Other What's ruining your life right now?

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

The late, great George Carlin.

 

That reminded me of your old PM Muldoon, that when New Zealanders move to Australia it “raised the IQ of both countries”.

 

Dear BMW drivers/personalised number plate owners: nobody is impressed with you aggressively accelerating up to a corner, then having to break because you can't be bothered to learn to drive consistently and smoothly. Try it - you'll save money on fuel.

Driving across the peaks each day, you get to see some weird things. I haven't yet seen a crash happen, but arrived a few minutes after one had - a BMW 3 series and a normal estate car. Both obviously written off, but it looked like all parties had probably got away with light injuries at most (I hope). Easy to see who was at fault - not being a dick, was just obvious what had happened.

I'll never forget before Christmas, on a rainy day, there was this absolute see you next Tuesday in a Navara behind me, probably a maximum of a car length away when I was about third in line of a 'convoy' doing <=60 on a single lane carriageway. I decided to ignore him and after a 'while', looked back. Initially I thought he'd turned off; what was actually happening was that he was so close, his headlights were blocked by my rear door (I drive a Volvo V50). I have to admit what I did next was immature, but I had had enough of this w4nker. I indicated left and braked hard - not enough to make him crash, but enough that he would have to brake hard too, bought my car to a stop and waited for him to overtake. Cars were coming the other way, so he had to wait for them to pass before he could move off. Then he did exactly the same to the car in front.

We are aggressive drivers in this country though. If you want a nice drive, go to Greece. People are nice there!

 

Sonos announcing today that they will no longer update the Connect after May this year...

...three days after I bought one on the marketplace here...

I mean I get that they can't support the devices for ever but I thought I would get longer...

...its not as if you can research this, Sonos do not publish a support schedule for their products, cos its a secret...

...bar stewards.

 

Plenty of aggressive drivers here, generally put them into a couple of catagories

Boy racer Believes their shed is the fastest thing in the west, cars locally we have little hatchback's, BMW's lowered and usually used to *drift around car parks or 18 year olds with more finance than sense who slap air ride and stupid wheels on a car and pose for photos everywhere.

Vans covers most commercial vehicles, generally driven so close you think they are peering down into your boot to see whats in there. Have no comprehension of junctions or give way signs often parked in an abandoned state

Golfer usually drives a large off road vehicle with normal road tyres for comfort, avoids mud at all costs for fear of cleaning, usually refuses to give way on singletrack

Audi's Drives like an angry BMW driver, just in an Audi

*drift wheelspin and slide the car badly in circles till the diff fails

 

That e-mail hacked me off, too. I've got a fair chunk of 'legacy' Sonos kit, and I'm now tempted to ditch it, along with all of the rest of my Sonos kit, because I think it's a bit of sharp practice on their part. Bah.

 

Me too although I suppose it depends what you use them for. My Sonos systems is only used to play music off my NAS and so I'm not going to be changing anything. If I had a system where I used their 'new features' more regularly then I would too be annoyed. As it stands my 4 Play 1s and my Connect all work without a hitch and so, as long as that stays the same, I'm staying as I am.

 

I'm not too angray about them dropping support, that happens and the support duration is even longer than Synology for example.

The devices will keep working but there is a risk that if you have mixed legacy and currently supported devices in your Sonos setup, at some point you will need all the devices to be running the same version to work.

If you don't update them, they will continue to work. Apparently you can also setup your legacy devices on their own parallel Sonos network, isolating them off from your newer devices.

What I am annoyed about is that Sonos don't publish any support lifespan matrix for their devices like Synology do, if they did you could make an informed choice.

That and the fact that the replacement for the Connect (Sonos Port) is a stonking £400 new, a ridiculous price for what it actuslly does.

Theres a guy on github who has made his own Connect with a Raspberry Pi, a USB sound card and some software jiggery-pokery, its not rocket science.

 

Boy what a test of patience and endurance.

I built my rig over two days. All went well. Looped it all up yesterday. Poured the res full of coolant and started the pump on an external PSU. It took a very quick wee all over the floor of the rig (right above the screen).

Turns out on the Bitspower T junction piece there lives a G1/4 hole for the thermal probe. Only the thermal probe had fell into the abyss and wasn't in there. So that means I had a G1/4 hole facing downward.

Took the whole rig back apart and removed the floor. I started at 10am and had it back together at 1am. Ran the loop for ages no leaks.

Worked up the courage to connect the PSU and boot the rig. Only it wouldn't boot.

After hours more messing around I figured that the Cooler master ribbon simply didn't work with this board. So I had to do a Spanish waiter and do the table cloth trick. Removing the vertical bracket and cable whilst leaving the GPU in the loop. Got it out after lots of swearing and put the Phanteks ribbon in. Worked perfectly. Got the BIOS updated, install windows and it all works well.

I'm exhausted. Hardly any sleep and rolling around on the floor has destroyed my back

Computers, eh?

 

I mostly use mine with Roon, which won't allow Sonos stuff and RAAT stuff to be played to simultaneously anyway, so it's probably the kick I need to ditch it. I've had Sonos for about ten years now!

 

@Vault-Tec , at least it's all up and running now, so all of that hard work is worth it. But this is exactly why I don't do a full PC build (or even do much tinkering) very often these days - I just don't have the time, the patience or the inclination to fanny about. Shame, as I used to really enjoy this side of the hobby, but now I just want to use the damn thing rather than take it apart and put it back together

Oh, and let's some pics!

 

Note that was before and after the leak. Go back to before now lol.

I forgot to mention I don't have the phanteks mount, only the ribbon. So the GPU is currently being held up with a box haha. I'll pick up the mount/bracket over the weekend. it's at mum's.

Other notes. Paint is damaged. Turns out acrylic edges are like scrapers. Paint for touch ins ordered.

Still got cable work to do. All drives work and are being detected fine. CB R15 stock scored 2478. I haven't ran anything else because it takes ages and I had no time left.

Byski block is absolutely awesome. Cannot believe it was £35 inc.

Phanteks ribbon looks pure sex compared to the nasty stiff CM one which is like an old ultrawide SCSI cable or 100+ PATA cable.

Very excited to try NVME raid.

Had to buy a new 10 pro key. £7. I have it but haven't been on the pc today as I'm waiting for meds and my shopping etc.

Now comes weeks of tweaking, setting up software and downloading 800gb worth of games. Unless I can move them off of the partitioned Intel NVME that was my boot and game drive (1tb). It's currently split into 200/800.

I may be able to blend the partition without losing the games but MMMV (my mileage).

We'll see. It's got me all excited again so that's cool no?

 

I was thinking of buying a Sonos Beam to replace the old soundbar for the TV, I'm even tempted now to buy a Sonos Port Amp (to replace the Connect) and plugging both the TV and the turntable into that and forgetting the Beam, I can use the Play:1 satellites already there.

Having second thoughts now...

 

Got tickets for the Slipknot gig in town tonight, and I just cannot be arsed with it. I'm absolutely exhausted today, I have a stinking headache, and I just want to go and lie down in bed. I am really not in the mood* for an 18+hr day which finishes with very loud very angry metal in a venue where the sound is utter garbage.

*Maybe I need some encouragement from Patrick Stewart:

 

Aww shame Byron. I know what you mean though.

I'm simply too tired to even turn my pc on. No sleep coupled with anti psychotic pills and I'm literally sofa bound and feel all floaty.

Just want to stay awake to see that thing about the farm tonight on ITV, then it's literally do not disturb for 12 hours.

 

It's official, I need complete spinal fusion. Pain's been incredible, but doc has me on decent pain control until I get to the emergency consult for pain control. Now I'm high and sleepy, but at least I'm not crying any more.

 

Just heard the tragic news about Tom Logan's sister.

Absolutely heart breaking

 

It's on the news now - way to step on your own dick, Sonos.

 

Just saw this today... glad I changed out a load of soon-to-be unsupported Sonos gear last summer. This is all the poke I needed to swap out my remaining four P1s.

All well and good to say “unsupported” doesn’t necessarily mean bricked, but it’s only one controller or API update away.