Topics

31

Off Topic / the unit has acheived another year of (mostly) successful operation

« on: June 08, 2014, 09:21:12 AM »

hello forums i come bearing great news to the humans
i am now a year older so we should CELEBRATE

happy birthday to me

items acquired:
$20
two cakes
2 trade paperbacks of robots in disguise
2 cat food can lids???
an aspca keychain??
a pair of socks featuring subway routes
shoelaces with pawprints on them
a sort-of preorder for an upcoming transformers game

that's it so far bc i haven't opened my presents yet

32

Off Topic / anyone else get hit by a really bad storm today?

« on: June 05, 2014, 10:31:23 PM »

earlier today we got hit by a really bad storm: winds up to 80mph, power outages, raining so hard that you couldn't see out the windows, and super frequent lightning. we lost out shed door, parts of the walls of the shed, and a big section of our fence. there are long rows of powerlines just laying in roads and a lot of trees got blown over.

so has anyone else been hit by this storm? it didn't really stay here for too long

33

Off Topic / it is a time for mild celebration

« on: February 09, 2014, 10:20:34 AM »

as has been brought up a few times in the past, i run a blockland forums-based tumblr. basically i take screencaps of forum posts and post them for other people's enjoyment. sometimes people submit things.

today my little baby of a blog got its 100th follower. this is surprising because i don't think 100 forumers have a tumblr.

to celebrate (and because i haven't gotten any submissions in a while), come and check out the tumblr in all of its non-social-justice-warrior glory right here

34

Off Topic / so my sister just got kicked out of a college-level high school

« on: December 23, 2013, 01:24:11 PM »

...over one essay that she was too lazy to turn in

okay so i'm going to just rant here and i'm going to be all over the place but i am just so mad right now

so basically the school she was going to was like a college prep school. the students stayed in their dorms, built their own schedules, and could earn up to like, 40 hours of college credit. and it was way cheaper than actually attending a college, since tuition for a year only costs $300.

but the thing is, you can't have more than one D by the end of the semester or you're out. at one point my sister had three D's but managed the get herself to only one after spending several weeks on "academic probation." she was doing really well until my dad saw that she didn't turn in one essay when it was due and now she has two D's. he told her that she still had the chance to get in touch with the teacher and maybe work something out to fix her grade, but she said no.

this really kind of pisses me off that she'd just throw it all away like that, because now she has to come back to school with me again. she was going to a school with people who shared her interests and where she had more independence than she did here. but now she's coming back to a school where she never had any academic challenge, was stuck with classmates who never worked and only annoyed her and disrupted classes, etc etc

really, the students here are absolutely awful. they're the most disrespectful forgetwads i've ever seen and to them, a D is a good grade. there's absolutely no challenge at the high school here but yet almost everyone seems to struggle with even the easiest concepts. the school she went to had kids who knew how to behave and could actually complete simple tasks.

my thoughts are kind of everywhere but i guess that's because i'm so pissed that she'd just throw away the world of opportunity that college prep school gave her simply over one essay

35

Off Topic / yo forums lets talk about thanksgivin dinner

« on: November 27, 2013, 07:47:56 PM »

so i'm in a hungry mood and i'm tired so let's hear about all the stuff you thanksgiving celebrators are gonna be shoving in your faces tomorrow
go into every gross and painstaking detail about the meal

i'm kind of surprised this kind of thread hasn't been made yet since thanksgiving is like. tomorrow. and i know we have plenty of american forumers here who undoubtedly celebrate this stuff

my family is gettin out stuff like deep fried turkey, home-made chips and sourdough bread, green bean casserole, that forgetin cranberry jello stuff, mashed potatoes with gravy, some other stuff and some pies my dad made
it's gona be great and i'm going to get so fat

so let's hear it y'all i'm in a social mood

36

Creativity / carolcat dissects another computer monitor (IT BEGINS on page 3)

« on: November 10, 2013, 09:25:31 PM »

so around the start of the school year i was helping the EAST lab at my school troubleshoot computer problems (such service that has landed my "apprentice" and i an honorary seat in my district's IT department) and helped take out a bunch of faulty monitors
well the teacher was good friends with my sister and so she's pretty positive towards me and as such gives me a lot of extra privileges
these privileges include letting me take home a faulty monitor to dissect it

so the monitor sat around for like, two months before i finally got around to taking it apart
after about an hour's work, here are my results:


the overview of the mess i made


circuit board stuff


the silver circle thingies are the monitor speakers and the orange thing is the control board from the front of the monitor, the rest of the stuff in that bag is stuff like lcd number things, microchips, and wires from my dad's days in electrical engineering


the back of the screen itself, i haven't taken it apart yet due to the ominous warning about mercury being in the screen's fluorescent lamp


the front of the screen


the dumbass who kept trying to eat all of the screws

some of these pictures are bad so if you want better ones then let me know

discuss i guess and tell me if taking apart that screen will be the worst decision of my life or not

37

Off Topic / is anyone else here in the stock market game?

« on: October 09, 2013, 10:15:56 PM »

so one of my teachers got me in this stock market game (http://smgww.org ) and i'm told it's some kind of competition
but the problem is that i have no clue how the forget stocks work
all i know is green = good and you want to invest in stuff that grows

so does anyone else here participate in this thing that could give me some advice on it?

38

Off Topic / forums i need suggestions for headphones with built in mic

« on: September 23, 2013, 09:57:18 PM »

so earlier i noticed that my beloved pair of plantronics g307's (at least i think that's what it is?) sound is starting to get iffy
it'll randomly shift all sound over to the right ear and i'm pretty sure the cord leading into the headset has worked itself loose somehow
i've had a couple problems in the past where fiddling with the volume wheel causes the sound to go to the left ear but that's usually fixed by messing with the wheel again
i've had this headset for well over a year i think, possibly two because i really can't remember when i got them
i picked them up for like $30 and they've been really good to me- they've had good sound and mic quality and they're pretty comfy

obviously since i'm having problems with them now, i want to look into getting a new pair in the event that these do give out on me completely
here's what i'm looking for:

cost under $50
not a USB headset and needs to be wired
has the mic boom built into the headset (it's way more convenient for me and i don't need 5 star quality recording)
provides good sound (before you say "headsets like that never have good sound or recording" then you are wrong because my current pair is amazing)

i'm pretty sure that's my criteria but i'll add more as i see fit i guess
if you're hear to bitch about my headset preferences then please don't even bother posting

39

Forum Games / silver legs, swinging free - steamy hot button pushing

« on: August 20, 2013, 09:36:29 PM »

a silent scream snaps you to a conscious state
you look down to see silver plated legs reflecting a boiling abyss below you, swinging as they're carried along at a leisurely pace
the sound of heavy machinery echos around the dim chamber

40

Off Topic / dear forums i require assistance coping with an infant

« on: July 18, 2013, 09:50:28 PM »

i've been stuck with a seven month old baby getting shoved in my face and slobbering over my stuff and i every day for over two weeks
i'm starting to struggle with putting up with this baby's stuff

how do i handle this situation

41

Off Topic / hello forums it is my birthday

« on: June 08, 2013, 01:40:21 PM »

yes i am now 14
only four more years until i'm legal!

the loot:
a three month old snowshoe siamese (i named him starscream)
kreo transformers bruticus and devastator (thank you to a wonderful forumer for these)
botshots action masters shockwave (also thank you to that forumer)
grey and white maxi skirt
transformers: more than meets the eye volume 3
generation 1 shockwave (this is the greatest present)
a creeper plushie (from my sister bc she knows they scare the stuff out of me sometimes)
neon genesis evangelion volumes 1 through 3

and then $70 which i've already spent go me


so yeah happy birthday me

42

Off Topic / carolcat does a livestream with commentary!!

« on: May 30, 2013, 04:25:24 PM »

here's the link
i'm playing hammerwatch beta with a friend and there'll be a+ commentary
come watch

43

Creativity / carolcat takes up an object head project [yeah we're done]

« on: May 10, 2013, 10:42:52 PM »

Earlier today, I was inspired to turn an old CRT monitor and make it into a helmet. So I took out some tools and dug out one of my dad's dying monitors (I'm not very keen on using it anyways) and started on disassembling the thing.

The disassembly process took close to an hour, even with a good deal of help from my mother. An irrelevant tab snapped off in the back and we had to snip several wires that were glued down, but other than that it went well.

A few pictures of the insides of the monitor:


(the heart of the machine, we had to be super careful with it because it's so heavy......)


(our hands were absolutely covered in the dust from that thing)

Cleaning the plastic frame of the CRT took me close to two hours. I had to dust, wipe, and then rinse every piece of the frame. It's all currently drying, but here's the pictures:




(it's upside-down and backwards so the box fan on the counter behind me can dry it better)


(there aren't actually any USB ports in the back of the monitor)
(fun fact: the frame shows that there are openings for a headphone and microphone jack, but when the monitor is assembled, these openings are not visible and there are no actual jacks inside the monitor)

Tomorrow I'll be cutting a hole in the bottom for my head, reassembling the frame, adding foam inside to make it all easier to wear, spraypainting the outside, and then cutting and tinting a sheet of plexiglass to fit the screen (my dad actually works at a plexiglass/acrylic company so the material will be easy to get a hold of). I'm hoping to attach the video in and power cable to the back for show and then seeing if I can maybe set up an LED on the inside-front frame so I can have a lighted power indicator.

thoughts/discuss/tips/etc

44

Off Topic / would someone be able to resize and trans this for me?

« on: January 07, 2013, 08:17:14 PM »

if someone could make this into an avatar size for me, that would be great. i won't mind if you crop a bit of the extra space on the side off, and if you need to get rid of his shadow, that's fine, too.

45

Off Topic / i have somehow frozen my ipod nano

« on: December 10, 2012, 11:50:59 PM »

i was listening to some music to help me sleep and turned on my ipod to pause it but it froze. i've tried holding down the power button, plugging it into the wall and unplugging it, but nothing's working. should i just leave the battery run out or what?

i'd go google a guide but the only internet-capable device i have access to right now is a dsi and it doesn't have enough system memory to load any of the guides i tried looking at.

i don't know what generation it is, but i think i got it around early january 2011