Trump says CEO of Intel must resign, calling him “highly conflicted”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-is-president-trump-calling-on-the-ceo-of-intel-to-resign/
I’m doing my part to encourage the departure of CEO Tan from Intel, glorious leader Trump! Yesterday, I bought a Windows 11 laptop computer with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. It will be interesting to see how well, or not, software emulation of the Intel x86_64 architecture will work for legacy applications.
First the Panasonic DVD recorder died, followed by the Logitech Squeezebox Touch audio streamer. As trouble always comes in threes, what else can go wrong? Ah, there it is. The touchpad on my Lenovo Yoga laptop computer has stopped working. Not all of the time, but mostly. As it’s either working or it isn’t, I suspect it’s due to a loose internal connection.
Last December was when I said this: “The touchpad on my Lenovo Yoga laptop is awful. I will never buy another Lenovo product again, based solely on this one deficiency.” That trouble must have been an early indication of the failure I am experiencing now. Just as the previous outages of the Touch were hinting at its inevitable final countdown.
I’m using the Lenovo now, but on my desk with a USB mouse. What to do… what to do.
R.I.P., my beloved Logitech Squeezebox Touch streaming audio player. It’s been a long journey, with more than a few technical detours that, as with this WordPress installation, I successfully navigated along the way. The failure that appeared today was fatal. The sad tale is told here:
https://forums.lyrion.org/forum/user-forums/squeezebox-touch/1780379-r-i-p-squeezebox-touch
With the expectation of a tariff price increase, on a WiiM I ordered one of these as a Touch replacement:
https://www.amazon.com/WiiM-Pro-Chromecast-Multiroom-Compatible/dp/B0BJDY6D1W/
Oh, no. Jim Wild has died. This news is hitting me hard.
Jim was a computer system integrator who I worked with frequently and closely for 25 years, from 1982 until he sold his company, JJWild, Inc., to Perot Systems in 2007. Although I didn’t work for Jim, I visited his computer lab so often that he had an employee badge made up for me, so I could come and go freely, as needed. (Perot, later acquired by DELL, wasn’t so accommodating.) Jim had a quiet way about him as he pulled resources together from multiple technology companies to make things happen. He was one of those people who never seemed to be in a hurry, and yet everything was done promptly. Jim Wild was a rarity in the business, wanting to please everyone he could and, in every instance I can think of, succeeding.
I enjoyed every one of my countless dealings with Jim, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. The last time I saw him was at a social gathering in August, 2019.
I’m reminded of how long I’ve been Prattling here. This is from my first Christmastime on WordPress. How long ago was that? It includes a reference to analog cable TV!
The Panasonic DVD recorder Santa brought me that year is now a piece of dead electronics. It suffers from an incurable U61 error.
A few of you might remember me playing records on one of these, long ago. A JVC VL-5 turntable.
I bought a VL-5 in 1974. It was my turntable in college and beyond. There it is on my right, with the dust cover raised, in this old photo of my post-college basement dungeon.
I sold the VL-5 circa 1982, when I switched to German turntables with straight, low-mass tonearms, as was the trend. A year later, the Compact Disc was introduced in America, a mere 25 years after the introduction of stereo records.
On a whim, yesterday I searched for a VL-5 on Craig’s List, and there one was, in very good condition at a reasonable price. So, yielding to the impulse, I bought it. Now it’s in my office, 50 years old and working almost as if new.
I still have the small Pioneer amp in that photo, purchased from Brad, who some of you know, of course. The larger amp is a Philips 384. It’s something else from my audio past that I sold and might look for.
