Back Online and Testing

Got the power supply and  have hooked it up and the system is under test. Thankfully, nothing was blown except the power supply.

Here are comparison photos between the old and new power supplies. The 850Watt Focus and the 1000Watt Prime. Same manufacturer and both fully modular so that the cables could just be re-plugged into the new supply. Worked like a charm. Back up in about 30 minutes. No cables to replace or re-route.

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Power Supply Died

October, 2017 I built an AMD Ryzen System with all new components. It’s been great. I’ve upgraded it with a second SSD and a second larger HD for video game captures.

Today, the power supply blew.

As you can see, the top blew out of the main large Electrolytic Capacitor. There was even an embossed X where the blowout was supposed to occur if pressure built up. Well at least, it didn’t blow sideways all over the place.

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UPS and USPS Working Together? A Joke.

Update: Check the end for the latest

I ordered something from NewEgg. It was a very small item – 0.28 lbs. And they shipped it for free via UPS and USPS “Innovations”.

Here are the tracking pages both from NewEgg and  From UPS. I’m sure the NewEgg page is just an automatic digest from the UPS data, so NewEgg is not the issue here. But notice the route and expected delivery date reported by UPS. What a JOKE.

So the service that UPS is using here is called USPS Innovations, which is apparently a service where UPS gets to use USPS for the “Last Mile” delivery of the package to save the UPS driver from driving to my home. No problem. But there are two nonsense things with UPS reporting of the tracking and delivery times for this service.

  1. UPS sends the package from California to near FREAKING Seattle Washington, before sending it back to me in Oregon 1/3 of the way from California to Washington. In other words, a thousand miles out of it’s way.
  2. UPS reports that it’s only going to take USPS less than a day to get it almost 400 miles from Fife, WA, near Seattle to me in Coos Bay.

So either, UPS just made a mistake about how long it would take USPS to deliver on that last mile – eh hem last 400 miles.

Continue reading “UPS and USPS Working Together? A Joke.”

Shadowbringers Complete

After grinding crafting for three weeks or so, I took another approach to finish Shadowbringers. With Red Mage, finishing the Role quests, and then picking up “Weathered” ilvl 430 gear from Grenoldt in The Tempest. This gear is available for free for each role once you finish the Role Quests at level 80. The Red Mage final solo duty was not that hard to complete on the average ilvl 409 gear set at the time. The Duty Finder waits on the final two duties to complete Shadowbringers was about 20 minutes each on a DPS job, but the review before hand of the MTQCapture guides on youtube were quite a lot of help.

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Red Mage in Eulmore

I’ll be leveling my White Mage job to 80, completing her Role quests and then grinding some Goetia Tomestones for gear. The Any purchases with Goetia stones is gated on completing Shadowbringers so now that’s out of the way.

The Ronkan Caster Gear from Goetia stones is awful looking. But I guess that’s what glamour is for. The healer gear is the same with a slightly different tan tone. I’ve not bothered to check out the other gear sets.

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Ronkan Caster Gear

So between and after trips to the Roulette, it’s back to crafting.

May you walk in the Light of the Crystal.
:ww

All DoH / DoL Jobs 50+

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All DoH / DoL jobs are 50 or above now. And I crafted a new set of DoH gear. But there did not seem to be a set of DoL gear to craft, so I bought a set in Ishgard. There are some crafting pieces, but each are job specific and I don’t want to fill the Armory. I’m buying Green Level 50 main hand tool from my Grand Company for seals and crafting the Off Hand tools. Most of the leveling has come from the Once a Day Grand Company Supply and Provisioning turn-ins, which have given plenty of seals for the Main Hand Tools. The Grand Company clothing pieces are all job specific which will fill up the Armory, so I’m sticking with Generic sets.

Here’s the DoL set I found in Ishgard.

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Rock’n Forward Into The ’90s

My house dates from the 1970’s, and the kitchen lighting fixtures apparently date from then too. They have LEDs, but there is lots of Spillover around the shades and with LEDs they are too bright. By spillover I mean that far away from the fixture you are looking directly at the bulb rather than through the shade. Notice the attempt to dim one of them by adding Trash Bag plastic to the shade. Not a good idea with Incandescent bulbs, but no problem with heat from LEDs. Anyway that was a failure. The spillover made that useless.

Time for an upgrade.

Wayfair had some nice ones for not a lot of money and free shipping.

WhooHoo… We are rock’n in the 90’s now. Ok So a Can Lighting upgrade was too much work. But these only have one bulb, which is right for using LEDs and they are attractive and spillover free.

I’m way happy.
:ww

LED Torchiere is Cool

I just got an LED Torchiere Floor Lamp from Wayfair.Wayfair Torchiere Floor Lamp Detail.png

Here it is where I’m using it. It’s probably hard to see in the clutter.

The top red circle is the top light aimed at the ceiling. The bottom red circle is the task light. I have a FLIR thermal camera and here are the temperatures for the two lights.

Task Light First. Back and Front.

And here is the top ceiling light. Back and front.

This is after running it for several hours on high. The power supply is a wall wart that supplied 24 volts at 1.5 amp for a maximum of 36 watts. Way down from the Halogen light I’m replacing that has a 300 watt ceiling directed light and a 50 watt task light.

I’ve been waiting for a couple of years and watching for an LED version of this light. For a long time only Halogen versions were available.

May you walk in the light of LEDs.
:ww

Well Into the Roaring 40s

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Lots of progress in DoH and DoL jobs in the past couple of days using Leves and Grand Company Supply and Provisioning turn-ins. Guildleves are throttled by the game quite severely. After starting with with 99, Leve Allowances, this is down to 27 now.  Apparently I get 3 every 12 hours or 6 per day, but that doesn’t take long to eat up.

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But Grand Company Supply and Provisioning is handed out once each day at noon and that is a very nice way to make XP.

Guess I’ll be getting back to just moving through the Crafting Logs and doing items in order. That seems to give quite a bit of XP and it’s only throttled by the need to gather materials. The Job quests often require turn in of a High Quality item, which can be quite time consuming a wasteful to accomplish. I often just buy the HQ item on the market board but sometimes the prices are unreasonable – 40,000 gil for a single level 30 jacket. All I need is XP, I don’t really need to complete the job quests as far as I know. Not sure anything is gated on them. So back to the Crafting Logs for me.

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Starlight This Year is No Fun

What isn’t much fun this year is the Starlight celebration quests. I’ve tried several times and just can’t get the hang of doing the Caroling quests. So I guess I wont be getting the Starlight Barding this year. But I have an outfit from past years.

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Happy Starlight!
:ww

More Progress

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More progress on the DoH / DoL front.

Several new methods turned up for gaining XP. Turning in Grand Company Delivery Missions gives an awesome amount of XP, but you have no control over what they want that day.

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But I polished all these off pretty quickly and it jumped some of the jobs quite a bit.

Another helpful activity is Leves as I’ve suggested, but I found that outposts were not available to me for some reason, but after a little research, I found that there was a big list of activities back at Gridania for some of my jobs.

Carpentry and Leather working were today’s favorites with no work for the other jobs.

I finished up some of the easier Specialty Housing items and put them up for sale.

Some of these items require “Fine Wax” which is a drop from a chest in the Haukke Manor dungeon. I’m sure I could farm this solo, but I’m not sure the XP or the selling prices would be worth the trouble at this point.

Tomorrow I need to work on Goldsmith and Alchemy since they are a little behind the others.

:ww

Quarter of the Way

I’m grinding most of the professions and have made over 25% progress toward the Level Cap of 80.

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So far, the Gil cost is about neutral. I’m mostly grinding using Miner and Botanist. But there are a few items that can only be obtained by Fishing, and those I’ve bought off the Market Place.

Also I’ve run across some examples of how Leve’s are scaled between Battle and Field/ Crafting jobs.

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