Poasters

Off the Wall => The Poast Office => Topic started by: buffalo2102 on September 15, 2014, 16:33 hrs

Title: How is everyone?
Post by: buffalo2102 on September 15, 2014, 16:33 hrs
Evening all.

Apologies for my prolonged absence but I have had a few major life changes in the last couple of years that have caused me to greatly reduce my on-line presence.  I won't bore you with details......

Anyway, I am back again and glad to see the usual suspects are still keeping this place going.  Hope everyone is well.

One thing I achieved a while ago was to build my own home server for TV recording, media streaming, backup, file-sharing, website and email hosting, downloading, DNS server and making the tea.  Alright, not the last bit but it does pretty much everything else.  I will attempt to poast a guide when I get time.

Buff
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: buffalo2102 on September 16, 2014, 07:32 hrs
Oooh, nice colours Johnny!

My wife also loves a nice afternoon tea and she has asked me to take her out for a posh one on her birthday in November.  I think I can stretch to that.  Not sure about having kids afterwards though!

I didn't know you had relatives over here.  Good job they're not in Scotland or they may not be in (not so) Great Britain after the referendum tomorrow.

Will post something about the server in the System Builds section when I get a chance.

Thanks

Buff
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: Bill on September 16, 2014, 07:47 hrs
Hi Buff, welcome back.
Don't be put off by our lack of volume of activity John, Scuzzy and I seem to be the only regular visitors, we'd like to count you among them.
Your server sounds like quite a project -dual quad core CPUs?
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: buffalo2102 on September 16, 2014, 09:11 hrs
Hey Bill

No nothing that powerful.  Just a HP N54L microserver - AMD Turion dual-core CPU 2.2GHz.  Pretty low-end really but powerful enough for what I need it for.

No Ace then?  No Chandler, Carskick or Pat?  Maybe they will return one day if they are able, as I have.

Buff
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: scuzzy on September 16, 2014, 11:55 hrs
It's nice to see you back, Buff. I hope that whatever problems you've had are now safely tucked away in the past.

Somehow we just keep plugging along. Ace checks in about once a year, but he hasn't poasted anything in quite awhile. He's probably just drunk.

I'm fixing to be off line for a few days, but I'll be back soon enough.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: buffalo2102 on September 16, 2014, 12:02 hrs
Good to know the cops are still around Scuzzy.

"See" you when you get back.

Buff
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: Carol on September 17, 2014, 16:39 hrs
I still drop by occasionally.

Carol
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: buffalo2102 on September 18, 2014, 04:42 hrs
Oh, hi Carol.  Good to know there's a lady around to keep an eye on us.... :)
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: carskick on July 02, 2018, 14:43 hrs
I'm going to do it! I'm going to revive this ancient poast.

How's everyone been? I know a lot of us, including myself, hardly ever show our faces here anymore. It's quite a shame, as we have such a great community. I'm going to try and stop by more often to say hi and help people.

Computer related, I've been making side money refurbishing computers, primarily budget gaming/CAD/editing machines, through Facebook. Take an old Dell Optiplex or HP SFF with a 3rd or 4th gen i5, throw in an SSD & a GTX1050 in it, and you've got quite a capable machine that only costs about $350. As a bonus, the Windows 7 Serial number will activate on Windows 10 no problem, so you get Windows 10 pro. I enjoy custom builds far better, but it's hard to make money at that these days. But computer repair isn't my day job, just a fun hobby that makes a few side bucks.

My wife and I are in the process of selling our house and buying a new one in the area, which we are very excited about. We also started a family, I now have an 18 month old son. I've attached a picture of us from a few months ago.

What's everyone else been up to?
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: Bill on July 02, 2018, 15:05 hrs
Hi Cars, welcome back.  There are still some of us around. Last poast on this thread was 9/14.  Buffalo was around couple weeks/months ? back, haven't seen him since.
Carol is still about, on occasion, holidays mostly.
Scuzzy and I use the boards almost as private chat rooms.  But you're certainly welcome anytime.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: carskick on July 03, 2018, 09:16 hrs
Thanks, Bill. I'll happily join in!
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: scuzzy on July 03, 2018, 10:11 hrs
Happy to see you back, Cars! It's been awhile.

As Bill mentioned (and as is probably obvious), things have slowed to a crawl here. I should get off of my keister and reopen the forum to the public. A problem child forced me to completely shut the doors to everyone who doesn't have a key. Maybe in a few more weeks I'll open the doors again to new members.

The computer refurbishing idea is wise and a good way to pocket some extra change. You're right that there's no money in custom builds, with rare exception. The last custom build I sold was several years ago. That customer used it to commit fraud and eventually got 4 years in a federal prison.  ::)

I do not recall you being married, or even in a serious relationship. Then again it's been a few years. Congrats on both your marriage and your son. I hope all is well for you and your family. Oh, congrats on the new house as well. Exciting times, for sure.

I retired from law enforcement and now work in a retail store. I'll probably do that till the end of this year and then move on.

Feel free to join us as often as you like.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: Carol on July 04, 2018, 06:32 hrs
Hi Cars, 
Yes, I'm still around.  Pop in now and then.  Since I don't "speak" computer my conversations are limited.  Most of my spare time is spent doing genealogy, my own and for several friends. Nice that you are back, I should pop in more too.
Congrats on your marriage and your little one.  Enjoy every second and don't blink your eyes or he will be grown.  I can't believe mine are both in their early 30's now, one recently married.  When I joined I was driving them all over the place.
Carol
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: Chandler on August 17, 2018, 18:44 hrs
Hi all,
I check in from time to time, but things are really busy with work these days. I work from home, which is a blessing and a curse because it's nice to not have a daily commute, but it's far too easy to spend the evenings and weekends working. I'm currently doing quite a lot of work with the Raspberry Pi and other similar single board computers, which can be quite challenging for some of the things we are running on them, but it's all good stuff.

I still have my Quantex SM1 from 2000, but it's currently tucked away in a cupboard. It's a British Quantex, so I guess at 18 years old it's now old enough to drink alcohol in a pub. It's currently rocking a 1GHz Pentium III and 512MB RAM, up from the 650MHz and 128MB it came with from the factory, but still has the incredible Aureal Vortex 2 sound card, Zip 250 drive, Windows 98 SE and for now, even the original (and quite awful) nVidia TNT2 Vanta graphics card. The case plastic is looking pretty yellow these days, which is a shame, but pretty much to be expected with beige ABS. It has always been a great PC.

I'm quite into mid/late-90s to mid-00s gaming and nostalgia at the moment, and have (re)built a few PCs from various years during that period; recreating equivalents to my older systems which have either died or been sold for parts over the years. My latest build is a 2004-ish system based around the Athlon XP "Barton" 2500+ CPU and nVidia nForce2 motherboard and Radeon 9800 Pro. Hopefully this one will last longer than the motherboards in my "real" systems from that period, because I recall that all of them except for a very cheap Biostar board were extremely unreliable (probably thanks to dodgy capacitors).

Hope everyone else is doing well.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: scuzzy on August 18, 2018, 10:29 hrs
I can't believe you have hung on to that Q for that long. Lol. I have no clue whatever became of the Dell I purchased during that period.

I have not done much in repairing or building computers of late. My current builds (me & wife) are 3 years old already. The last time I did anything for a customer was a build I did some 6 or 7 years ago. He was a previous cop (coworker) who went on to use the computer for criminal activity and eventually got 4 years in the federal pen. As far as I know, the FBI seized all of his computer equipment. He's already done his time, so maybe it was all returned to him.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: Chandler on August 19, 2018, 11:40 hrs
My main desktop PC is 10 years old. It’s had a few upgrades over those years, but they’ve all been incremental or replacing failed components. I’m not heavily into gaming, so it just hasn’t been necessary to upgrade.

Building or upgrading computers these days is a lot less hassle than it was 15 or 20 years ago. Almost boring though, because everything generally works out of the box as soon as it’s put together and Windows finds and installs working drivers automatically.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: scuzzy on August 19, 2018, 12:25 hrs
True. It did seem more challenging back in the day, but I don't recall my last builds particularly easy-as-pie, so to speak. Bill had a bit of trouble with his last build and getting Windows 7 to work on an SSD M.2 card.

As for my current build, I am going to have to do something about storage for the operating system. I wrongfully thought 60GB would be more than enough for just the OS. When I first installed Windows 10, it took up around 20GB. It's now often pushing 50GB or more. I often find myself having to clean house to get it back under control. I'm thinking of installing a dedicated 256GB SSD for the OS.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: Bill on August 19, 2018, 12:39 hrs
scuzzy is known for his understatements.  It took the combined expertise of three people and a lot of "google" to finally solve the problem.
In a nut shell, Win 7 didn't come with USB drivers, and the use of a USB stick was necessary to install 7 on the M-2.  We finally found someone that sorted a way to included USB drives in a Win 7 install using, all things, DOS commands.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: scuzzy on August 19, 2018, 17:41 hrs
"scuzzy is known for his understatements"

I am quite often told that. I'm starting to think there might be some truth to that. Lol
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: buffalo2102 on June 26, 2020, 13:50 hrs
Hello again.  Kinda like Groundhog day, I'm back again.  Like a bad penny.

Successfully negotiated a second divorce and feeling another few hundred years older.  Still keeping up with the tech though, whenever work allows.

Hope everyone is ok.  I'll try and stick around a while this time.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: scuzzy on June 26, 2020, 14:00 hrs
Hello, Buff. I hope the second divorce wasn't from the same person. Gotta at least have some variety. I felt a few hundred years younger after my divorce back in 1988, although I was broke for awhile.

It's nice to see you back. I don't know why Poasters still exists, but here we are.

Scuzzy; older than dirt.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: buffalo2102 on June 26, 2020, 14:05 hrs
Scuzzy!  Thanks for the welcome.

No, different person - spice of life and all that.

I must say that it's very reassuring finding you are still here.
Title: Re: How is everyone?
Post by: scuzzy on June 27, 2020, 13:36 hrs
It's reassuring when I find myself here. :)