A Windows 8 no-no...

A technique I picked up some time back was to keep my data on a separate drive on my computer. This could be done using either a physically separate hard drive or (on more recent machines) by creating a separate partition on my computer's hard drive.

Shortly after getting my Windows 7 machine—and after finding that I had shortchanged myself in the amount of disk real estate I had reserved for the C: drive—I managed to copy the file structure in my "user" folder (located in the C:\Users directory) to the D: drive and then create a junction in that directory that basically served as a link from the C:\Users directory to the directory on the D: drive.

My Windows 8 ASUS machine came preconfigured with C: and D: drives, with the latter specifically intended for data. And after observing how my C:\Users drive appears to be eating space on the C: drive a bit more rapidly than I care to see, I tried the same trick.

And paid the price, consisting in a bunch of time lost because Windows 8 really, really doesn't like it if you try to move your "user" folder. (I hope that's the only penalty, and that no additional consequence of my failed attempt come back to bite me in the future.)

As it turns out, it would appear that some, if not all, of the directories in my "user" folder can be moved from within the Location tab of the associated Properties folder.

Cheers...

Farblegarg!

Winston Churchill is credited with saying "Never, never, never give up!" To which I am tempted to add a parallel thought, along the lines of "never" assuming that engineers in a bilateral (bilingual) project will have the same passion for accuracy as the translator.

(There's that curs't "assume" word, again. Hanging out like a gob of snot on a doorknob, with the attendant subtext of being unpleasant to consider, yet a thing that—properly arrayed—may be used, from time to time. But I digress...)

Some time ago, I ran across an equipment designation in a Russian source text that had the letter 'С' in it. Now, it so happens that both English and Russian have letters in their respective alphabets that look like 'С', but in English translations, such Russian designations are almost always transliterated (a process by which Cyrillic letters are replaced with English sound-alikes), in which case the 'С' is rendered as an 'S'.

Except that now it turns out the Russian equipment designation is actually the Latin letter 'C' (as in: the letter after 'B' and before 'D'). So all those transliterated designations, with 'S', are... um... wrong.

(The trick of searching for a particular Latin or Cyrillic letter to see if a letter in a designation is one or the other is not entirely reliable, as it turns out, because it requires the source document originator to care enough to switch keyboards so as to type the correct letter. And that is far from a sure thing, these days.)

Funny how nobody has noticed this incorrect designation before... or has it been noticed and simply not brought to anyone's attention?

Battery business...

This year is turning into the Year of the Rechargeable Battery around this place.

I recently fired up my old HP-28C calculator, only to find that the three 'N' batteries had finally run out of steam. Turning to my late stepdad's HP-41C, I found the same problem.

So I did a little digging on the 'net and found a place that not only offered rechargeable 'N' cells at a reasonable price (below $2), but also charged a reasonable amount for shipping a dozen of them in my direction (less than $4).

The package arrived today, and I have to admit that when I first laid eyes on one of the batteries, I was sure it was the wrong size. However, comparing the new and old batteries suggests my concern was the result of an optical illusion (mostly, since the new cells are just a hair longer). Check it out (nonrechargeable Radio Shack Enercell on the left, noname rechargeable on the right):



The trick to charging such cells, however, is their unusual size. Most popular chargers will accommodate AA and AAA batteries, and while the 'N' size appears to be compatible in diameter with the AAA design, it is quite a bit shorter. And so, with the help of a small pair of pliers and some paper clips, I made do:



My only remaining concern is that I wasn't careful enough when ordering to make sure the batteries were LiMH units. As it turns out, the batteries are NiCd, which means having to fuss with them more over the time I use them, since NiCd batteries have a tendency to lose charge over time while doing nothing.

We'll see how this experiment works out over time.

Cheers...

Oh, these kids today...

Spied at a recent garage sale:



I can't tell if this is a "prochonism" or just a run-of-the-mill "anachronism."

Can you tell what's "off" about the price tag (aside from the outrageous price ;^)?