asciimov

Without knowing your big box store options, going with a DC motor fan, that is well rated and easily returnable is a good starting point. A fan that looks like a traditional fan, not like the ones shown in this article.

I used to recommend the house brands at lowes (harbor breeze) and home depot (hampton bay). But they both had a big quality drop post covid.

I've tried some of the well rated fans from Amazon and they've been ok too.

I would tell you to look at the installation guide before buying. You can always find them online links are usually on the store website. What you are looking for is ease of installation. Some models are stupidly complex with how they go together, making it impossible to remove or adjust the blades without completely taking apart the fan. Others have minimal screws and snap on blades. Easy to put together doesn't mean a worse fan.

Growing up in Texas, I have always had a fan up and running. When living in apartments and houses that didn’t come with them I’ve put them up (likely breaking a stupid lease rule). At this point I’ve installed dozens of fans and have enough strong opinions on ceiling fans that I could write a lengthy blog post on the subject.

Don’t buy any of these junk fans. Get a normal looking fan, with a quiet DC motor, that takes standard light bulbs with a medium base (e26 in the USA).

Skip modern AC motors, nobody today can seem to build one that doesn’t whomp when it runs. Older AC motors weren’t so cheaply made and don’t usually suffer this problem.

If you have an older fan 25+ years old, you can often rebuild them and end up with a better fan than anything you can buy today.

If you’re building a new house (or doing a rewire) put two light switches in every bedroom, one for the fan the other for the light kit.

If you’re getting a fan with a remote, get one that will let you change the spin direction from the remote.

Get the correct size fan for the room.

Friends don’t let friends buy Hunter Fans, they are all hot garbage. Though they do follow through with their warranties.

By the time 56k was out most new entry level machines came with at least 32 megs.

It’s a nice tribute, but it’s all off. Glad I’m not the only one that knows the modem sounds are off.

For me it was ‘02 when I moved to college and got that sweet dorm room internet. Some of my friends had aim via text messaging.

2012 is a good date for roaming internet, although for the plans and places I’ve been it’s only been the last 3 or so years that roaming internet has been mostly reliable.

If even half of the toxic communities go away to LLMs, maybe AI will be a net positive after all.

You would think so, but most of the low hanging fruit has already been rewritten and replaced. The biggest hurdle is hardware lock in, ISA boards, hardware keys, or other hardware interfaces that can’t be easily connected to new systems. Never mind the problem of verification. That app that takes days to rewrite can annoyingly take months to verify.

Use a hosts file to block every website you don't need access to.

Gotta be first to get the patent, a blanket cancer cure would be worth trillions.

I wonder who’s research they scooped this time.

In Linux if you enable the compose key it’s the compose key followed by 3 dashes.

I used to think this way, but now I know better.

My dad passed a few years back, this past year I spent a considerable amount of time helping my mom and sister tame all his junk. So much junk was tossed or donated, very little was kept and even less sold. Not wanting to burden my family with all of my junk I started working on my own hoard this summer. Letting go wasn't easy, but once it was done I felt less burdened by it.

And yes like clockwork a week after tossing it all I needed some random cable. I spent a couple of bucks for one at Walmart of all places, but Amazon and ebay would have had my back if that cable hadn't been there.

If you have a similar junk box, you have my permission to just throw it away. Don't look in it, don't worry about it, just toss it. You do not need to be carrying so much junk. You do not need 20 year old ethernet cables, 30 year old scsi and ide cables, or 40 year old audio cables. You can buy new ones, in new condition today, most of which are reasonably priced and wont produce random errors or noise due to internal faults.

tl;dr- You don't need it, toss it and do it today!

In the AI era the internet is not for human consumption.

For me it’s about human connection. I want to know the thoughts of others somewhere else to learn or share in their experiences.

Star Wars went dormant in the late 80s through the mid-late 90s where there was no merch or toys in stores, no cartoons or shows on tv, and no comic books. Cable and home video wasn’t yet ubiquitous, for a cohort of kids born in the 80s and early 90s it’s quite possible to have missed out on it until you were older.

I was 7 or 8 in the early 90s in Texas before I heard about Star Wars. I was playing play sword fighting with my dad, when he mentioned my broom handle looked like a lightsaber, I was like “what’s that?” My dad then proceeded to delight me with the story. It would be about 6 months later when an aunt lent us a VHS player that I would get to see it.

Pen(cil) and Paper. I keep a stock of mini memo pads in various colors for record keeping. This lets you track what you need when you need it. If you find yourself needing more room get an thin a5 notebook.

Nearly a decade ago I digitized my families cds and dvds. The stamped discs had about a 10% failure rate, which was higher than I expected.

Fortunately the vast majority of discs people own aren’t particularly rare, so if they loose a disc from a top 40 artist, they can easily get a replacement.

Factory stamps are still not immune to bit rot, even when stored in ideal conditions.

Hearing the vroomvroom isn’t the same as feeling the vroomvroom.

My dad worked for HEB for 35 years. He never planned to stay there when he started in the late eighties, but they had better hours than his prior work as a photojournalist and treated him a whole lot better.

HEB believes that if you treat your employees right, that they will in turn treat their customers well.

As someone that has spent years living away from HEB they are just a great store to have access to. Better prices, store brands that are often better than national, and they usually have a good produce selection. When we moved to the San Antonio area a decade ago, having access to HEB again was one of the most exciting parts of the move.

This is your reminder to stop touching the bell when playing third position.

My partner and I got a 1 year old rescue schnauzer a few weeks back, so we are learning to dog while trying to teach her to sit, stay, and come.

Tech thoughts: this week I decided to move to a new to me NameBrand™ Arch distro. Even though I’ve been daily driving Linux for more than 10 years I still can’t get a new install up on the first try. This time the boot loader wouldn’t load. No error, no log, and no boot loading. A few reinstalls later, I picked a different choice and was finally booting. But then the next problem was the login display manager doesn’t want to sleep the monitor if nobody logs in. Learned this after an overnight power flicker caused a reboot. The monitors running full tilt for several hours waiting for someone to log in. While I would like to say this issue is another joy of the Wayland-way of Linuxing, I have found that other display managers offer the same defect.

Anyway dogs are great, I shouldn’t have waited so long to get one.

Those colorized movies were awful, AI would have just made them awful in their own way.

Outside of film restoration, old movies should be enjoyed the way they were made.

I haven’t thought about Ask Jeeves in a good long while. For a brief time in the late 90s they were my go to search engine and my recommendation for those new to the net.

Citizen has an Atomic Timekeeping Eco-Drive series of watches that have a 200 meter water resistance. If you like complications see the Promaster Skyhawk A-T.

Apple Series 3 owner for about 9 years.

1. Notifications. Most useful in noisy environments such as grocery stores, airports, shop floors, or any place you may be wearing hearing protection. Also great while working with your hands, like car work or cooking and directions while driving. It’s best to limit them to the apps that matter, and only when you need them.

2. Biometrics.

However, after this watch finally dies, I don’t think I will be going back. Big reason is smart watches are not stylish at all. For men watches are our only fashion accessory that we can freely wear in all occasions. No matter what band or watch face you use you are stuck with a black square attached to your wrist. Also smart watch battery life is a bit of a bummer, it’s hard to beat self winding or solar powered watches that you never think about changing as long as you wear them.

Would be cool if somebody would make a round over or chamfer plane that would allow you to remove the corner with a higher finished look.

This takes all the satisfaction out of spending a few well thought out weekends to build your own language. So many fun options: compiled or interpreted; virtual machine, or not; single pass, double pass, or (Leeloo Dallas) Multipass? No cool BNF grammars to show off either…

It’s missing all the heart, the soul, of deciding and trading off options to get something to work just for you. It’s like you bought a rat bike from your local junkyard and are trying to pass it off as your own handmade cafe racer.

My solution was to half the requested liquid for a thick oatmeal. Ok, thick is underselling it, it’ll be quite dense. Add cinnamon and chopped dates.

I just don't think to proof my texts. Usually it's type, send, and realize autocorrect makes me sound like a ~balloon~ buffoon.