Other What currently makes your life awesome?

@goldstar0011 Free ex corporate kit you can use is very satisfying to have and reuse, if not a bit dull spec wise!
In a similar vein, I help with IT at a local charity that my Dad is involved with.
Sadly I have their 55" monitor to take to the tip as someone twisted it while bringing it back from an event, loading it in their car... I also have a laptop and some other stuff to dispose of.
I don't much like laptops as they're mostly too proprietary to tinker with.
This old Dell Latitude seemed well made, so I looked at at quick YT teardown guide and decided to open it up before disposing of it.
It's a nice meatal framed machine with well designed and thought out access to everything.
I have harvested a pair of 4GB DDR3L SODIMMs and a 256GB mSATA drive, that will perk up a NUC and maybe a Tosh laptop I'm lining up to sell.
So long as they work, it'll be very satisfactory, thank you

 

These Quadro cards aren't too special, they are only P2000 cards, but still kinda nice to have for the large amount of 2D CAD that I do, I am just a little limited should I ever need to monkey around with any big 3D BIM building models.

I would love to be able to run off with this machine and really stock it up, it only has a single Xeon Silver 4110 in it at the moment and 32GB of RAM, it could be so much more for not a silly amount of money, and would be a good start for a big upgrade for my home PC.

 

What could possibly be better than being shipped off to Africa or China for some poor sod going through the pile of hardware to find the few pieces that can be acid-treated to extract precious metals?

 

Refreshed trans law in finland should kick in on Jan 1st. After that changing my name and gender marker should be just filling a simple form and waiting a bit over a month (because a cooling off period is required)

Yup. helsinki GIC keeps rejecting my UK paperwork claiming "its not valid"

 

My custom loop 5950x & 3090FE build is on hold, because I managed to lose/misplace the backplate and gasket for my Supremacy EVO CPU block.

Yeah, I know. I've spent a LONG time emptying boxes and getting angry over the last few days.

Anyhoo, I got an itch to check out the EK store and see if there was a cheap(ish) CPU block in the clearance section. Lo and behold, Supremacy EVO backplates and gasket for under two Euros. Shipping brings it up to a tenner, which is a sight better than the alternatives, and they throw in a fill bottle - which is really handy, because I think mine eloped with the EVO gasket.

I have my low power gaming box up and running, so I can live without Chonkyboi for a week or two. Oh, and I ordered a copper shim for the RTX 2000.

 

Will soon be rejoining the PC gaming world, finally have a video card coming. SSD and memory as well. Paying off my bills was worth it.

 

Tomorrow's to-do list:-

• Fit these to my rig.

 

Jealousness.....

Nice one!

For me, it's finally working back in IT again, after working retail for so long from Covid.

It's a project manager role, and I'm pretty happy

 

From this fungus-encrusted lens



to this clean - albeit dusty - lens





via a lens spanner, patience, and hydrogen peroxide



Focusing a manual lens on a camera that doesn't have a split focus prism - or any viewfinder at all, for that matter - is hard bloody work! There is supposed to be a focus assist mode that zooms the image in, but I can't seem to activate it without going hunting in menus.









Still, I'm chuffed that I didn't totally f' it up. And now that I know what I'm doing with the 50mm lens it'll be a lot easier the next time I have to do it. This diagram from the Pentax forums really helped make sure I'd got the optics back in the correct way round!



Now for the 135mm lens... which needs to have the beauty ring (the bit which says "SMC PENTAX-M 1:3.5 135mm...etc...") removed before I can get a lens spanner on it to remove the elements...



How the hell do you unscrew that? With tools like this, apparently



Hm, £34 for some bits of rubber, I think not... I'll see if I can get the beauty ring off another way on my own first, thanks...

But that's a job for another evening, I'm gonna go have a beer and watch Stargate now.

 

Great work Byron.
IIRC, when I was at the camera shop we had a single soft plastic cone to undo front rings like that. Maybe the repair guys had sets.
A well earned Beer and Stargate methinks

 

Ta. Honestly, even if there is some dust trapped in the lens, I'm just chuffed that I actually finished something for once

 

finished rebuilding my hobby room. the cabinets are just /chefs kiss.

 

One day I will drag out all of the Fallout stuff I have collected over the past 14 years and get some of those. Gosh it's a lot

 

Update - SHE FITS!!!


But I appear to have lost RGB in 2 of the bottom fans. Have to look into that...

 

Your picture capture machine isn't working double plus good, or you've encountered hungry space termites in your cabin.

 

That is tidy as hell, no way I'd be able to keep it that neat.

The glass cabinets are really handy, we've got one downstairs for Lego but it's not big enough for some of the models I have. The Saturn V, Space Shuttle Discovery, and ISS sets are all too massive for it.