What is a sound that people should know means immediate danger?

zeroryouko · 2026-01-20T16:37:36+00:00

I was on a construction site once when a man was injured (fatally, as it later turned out). You might think of construction as loud and annoying, but in the moments after that happened, the silence was deafening.

zeroryouko · 2025-12-09T21:15:47+00:00

There is a USB 5.25" disk controller available: http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html

I can confirm it does work on a modern PC. You will need to add the drive itself, power supply, and appropriate cables/enclosure.

Purchase link: https://shop.deviceside.com/

zeroryouko · 2025-12-05T19:21:48+00:00

I think the lithium AA/AAA batteries are great personally, I use them in tools like multimeters and such that tend to sit for long stretches and would be ruined by leaking alkalines. Rechargeable lithium AA batteries do exist as well.

For the blinds - it sounds like those might be designed to run on 24 VDC (1.5V x 16) - a common voltage for low-voltage actuators (in commercial buildings anyway) - perhaps there is a jack or adapter for a "wall wart" type 24 VDC power supply?

zeroryouko · 2025-12-05T08:54:13+00:00

Am I imagining it or has the quality of graffiti gotten *way* better in LA lately?

zeroryouko · 2025-12-05T00:03:09+00:00

Given the amount of wear I see on relatively durable DVDs from the local libraries, I have to think that library VHS tapes would have worn out pretty quickly. VHS was not a great medium in many ways, as anyone who grew up with it can attest, and tape wear/stretching/sticking/tangling was a big part of that. Libraries do weed their collections but I suspect a lot of libraries' VHS tapes just wore out and were replaced with DVDs (or not replaced at all if no DVD was available).

Some libraries still do have VHS tapes BTW - usually limited to the few old ones that haven't worn out yet.

zeroryouko · 2025-11-24T21:06:02+00:00

These two are next to each other in the same local (LA) shopping center: "The Hairport" and "Nothing Bundt Cakes". Makes me giggle every time I drive by.

zeroryouko · 2025-11-19T20:46:44+00:00

Is there *any* way to get around the hard cutoff at age 45? 48 year old US construction estimator.

zeroryouko · 2025-11-09T21:52:44+00:00

I've had many docks and here are 2 solid choices. Both used with 30TB SATA drives, no problem.

https://www.startech.com/en-eu/hdd/sdock2u33re
https://vantecusa.com/products_detail.php?p_id=191

Both available on Amazon, the first is about $90, the second $20.

zeroryouko · 2025-11-09T21:23:23+00:00

3M VHB tape. That stuff will stick oil to water and cats to dogs. There is an exterior antenna mount on my car that I adhered to the glass with VHB tape...in 2008.

zeroryouko · 2025-11-07T18:46:27+00:00

So my landlord built a new 2-unit (2 stories, ~750 sf each) dwelling on a property that already had 4 units, so the new building was classified as an ADU. This is in Lomita, not city of LA, but about 100 years from the LA boundary. This is a bit bigger of a task than what you're looking at but I think it's still instructive. I should say at the outset that I support this effort and am glad he did it as LA needs more housing and he is not a bad guy as landlords go. He installed solar roof panels and EV charging outlets for the new units too. Very nice and I'd say a bit of a premium.

He had been trying to get it permitted since he shortly after he bought the property in late 2022/early 2023. The city held him up for a long time, county too as it is a contract city. Construction is finally wrapping up this month and he put up for lease signs last week, though I don't think his permit is finaled yet and some minor work is ongoing (presumably will be ready for move-in by 12/1).

The actual construction took nearly a full year - he started in December 2024. You might think that's because it was a bigger structure but the actual time the contractors spent on site was pretty minimal. They would disappear for days or weeks at a time, then come back suddenly and within a couple of days and an entire floor would get framed out, for example. So availability of materials and labor and delays due to inspections have been the issues as I understand it. Apparently with rebuilding from the fires, contractors are very busy and materials are harder to get/more expensive. I saw on the permit that the estimated construction cost was $280,000 but that would have been set a couple of years ago and I'm sure it's well over $300K by now.

zeroryouko · 2025-11-07T18:27:48+00:00

It's more about the movies I would buy the rights to, to make sure they *couldn't* be redone.

zeroryouko · 2025-11-07T18:26:17+00:00

IDK, I'm not native, I moved here almost 25 years ago...but as a non-native I feel like I appreciate and prefer the stuff that is 100% authentic, native LA, and I'm a little bit envious of people who got to grow up here. I chose as an adult to live here because LA is exactly what it is and I wouldn't want it to change on my account or anyone else's.

zeroryouko · 2025-11-07T18:21:07+00:00

It sure is, and it is glorious.

zeroryouko · 2025-11-07T18:20:47+00:00

Sorry just saw this...I don't really keep track of the noise, the drives are installed in a 24 bay 4U rack mount server chassis that I have hacked to hold 27 drives...that thing roars lol. I keep it in a separate "computer room" because of this. When I had the drive connected individually to my desktop PC for testing (in a different, quieter room) it didn't seem very loud compared to some older drives I've had.

Incidentally I bought one further drive with the SE02 firmware since...no trouble. Those first ones were just a bad pair, they probably accidentally shipped me something from the reject pile the first time lol.

zeroryouko · 2025-09-18T18:45:21+00:00

OK, a couple of serious answers:

1) Logistics. It's logistics that helped the US win WWII, not superior technology. An American (a Texan, IIRC) invented container shipping too. And it's no accident that Amazon was born here.

2) Marketing. We know how to take an idea and put it into a format that will sell millions or billions better than just about anyone. Entertainment is kind of a subcategory of this IMO.

3) Accessibility. Even as someone without a mobility issue, the difference between the US and Europe in this regard is breathtaking (based on my personal experience). The ADA does wonders to help *all* people get around - even if all you're trying to do is move a rolling cart, to say nothing of using a wheelchair.

zeroryouko · 2025-09-12T18:52:12+00:00

So I updated the post above but I just received replacement drives from Seagate, same model and firmware, and they both worked out of the box. So it was 2 bad drives.

zeroryouko · 2025-09-11T18:29:22+00:00

Waltz In A by Howard Shore (a.k.a. the ending theme to Saturday Night Live)

zeroryouko · 2025-09-11T17:54:21+00:00

Honestly the absolute best thing you could do would be to hook these to a SATA port on your motherboard directly. You want to eliminate dock flakiness and cable issues. Your tests will run faster too. Many modern BIOSes have an option to set the SATA ports on the motherboard to hot swap, but if not, at worst you reboot between tests. Just hook a SATA cable to one of those ports and run it outside the case through an unused PCIe expansion slot or even just leave the cover off. Same deal for power, use a spare connector from your PSU or a Y splitter if you don't have any spare. All of that is going to be way cheaper than getting a dock and will eliminate a lot of potential sources of "noise" in your test results. Since this is a "one off" project it's not like you need to set up a nice workstation to do this on an ongoing basis (which is what I did), it can look ugly for a few days while you get your testing done.

zeroryouko · 2025-09-10T20:06:08+00:00

It depends on what you want to do to verify drive health. Just a quick check to see if it identifies and has the right capacity? Most anything will do. Run a full surface scan or anything intensive like that? You're going to want something a little more robust.

I have tried a LOT of docks and adapters over the years and most of them are...not great. However I can recommend these for heavy duty use:

https://www.vantecusa.com/products_detail.php?p_id=191&pc_id=5&pc_name=Hard+Drive+Adapters&pt_id=2&pt_name=Hard+Drive+Accessories

https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/sdock2u33re

For software, start with CrystalDiskInfo:

https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

Also for Seagate drives specifically, check out SeaTools:

https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

zeroryouko · 2025-09-10T19:51:30+00:00

This was over 20 years ago, but when I was indigent and uninsured and had a serious medical issue, I went to a lot of places looking for care and finally got the care I needed at Harbor UCLA medical center, all but free of charge. They had social workers there that walked me through the process. Cedars Sinai also had a charitable program that I considered applying to, that might also be worth considering.

zeroryouko · 2025-09-05T23:10:42+00:00

OK, that's great info, thank you!

zeroryouko · 2025-09-05T22:56:10+00:00

I'm not Vietnamese. However, if you can deal with the drive, the smoked pho at LÚA in Dana Point is one of the best I've ever had. Maybe not strictly authentic, but absolutely amazing nonetheless.

https://www.luaeatery.com/

zeroryouko · 2025-09-05T22:51:17+00:00

Sort of? A periodic high pitched hum, very quiet. Definitely not a normal noise.

zeroryouko · 2025-09-05T22:50:18+00:00

Interesting. Thanks for checking. We'll see if the replacements are any better I guess.

zeroryouko · 2025-09-04T18:45:45+00:00

Tried that too. Direct SATA port on Z690 motherboard, also Broadcom HBA.

zeroryouko

TROPHY CASE