What are you doing today?

[Essjay]

I don't know what the drive in my husband's laptop was as it was cut up and thrown away. I have the same model laptop but bought a few years later than his and this is what my laptop says mine is. His might have been the same or an older one.
477 GB SSD NVMe KBG40ZNS512G NVMe KIOXIA 512GB

 

[MaloK]

I don't know what the drive in my husband's laptop was as it was cut up and thrown away. I have the same model laptop but bought a few years later than his and this is what my laptop says mine is. His might have been the same or an older one.
477 GB SSD NVMe KBG40ZNS512G NVMe KIOXIA 512GB

Any USB enclosure supporting Nvme PCIe Gen3 and 4 form factor 2230 should do.

 

[GaryE]

At my end, no tech adventures, just hunting down killies. It's my annual Spring quest. Eggs get sent in the mail, and I figure I can get 2 or 3 species (eggs) arriving alive. Then I have to raise them and get both sexes, but that's a technicality.

I'm expecting fish or eggs from central Canada, France, Italy and eastern Europe now, and hope to add one more eastern European batch. I have my core species I've kept for ages, but since there is such a live market for killies around here, I sold off some species I had kept for a while without them becoming favourites. I have a lot of room to try some new things, or really, to try some fish that gave me trouble in the past.

I have a large looking batch of Black neon tetras out there now, just starting to run around their tank. They're tiny. We have a local scene developing based on what a lot of Czech aquarists do - cottage breeding. They focus on rarer fish for the international market, but here, we are trying to help out a local store by each breeding a couple of bread and butter fish. Shipping costs to this out of the way town are high, so we've informally banded together to try to occasionally supply lots of common fish or shrimp to the local store. The owner is a nice guy, and a few hobbyists are taking this up so they can learn how to breed fish while having an outlet for the young. No one plans to get rich on it.

Maybe we can stretch local availability, and make the hobby more appealing. I want to try some fish he doesn't sell, but that I think he should! I tried a standard in the hobby, black neons, because I had females full of eggs and I figured I'd see if I could breed them. I guess I can.

I'll try a tetra or two more, maybe some blue eyes if I can get numbers, and I'm hoping to get a pair of Apistogramma cacatuoides this weekend. They were always easy to breed and raise, and hard to rehome.

 

[Lanpenn]

On Monday, I went with my Betta splendens to the veterinarian in another city (Ribeirão Preto). It is the first time in 13 years I have brought a fish to a veterinarian. She said that my Betta was too thin and suspected some scoliosis. Later, she took a sample from him to look specifically for ectoparasites under the microscope (but found nothing), and also did an X-ray. On the X-ray, she told me that the central section of the spine was lacking in vitamins (it seems that it is vitamin C), because it was less “full” and prominent in the image generated. She prescribed salt baths and a change of the feed schedule and the foods used. Without so much money and being a tight-fisted person, I bought Tropical Dafnia Vitamined and Tropical Spirulina Super Forte Flakes (there are not so many food options... I did not find Hikari in Brazil). I hope they arrive soon. I must collect his faeces for the doctor doing the analysis, but it is hard to find them on the substrate. I could only think about adding almond leaves to enhance the contrast, but I do not have any more left. I will try to find out something on scientific articles on Google Scholar.

I started another brine shrimp culture, this time in a small container (up to 3.4 liters). The air pump that feeds the sponge filter is also oxygenating the mini culture. I do not have any idea if this will work in some way.

 

[GaryE]

@Lanpenn - catch some mosquito larvae for your Betta. It's their natural diet. And if Sao Paulo state is like New Brunswick, they are free!

 

[Alice B]

walking my dogs and going to the rock yard today. Weather is nice for a walk, and I have to buy stone for next project

 

[gwand]

Where you been? Have not seen you around lately.

 

[MattW]

My day off today so the tanks got a big trim. Fish aren’t pleased I also found that my pothos has rooted into the substrate. Im not going to attempt to wrestle that out. Finishing the day watching this weeks eps of Andor. Best live action show from SW in a while IMO.

 

[jaylach]

As is usual I am having another mellow day. Watched an early baseball game and my team won so a good start.

Also helped a guy I know that is trying to help a friend of his install Linux on a computer that has no optical drive. Made him a boot-able flash drive from an ISO file from which he can select to install Linux on the system. We shall see what we shall see but I think he thinks he thinks he knows more than he really does.

 

[MaloK]

Today I fixed a windows 10 computer that I overloaded from 3 hard drives to 10, I added a PCIe Sata interface and added 6 hdd and 1 SSD.

At first boot something broke in the power supply that prevented all UBS ports to have power. the computer booted completely in windows without any mouse or keyboard working. I restarted the computer and i could see that there was no USB input detected. and wasn't able to enter bios etc... After fiddling a little I replaced the PSU for a much stronger one and got my keyboard and mouse back, could access bios and mouse lights are on .

Alright, I thought great, it's not the motherboard... Boot into windows... Nada... No mouse no keyboard. No way to access anything to try to find was going on. I have not set any kind of remote access and probably should...

As a lucky guy, the mother board had a keyboard/mouse PS/2 port and it really saved the day. I was able to find out that Windows 10 in it's infinite wisdom, since no USB controller where present decided to remove support altogether. But worse, wasn't able to reinstall it after. Chkdsk, Sfc, Dism all found nothing...

I kid you not... I copied the USB.inf and associated files to their respective emplacement from a working one ( both files where missing ) and rebooted, tadam ! Everything is back...

Not sure what makes me mad the most... The stupidity of Windows... Or spending 2 hours finding a PS/2 mouse.

 

[jaylach]

Today I fixed a windows 10 computer that I overloaded from 3 hard drives to 10, I added a PCIe Sata interface and added 6 hdd and 1 SSD.

At first boot something broke in the power supply that prevented all UBS ports to have power. the computer booted completely in windows without any mouse or keyboard working. I restarted the computer and i could see that there was no USB input detected. and wasn't able to enter bios etc... After fiddling a little I replaced the PSU for a much stronger one and got my keyboard and mouse back, could access bios and mouse lights are on .

Alright, I thought great, it's not the motherboard... Boot into windows... Nada... No mouse no keyboard. No way to access anything to try to find was going on. I have not set any kind of remote access and probably should...

As a lucky guy, the mother board had a keyboard/mouse PS/2 port and it really saved the day. I was able to find out that Windows 10 in it's infinite wisdom, since no USB controller where present decided to remove support altogether. But worse, wasn't able to reinstall it after. Chkdsk, Sfc, Dism all found nothing...

I kid you not... I copied the USB.inf and associated files to their respective emplacement from a working one ( both files where missing ) and rebooted, tadam ! Everything is back...

Not sure what makes me mad the most... The stupidity of Windows... Or spending 2 hours finding a PS/2 mouse.

Sort of curious... When you got no mouse/keyboard were they plugged into a USB 3 port? In many cases USB 3 ports are null until Windows or another OS is loaded as these ports rely on drivers being installed. Always connect a USB mouse/keyboard to a USB 2 port if available. If the BIOS can be accessed there is often a setting to enable/disable legacy USB. Always have this enabled.

The USB.inf file you copied is the USB driver information.

Good job getting it going.

<edit>
Just as an added thought... Is this system prebuilt or home built? In either case make sure to go to the system or mobo manufacturer and go to the support page and download and install the most recent driver installs paying special attention to USB and chip-set drivers. Especially if the mouse/keyboard are using a wireless USB dongle also look at wireless adapter drivers. Actually I build my own desktop systems and the first thing I do after installing Windows is to get the newest drivers for everything.

 

[GaryE]

The dog had surgery yesterday, and she is a sad creature. The cone, the dreaded cone. She goes down stairs, but today's job is getting her to go back up them. She weighs 85 pounds so she's not the best of lap dogs for me to carry up nine stairs.

Otherwise, I've been having a nice online conversation with an English speaking aquarist way east in Europe, in the old Soviet bloc. There's always a lot of stomping and self promoting on the internet, but every once in a while you luck into exchanging with a smart, likeable person who can give you valid, tested ideas. Fishkeeping culture in other languages is interesting to see into.

 

[seangee]

Returned home from the Caribbean adventure. Went to collect the dog from his holiday home and now debating whether to crack on with the water changes and trimming or go for a nap.

 

[MaloK]

Sort of curious... When you got no mouse/keyboard were they plugged into a USB 3 port? In many cases USB 3 ports are null until Windows or another OS is loaded as these ports rely on drivers being installed. Always connect a USB mouse/keyboard to a USB 2 port if available. If the BIOS can be accessed there is often a setting to enable/disable legacy USB. Always have this enabled.

It's an Asus P8H61-M (2010) with a i7 3770K, it has 10 USB2 ports and they all lost power a the same time, This Mobo been running my media server for the last 15 years and still today able to kick A$$.

Just as an added thought... Is this system prebuilt or home built?

It's home built, that I upgraded many times, I think the last bios update was like 10 years ago and latest possible drivers are about 4-5 years. I use SDIOrigin with the 36 gig drivers pack. It ran W7 from start, until last year when I decided to upgrade to 10. Since I solved all the hiccups and the last move was to give it a lot more space.

I was kinda expecting the PSU to blowup, but not that sneaky way. Physical inspection reveal that this thing is not going to stop anytime soon. And the oldest drives in there (WD Raptor) have 11 year spinning and are still at 98% health. All the other drives are WD Raid Edition, between 1-8 years of service all showing 100% health. And one cheap SSD for ReadyBoost and temporary files.

Who doesn't love the reliability of a good enterprise class HDD. Even if I paid 475$ in 2010 each for 500gig, The WD Raptors are by far my favourite disk ever made to run an operating system.

 

[Lanpenn]

@Lanpenn - catch some mosquito larvae for your Betta. It's their natural diet. And if Sao Paulo state is like New Brunswick, they are free!

Some people suggested that I "culture" bloodworms, if possible. I know that mosquito larvae sometimes appear in my aquarium, and I always control them. And they like only the aquarium, because I set several mosquito traps in the backyard, and they never came (I only see some unicellular Eukaryota as well as Ephydridae larvae). Since Brazil has a serious issue with Dengue fever, I do not know about the legality of "culturing" such mosquitoes at home (I think that I will contact some state agency to ask about it). Some bloodworms even appeared at the dogs' water bowl (impressive). Where I live, the climate is classified as "Aw: Tropical savanna climate with dry winters" or maybe "Monsoon influenced humid subtropical climate (Cwa)" (or both at the same time?). Brazil has been dealing with mosquitoes since at least the first reports from Portuguese settlers. The Europeans always complained about this, although Native Americans already knew how to protect themselves from mosquito attacks.

A few years ago, I tried to attract bloodworms and I succeeded, however, Culex mosquitoes (both love water with a heavy load of organic matter), which also transmit diseases, came along. So, I suspended the project.
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By Beck, H.E., McVicar, T.R., Vergopolan, N., Alexis, B., Lutsko, N.J., Dufour, A., Zeng, Z., Jian, X., van Dijk, A.I.J.M., Miralles, D.G. - "High-resolution (1 km) Köppen-Geiger maps for 1901–2099 based on constrained CMIP6 projections". Scientific Data. DOI:10.1038/s41597-023-02549-6., CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=146728686