Microsoft Just Revealed How INSANELY POWERFUL The Xbox Series X Will Be.

https://youtu.be/3qreWiBtcFY

I've been interested in how powerful the XBox Series X is going to be, because I can't build a computer this powerful for $1000, and maybe not even $1200. I want a computer with this much power.

Well, this video reveals that the custom APU chip, the central processing unit with the GPU built in, is going to cost over $500 by itself. That doesn't include any other parts.

Rumor has it that Microsoft plans to take a $200 loss on the system. The rumored price is $599. They can make that up with subscription services.

I want AMD to sell me the APU. It will never happen. They have revealed plans to release a video card with the same GPU technology.

Phosphates and dishwasher detergents

For about 50 years the United States has been phasing out phosphates used in detergents, and they were completely banned about 10 years ago. The phosphates cause algae blooms that are supposedly harmful to fish.

The problem is that the phosphates were very effective in automatic dishwashing detergents. They not only helped clean the dishes, but they acted as a kind of water softener to prevent hard water stains, calcium build-up, on glassware on other dishes. About a dozen years ago there were a ton of complaints by consumers that dishwashers weren't getting dishes clean as they used to, and because of the hard water stains, the glassware looked dirtier after they were washed in the dishwasher than before.

I have been having this problem. There were noticeable hard water stains on my glassware and other dishes. So I tried washing once with dishwashing detergent, and a second time with no detergent, but I poured vinegar into a 16 once container and set it in the top rack of the dishwasher. After the second wash, everything was spotless. Since the vinegar is acidic, it dissolved any calcium stains.

It is believed by many people that "Tang" can be used to clean out your dishwasher. Since "Tang" is an acid, it might actually work. I had a dishwasher salesman tell me to put "Tang" powder in a cup on the top rack. (I would not do this with the detergent, because one is basic and the other is acidic. At the very least they would cancel each other out, if not react with each other in unpredictable ways.)

However, if you have stains in your dishwasher, bleach is much more effective. In my old house, I had a cheap GE dishwasher that was not stainless steel inside, but it had a cheap plastic interior. That interior got so badly stained that I thought that I was going to have to replace the dishwasher. After I played around with the dishwasher, I realized that each wash would go through three cycles: an initial rinse and drain cycle, a long wash cycle, followed by another drain and rinse and drain cycle. All dishwashers work this way. To solve my stain problem, I waited for the long wash cycle to start, and then I poured a bottle of bleach into the dishwasher. However, when it got to the final drain and rinse cycle, which could have drained out all the bleach, I turned the knob back to the wash cycle so that the bleach would not drain out. I did this a few times so that there was plenty of time for the bleach to circulate in the dishwasher. The end result was amazing because the dishwasher was spotless inside.

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Salads

I have been experimenting with making salads with store-bought shredded cabbage because it stays fresher much longer than lettuce. I could also see using a combination of the two.

My simple recipe is to use 20 to 50% of a package of shredded cabbage with a generous sprinkling of bacon bits and a generous amount of Italian dressing. This is very good by itself, but with tomato wedges, it is almost perfect.

In the last couple of days, I have tried adding strawberries, chopped apple, and cashews. These don't necessarily make the salad taste better, but it is a good way to eat fruit and nuts. I especially like the apple in the salad.

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Power outage/Transformer blowing up?

A major storm front moved across Indiana in a southeastern direction, causing property damage across the state and about 50,000 people to lose power.

On Monday nights I run online the Greenwood Chess Club that I started five years ago. We are not meeting in person because of the pandemic.

While I was playing chess online, I noticed that it was storming outside and at 8:35 PM my power went out. This was accompanied by a very loud buzzing sound that had me worried. The first thing I did was to text the guy I had been playing to tell him that my power went out.

The power toggled on and off, again with the troubling loud buzzing. I decided to investigate. The power came back on. I opened my garage and stepped outside. This time I saw what looked like a huge electrical spark above my neighbor's house accompanied by that loud buzzing sound again, but this looked like nothing I had ever seen before. It was obviously an electrical spark, but it looked more like an orange vertical bar. (Electrical sparks cause the electrons to be stripped off of air molecules, which turns the air into the 4th state of matter, called Plasma. When you see an electrical spark, what you are really seeing is the plasma emit light. You can't actually see electricity.) I figured that this had to be a transformer in the process of blowing up. Maybe it was on fire, which might explain why the spark was orange in color, although I'm not sure that this is a good explanation. Maybe the chemicals in the transformer caused the spark to look orange.

This looked scary. My first thought was that I did not want this to burn down my neighbor's house and then take mine with it. There were people in the street watching this strange sight, and I yelled at them and asked if they had called 9-11. They said that they had. One of the neighbors yelled that there was a tree on fire, but I couldn't see this from my vantage point. Then immediately the power went off again and I was relieved because the situation looked very dangerous. Very shortly fire trucks drove by, so I thought thank goodness the Fire Department is here, but they just kept on driving. In the middle of a thunderstorm, they probably had other problems to deal with.

I was not inclined to get any closer to investigate, especially since it was still storming outside. There was a huge crack of lightning close by which convinced me to seek shelter back in the house.

So I mostly sat in the dark texting my friends about what happened until the power came back on 2 hours and 20 minutes later.

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Re: Frustrated

I tried to send this from my phone.  I incorrectly copied his comments and copied his same comment 3 times.  I'll fix that below.

On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 8:48 PM <john2001plus@gmail.com> wrote:

Craig:

I am really really frustrated

I think I'm studying and learning more and it's like I play worse and worse.

I think that I have been expecitng hard work to pay off too fast.

John:
It is a common complaint.  I don't seem to have this problem.  I have a friend who thinks that studying tactics makes him worse. My attitude is that I try to master the easy stuff trying to make that as automatic as possible. Someone once said that to be "extraordinary" you have to do "extra ordinary" stuff.  It is like the pro who practices layups hundreds of times. The 1, 2, 3 move problems on my website I have done at least 200 times over the last 25 years.  Same for the slightly more advanced 1000 problems on the Shredder App.  I have rehearsed basic endings just so that I can do them without much thought.

Craig:

I guess that what I put in will keep building on on what I got.

John:

Slow and steady wins the race.

You have a plan that you follow consistently, not that this is always possible since human existence is difficult, but I really focus on mastering the "fundamentals".

Best wishes,

John Coffey

Frustrated

Craig:

I am really really frustrated

I think I'm studying and learning more and it's like I play worse and worse.

I think I'm studying and learning more and it's like I play worse and worse.

John:
It is a common complaint. I don't seem to have this problem. I have a friend who thinks that studying tactics makes him worse. My attitude is that I try to master the easy stuff trying to make that as automatic as possible. Someone once said that to be "extraordinary" you have to do "extra ordinary" stuff. It is like the pro who practices layups hundreds of times. The 1, 2, 3 move problems on my website I have done at least 200 times over the last 25 years. Same for the slightly more advanced 1000 problems on the Shredder App. I have rehearsed basic endings just so that I can do them without much thought.

Craig:

I think I'm studying and learning more and it's like I play worse and worse.

John:

Slow and steady wins the race.

You have a plan that you follow consistently, not that this is always possible since human existence is difficult, but I really focus on mastering the "fundamentals".

Best wishes,

John Coffey

Commodore History Part 3 - The Commodore 64

This guy is a huge Commodore 64 fan, understandably so.  However, in terms of inflation adjusted dollars, it was expensive in 1982, like $1580 in today's dollars.  Even more so if you bought any of the many Commodore 64 accessories.  

A company called Sinclair came up with a cheap computer called the Spectrum that was enormously popular in England and Europe, and Timex sold an upgraded version of the Spectrum in the United States.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpXFB8ZEH30

So I had to write this:

"In 1983 I got a Timex Sinclair 2068 for $200.  It also had a great sound chip and a 3.58 MHZ Z80 and a keyboard that I actually liked.  It had many advantages over the Sinclair Spectrum.  It was much computer for the money, compared to the $595 for the C64, equal to over $1500 today, which for me was way cost-prohibitive.  I temporarily had a healthy business selling software I wrote for the 2068.  I loved this machine.  I'm sure that I would have loved the C64 more with the better graphics, but the cost was a huge issue."

I am actually very proud of the business that I ran selling 2068 software.  This helped me get computer jobs later, and eventually, I worked in the console videogame industry.  

Get Free Coffee at Panera Bread

I've been getting free coffee for about 3 weeks.  I need to cancel the coffee subscription by the end of September in order not to be charged.

https://www.panerabread.com/en-us/mypanera/mypanera-coffee-subscription.html  

Cracked tooth

I got a crack in a tooth. For insurance reasons, I had to go to an oral surgeon in Seymour to have it removed today. I saw my Dentist yesterday, who said that the tooth was cracked and recommend that an oral surgeon take it out. He first tried to book me for a "3D XRay" at an Endondist, but I was going to have to wait a week to get the XRay, so I called the Dentist and told him that I did not want to wait that long. I was in too much pain. He then booked me with the Oral Surgeon today.

On Saturday I ate some hard croutons on a salad that I made. The tooth started hurting on Sunday, and it only got worse over time. By the time I saw the Oral Surgeon on Tuesday I was more than eager to have the tooth removed. It was hurting me quite a bit. I tried using Orajel, which only helped a little. (BTW, I have used both the name brand and the Walmart generic. I suggest sticking with the name brand. The generic did not seem to work as well.)

The surgeon told me that the croutons could have caused the crack, but he thinks that the tooth already had a crack in it and the hard croutons made it worse. I told him that I used to eat popcorn quite a bit, which I no longer do because of diverticulitis, and he said that popcorn can be hard on the teeth.

I asked the oral surgeon if I should avoid hard foods in the future, but he didn't think that was necessary. I brought up the fact that I'm now 60 years old, but he didn't think that it mattered.

My recent experience with dental procedures is that it takes an extra shot to make me numb. He started to remove the tooth but I was still having pain so he gave me another shot. He said that he would wait two minutes for it to work, but I think that he waited less than a minute. He seemed to be in a rush. I had some strong pain as he pulled the tooth out, but for only about 15 seconds. I'm unhappy with the way he handled this.

I assumed that once the tooth was out that everything would be fine, but once the numbness wore out I was in almost as much pain as I was before. The oral surgeon put me on a regiment of both Tylenol and Advil, which maybe is helping. I am just trying to get through the day hoping that tomorrow will be better.

Prior to this I only had about five hours of sleep because it is hard to sleep with a sore tooth.

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com