Young people can't operate a radio

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dualstow
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by dualstow » Tue Oct 10, 2017 7:32 pm

Sounds about right. When I was your age,I was hammering nails, not creating memes and typing with my thumbs! O0
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by ochotona » Wed Oct 11, 2017 6:09 am

At 12 I was soldering and wiring breadboards.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Oct 11, 2017 9:23 am

20 years ago I was playing football, Jim, not soccer. You fucking commie.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by WiseOne » Wed Oct 11, 2017 8:43 pm

Sounds about right. When I was a teenager I was mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, helping clean out the garage and paint the floor, and babysitting for the neighbors. My nieces have never done any of these things.

But, if you're a suburban parent you don't do any of those things either. You hire a guy from El Salvador who doesn't speak English to do them. And of course, pay him in cash. He's the one who goes to Home Depot - not the suburban parent!

I still do all my own housecleaning, despite lots of urging from people to hire somebody. Not having a housecleaner is considered strange in my neighborhood. Or maybe it's just that I'm that bad at it!
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Maddy » Thu Oct 12, 2017 7:52 am

WiseOne wrote:Sounds about right. When I was a teenager I was mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, helping clean out the garage and paint the floor, and babysitting for the neighbors. My nieces have never done any of these things.

But, if you're a suburban parent you don't do any of those things either. You hire a guy from El Salvador who doesn't speak English to do them. And of course, pay him in cash. He's the one who goes to Home Depot - not the suburban parent!

I still do all my own housecleaning, despite lots of urging from people to hire somebody. Not having a housecleaner is considered strange in my neighborhood. Or maybe it's just that I'm that bad at it!
I'm with you, WiseOne. I'm always amazed when cash-strapped relatives or friends refer to their housecleaner or gardener. Even when I worked long hours in the city, I cringed at the thought of hiring somebody to do something I could do myself.

YouTube has been such a great resource for getting things done. I doubt a week goes by that I'm not consulting a YouTube video for instructions on how to repair or maintain something. However, I often wish that the videos on mechanical things were more geared to the novice. Maybe there's an opportunity here!

God help the miliennials, whose only apparent skill is to point and click. At least I know that as long as my arthritic hands can turn a screw, I''ll be employable.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by WiseOne » Fri Oct 13, 2017 8:19 am

Go Maddy!! Perversely, I like being able to fix/clean things myself. It's very different work from what I do for pay, and I actually find it refreshing - even more so than usual methods of unwinding like watching TV. I go to Youtube videos all the time. Another great resource is ifixit.com.

I share your sentiment about hiring help, but I did break down to the extent of buying a Roomba. It's a lovely gift to yourself; maybe you can score one off Craigslist? I got the 860 which has the new easy-to-clean rollers and doesn't have wireless. You can't run the things unsupervised anyway (e.g. Roomba + cat vomit = disaster). Nevertheless, it converted vacuuming from onerous weekend chore to easy weeknight job, and it pushed me to keep the place tidier and reduce clutter. As did the clothes moth infestation, but that's another story :-).
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by bedraggled » Sat Oct 14, 2017 8:57 am

Am I left on the side of the road? I feel like the parent with the virus protection problem mixed with files not stored on Word or spreadsheet not saved on Excel.

I want to transfer 5 DVD-Rs to both new DVD-Rs and another means (thumb drive?) to put the 1700 minutes of yoga stretching classes on the Apple hard drive.

Are the various media devices fragile these days? The disc copier (burner?) may not read my original/ master discs. (That's when I tried to load disc 1 onto the hard drive). The burner may have died.

Do DVD players get old? My disc 1 copy (not the original) stopped frequently but Casablanca and other store-bought DVDs are OK. So, it seems to be my home-brewed DVDs cause the problem- or am I wrong? The disc tray kept opening and closing for ten minutes after I extracted the offending disc, until I shut the player off. I don't want to risk the masters to my attempts as I don't trust my abilities here.

Now, there are copying services available, if I wish to mail the master DVD-Rs for reproduction. Is the age of a local shop providing copying services gone?

Finally, during my 3 years as a member of this forum, I find many tech savvy people reside here. I'd be happy to pay to get the 5 DVD-Rs transferred to new media. If you folks think you have insights into my dead end, thanks in advance. The content of the DVD-Rs is quite difficult or impossible to replace.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by ochotona » Sat Oct 14, 2017 9:59 am

Cloud storage is the way to go. Let the Cloud provider worry about continuity and survivability of physical media. And I would say MULTIPLE Cloud providers. All of my photos go to Flickr, Dropbox, Google, and Facebook (those I post). But I still I have them on a PC, and on a removable hard drive in my safe.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by dualstow » Sat Oct 14, 2017 11:47 am

pug's advice is good.
I still burn things to disc (blu-ray, using Apple's built-in software called Burn), but mainly because I have all these blanks collecting dust.
Everything gets old. Everything wears out. But things with moving parts often wear out faster. Put those 1's and 0's on a hard drive or two.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Xan » Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:42 pm

Recordable media like DVD-Rs will always (well, almost) have a shorter lifespan than store-bought.

DVDs (or CDs or whatever) which are mass-produced are pressed, that is, there's a physical hole for a 1 as opposed to a 0 (or it's the other way around, I forget). With recordable media, it's a dark spot that simulates a hole. Eventually the ink fades.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Maddy » Sat Oct 14, 2017 3:03 pm

Xan wrote:Recordable media like DVD-Rs will always (well, almost) have a shorter lifespan than store-bought.

DVDs (or CDs or whatever) which are mass-produced are pressed, that is, there's a physical hole for a 1 as opposed to a 0 (or it's the other way around, I forget). With recordable media, it's a dark spot that simulates a hole. Eventually the ink fades.
As long as the old fogies are being indulged:
For backing up files, how reliable is a thumb drive? Is an external hard drive (someone mentioned a "Passport") any better?
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Xan » Sat Oct 14, 2017 3:52 pm

In general, I'm pretty high on the reliability of USB flash drives, if it's enough capacity for you. I'm actually pretty low on using a traditional hard disk (as opposed to a solid-state disk), because they introduce an entire class of potential mechanical problems.

I would also strongly recommend off-site-ness as a key component of your backup strategy. Maybe have a couple of USB flash drives, encrypted, and cycle them through a safe deposit box. Encrypt your files and put them on the cloud every so often. (Make sure it's good encryption.)
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Libertarian666 » Sat Oct 14, 2017 7:52 pm

Xan wrote:In general, I'm pretty high on the reliability of USB flash drives, if it's enough capacity for you. I'm actually pretty low on using a traditional hard disk (as opposed to a solid-state disk), because they introduce an entire class of potential mechanical problems.

I would also strongly recommend off-site-ness as a key component of your backup strategy. Maybe have a couple of USB flash drives, encrypted, and cycle them through a safe deposit box. Encrypt your files and put them on the cloud every so often. (Make sure it's good encryption.)
Copies kept at home should be in a fire safe rated for media preservation.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by bedraggled » Sun Oct 15, 2017 5:52 am

Folks,

Thanks. Some good stuff.

I will begin investigating as soon as the weekend obligations are over. There might be a surprise or two yet to be discovered.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by farjean2 » Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:57 pm

Desert wrote:
Maddy wrote:. . . And old people can't operate Facebook.
:) Yep.
+2

And people in my generation didn't know how to crank start a car or shoe a horse. So what? It's called progress (not to be confused with "progressive" politics - or at least hopefully not).
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by WiseOne » Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:02 am

If I were doing my own home data backup, I'd make a second backup of stuff I would hate to lose on Amazon Glacier. As it is, I just use Dropbox. It's essentially regular Amazon with a premium price for the syncing/sharing software, which is completely worth it to me. With all my research collaborations & lab, I'd be lost without it.

I once read an article comparing the costs of Amazon or similar cloud storage to the total costs (including electricity & hardware replacement) of running a live home backup system with NAS drives. The cloud came out cheaper. And the problem with DVD and USB is that you have to remember to backup frequently, and you probably don't do it often enough.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by dualstow » Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:42 am

I'm out of touch with Windows, but Mac's Time Machine makes one-touch back up possible, and I hit the button several times a week (can also be set to auto). My backups are on a traditional hard drive, which will fail, but at 1 terabyte for US$50, I can have more than one.

Also, older folks: don't fall into the trap of thinking that an external drive or USB key is a backup if you took the original data off of your computer. Keep more than one copy!
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Libertarian666 » Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:19 am

WiseOne wrote:If I were doing my own home data backup, I'd make a second backup of stuff I would hate to lose on Amazon Glacier. As it is, I just use Dropbox. It's essentially regular Amazon with a premium price for the syncing/sharing software, which is completely worth it to me. With all my research collaborations & lab, I'd be lost without it.

I once read an article comparing the costs of Amazon or similar cloud storage to the total costs (including electricity & hardware replacement) of running a live home backup system with NAS drives. The cloud came out cheaper. And the problem with DVD and USB is that you have to remember to backup frequently, and you probably don't do it often enough.
And the extra benefit of storing your backups in the cloud is that the NSA can help you out if necessary.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Maddy » Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:33 am

Well, it seems that old people can't operate microwaves, either.

I've been using a borrowed microwave for the last several of weeks due to an injury that's made it hard to get around. Last night, I made my usual cup of tea by microwaving a ceramic mug full of water for 130 seconds--just as I have done on at least 50 prior occasions over the last few weeks. Exact same mug, exact same microwave, exact same time setting. Anyway, when the beeper went off, I reached into the microwave and grabbed the handle of the mug, which is normally cool to the touch, and promptly received a whopper of a burn to the inside of my third finger. Strangely, the water inside the mug was only warm, but the mug itself was so hot it required a pot holder to handle. WTF?
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by dualstow » Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:36 am

That has happened to me occasionally with my cherished old Correlle mug. Be careful!
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Maddy » Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:36 am

Libertarian666 wrote:And the extra benefit of storing your backups in the cloud is that the NSA can help you out if necessary.
Exactly my reaction.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Maddy » Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:38 am

dualstow wrote:That has happened to me occasionally with my cherished old Correlle mug. Be careful!
For God's sake, don't send the social workers!
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Xan » Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:39 am

One thing the Snowden revelations did confirm is that encryption works. Encrypt it on your end, with a good, modern, trusted algorithm (and don't use the service's encryption) and you'll be fine.
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by dualstow » Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:40 am

I use Veracrypt. Works great. I couldn't get my dad into it, so I bought him the same USB key with a numeric keypad that I told craigr about and which he ended up buying. (Apricorn Aegis)

Xan: the WSJ mentions this morning quantum computers that will be able to crack encryption on "classical" computers. I guess we have a few years though. (?)
Maddy wrote:
dualstow wrote:That has happened to me occasionally with my cherished old Correlle mug. Be careful!
For God's sake, don't send the social workers!
O0
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Re: Young people can't operate a radio

Post by Xan » Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:46 am

hmm, good point. I suppose you can't guarantee that it won't be crackable in the future. Unless you encrypt with a one-time pad, of course, which is unbreakable even in theory.
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