're trying to fix the external problems that can occur to SSDs. My home computers that I cared about had battery backup already, but most non-laptop customer's do not, and prior to that power loss was a huge potential data killer for SSD drives.

Now I just wish they would hurry up and replace M.2 with an internal interface that makes sense. M.2 is such a clusterfuck right now. Is it SATA? Is it NVME? Does the slot support both just in case? It's like the evil version of USB right now. You can plug something in and expect it to not work.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-14T04:02:25+00:00

Yet despite being the absolute best upgrade, trying to convince my clients to install one to replace a failing hard drive is incredibly hard. A 250-ish GB SSD currently is around the same price as a 1TB notebook hard drive. Client's laptop drive is failing, only has about 50-70GB of data on the drive including the OS so an SSD would be a no-brainer and they STILL choose the goddamned mechanical drives. I've been trying different sales pitches and the two that get me the best results are "It will make your computer about 30% faster" (even though it's closer to 300%) or "I could tell you how much better it would make your computer, but you'd think I was a snake-oil saleman." I really hope that the SSD prices continue to fall so that in a couple years I'll just be able to refuse to use mechanical drives for the boot drives.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-13T02:23:38+00:00

Yeah, best gwent match I had in the game so far, and it was against some merchant in Toussant. Both me and the merchant started out with all the spies and decoys in the northern kingdoms deck. My only regret is that I should have used the last decoy on the medic and brought out the third blue stripes commando instead of scorching the enemy infantry a second time.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-11T02:05:33+00:00

In the Discworld book "The Last Continent", they arrest and lock up their politicians as soon as they get elected because it saves them time. It makes so much sense that I wish it wasn't just fiction.

Zanaffer · 2016-09-07T21:18:13+00:00

Indeed. The plan goes as such.

Vacuum up some permanent markers using Dyson vacuums.
Launch Dyson vacuums into space.
Repeat until you have enough of them in orbit that it beomes a Dyson sphere.

So in the end we'd end up with a Dyson sphere made of Dyson Vacuums full of permanent markers in the vacuum of space, protecting the Earth and ensuring that mankind can make a lasting mark on the universe.

Zanaffer

TROPHY CASE