PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

My mom accidentally knocked over a glass of water on my Mac when it was maybe six months old; We let it sit for a few days and dry out, and it’s worked more or less fine ever since.

When the Mac was maybe three years old, it started having little hiccups; Every so often it would shut down at random and have to be rebooted (hasn’t done this in well over a year), sometimes it runs incredibly hot, and sometimes the plug doesn’t work. The overheating doesn’t seem to affect the performance of the machine, but it still gets really hot and I’ll end up putting on top of a central A/C vent in the house to cool it down; It has not done this at least 2020…

The most glaring technical issue is that touchpad mouse no longer works properly. Blake at Dtown Tech quoted me $300 for everything because his method involved destroying the battery to access the touchpad; If the computer were only a couple years old, I’d do it, but not on a machine that about 4 years old. Blake did something to make the mouse less touch sensitive and it worked for a little bit, but now it barely works at all, and I use a regular mouse plugged into the USB port.

Sound only seems to be coming out of one speaker, and it’s been that way since at least 2019; When headphones are plugged into the jack, sound is very muted coming out of the right side unless I mess with the cord.

 

My very first laptop was a 2004ish HP that my mom bought new and gave me in 2006; One night in about September 2007, I was surfing the net, and the damn thing just died for no reason. A trip to Geek Squad the next night determined that the hard drive was done and it was more cost effective to buy a new machine; My parents bought new a HP that same night!

The 2007 HP should have, in theory, lasted until at least 2010 or so; However, in about June of 2009, I smashed it in a fit of rage.

This was over 12 years ago and I was not as mature then as I am now. The laptop froze up or something, I got angry, and I whacked it with the charger. This hit was just a matter of bad luck; I not only dented the plastic shell around the keyboard, but dealt a fatal blow to the hard drive. By this time, I was in college, and my parents determined that at this point a laptop was a necessity; They gave me stern lecture about taking better care of my stuff and bought me a new laptop.

 

The 2009 HP was one of my favorites ever; It was this cool copper color and it’s one downside was that it had Vista…

I forget what happened to this laptop, but I got about two and a half years out of it; I think it may have gotten a virus (even though I had software to mitigate that), and every time I thought that I got rid of the virus it would come back in months or even weeks…

The 2009 HP is the one I spilled a bottle of soda on when it was three days old, but luckily my Geek Squad protection plan covered the replacement of the motherboard.

 

I still do not remember exactly why I put the 2009 HP computer out to pasture, but in late 2011 my parents bought me a Samsung laptop (I think it was a Samsung); The Samsung did not have any technical issues, but rather it just fell apart (bits of plastic came off and shit). I believe that by 2013 I had gotten a new computer (another HP which I believe I still have). The HP was still operational when I bought the Mac, but was a bit beat up just because I take my laptops everywhere and don’t baby them…

I discovered early on that like the PC it was supposed to eventually replace, the Mac did not have enough space to store my incredibly largely college of photos without the use of an external hard drive; External hard drives that had initially been used only on my PC would not work with my Mac. The Mac was used for word, iTunes, and emails, etc…

The PC was used for photo storage, photo editing, video editing, and pretty much everything else.

In 2017 or so, the PC started giving my trouble, and I started using my dad’s Toshiba laptop; My dad eventually bought a new laptop and just gave me the Toshiba.

 

The Toshiba was working okay until just last month; It started slowing down in 2019 or so, and towards the end of 2020 it really started showing issues. It would constantly have to undergo “startup repair”, it froze regularly and would have to be restarted, and it just didn’t work as well.

Last month, I was uploading photos to Facebook and it froze; It would not I freeze like it had before, so I turned it off and restarted it. It gave the option of either initiating “startup repair” or just starting normal boot up. Startup repair did nothing, so I tried to start it like normal, and it initially seemed like it was going to work but then it briefly flashed the blue screen of death before going to a black screen with an abnormal-looking cursor.

After trying several times to get the Toshiba going, I realized it was likely done.

 

About a week and a half ago, I pulled out what I believe to be 2013-2014 HP that had been sitting for at least three years and fired it up; I forgot why I’d shelved it, but it seems to be working okay and I was using it to upload photos until the Dell arrived…

 

Drove across the Delaware with the flag on the back of the truck, since it’s 4th of July weekend, and of course it really started raining…

 

Parents are gone for the weekend, and contrary to what some people might think, I can cook!

I combined some Mac and Cheese and Italian pasta, then mixed in the cheese powder (even though the Mac and Cheese was expired) and created salmon mac and cheese!

 

Those waterproof aprons I used when juicing lemons and limes at Puck were mine, purchased on Amazon, so I took them with me when Puck closed; I put the white one on so I wouldn’t mess up one of my favorite 3XL T-shirts that I was wearing, and if you look closely at the bottom of the pic you can sorta see the bottom of the apron…

 

Finished product; Tasted pretty good!



And I’ve still got a metric shit-ton of cheese noodles in the fridge!

 

That bridge looks kinda sketchy!

 

Fine when nobody's around but too narrow on a busy weekend! I saw a truck almost hit the guardrail!

 

Hated this one bridge back in Pittsburgh, think it was called the 31st street bridge. Anyways I would get stuck on it in traffic and trucks and busses would come from the other direction and when they passed me the bridge would start bouncing up and down, it was terrifying.

 

On my back deck; Two spiderwebs and a daddy longlegs…

 

As I’ve said many time before, my parents’ house is two stories and has separate central A/C and heat systems for the first and second floors; Like most newer houses in the area, our house has straight-cool A/C units has natural gas forced air heat. This consists of a 2.5-ton 14 SEER Goodman A/C for the 1st floor and basement (with the 90% efficient gas furnace in the basement), and a 2-ton 14 SEER Goodman A/C (with the gas furnace in the attic); I have no idea what size the furnaces are, but if I had to guess, I’d say the main level furnace is somewhere in the range of 50,000 to 60,000 BTUs and the upstairs furnace is 40,000 to 50,000 BTUs. The house is like 3,000 square feet if you don’t include the unfinished basement…

By comparison, the townhouse in Furlong was at least 500 square feet smaller than this place; The townhouse had two identical Carrier systems, one for the 1st floor and one for the second floor, both located in the basement. Both systems consisted of a 2-ton 13 SEER A/C unit and a 40,000 BTU 90% efficient gas furnace. I believe that the system in the townhouse worked better than the one in this house, and even because the HVAC equipment in the townhouse was from a better company…

 

My bedroom is not satisfactorily comfortable when it’s warm out unless the thermostat is set to 67 degrees. The second floor of my house uses flex duct, and my room is also effectively “the last stop” for the air flow. Two different HVAC techs could not 100% correct the problem; Go figure I set the thermostat from 68 to 67 and notice a difference!

It is was nowhere near as hot today as it was just a few days ago, but it was still warm and humid; I decided to see if the 5-year old 2-ton Goodman could get the the second floor down to 65 degree, and guess what…?

 

Don’t know why the 1st floor unit hasn’t gotten it down to 68 yet, but yeah, my parents and I like it cold when we sleep!

 

I’ve said this before; I learned to stop complaining about what temperature the A/C is set to when I visit a friend or relative who keeps it above about 72-74…

I once got into an argument with my aunt because she asked me to turn the temperature on the thermostat up due to it being too cold in her opinion; I was pissed!

Too cold? Put on an extra blanket and leave me alone, because it’s my house and I like it cold!

 

Happy 4th guys, hope everyone had a great day