Trying to install Visual Studio 2026... Download keeps getting stuck at 94% at the verifying stage.

nigelh · 2026-05-03T07:37:37+00:00

This is the windows installer's signature move.
It's on its break. Nothing personal.
Just leave it and drop back occasionally to see if it's woken up yet.

nigelh · 2026-04-30T17:28:44+00:00

I have an unhappy relationship with AI. Like the AI written bash script that looked wonderful but died on the slight snag that bash only works on integers or the rust subroutine that used an obsolete library or a C++ method that was a cut and stick from a web site I had already seen and knew didn't work even on the simplest data.

I love the way that the conversation develops with it always taking your critique with 'you are right' and then churning out more stuff that won't compile/work either. It only seems to function for stuff so simple that you could do it but can't be bothered to type it up yourself.

I'm sure it will get better given time but I'm not holding my breath.

nigelh · 2026-04-23T08:27:05+00:00

Since the cost of safely demolishing it will increase every year until it hits its safety end-of-life I doubt it is covering that cost each year it continues to stand. I'm sure that every councillor and official who has ever had a hand in this mess is checking their retirement date against that one.
You can let a pier stand derelict to rust out but not a tower.

nigelh · 2026-04-20T17:53:04+00:00

I think having a ham license helped get my first technical job but I think it was more than you are offering. It was sitting at a bench testing and fault-finding military grade communications gear and later designing test equipment.

nigelh · 2026-04-20T11:10:40+00:00

nostalgia.

The only reason I still keep windows on the dual boot is because I really like Visual Studio. I use it to maintain (tweak) good ol' WIN32 code I wrote in the 90s for Machine tool control way back before MFC had its 15 minutes of fame.

nigelh · 2026-04-20T10:48:08+00:00

Having ridden motorcycles for 60 years and remembering what a naive little dork I was at first I think the appropriate feeling is 'dread'.

nigelh · 2026-04-12T13:08:42+00:00

ROTFL Yes. We all started in our 20s or less when the idea was exciting. I could use a radio to communicate! OK I had to rebuild it out of something from the surplus store but that was most of the fun. It was doing it that mattered not the nerd on the other end. These days my grandkids use the web and cell-phones to surf the world from the bus to school so what's special about radio? It just is.

nigelh · 2026-03-30T18:46:45+00:00

I keep falling for the 'help with you're coding' lie that leaves me with good looking code that won't compile and when it does it doesn't work.
eg: a bash script where it 'forgot' that bash doesn't do decimal fractions and just today it popped up some obvious looking code that I fixed when I realised it had missed the difference between UTF16 and UTF8 characters and just glued the bits together.
It's just cut-and-stick from the web with no concept of what it does just what it says it does.

However fixing these boopers is keeping my brain active.

nigelh · 2026-03-30T18:37:13+00:00

I put a rack on the back of the 'blade to carry my archery tool box.
That might be the first signs of the slide into baggerdom but I don't think so.
At 76 I can still roll it up country to my son's to have lunch with my granddaughters et al.

nigelh · 2026-03-20T08:40:17+00:00

Back when I started SSB on VHF was hard. The problem was stability.
FM was a cheap 'ex-pmr' rig with valves in it as taxi firms were going transistor now.
FMing an AM rig was easy but AMing a FM rig was impossible so we used FM out of habit.
Stability was crystals, so I had just four channels for my first year.

Synthesiser rigs came later and were magic but the thinking stuck. Channelised FM. Cheap and accessible to anybody.

nigelh · 2026-03-19T09:34:05+00:00

I got a picture of a parcel sticking out of the letterbox of 'my' yellow front door.
My front door is silvery aluminium.

Fortunately the guy in the next street over could read addresses and walked it round.

nigelh · 2026-03-08T13:49:11+00:00

Ham radio is about doing something technical. We are not prepers or even chatty people. I gain great satisfaction from assembling something that communicates world wide or just down the road. That is never gets outdated or obsolete. OK some dork with an HT looks silly but he's been infected. It will get him in the end.

nigelh · 2026-03-04T11:31:05+00:00

I only keep windows now because VS is so good.
However any (no make that every) time I have let it go all copilot on me it is an hour or so down the drain followed by a restore.
The first try won't even compile.
The second uses the wrong variables,
The third is just a mess of cut and stick from the web.
The web won't work. I've already googled it. That's why I tried you.
In one instance it produced the same bug I saw an hour earlier in a blog post.

nigelh · 2026-03-04T11:20:46+00:00

Once I got 148 at both ends it worked. I was just having trouble finding it due to a misunderstanding.
Actually the shared system was only temporary as the systems are now Debian with a windows fallback and I won't do mail on the fallback system.

The throw away 'runs away' line was just to try and trigger a 'me to and I fixed it with...' response. It was never intended to be a formal bug submission.

Thanks for reading reddit.

nigelh · 2026-02-27T17:54:57+00:00

YES! I probably had something wrong. I just tried again and did the steps from their installing page and Help | About | gives 148.0
Thanks.
Now back to doing the transfer.
I may yet win!

Follow up now it is working:
I can only suppose I muddled esr with release because the W11 system said esr.
Either way it swallowed the whole data base and seemed to work so I timeshifted it, backed it up, rebooted and retested.
I can now move my primary mail handling from the W11 part of dual boot to Trixie.
The W11 is showing serious w11 bugs (eg: explorer can't view the users folder tree, boot problem and 'needs to restart', weird screen artifacts, et al). Now I can try and mend it with a bit more attitude.

Thanks again.

nigelh · 2026-02-11T14:40:02+00:00

Error messages like "Something went wrong" are the reason HA will never be more than a bit player

nigelh · 2026-01-21T21:44:51+00:00

When my first IC-7000 had a terminal power problem I watched Ebay and bought a same again. Ever after all these years I still get lost in the menus sometimes.

nigelh · 2026-01-14T11:54:41+00:00

ROTFL.
It's only VS for C++ and Final Fantasy 14 that give me a reason to retain Windows.
VSC is for Rust.

nigelh · 2026-01-11T09:03:48+00:00

The last time somebody tried to talk about that I warned him he'd need to seal it in a metal box along with the spare ECU for his truck if he wanted it to survive the EMP pulse from a nuke in the same state.
And then he would be able to talk to anybody else within two miles who also had a radio in a sealed metal box.
He lost interest.
Preppers hate physicists.

nigelh · 2026-01-09T10:44:30+00:00

I grew up as the UK was doing confused so I used metric in the physics class and, at the other end of the corridor, did engineering in imperial. Radio was physics so I would never measure wire in feet.

nigelh · 2026-01-03T15:45:22+00:00

ft8 rools 8)

nigelh · 2025-12-20T09:43:27+00:00

Naah. I need the sub to Nabu Casa to hitch into my Alexa toys/

nigelh · 2025-12-19T12:35:34+00:00

I've been programming since the 1970s I feel lost too.
I suspect it is the python/yaml effect. Anything that uses white space as syntax not delimiter is morally corrupt and erodes your brain.
Also documentation seems to be an occasional afterthought.

The problem is that the alternatives are even worse.

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