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Friday Fun Thread for October 4, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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For odd electronics adapters, big choice is StarTech. They're not the only people with USB-serial adapters (second place: TrendNet TU-S9s) I'll trust in safety-of-life situations

I think they may have outsourced some stuff now -- I've got some weird KVM-type stuff from them that is great, but my work IT supplied a simple USB-C dock (probably the cheapest one in their catalog) that is utter garbage; drops monitors pretty often and semi-frequently drops all usb devices, needing to be unplugged from the laptop to reset. Definitely not safety-of-life grade.

Ooof. That's unfortunate. Wouldn't be the first time for them to have glorified reseller stuff, but that level of issue in pretty mainstream hardware is a real big downer.

Yeah I don't actually mind when this kind of thing is weird and janky on my own weird and janky systems, but if your thing is janky on managed-out-the-ass corporate windows laptops, it's a problem. (not least because on my own systems I can usually dig in and fix the jank if it bothers me too much -- the IT drones OTOH have only so much time to devote to such things, so 'unplug it and plug it back in usually works, if not reboot' is the best I can do for my team)

I'm kind of thinking it's heat-related maybe -- TBF I do have a lot plugged into the thing. I may now have enough pull to just ask IT to send me an HP one -- thanks for the reminder, lol.