That sounds great. What languages can you translate to/from?

And when it shorts due to that, you did not lose an expensive machine.


I am happy that I saw the sun today for the first time in a couple of weeks.

Tomato soup.

oh the association has asked me to help when they can only speak English and no Italian, so I can help them to explain themselves to the judges. There's no Japanese or German refugees XD
They probably can speak more languages then I do.

Anyway, two things that always make me happy are my flatmate cooking for me and the house kitty purring for me.

I've put on some weight since last November and I need to lose a good 11 pounds to return to what I weighed before. Spent all of February bettering my eating habits, like replacing fruit juices with fresh fruit and lemon water. I also avoided all refined carbs such as white pasta, white rice, white orzo and white breads. Reducing my sugar intake was the toughest, but I did it. Lost 4 pounds so far! That's about 1 pound per week. It ain't much but it's enough to make me happy. :) And it's slow enough for me to feel like I can stick to my plan. ;)

Got a USB to SATA cable, tested it, and it works.

Now, I have a drive that has the Windows installation from an old laptop. Should I back up the contents before I wipe the drive? (I think I may try using it as a Raspberry Pi 4 boot device, and see if it still has the same problems with stalling that it does when booted from a SD card. Or I could take the SSD I replaced it with out of the old laptop, back it up, and use that as the boot device for the Pi.)

if theres a remote chance of ANYTHING you may want to keep on there, then yes.

I neglected that a few years back wiping an old xp drive, only to realise after there were 1000s of music production files on there that were not otherwise backed up (it had been so long).

I believe I replaced the drive with an SSD before I did anything with the computer.

How difficult is it to re-install (and activate) Windows on a computer that came with it if the original OS has been wiped?

activation is one thing (if its an OEM version it can be a pain - you'll have to ring microshaft), but you never actually have to activate windows (at least thats been my experience with bugged OEM drives in the past - certainly a fact with win 7 i can attest to). but you'll never have a desktop background and get an annoying but tiny "activate windows now!" thing in the right hand corner. not really an issue though i suppose.

Edit: if you've only replaced the drive then the OEM licence should be valid BTW (sorry, a bit off-kilter there).
Edit2: as to the version of windows, that could be a bigger problem if you dont have a backup of the disc / iso etc already - microshaft dont like keeping old versions available it seems. When my drive died in ~2016 I was forced to get a mirror from an unassociated site and it was in german (requiring a language pack) but it was clean and safe in the end. had it not been for people here advising on that, id have likely lost the plot

I finally got my 2nd SNES to work (I was dragging because of the nightmare my first SNES was and the trauma it caused) and got to play a bit of Slayer (yes, the same as the 90's shonen series). That was the first time I didn't need to go to a friend's house to play it, and oh boy, just hearing the intro song made me smile from ear to ear

These days I just use emulation for my SNES needs.

Then again, it's been discovered that the SNES game Ultima VII: The Black Gate behaves differently in an accurate emulator (like bsnes) than it does on a console. (Note that this is not the same game as the PC game with that title, and should not be treated or judged as such; it's generally considered not as good as the PC game, but it happens to lack the issues that I've complained about in the past.)

(By the way, there are ways to play things like rom hacks on the actual console.)

Sadly, Slayers isn't sold as a rom anywhere, and that's one of the SNES games I want to finish the most. So I'm stuck with playing the physical media

Above zero temperatures made it ideal for a Sunday stroll. I could hear the snow melting! Took my mom thrift store shopping. The idea was that we'd both benefit from the 45-minute walk to get there, physically and conversationally. ;)

Felt like I hit the jackpot at the thrift shop... Found a lovely, solid ceramic bowl, the kind for serving vietnamese pho or ramen soup. And four books to add to my bookshelf backlog (oh, nooooooo!): the Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko. :)

I learned that Xi Jinping struggled in his youth. In the cultural revolution, his father was imprisoned, his sister committed suicide and he was sent to a poor village for 7 years. He struggled and eventually became a moderate political realist who leads China to a peaceful and prosperous future. No political system will ever be perfect but judging by the results, the CCP under Xi has been a blessing for its people and the whole world. I look at China today and see a country that is getting so much better every year while my own country declines. But just like China is not seeking revenge for the century of humiliation it has suffered by European powers, I do not envy China. I am simply happy for all of humanity that an Asian age of rational leadership has dawned. China wants to be whole and harmonious. It does not seek pointless wars in foreign lands, like the USA but will defend its territory. It will not make the same mistakes again. It's all cultural revitalization now, not cultural revolution.