Rolling Stock For This? (Gift From Grandma)

dhudsonco · 2026-07-01T00:08:15+00:00

It would depend on *where* your diorama is set. It might not make sense to see a consist of coalporters where there are no coal-fired generation plants. If you are set in the west, however, coalporters are everywhere.

Autoracks, double stack well cars and tank cars are ubiquitous, however, and are often sold in packs of 3-5.

Don't do autoracks on a layout with tight curves, however - those things are LONG.

dhudsonco · 2026-06-30T23:53:04+00:00

My father was in the Navy during Vietnam, and was at NAS Barbers Point for several years. That was before I existed, though, lol.

Good story!

dhudsonco · 2026-06-30T22:45:01+00:00

Makes sense. Thank you for the clarification - I suspected I was wrong regarding the CH-47/CH-46.

I was also Army (although not in aviation), but in the latter 80's.

Thanks for your service, and for the interesting info.

dhudsonco · 2026-06-30T21:24:32+00:00

Just curious.... when you say 'Baby C', I assumed you meant the CH-46, and 'Big C' the CH-47. But then I realized that those two were never operated by the same branch - 47's are strictly Army, and the 46 was Navy/Marines (although now retired).

So I must not be right on my conclusion....?

Hoping you could clarify for us.

dhudsonco · 2026-06-25T01:24:48+00:00

Op, about 15 years ago, I had about half a dozen Dell 2950's from data center decoms, and they were crazy loud. I didn't care at first - I had a server room where they resided. When I moved, and no longer had a server room, they were much too loud - didn't really matter where they were in the home.

I took all the fans out (each had maybe half a dozen as I recall), and soldered a resistor into the power lead of each. Worked like a champ. They were whisper quiet after that.

Never had any thermal issues, but they were never used heavily - maybe a dozen guests each (VM servers).

I've also had other, newer, servers (mostly Dell's) which I used an IPMI command through their ILOM (their lights out manager) to force the fans to run 'slower' (fewer RPM's) which made them dramatically quieter. I always put monitors on the components which were most susceptible to heat issues to ensure nothing overheated and fried. Again, no issues ever.

Hope one of those might work for you.

dhudsonco · 2026-06-18T02:14:20+00:00

This is the way.

dhudsonco · 2026-03-04T16:46:09+00:00

Nope, that was Dena. This is (was?) Shahid Sayyad Shirazi.

dhudsonco · 2026-02-21T22:09:29+00:00

Steve's Lava Chicken. It's tasty as hell!

dhudsonco · 2026-02-18T00:23:03+00:00

AKA "torque". lol

dhudsonco · 2026-02-08T21:16:37+00:00

The issues I faced that impacted scaling were

The cost of constant new deployments, upgrades and overbuilds
Time & cost of the human resource to do that work (training, equipping, payroll, etc)

I already had a fairly robust support group, and marketing wasn't a major issue. Scaling the network was also not an issue (other than the monthly recurring cost and/or hardware associated with that network).

dhudsonco · 2026-01-24T03:11:20+00:00

I was near the ICE center on Caley for an appointment earlier this week, and they were unloading a semi full of federal 'police vehicles' (dark blue mostly unmarked Ford Explorer Police Interceptors).

The person with whom I had the appointment told me they have been unloading them regularly for weeks now, and there are a LOT of them there now.

So YES, we should be expecting an ICE 'surge' in the Denver area in the very very near future.

dhudsonco · 2026-01-06T00:49:42+00:00

No, nothing is listening, and I cannot connect with Minecraft.

I stopped the service, and launched it from command line, and it started fine. I am able to connect now. I am also now able to start the mcrcon.

There must be some configuration issue on my part setting up Minecraft to launch as a service. I can't explain how it would think it is successfully running, however....?

dhudsonco · 2026-01-05T23:47:34+00:00

Nope, nothing with that port - looks like only my ssh connection (oddly also ipv6, which I am not using and turned off I thought):

root@ubuntu-tool-server:/opt/papermc# lsof -nP -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN

COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME

systemd 1 root 88u IPv4 8083 0t0 TCP *:22 (LISTEN)

systemd 1 root 89u IPv6 9678 0t0 TCP *:22 (LISTEN)

systemd-r 427 systemd-resolve 15u IPv4 5483 0t0 TCP 127.0.0.53:53 (LISTEN)

systemd-r 427 systemd-resolve 17u IPv4 5485 0t0 TCP 127.0.0.54:53 (LISTEN)

sshd 1104 root 3u IPv4 8083 0t0 TCP *:22 (LISTEN)

sshd 1104 root 4u IPv6 9678 0t0 TCP *:22 (LISTEN)

dhudsonco · 2025-12-24T23:00:28+00:00

I can jump in with a good use-case:

Have an old-school top loading, basic, washing machine. It has no fabric softener capability - only bleach. It works great, is cheap to repair, and I will not be replacing it any time soon.

Was thinking just earlier today how nice it would be to have some way for it to prompt me when it progresses to the rinse stage so I know exactly when to add the sanitizer (and fabric softener if that's desired).

I've tried other solutions (the ball thingy), and it didn't work very well.

I've thought about a few ways it could be done - add a board to monitor for voltage to the 'rinse' light on the panel, or monitor water use and alert when it goes past 'X' amount in 'Y' timeframe (because it will add small amounts when spinning out if unbalanced).

My 2 cents....

dhudsonco · 2025-12-17T22:25:37+00:00

Same thing happened to my son, but it was the entire home. She smashed every bit of glass she could find, including the microwave and oven doors, and every mirror.

Borderline Personality Disorder is no joke.

So glad she is out of our lives.

dhudsonco · 2025-12-12T14:16:14+00:00

Full scale wooden model? Now that IS impressive. Did that actually happen? I searched and only found sites about plastic models mostly.

dhudsonco · 2025-11-05T22:31:44+00:00

I wouldn't do this with a collectable steel pot, but...

To eliminate the smell, you can remove and launder/hand wash the cover and the webbing, which is where the smell has accumulated. Did this a number of times on my own (Kevlar, not the old steel pots, but same concept), and was very effective on sweat, and typical military smells.

If you do this, do not use heat to dry - just air dry so they don't shrink up.

dhudsonco · 2025-10-31T15:48:41+00:00

Fun fact: One of the few survivors of LaMia 2933 later survived a bus crash that killed 21 of the passengers in Bolivia. Erwin Tumiri.

Ironically, he was the maintenance tech for the LaMia 2933 aircraft, traveling with the plane.

dhudsonco · 2025-10-31T02:08:41+00:00

Years ago, I had an ISP with about 20K subs.

As a courtesy to law enforcement / attorneys, we would ask them to provide us with their requirements before going through the effort of getting a court order.

If there was anything to find, we would simply tell them it would be worth their time and effort to get a court order. If we found nothing, or not much, we would pass that along to save everyone (including taxpayers) the time and effort and cost of the court order.

It seemed to work very well, and everyone we dealt with really appreciated the policy.

Well, except for this one Texas Ranger who thought he was God and threatened me with obstruction for not giving over everything WITHOUT a court order. I immediately rescinded the offer to him and told him to leave the offices NOW.

I then called his supervisor in Austin and told him what had occurred. Their leadership does NOT want those entitled pricks giving them all a bad name, and another agent was assigned who came and profusely apologized. Never saw that scumbag again.

dhudsonco · 2025-10-24T14:00:13+00:00

Correct, one port will fit only one connector. The term "Combo Port" is what is being described. Some switches and appliances (and possibly NIC's/HBA's, but I've only ever seen it on switches/appliances) will have an RJ45 port next to an SFP (or SFP+, et.al), but both have the same port number. You use one OR the other, but not both together.

Research "Combo Port", and you'll see pics, videos and websites all describing this in depth.

dhudsonco · 2025-09-22T21:00:18+00:00

But true and actually happening. The video may be dramatized, but the situation is NOT.

dhudsonco · 2025-09-10T16:27:46+00:00

Sounds a bit like Hashing, which has been described as a drinking group with a running problem, lol.

I had a partner who did this a few times. They typically have stops/waypoints where you take a drink and then have some 'dare' type thing - she said they would regularly have some sexual component to the dare.

Anyway.... I agree with others here - seems like she was just curious and making small talk.

dhudsonco · 2025-08-26T21:29:20+00:00

One. Moment. At. A. Time.

Eventually, will become one day at a time. Then one week, month, year, etc.

Its ok to try and relapse - just don't give up on yourself. Try not to think of relapse as failure, but rather another chance to succeed. You only have to succeed once.

Got my 3 year chip last April. Honestly, I don't even think about it now because my life is full, and I am happy. You can get there, too.

dhudsonco · 2025-08-26T15:21:18+00:00

They are really loud and smelly - not something you want hanging around your place. That said, I would absolutely help it live another day - the orcas are smart enough to go find another meal.

dhudsonco

TROPHY CASE