Mission Statement
This site is dedicated to sharing my research and knowledge about technology and whatever else I've been into for some time.
Robert Heinlein has pretty-much explained my credo in the two below quotes:
"There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted … and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears." - Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert A. Heinlein
WARNING ABOUT ALIEXPRESS
2024-11-27 I have been a longtime AliExpress customer buying thousands of dollars of stuff every year. This year I made the mistake of buying during their Black Friday sales event. I bought a lot of stuff but among that were 2 really nice led flashlights from Truefire, about $16 each. I bought a dozen other things in as many orders that were also shipped at the same time in the same package. When it arrived yesterday it was missing one of the flash lights.
I contacted their customer service and tried to tell them what happened but they rejected my claim that one was missing. They said I did not provide proof. How does one provide proof something was missing? I have contacted them again and they said I need to contact the "logistics company" about the missing TrueFire flashlight. Folks, do NOT buy from AliExpress. You are better off purchasing from an American company because if something is wrong or missing from your order you are going to be out of luck.
This is not the first time I got ripped off via AliExpress.
A few years ago I ordered 100 Harris 1802 CPU and what I got was half 50+ year old (actual) RCA CDP1802 ACE. They could even have been "pulls". I sent pictures of some of the chips (it is hard to take a very close macro image of such chips) and they still rejected my claim. Honestly the vendors ion AliExpress are often dishonest and AliExpress enables them to rip you off. Even though you pay more, you are safer purchasing from Amazon.
In this most recent case, the theft of the flashlight took place within AliExpress packaging center as the bag containing 8 or 9 orders was handled inside AliExpress where it is shipped within one package. The package arrived and there were no holes or repaired areas so the flash light was stolen before it was shipped.
2023-03-07 I am almost blind so very hard to update or create any content. Goodbye.
2022-07-22 If you are wondering where all the content is… It is all here at the same paths that it was before but I have merely removed all the references to it on the left menu panel. You can find it all by using the "List all pages" selection which I left in place. All that content should be considered "retired". I don/t really want to maintain all that since my sight is failing. Unfortunately the Wikidot search engine is still offline so all you can do is use that "List All Pages" selection for now.