[Music]
hello welcome to
category 5 coffee break i'm bp 9 hello
and uh off to that direction i'm not
even going to say left or right because
i messed it up last time
that's doug over there there he is
and then over on this side that's sobu
give us a way of sober
good job and then below below me is uh
is peter give us away peter good man
thank you very much
so first thing is i cannot believe
that i forgot pi day last week
on on the 14th of march 3.14
we completely forgot about pi day and
even marshman said something about it
but
uh in in the forum but i completely
forgot to mention it so i was i was
trying to make sure that uh i mentioned
i completely forgot so
happy belated pie day to everybody
and at 3 p.m 1500 in military time
it would be 3.1415
say that one more time doug because
3 p.m and military time is 1500.
yeah so it would be 3.1415
yeah i'll go all right i'll take that
yeah okay i would have expected it to be
one 1 59 in the morning
on march 14th 3.14 for date and time and
then one point at point
3.14159 would be 159
in the morning right uh yes yes it would
that would work too that would work too
that would be another way to do it
wouldn't it so
i only remember pi out to four digits so
i
i remember two
so the continuing saga of the dell
oh my i'm still running the
i'm still running the laptop as you can
tell by my wide screen
um yeah it's it's delightful
i know it looks good doesn't it but i
don't know what i'm gonna do
about this about this deal it's doing
what i
bought it for um i bought it
to do specific tasks and the main reason
for the for putting the hard drive in
was for
you know to run linux on it right um
well it took less than 10 minutes to run
off script
for those um support folks over in over
in
um uh yeah over in that other country
and um it it yeah less than 10 minutes
and i had them i had the baffled already
and all they could do was say well
if you will mail in your brand new
computer
that you bought two weeks ago we will
give you a
really good estimate on what it would
take to fix it oh man
no no no no no no no no no
i this this computer is under warranty
it's under a one year warranty i am not
paying you to fix this
right it's broken you should fix it for
free
now uh all they'll all they're gonna do
now is just keep sending me the
email to say here this is what we
recommend you do
it has two links in it one says if you
want your computer back in two weeks pay
39.
if you want your computer back in one
week pay sixty nine dollars
no no i'm not doing that
but i don't know how to go i don't know
how to get around that so one thing yeah
one thing and then luis rossman
is has touched on this issue
in a few videos in the last couple of
years
and he says that
in order for them to tell you uh how
long they
take to fix advice they first first they
have to
take it in and open start opening it up
in order to see
what is wrong with it yeah and and he he
and he has decided to
to to not charge for that
initial uh checking over if they can do
it and what is wrong with it
um so that is um why they can't just
tell you how long it will take because
yeah they have to
see what's wrong oh i understand i i
have no
problem with that one reason they
have to to open it is to to figure out
if it actually is a
a warranty issue um depending on
what they want it says so did you buy it
i'm sorry where did you buy it i bought
it online
i bought it through the dell online
store uh
okay all right ryan murray welcome
hey brian i don't think he
i don't think he can hear it or he he
says it's connecting to audio there he
is
yeah his background looks like a scene
from uh one of these target episodes
it does doesn't it yeah hello brian can
you hear us hello
do you hear me okay yeah welcome yes
absolutely we can hear you how are you
sir
hi guys it's good to be here um i tried
to join in i've got um
zoom set up on my poseidon desktop
for some reason it won't actually it
won't let me log in
my password so i'm currently speaking
now on my
oneplus 6 phone okay
that'll work um for your for your
desktop if you have a zoom client you
don't need to log in to join
all you need to do is just say join
meeting yeah and then it will ask for
the passcode and that should be enough
yep yeah i tried it because i remember i
tried last week and i was an hour late
because you guys jump ahead
on our forward so yeah next sunday
yeah okay so then you'll you'll jump
back to
five o'clock gmt 5 pm gmt whenever
it's 1609 it's four minutes and yep nine
minutes past four just now yeah
i took sober's suggestion and put the
gmt time up there so that
uh you folks in europe could see uh
could see the um would know when would
be the good time to start
so so i hope that worked for you
so yeah continuing the continuing the
dell issue what were you going to say
sober about um about repairing it
because i think that what i've got
is a is a sata cable that's gone bad
although
i've got a spinning drive in here right
now and it actually does spin up
i can hear it spin up if i um if i power
it up and i can hear it shut down
when i turn it off so yeah my point is
just that
in order for them to tell you how long
it will actually take
for them to fix it and bring it back to
you they first have to take it in
and start looking at it in order to tell
you how long it will take
yeah i wish i i wish that
i could just get that sata cable that
ribbon cable
as a part number i cannot find the part
number anywhere
so i may log into some forums or
something and see if i can find
a cable for it that's the only thing i
can think to do
at this point you know
say that one more time peter is it a
standard
cable you know it's not no it's a
specific part number for
this laptop and the laptop is so new
that you can't see
spare parts on the dell website for it
okay
okay okay it's a new
it's a new model um and what it is it's
a ribbon cable that runs from a a card
can
a ribbon connector on the main board to
the
to a sata connector that you plug into
the um
into the spinning drive into the stacker
drive so
yep that's what you got so
uh since brian's here let's let's let's
let him
go first since uh yeah since uh he's
he's a brand new
um uh brand new participant welcome
all right yeah not a problem we'll we'll
make you last this time cult sober so
you'll have plenty of time to make
coffee how about that
yes fine brian welcome i i
haven't met you i think i've seen you in
the forum i'm sorry that you missed last
week um
on coffee break i apologize for that
and well welcome to coffee break
yeah no problem at all i actually
noticed this uh
coffee break i think it was when um when
robbie started it up
last year he was on i think was he not
on almost daily
it was on every day for about three
months and then we went to
then we went to every other day and then
finally
just went to once a week and then it
just got too
uh too much for robbie to handle once
he got back into um once he got back
into producing episodes for a category
five
so well i volunteered to take over so
right um i've i've i've been uh
oh good i'm sorry i think there was
about 2008
when i first came across cat5 um
i've been into i was ubuntu i'm actually
using
linux mint for the last six months but
um how do you like it
i find it actually i've tried it before
because i was really on ubuntu a gnome
type person for a long time
but i had the 2004
running okay but it could run i'm an
i'm obsessive with massive up times
and i would get maybe 30 odd days
without a reboot
and then it would freeze up well i
couldn't use my
on the desktop i couldn't use the mouse
or you know i had no control
the only way to to get it was a hard
reboot press the power button
shut down and reboot and i never found
that i suspect
it was something to do with nvidia
drivers so i ended up taking them out
and just using the nouveau drivers
and it seemed to help but just every so
often you could go for
for weeks and weeks and then no problem
and then maybe eventually or you would
um
a week from suspend and you'd just get a
black screen
various things so a long time i thought
okay i'm going to try i'm going to try
linux mint
and with some with the cinnamon desktop
and since that's about july i tried that
i have never had a single problem
interesting okay i've had up to 40 in
fact one day
i've got a small laptop a starlight
laptop
and that had up to i think it was
was it 80 odd days without a reboot
no problems at all i just find cinnamon
so much more stable for some reason
interesting interesting i've
i've i've i'm a i like ubuntu i've used
ubuntu quite a bit
and more specifically exhibit 2 because
i like
the xfce window manager
now i know that i don't have to put in x
ubuntu on purpose
but um since it already comes with xfce
pre pre-built then um
then why not right so all pre-installed
then why not just use that i've had very
good luck with um with xubuntu i like it
it's being debian based it uses uh
apt it uses apt to manage its packages
what about linux map is it the same yeah
linux mint is uh
is based on uh ubuntu so
uh yeah it's all uh i basically out of
as i say i first got into linux through
ubuntu
late 2007 2008
and i've been most of my time that i
went actually
went all much all apple
from about 2011 to 18.
um because i used to work as a as a
courier
same-day courier and when i was out
about driving i always thought
uh a tablet would be handy
yep and the best tablets even to this
day i think is is
ipads are just so far ahead
so i got an ipad this was ipad two days
2011.
that's the that's the gateway drug i
ended up
then getting an iphone under my a big
mac pro they call the cheese greater mac
pro huge big one um
it's fantastic but as i said i was still
really uh an open sourcer type person so
yeah and you're locked into the apple
ecosystem aren't you you really can't
break out of that
if you stay in it it is it's fantastic
it really is
oh it's well if you don't mind sending
all your data to apple
well yeah because you know you are
spending all money as well
very proudly well that's that's the
thing that's i retired
um a couple of years ago and it's now
it's it's so expensive
everything's subscription based it's all
money money money money money yeah
um so that's me back into uh
to linux again well welcome back to
welcome back to linux for sure
um i have used i have used linux since
he i don't know early to mid 2000s
i started playing with linux even back
in australia
in the uh 90s the 80s and 90s but it was
pretty primitive back then
um but i've been using linux ever since
and that's my daily driver all my
machines here
run linux except for this lap this this
dell laptop that i've
that we were talking about when you
joined i bought a brand new laptop and i
can't
make it recognize a uh a sata drive that
i installed
so i'm trying to try to figure that
messed out
um what size of a what size is the sata
drive what's the capacity
gig right because i was going to say i
didn't notice in the in the past at one
time
anything over a four terabyte drive you
can sometimes have problems getting them
to recognize
i have a spinning drive and i have a ssd
both of which work fine in my older
inspiron laptop they work just right no
problem at all
um and this is a this is a new dell
um instagram that's running windows 10
at the moment
um and i was expecting the bios the bios
doesn't even recognize that the setter
drive exists
so i've got to figure out how to get
around that
have you checked the because that adele
know
or always have been very much um
linked in with ubuntu canonical um
they have a a listing
on dell's website of or sorry
canonical's website
of um tested hardware i don't know you
can maybe check either that
yeah um i haven't i have not
i have not checked that list but i have
had good luck with dell they've usually
been pretty good about
um running whatever operating system
i mean if you start the machine and push
f12 or f2
you can get into the bios and the bios
shows you what devices it recognizes
it cannot even see the sata drive
but as i was saying earlier the sata
drive does spin up
so i can hear it spinning up inside the
case
i deliberately put the old spinning
drive back in just a second
yeah of course it's running just fine
okay
yeah it's a it's a known good drive
peter for sure
yep so and that's what i was trying to
tell the support folks
but uh they wouldn't they wouldn't hear
of that you know because it falls off
it falls outside the script as soon as
something doesn't work
and and they run off screens and all
they can do then is say well go
you'll have to send it in to let us fix
it have you tried
uh have you tried uh using a live
dish or a different distro to see if
that would recognize it on a live disc
well that would mean booting it off a
usb port or something that's the only
thing that's a different path
right what i'm trying to do is to prove
that the sata connection inside the
machine
works
sorry i don't think that will work
because i think the bios has got to
recognize it before anything else
that's exactly my thought as well that's
exactly my
even if i could get it to boot off the
usb if the bios doesn't recognize that
spinning drive
it's not gonna it's it's it's not gonna
know what to do with it
so yeah right let's um
let's let the other folks have a go
brian it's been a pleasure
please hang around don't run away um
and you're welcome to come back any time
and uh and join us
some more it sounds like uh from that
accent i hope i get this right
scotland yeah i'm
uh edinburgh in scotland all right nice
okay okay i'm glad i'm glad i picked
that right because i know if i i know if
i get that wrong i'll probably get you
know
an arrow in my back or something
i have a world cut one thing to ask and
uh brian you mentioned that you are
an uptime and kind of a guy uh
what is your highest all-time up time if
you remember
i think to be honest now it's it's only
in this last year it's probably
i'm pretty sure it was on that laptop
about 80 odd days
yeah because i i have a
system service that i run on all my
computers
and then the longest my gateway
which is a linux system it's all time uh
uptime record is 895 days
see i've got a long way to go then i
don't think i've ever made 800 days but
i know i've made
almost a year on a uh on a server
running non-stop
almost 365 days yeah um
after a while though it starts to get
needy it starts to want
to do updates yeah and some of those
updates require a reboot and that messes
up your up time
yeah and that's especially true of the
pine time uh the pine
phone it wants to do updates almost
every day it's crazy
it's not smile which i'm happy to do i
don't mind doing the updates but um
but in the external service on the
external surveillance
that me and my friend there are um the
hosting um
um we had um
planned uh a reboot for um the kernel of
upgrades um and yeah it
was 880 some days and we
planned to do a reboot after it it has
turned
888 days and then
just a luck uh two days before on the
886th day
uh the data center had a poor loss
[Laughter]
oh when that happens yeah
mr dog you've been very quiet what have
you been up to sir
um how's your raspberry pi coming along
no
it's not right the saga continues
um i
tried to do ubuntu server edition and
i've had all kinds of problems with that
getting it to boot like i said last week
i couldn't even sign in
um so i tried ubuntu mate
and that looked like it was going to
work but then it
crashed and i i just can't get anything
else to work on that raspbian works fine
no
no issues
in raspbian oh okay because i was going
to say use the
use the operating system that that was
designed for it
yeah chrome won't update in raspbian
i'm thinking of getting an xu4 maybe
that would work better
talk to amira droid he'll he'll be happy
to sell you one
i'm sure he would yeah yeah
ameridroid.com
you're not going to have any luck
getting a fine partner or a pine plain
book probe
or a pine book because they're sold out
right now
so i'm really glad that i got mine when
i when i did so
i could get a chromebook and try putting
ubuntu or something on that
yeah you could i don't know what the
hardware is like we'll see
see how that works out for you a lot of
them have emmcs
so that could truly be that could be a
challenge
this has an emmc in there as well and it
has room to put a uh an 80 millimeter
emmc in it so a larger physical size
which hopefully would translate to a
larger memory
size or storage size yeah i'd like to
i'd like to do that just to see what uh
just to see what happens so maybe i
could just
dd the windows 10 partitions across and
then
make a deal boot into linux that way so
there's all kinds of sneaky ways to do
this
yeah what's your what are you up to sir
what sort of trouble are you getting
yeah
yo yo is not very good by the way just
uh
uh dialecticified is it really
yeah yeah it sort of goes up peculiar
sometimes
oh okay i think it's your bandit
well i can't do anything about that
sorry i really
realized that but don't you thought you
know thank you
it sounded it looked and sounded okay to
me here but
i haven't reviewed the recording yet so
we'll have to do it every so often it
happens
that every so often it tends to go off
yeah and then it goes back into that
okay thank you i appreciate that yeah
yeah well
done i i use the same operating system
as you brian
um actually this computer was a uh
given to me from an external uh
people that uh deal with me accessory
nurse and uh
she wanted windows 7 on it and she
couldn't get windows 10 so
she will throw it away and i got it and
i put the burns on
her and no problems with it at all no no
problems
that were meant on it at all things
worked ever since yeah
no problem i keep telling you that you
know
yeah um but uh i i bought one from
amazon
which i never bought in now um i'm
saying it partly worked
and i've been having some discussions
with amazon about replacing it
and uh they keep talking to the um
supply and demand goal and
you get no joy out of them all the time
so
i'm gonna give them to monday and i'm
another word woman if they can get me
money back
uh i got no idea what's wrong with it
but uh it means so is this a laptop or a
desktop peter
no it's a piece of electronics it's a
natural all right okay
okay because you've got solder things in
like that can you see them
yeah yeah i see them they're surface
mount parts they're good fun
they are good fun and i'm not i'm not
i'm not
and i'm not very uh confident putting
them in particularly with my eyes at the
moment
and i i draw the limit at surface mount
that's one thing i'm not going to try
i i i when i retired i i i just was
service man was coming in and
uh i decided i'll never touch her but
uh a friend of mine said he'll have a go
as well
so we think let me go and shoot or
something but
it's probably going back to amazon
probably but
it worked up to the up to the
synthesizer but
uh for some reason the amplifier chip
decided to
go short and uh if they just talked it
unbearable
anybody knows anything about uh i
squared c
i squared c uh interfaces
yeah it is a an on the wire protocol
peter
um it's a serial protocol
yeah in our beauty university but a long
time ago
um i want to use it to connect to a
piece of
board and uh it's using linux or on the
pie
anybody got any ideas yeah i don't know
i don't know that much about it i've
i've used it on an arduino
before where i've um where i've just
been messing with with the arduino to
um to try and get it to talk to other
units but
i've used pre-built libraries i've never
never written anything from scratch yeah
yeah yeah
that that's what i'm looking for the
libraries particularly
and uh i would i would check um
adafruit adafruit is a company in new
york that um
that gives libraries away for free to
drive a lot of the
peripherals that work with arduinos so
that might be uh
that was mentioned to me the other day
uh like a fruitcat though
um but the the ones that we used were a
long time ago
20 years ago or something uh and
i remember you have to give each device
a address
you know things to tell it which one to
wake up and
right right talk to that question yeah
yeah
and already that's about as much as i
know i don't know much more than that
peter i'm sorry about that but
that's that's about as much as i can as
i can tell you yeah
okay okay i've done a lot of looking
through it sometimes but
you know the libraries are the libraries
are written in c and c
plus plus so uh i know you like pascal
so you're probably what they were they
do at pisco library they seemed
as well which was uh on youtube yeah i
don't know that there's any pascal
maybe there is i've it's been a while
since i've looked at it there there
might be some pascal stuff but
i don't know i've done so i've done see
but a long time ago
i don't mind doing that going i was
pretty good but
i've done it for a long time you know i
forgot most of
so we're at the we're at the end of the
30 minutes so i'm sorry about that
um so uh i just want to go one more time
around
the table to see if anyone's got any uh
last remarks before i close it down so
uh
doug if you'd like to go first everyone
have a great day
sun's shining here in rochester it's
looking beautiful out there nice
nice yeah i'll have to see if i can go
fly the airplane this afternoon that'll
be
that'll be the thing for me how about
you brian what do you what uh do you
have any
final comments before we close it down
no just thanks for letting me in guys
it's always
interesting i'll certainly make an issue
of
uh coming on every week no problem
please do
absolutely you're more than welcome
absolutely join us anytime
sobu how about you yeah i'm
upgrading some systems in the data
association that i'm sitting on the
border so i have my day
okay so you're going to be busy for a
while by the looks of it
yeah all right well thank you all for
joining thank you very much i thoroughly
enjoyed it as always brian
real pleasure to meet you i'm glad
you're glad you can make it this time
and
uh look forward to seeing you uh look
forward to seeing you next week
and i think you said your time zone
changes next next week correct
yes it'll be five o'clock five years
it'll be 5 pm gmt for you guys next week
as well yeah yep that's right no worries
all right then everybody have a great
week take care stay safe
bye bye everyone
[Music]
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