MacPro3,1 Catalina 10.15.2

Things started to go downhill ... The sleep and wakeup didn't work.
Since my system got through so many patches, software and hardware wise, I am losing count on what's what when it comes to isolating the problems.
Oh well is the only things that seems appropriate now.

I did the 10.15.4 update hoping that the sleep and wake up thing would go away, alas, it didn't.

The most frustrating part was to make enough room for the SSD to install the update.  It took me forever to squeeze enough space.  Because of Time Machine and all those snapshots so the Disk Util reports a vastly smaller storage available.  It took me many many trials to actually get rid of the Time machine snap shot restores.  I mean the actual delete takes seconds.

Anyway, still too much troubles.

I found out physically unplug the cable actually helps resetting the system to boot to macOS 10.15.4 otherwise the system just boots to recovery...Strange but true.

Mac Storage space can vary a lot, I mean a lot between Disk Util and Mac Storage

If you can a meager size SSD and some 4TB HDD and use time machine, you will have a hard time when try to re-install the OS to the SSD with you simply delete files or moving files around.  No matter how hard you try or how much free space you you squeeze out on storage, it doesn't matter as long as Disk Util says you only have a few GB available.  Even after you disable Time Machine along the way.

I'm sure I found a similar solution but I just forgot and in retrospect that might not be as effective as this one here.

https://youtu.be/JfvYkhXrqAs


Terminals codes - sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots / com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-19-151241 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-19-151441 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-19-153720 tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2017-12-19-151241


this frees up the space.

MacPro 3,1 on 10.15.2

I have no intention to upgrade to the latest 10.15.4, at least not now or maybe ever.  The system has been solid, that's until a few days ago.  If I could recall any changes it would be the updated Xcode.  Ever since that, I experience some wake up issue.  Given that my keyboard and trackpad are bluetooth only.  Plus my GPU is PC based without the EFI rom or some shit like that.  But I swear, once in a while I do see the Apple logo booting up, that the weirdest shit.

Short of updating the software or removing the Xcode as a trial and error, I proceeded to change the button battery inside.  I don't know but I think this little guy was there from day one so I just changed it now.  Maybe that would help with the sleep wake up issue as the battery is supposed to keep the state of some ROM, or whatever it's called.  I have some faith not a lot that it might just take care of the problem.

Well this whole thing is a hack on borrowed time anyway.

UPDATE:  Well it didn't help...

Country of Origin

Years ago, when Blundstones started manufacturing in China, I kind of got the impression they simply just don't want to talk about it at all.  They talk about tradition and all marketing material simply points to its Australian root.  If the brand has a problem, image wise, in telling people upfront the products are proudly manufactured in China, what do you expect the consumers to react.  Even the brand doesn't believe in that.

When I look at kitchen knives, if they say anything except country of origin, I can pretty sure that they are ashamed that their knives are manufactured in China.  They may have a Japanese name, Japanese steel or German steel or Sweden steel but the actual manufacturing is done in China and they are ashamed of it.  Again, how can I as a consumer buy it if you the brand doesn't even believe it yourself.

Stock Market

Is this the once in a century buying opportunity?  Know yourself.  If you are extremely risk averse or have hypertension or heart disease then it may not be a good idea to go all in even if this opportunity to buy low is once in a century.

It seems like the market is really propped up by a few big name companies, like MAGA or FAAG.  The Dow maybe in a rally and yet your stock might still get stuck in the mud for a long long time.

Iced Coffee or Cold Brewed Coffee

If you want to be scientific about it, I don't necessarily object as everything is kind of scientific.

But sometimes I just find it a little bit inconvenience when people say 3/4 of cups of coffee to 1 cup of water.  Wow, so I have to do fractions to make coffee?  Why at least say 3 cups of coffee to 4 cups of water?

Chances are when if comes to serving the cold brewed iced coffee you would add ice cubes and milk to it.  I see less of a problem if you make a stronger brew to begin with than a weak brew because you can simply add more water or ice or milk to dilute should the brew turn out to be too strong for your taste or mental health.  If you have a weak brew to begin with, then there is little you can do.

Overtime you will find your optimal coffee to water ratio.  I say 1 part of coffee to 4 parts of water is not a bad starting point.

Kitchen Knife

I own a set of Wusthof knives I bought many years ago.  I think I can substitute many with twenty, or more than twenty.  The knives are still functioning like the day I bought them with minor cosmetic degradation.  The chef knife is the one that I use the most, the black handles, over the years, seem to develop some very minor gag, like hairline gap with the full tang inside.  It's not so noticable if you don't look for it.  I haven't used any other knives in any meaningful way other than the Wusthof so I really can't comment on others.  Over the years, I always want to buy some other brands of knives just to have a change, to spice up the cutting a bit if you will.

I imagine any other knife without a full tang, both length and width wise won't be as stable as the Wusthof.  I believe it really gives the knife its stability and heft.  I tend to cut with a rocking motion, probably influenced by watching too much foodtv years ago and also the shape of the Wusthof.  It has a rounded blade, a wide enough blade so my knuckle won't touch the cutting surface.  The knife doesn't look too exciting but it's very practical for what and how I cut things.  I don't really do any chopping motion.

I feel that the steel is pretty hard but then I think I read that it's not that hard.  So I don't know.  I don't think it's too easy to sharpen but not difficult either.  I use a whetsone from JA Henkels, most likely not the best but I am OK with it.

I wonder what the carbon steel can do with sharpness.

I like to try knives from Japan or France.  But then they don't necessarily fit the way I cut, not wide or curve enough to allow rocking motion.

With limited money to dispose, I still only have one set of knives.  They are good though considering I have been using them for over twenty plus years.

VLC and Blu-ray

Despite what's said online, my experience is it doesn't work.  I am running vlc 3.0.8.  Many of those howto's are just copies from one another.  Maybe they worked at some point but not now not for me.  All of them give you very similar instructions with the database and the dynamic library.  And then towards the end it tries to sell you another software.  Well people need to make a living so I don't really blame them for that.

Google Sheets vs Excel 360

My understanding is Excel 360 still can't enter array formula.  I believe, which can be utterly wrong, many companies are still entrenched in the Excel environment.  I can enter with array formula in Google Sheets which is tremendous.  Don't know why Excel 360 can't, perhaps to make people upgrade to the desktop app.  Wouldn't know.

EDIT:  it's been too long ... what I meant was Excel for the Web.  I thought Excel 365 = Excel web version.  It isn't.
EDIT:  OK, it's called Excel 365.

MAGA and FAANG

MSFT
AMZN
GOOG
AAPL

FB
AAPL
AMZN
NFLX
GOOG

For some inexplicable reason, I invested in some weed stock, and I am having a negative return of more than 34%.  I know I know should have sold them.  Hoping NOKIA to bounce back on the rumor that the US may pick it up to fend off Huawei.

Corona Virus and Bad News

In whatever society, nobody likes bad news, or the bearer of bad news.  Some just don't broadcast bad news out of ulterior motives, like the person needs a promotion, a bonus, or just keeping his job.  Or people take it personally, bad news don't reflect well on one's ego.
I have seen little or practically no mechanism in any organization to report bad news.  OK, the suggestion or complaint box.

Google Statistics

There used to be this Add-on to sheet called something like Google Statistics.  Alas, they shut it down and the add-on is no longer available.

There's gone the box plotter.  The baked in candle stick chart is NOT a box plot chart.  Sometimes you just don't know why Google ripped that thing apart and made it unavailable.

macpro3,1 2008 hidden sata and power

it seems like i can limit 2 HDD on the HDD bays if i connected the hidden sata cables and use the ATA power.
Anyway.  I think figured out how to resolve or at least work around this problem.

Present configuration that works

Inside the 5 1/4 drive bay
1 Blu-ray drive connected to hidden sata port, with power from the original power molex to an adaptor to the drive
1 Superdrive, the stock one.  Once I connected with the ATA cable and power I was able to bootup the whole thing, even with 3 drives in the drive bays.
Drive Bays
1 the boot SSD drive
2 HDDs in drive bay 2 and 3.
Before connecting the superdrive I wasn't able to make the 3rd drive to work, I mean the system won't even bootup.

When I got this system, the superdrive was there but not connected.  Initially when I put my SSD into the 5 1/4 drive I just snaked 2 SATA cables and never bother to reconnect the Superdrive and at one point I even removed it out of the caddy.

It seems like I need to complete some circuit or something for the system power to work correctly.  Otherwise some sata won't work as previously.  I know it doesn't sound very scientific but I am not a science guy.  No excuse though.

Mac3,1 2008 Power

I am not technical enough to know for sure what goes wrong.

At some point I am able to run the following at the same time
SSD as the macOS
Blu-ray drive
The above are parked at the 51/4 drive bay with SATA connections snaked from the board and power from the original drive bay.
Originally I have the power split cable connected to the SSD and the BR drive but it won't boot up so I bought another one with no split and everything works.

The 4 HDDs bay only has 1 4TB drive running.  At some point one of the 4TB turned bad and the OS couldn't use it.  I don't know if at any point all the drives were working.

But I am sure the SSD, BR and one internal 4TB and one 2TB USB drive were working happily together.

Then came the replacement of the 4TB.  When I plugged it into one of the 4 HDD bay the Mac won't even boot up.  Nothing.  Initially I thought it's the replacement drive but I know it can't be right.  It's supposed to be a new replacement.  Not that new new but new replacement like new refurbished.  So I swapped it with the USB.  And viola it works.  So I know something is wrong with the system but not the HDD per se.

It seems like I can't have all the drive running at the same time.  Mind you I don't ever have drive bay 3 and 4 mounted.

So I took the SSD down mounted it on the HD1 bay and the 2 HDD on bay 2 and 3.  So the 5 1/4 only has the BR drive.  Still won't boot up until I unplugged the BR power.  That's very odd.

I don't know if there's anything with the Y splitter cable even I only use on end of it.  So I am ordering another one without the split.  Or the BR drive drawing too much power?  I have no idea.  It seems like if I only put 1 HDD into the drive bay then it would boot up when the SSD and BR are plugged in and powered.

This is just a bit weird to me.

ACHN

I bought this at $6.21 and admittedly I didn't do enough research or follow up.  The company was acquired by another for $6.30 and was supposed to close in early 2020.  There hadn't been lots of movement except on the downside.  I held on to it and set a limit at $6.30 to sell.  Then on 1/27 the stock shot up on the open bell.  It was so up that I got it sold at 6.96, not the highest but way higher than my limit.  I lucked out.  Then I think it just got stuck at $6.76 or there about until the company no longer trade as it's acquired by another company.

2019 was a good year for equity market for the most part.  2020 is going to be crazy.

Sunk Cost

Once upon a time, I learned this concept of sunk cost which supposedly shouldn't be something that influence your decision.  This is hard for me to grasp still.

I have all my in use gears in Nikon I would be hard pressed to switch to another brand.  Though in reality my go to camera and lenses are quite limited, 2 bodies and 2 lenses for 99% of my shoots.  The rest are just for fun pretty much.

After shooting with a motor drive for years I find it hard not to.  The balance without the grip is just not right.  The motor drive works just fine provided I don't need to hike up and down for a long time.  Except for the F5 I still don't own any camera with integrated grip.  Whenever I see a camera with integrated grip I am interested.  I instantly recognize it as a high quality build camera.  So naturally I am fascinated by the Olympus flagship whatever OM-D blah blah is and the soon to be released rumored Fuji for the 2020 Olympics.

Clear Duplicates

I haven't worked on a spreadsheet in a commercial setting for a long time.  Now people just call it data analytics or some variations thereof.  I just call it spreadsheet or quantitative analysis.  My understanding of the field is limited.  Back I had to deal with data and invariably the data were crap, and dealing with duplicates were inevitable and common.  I would just basically sort the data, then compare rows by doing a boolean if they return T then I just deleted one of them.  I was careful to keep the original order of the dataset all in all.  Now I just found out there is an add-on in Google Sheet to do just that Remove Duplicates.  Ha ha.  There is also I found out a fascination of graphics.  I think it's not exactly new but with new software like Tableau I think and that's just my opinion, probably biased and uninformed, the graphics just go a bit overboard and crazy.  When I did spreadsheet I never bothered with graphics for my purpose, I just did the numbers.  For one thing I didn't need to present anything to anybody who needed to see the big picture or trends.  It seems to me nowadays people are just obsessed with charts.

Leather Jacket

Google bot knows I'm searching leather jacket when I am online.  I got feeds from advertisers all over.  One of the retail brands carries a few brands like Schott, Ralph Lauren RRL and some Japanese brand.  The point I am trying to make is that who in the right mind would buy a RRL moto jacket.  For an imposer like myself I am looking for quality, realist garment RRL is not the right choice.  And more importantly, the quality looks sub par.  There is no football pits; the back panel is by 2 pieces of leather, the quality is questionable compared to Schott and the Japanese brand.  The manufacture origin is not so proudly only listed as Imported.  Come on, have some pride in where you source your material or manufacturing.  And yet the garment is selling for $1900 when a Schott is $900.  The Japanese branded is north of the $1000 as well but it looks like it gives more thought and quality than the RRL one.  The front closure has zip that goes both ways so when you sit down or actually ride, you can open the jacket from below and prevent the jacket from bulging out like as if you are pregnant without making the jacket short.  There are similar gussets on both sides of the jacket for that similar purpose as well.  Who in their right mind would buy a RRL moto jacket for $1900?  It looks sub par all around compared to others.

CVS pharmacy

CVS pharmacy wins in giving out the longest receipt ever.  You bought a Hallmark card, and you got a four feet long receipt.  You thought you're going to use the coupons there, but you never did.

CVS offers on site digital print service I have no doubt their machines are very capable.  What I don't have faith or empirically speaking is the staff manning the machine.  Not enough training or simply don't care.  I have yet to have any satisfactory prints from the shop close by.  There is ghosting to the image so something is not aligned right or something something.  So after maybe two trials I gave up on them.

MacPro3,1 can't split power from the 4-pin molex

I got one of those splitter but it won't work.  There are two 2 4-pin molex power plug in the drive bay of the MacPro3,1.  But you need 2 power adapters to convert the 4-pin molex to SATA power.  No luck with the Y splitter for that.  My boot drive, no ask me why, resides on that drive bay, using the power from the Y splitter when both are attached won't even boot up the MacPro3,1.  I mean using the Y splitter is totally fine as long as you only use one of the Y splitter but that defeats the purpose totally, doesn't it?  Got another adapter cable and now the BR drive and the SSD draws power separately and they work at the same time.  Hooray.