On Thursday 26 March 2026 14:59:35 Jim via tde-users wrote:
<snipping away ...>
When my neighbor "blew the fuse", he also managed to kill the power in this entire wing of the building.
Was he running his own power sub-station? That sounds like he was doing something very "interesting". (Or maybe the power distribution in your building is a bit on the sketchy side.)
There was another incident that is almost beyond belief, and has nothing to do with any of my neighbors. That was when I lost my old desktop, which was nearly brand-new at the time. It had been in storage for over a year, and I got it out and brought it here.
Then there was, I thought, another fuse blown or something. I went out into the hall, and all the lights were off. I thought, Oh no, not again. But it gets worse.
It turned out, it was not only on this floor, or this wing of the building, but the whole neighborhood, something like a square mile. I forget now what happened, exactly, but the power went out everywhere for about 8 hours, just in this part of the city. This was back about 2014-2015 or so, maybe?
That killed my original desktop. I forget now what brand, but I bought it new with no OS, so that I could install Linux on a clean machine. And it ran well for the year or so that I actually got to use it.
After that died, I built my own machine, got an old desktop chassis, the old heavy metal kind that you can sit on. A smaller person could probably stand on it. Then I got a motherboard, and other parts that I needed, and built my own. I still have this machine, and intend to keep using it (though it needs some hardware upgrades by now); but it is waiting for me in storage.
Anyway, that neighbor died about six months ago. I won't say that I miss him.
Was there a big flash of light or an electrical storm when he passed away?
Well, he died of some kind of cancer in the head, face, mouth, etc. Odd that he didn't suspect anything until a few months before he actually died. It was only then that he was diagnosed, and it was far too late.
So I won't speak ill of him, aside from his knack for destroying other people's electronics. Oh, and also his love of opera music (see below).
:-) :
(If he is the habit of doing this, you really want to get yourself a surge protector, if you haven't already done so.)
Yeah, I have been looking for a power supply backup; I used to be able to find them in most computer supply shops, but nowadays they seem to have gone out of fashion.
I suspect that with most people having laptops, as opposed to desktops, there is far less need for UPS power supplies. Of course, the people who want desktops might still want a UPS, but it is probably a supply and demand issue, like almost everything else.
I have my trusty Belkin surge protector which otherwise has served me reliably for years. But the problem seems to have been caused by the fact that I was transferring files at the time the power went out.
That is curious. Did you have anyone who is really skilled with those things look at the SSDs?
No, and I do still have both SSDs, but I just don't have time or money to deal with them now.
In the meanwhile, I have whittled down my working external drives to a few flash drives and one external hard drive; then everything is regularly backed up to other hard drives, using that 13-port hub. Otherwise, I have three 3.0 USB ports on my laptop,
Are you sure? The specs I saw said two were 3.x and the other was a 2.0.
Well, it may be that mine is some slightly different model. When I got it, it said three 3.0 USB ports, an HDMI port, and a slot for SD card. You might be right, but I don't know how to check that.
All seem to work about the same, and I could use them interchangeably without any noticeable difference in performance. I only tend to choose to use them in the same way due to logistics; which is to say, space available on my desk, and what I can fit in, and where and how.
For example, I plug my operating system flash drive into the middle port, so that it stands less chance of getting jiggled. When that happens, then my system really does freeze up, but it's because the hardware got disturbed. But that has only happened twice in a couple years, then I got wise. Now the middle port is "protected" (so to speak) by the USB cords that are plugged into the ports on either side of it.
Are you familiar with the hdparm command? For giggles you might do some performance testing. Running sudo hdparm -t /dev/<whatever> will run for a few seconds and give you an indication of what speed you can read from the device at. For example, on my laptop I do sudo hdparm -t /dev/nvme0n1 and it responds with /dev/nvme0n1: Timing buffered disk reads: 6330 MB in 3.00 seconds = 2109.97 MB/sec
The original disk in my wife's venerable 2009 laptop had this results sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda /dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 234 MB in 3.00 seconds = 77.96 MB/sec with its original disk, and after replacing with an SSD at some point, it went to /dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 818 MB in 3.01 seconds = 272.01 MB/sec
The SATA bus in that computer maxed out at 280 MB/sec (or something around there) and so we didn't get the full benefit of the SSD's speed, but it gave the laptop a new lease on life. The increase in speed of the laptop was very dramatic.
########## Here are my results.
running sudo hdparm -t
SanDisk flash drive 256 gb USB 3.0 root directory /dev/sda1: Timing buffered disk reads: 286 MB in 3.00 seconds = 95.25 MB/sec
swap /dev/sda2: Timing buffered disk reads: 412 MB in 3.00 seconds = 137.22 MB/sec
home directory /dev/sda3: Timing buffered disk reads: 344 MB in 3.01 seconds = 114.35 MB/sec
########## external drives
Unknown brand, found in garbage, has a big letter G on it. It may be some kind of Googlish thing, or it may indicate a conspiracy of Free-Masons. It connects with a USB-C to my 3.0 port. 1 tb hard drive (the films, tv, music, etc.) /dev/sdb1: Timing buffered disk reads: 122 MB in 3.05 seconds = 40.05 MB/sec
Another SanDisk flash drive 256 gb USB 3.0 /dev/sdc1: Timing buffered disk reads: 92 MB in 3.04 seconds = 30.30 MB/sec
##########
The guy wasn't working on some military-grade electromagnetic pulse weapon by any chance?
He was just a few years older than myself, but not at all technically-inclined, and was suspicious of my running Linux and talking about free software. He did not believe that there was such a thing as free software. He had a lot of appliances that required high voltage.
It is strange that he was not more adept at the new technology, as he was some kind of engineer and/or architect before he retired. He used to hang his degrees on the wall, from Harvard and elsewhere, sit alone and drink martinis and listen to opera music.
If I were to speak ill of him, I think it is the opera music that I really hated. Otherwise, he was just a bumbler, who didn't seem to understand that other people might be affected by what he did. But some of the power issues were not his fault, as my new neighbors also blow the fuse a lot.
And yes, the power in this building is very dodgy. It amazes me that the building inspectors have not shut this place down. Back in September just last year, I went through a period where I got flooded three times within a week. Fortunately, I had already moved out practically everything, and what was left just happened to be (by luck, not planning) above the water. So there was nothing important that got damaged, just stuff that I would probably have discarded, anyway. I had about six inches of water in my place each time. The sewer had backed up, and overflowed into people's apartments.
Then there was the day that the floor beneath my bathroom came crashing down, and I had a big gaping hole, looking into the lobby downstairs. I lived for four months without a toilet here, from mid-September until mid-January, and used to have rats, the size of dachshunds, coming in to visit me. I covered up the hole to keep out the rats, but I still lived for four months like that. Other times, I had to deal with repairs people going in and out of my place for days on end. About all I could do here was sleep and eat.
Before you ask, many people here have tried to sue for these matters, and we keep getting told that this company is too big to sue, and also that "they have no money"; which seems to me is beside the point, as well as a contradiction.
Anyway, these experiences will give me more to write about. (This is not the long-term project to which I referred elsewhere. That is more of a scholarly historical work, for lack of a better description.) Also, my tales of misadventures in California's dark underbelly ought to make for some pretty good reading, and I am more likely to make money from that than from my other work.
Also I am thinking of getting a Jackery power station. <...> I don't know about brands, but so far the Jackery sounds like the top of the line.
I have an Ecoflow. If you talk to any of the Ecoflow fan-bois, they will tell you that Ecoflows are the cat's meow. I don't have any real opinion myself (when I went to buy an Ecoflow, the reviews were as positive as any of the other brands, and I could buy one locally, so...). My experience with my Ecoflow (Delta 2 model + extra battery) is that it will give you something like 80% of the rated power. So I have (nominally) 2 kWh, which should run one 250-watt device for 8 hours. But I suspect I probably end up with about 6.5 hours (or so) of power. YMMV.
I will check out Ecoflow. Always good to shop around and do some research, before I go and blow my money on such a big purchase.
I had also heard of Rockpals, but was more impressed by the Jackery models. Ecoflow looks interesting, and the prices are too bad for the size I want.
Besides using it for my own household needs, I want something that is both portable, and big enough, to power several instruments and other equipment for a band. I have some people that I play with, and we are thinking of taking it on the road in a very modest way, just to have some fun. But sometimes available power is a problem, so I had already thought of a power station as a solution, because I saw some other musicians doing it. And they were using a small-medium Jackery unit.
Bill