Here we can all be heard for a little while. Part 3

Lambyr

tea_lover wrote: »

Ooh what exciting plans lambyr

disabled_NCIS_fan wrote: »

Lambyr they sound like exciting plans and I for one would buy your novel. I love fantasy stories.

Thank you both! I'll keep you updated with how it goes! In fact, it might actually help me be more motivated to get things done! I've mastered the art of procrastination. For example, I rescued a laptop and got it back up and functional to act as a writer's laptop... now to actually do some writing on it!

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

(that's a line from your penguin, but I think it's OK on its own - if you'd prefer I remove it I will of course)

I can only speak for this man rather than men in general. While it's true I've never met anyone that self-identifies as male that I've been at all attracted to, so as a literal statement it is correct, in terms of hobbies and interests, I'd be entirely happy with a girlfriend that enjoyed computer games and the other things you mentioned, and only owned one pair of shoes! (Actually, even I have more than one pair, the steel toecap boots for the garage / DIY work aren't much good for the office, and the office / vaguely smart shoes are hopeless for walking a long way).

Having interests that were seen as very much male-oriented a generation or more back does not make a woman unfeminine or unattractive, the world has thankfully moved on. :mad: . I'd far rather meet someone that genuinely enjoys her hobbies, whatever they are!

I do own several pairs of shoes! But I don't own any "girlie" shoes. I can't stand high heels, for example, cos I find them really uncomfortable and one of my ankles is kinda weak so don't feel safe in them. The pair I use the most are my Skechers with memory foam padding on the heel and sole. I'm definitely not someone who likes shoe shopping and only really buy a pair of shoes if I need new ones, or if a particular type catches my attention in a clearance sale - like I got some really nice non-high heeled boots with a fur lining for £8 not too long ago. Perfect for the winter when we have snow.

And yeah I don't get the whole thing about not being feminine enough in my interests. Seems bonkers to me. Surely having things in common and similar interests is a good thing, right? E and I, when she comes over, will watch silly movies, play on the Xbox and then when the T20 season starts we'll probably mong out in front of the TV watching some of that too.

My best male friend and I get on so well because we're so similar. We don't live close to each other so talk almost exclusively online via TeamSpeak but we do some online gaming together, I found an extension for Chrome that lets us sync up a Netflix feed and we'll watch a movie together and we sometimes watch sports together as well and he loves it that I can critique the England team and why we shouldn't be playing Rooney in the Euros ahead of Vardy and Kane right now. :rotfl:

I just like what I like and sometimes it has benefits. Like the laptop I mention above. Was E's dads and it's not a particularly old laptop. He got rid cos it stopped working. I asked if I could buy it off him and he just gave it to me for free. I took a gander at it, realised it had only suffered a HDD failure, bought a 1TB SSHD for it, bunged it in there and got it up and running again. There was a small keyboard repeating issue as well, which I was able to fix with a simple app. Works fine now, so I got myself a new laptop for about £50! I'm hardly a computer whizz but knowing how to identify an issue and fix it has probably saved me hundreds over the years.

My desktop computer I built myself, saving up for two years and grabbing parts on sale over a period of a few months. Stuck them all together and now have a nice, reasonably powerful rig for about two thirds of what it would have cost to buy from a shop... and with cute little enhancements like red LED fans!

Pyxis

Lambyr...it was a good cry! I was so touched! :A



Having read your penguin, just a thought.......(.penguined)....I am wondering if they do actually suspect, if they're saying things like:
[I should be collecting shoes or something, I guess, because "men don't want another man"]
Maybe they're pressurising you to meet a guy and have a family so that they won't have to cope with their suspicions.

Also wouldn't be surprised if your mum has an inkling or more. Mums can be very astute like that! especially if your girlfriend stays with you when she comes down. Little bits of body language can be picked up on.......it doesn't have to be a full-scale snog! End of penguined thought.

Lambyr

Hi Pyxis!

Well I'm glad it was a good cry!

PENGUIN Reply:
I don't think the wider family knows. They don't really spend enough time with me, and I have had boyfriends. Not proud of this but I've actually had quite a lot while searching for the guy who could make me forget the other, then-unwanted side of me. My last boyfriend was really sweet and possibly had my circumstances been different that could have worked out but he lived quite far away, and me being a carer it wasn't gonna work once things got trickier at home. So we amicably ended it. Still friends though.

In my wider family's case, truth is, they probably just think I'm some sort of failure and probably think that all my supposedly masculine interests are scaring the men away!

My mum, maybe she has suspicions but if so she's not giving anything away. E and I, outwardly, haven't really changed much. We've been best friends since we were teenagers and we've always had a bit of a "touchy-feely" friendship. Now I suppose maybe part of that is cos we did do a few things when we were younger but for the most part we've just been friends. But there's nothing abnormal in us, for instance, cuddling on the sofa watching a film or sharing a bed or anything like that cos we've just always done that anyway.

The only obvious thing that will have changed is that she's now here more often but even then, we've gone through phases where she's been here every weekend and a few times in the past she's basically taken to living here for a couple of weeks at a time so I dunno whether her increased presence would seem odd. Mum's not mentioned anything about that, only she finds it nice that I have a bit more company.

END OF PENGUIN

Pyxis

disabled_NCIS_fan wrote: »

Lambyr they sound like exciting plans and I for one would buy your novel. I love fantasy stories.

Does anyone have any good book suggestions for hospital trips? I like fantasy, crime, romance etc. Mainly I just want something fiction.

I just do crosswords.

Lambyr wrote: »

I just like what I like and sometimes it has benefits. Like the laptop I mention above. Was E's dads and it's not a particularly old laptop. He got rid cos it stopped working. I asked if I could buy it off him and he just gave it to me for free. I took a gander at it, realised it had only suffered a HDD failure, bought a 1TB SSHD for it, bunged it in there and got it up and running again. There was a small keyboard repeating issue as well, which I was able to fix with a simple app. Works fine now, so I got myself a new laptop for about £50! I'm hardly a computer whizz but knowing how to identify an issue and fix it has probably saved me hundreds over the years.

My desktop computer I built myself, saving up for two years and grabbing parts on sale over a period of a few months. Stuck them all together and now have a nice, reasonably powerful rig for about two thirds of what it would have cost to buy from a shop... and with cute little enhancements like red LED fans!

Hmm. I see a little hobby business developing here! If you've done it for yourself, why not do it for others? Don't think big.......get one up and running, sell it, then get another........


What's an LED fan?


As for girlie stuff........oh poo!
Who gives a monkeys! There are women in the Army doing all manner of stuff. Women firefighters. There are male nurses and midwives. Male au pairs.

Knitting, embroidery, they're done by men as well as women.
Car mechanics, engineering stuff, done by women as well as men.

No such thing any more as female jobs and male jobs, or female hobbies, male hobbies. Women even box for God's sake!

I always, always wanted a train set and some toy cars as a child. I liked dolls, etc, and cookery sets, and all that stuff, but I liked train sets and cars too. Never ever got a train set, and only ever got one car when I was about ten, and that was only after making a huge fuss. I would have loved a chemistry set too. Chemistry sets, then, only ever had pictures of boys on the boxes.
Meccano.......would have loved that!

I bought myself an airfix aeroplane kit, when I was about 12 or 13. Loved putting it together! (I was mad, mad, mad about aeroplanes!)
Must have been that that's made me so good at flat-pack furniture! Hahahahahahaha!

Haven't worn high heels for years and years. Too damned uncomfortable and extremely bad for the spine. I live in trousers partly for comfort and partly because my legs are very ugly. Don't wear makeup, except for AmDram! (and that's under sufferance!) it's all such a faff!

Some men like to wear skirts, heels and makeup. Good for them, why ever not?
Cripes, it wasn't that long ago when it was deemed stranger than strange for a man to wear an earring, (unless he was a pirate or a gypsy! :rotfl:) and just as strange for a woman to have a tattoo or extremely short hair!

Thank God we've moved on!

Talking of which, it's ok to talk about things under a penguin whiteout, if you make it clear what the penguin contains, so that anyone for whom it's a trigger can avoid it. :A

codemonkey

DNF - I don't know if you have a kindle but if you do, have a look on KindofBook. They provide links to free and discounted kindle books. I've read some decent books for free.

Lambyr

An LED fan is a cooling fan with a coloured LED (or three) in it.

I was sad enough to take a photo of my handiwork, so here's what it looks like:



And I agree... my family just have ridiculously archaic beliefs. I dunno why, just odd medieval thinking.

I wanted a train set but never got one, so had to settle for some old bits and bobs in the attic and an old Smokey Joe!

I dress for comfort mostly, rather than to impress or anything else. Jogging bottoms and t-shirts/hoodies are what I can be usually be found lounging around the house in unless it's too hot then it's basically gym bra and shorts! Will usually put jeans on if going out anywhere rather than joggers. Don't tend to put too much makeup on, though I generally have a little. I do change my hair colour now and again, and I do have a couple of nice dresses for dressy events but don't really go to any these days so they're not used much anymore.

Pyxis

So, how did you make the fan? (Sorry to be such an ignoramus! ) Is it on the outside? Suppose it must be, silly me! I can't picture it!

I didn't realise computers had fans.
But then I haven't had a desktop for years and years!

Lambyr

Pyxis wrote: »

So, how did you make the fan? (Sorry to be such an ignoramus! )

I didn't realise computers had fans.
But then I haven't had a desktop for years and years!

Oh I didn't make the fans. I just bought the fans but generally if you buy a PC from a store or pre-built, you don't get LED fans and I wanted to bling my PC up a bit since I'd spent so much time and effort sourcing all the components to stick it together so I wanted it to be a little unique to me, if you get me?

You can spend extra going through Alienware or PC Specialist and they'll do that for you but you end up paying a huge premium and that doesn't make sense when I have the knowledge to build a PC myself and I am on a tight budget. Like I mentioned, this PC was basically two years of saving up for me.

Most desktop PCs tend to have a fan on the processor, a fan as part of the power supply unit and then maybe one exhaust fan. Because my PC is designed for gaming on, it gets hotter because of the graphics card and the CPU is put under more intense loads in some games (like World of Warcraft).

So I have a liquid cooler on the CPU and the two fans at the top are pushing heat out of the top of the case as the hot liquid passes through the radiator. The other fan is exhausting heat out of the back of the case and then there's an unseen much larger fan pulling cooler air into the case at the bottom.

All the fans are on the inside. I have a window on my case so you can see inside it.

Pyxis

Lambyr wrote: »

Oh I didn't make the fans. I just bought the fans but generally if you buy a PC from a store or pre-built, you don't get LED fans and I wanted to bling my PC up a bit since I'd spent so much time and effort sourcing all the components to stick it together so I wanted it to be a little unique to me, if you get me?

You can spend extra going through Alienware or PC Specialist and they'll do that for you but you end up paying a huge premium and that doesn't make sense when I have the knowledge to build a PC myself and I am on a tight budget. Like I mentioned, this PC was basically two years of saving up for me.

Most desktop PCs tend to have a fan on the processor, a fan as part of the power supply unit and then maybe one exhaust fan. Because my PC is designed for gaming on, it gets hotter because of the graphics card and the CPU is put under more intense loads in some games (like World of Warcraft).

So I have a liquid cooler on the CPU and the two fans at the top are pushing heat out of the top of the case as the hot liquid passes through the radiator. The other fan is exhausting heat out of the back of the case and then there's an unseen much larger fan pulling cooler air into the case at the bottom.

All the fans are on the inside. I have a window on my case so you can see inside it.

Blimey! :eek:
Sounds like it's powered by a jet engine! :rotfl:



Edit. So the fan goes on the CPU not on the monitor? That's what I couldn't picture!



Does that mean you can't play games on an iPad?

Am probably starting to sound like a right twit now!

Lambyr

Pyxis wrote: »

Blimey! :eek:
Sounds like it's powered by a jet engine! :rotfl:



Edit. So the fan goes on the CPU not on the monitor? That's what I couldn't picture!



Does that mean you can't play games on an iPad?

Am probably starting to sound like a right twit now!

Well when you want to play Tomb Raider with individual hair strands being rendered cos you're that much of a loon, you do need to kick it up a notch in the power department!

On my set up there's a pump on the CPU (the doobry with the Corsair logo in the pic is the pump) which pumps a liquid coolant around. The coolant comes to the CPU, heats up thus drawing heat away from the CPU, then gets pumped to the radiator (which is above the two fans right at the top of the pic) where it spreads out and the fans push the heat out the top of the case But you can have an air cooled solution on the CPU which would be a heatsink drawing the heat from the CPU and then a fan blowing the heat away from the heatsink.

On my desktop the PC itself is contained within a case. The monitors are external peripherals connected via cable to the graphics card inside the case. The graphics card and CPU can both reach very high temperatures under load, whereas the monitors don't.

I don't have an iPad. I have an Android tablet though (birthday pressie one year!) and I can play some games on that. I have The Chase and Tipping Point, and Sonic 2! :rotfl: Oh and Tetris, of course.

But so far tablets lack the ooomphf needed to play something like Shadow of Mordor or Tomb Raider, plus the controls might be a bit fiddly.

This is how much of a nerd I am... :rotfl: