December 20, 2025
UPSsidaisy
A long time ago, 2014, I bought an APC ES 750 UPS. It served faithfully until the battery croaked. To my mind though, it ran out of juice too quickly. So rather than spend $$$ for an OEM battery, I hied myself to the Mart of Wals and bought a lawn tractor battery. I was able to wire it in externally, and I ran it for many years. I would keep Himawari running for a good 15 minutes with the monitor and cable modem (and network switch) fired up. Lately, I've been awakened, or come home, or just been sitting at the computer when it would suddenly shut off and start the continuous alarm. I assumed that since it wasn't running off the battery, that perhaps the battery was bad somehow, even though it seemed to be fully charged (like, perhaps it had cycled enough times that it had lost capacity). So I hied myself again to the Mart of Wals for another battery (They also stock the APC 450 unit, not gonna touch that).
This did not solve the issue. Although it did let me get rid of a dead automotive battery I'd been using as a doorstop for the screen door and recoup the $12 core charge. Now I have two perfectly serviceable 12 volt lawn tractor batteries.
So last Wednesday we had a massive wind storm that knocked out the power overnight. Around 2 AM the UPS screamed, so I staggered into the living room and found the power button and punched it, to silence the device.
And then my ideator ideated, and the idea involved inrush currents, so I decided to see what would happen if I slowly turned things back on. Hitting the power button on the old UPS set it going on Battery. Then I started Purah. When it seemed to be booting, I turned on the monitor. So far so good. Until it got to the point of changing the signal on the video card, which turned on the sound bar because of how it was connected to the monitor, which was a load I didn't anticipate. Instead of an alert, everything snapped off and there was a loud *POP* followed by a hiss, and a tiny thread of Magic Smoke snaked it way through a vent hole. I quickly unplugged things from the unit, unplugged it from the wall and detached the battery - the wires were rather warm.
Yeah, so what happened that a battery and UPS configuration that could support my old PC, Himawari, and the old flatscreen, was not up to Purah's power requirements. The oversized battery could supply it, but the UPS couldn't handle the power. And that's the actual alarm mode it was showing all those times it shut down. It was overloaded.
When I got back from work that day, I did a post mortem on the unit. One very obviously popped electrolytic capacitor had given its life. But there was also marked corrosion clumped up around the base of a couple of FETs and their aluminum heat sink block right next to it. I'm not sure what, if anything, that contributed to the issue. I have pictures but that's a bit too much of a pain to put up here.
Since we have a dearth of computer stores like Fry's (RIP) in the nation's northern tech capitol, I consulted the River website, and looked at the largest capacity APC units that weren't intended for Data Centers with infinite budgets. There are three 1500VA units in the line, but other than "True Sine output" there's not a lot of difference between them, and considering everything these days has its own switching power supply that runs on anything you feed it, I went with the least expensive unit - which was still almost $200 for something I rarely depend THAT much on. But I also had $150 in gift card points and some more on my Chase card, so in the end I was out less than $50, and it got here in two days with Free shipping.
It's sitting beside the desk right now, happily saying it will run for 600 minutes with zero load on it. Eventually I'll have to shut down and reconnect things to it. The one downside compared to the other units is a lack of wall-wart spaced outlets, but I have a number of tiny 4-outlet power strips that can displace the wall warts for the router and cable modem. I will definitely move the sound bar off the battery back up circuit.
For the curious, here's an affiliate link to the unit I got.
For the curious, here's an affiliate link to the unit I got.
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10:25 PM
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November 02, 2025
Ganglion
Remember that one bit from Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department with the temp worker who keeps getting jobs as a part time Minion for various villains? What if you had a short format show dedicated to that idea, except the guy is not a temp, and you filled it with middle-aged ennui.
It's too short to tell if I like it yet. And while it's short format it doesn't seem to be episodic. What I've watched so far chains together.
Anyway, that's Ganglion.
Apparently the Manga is from 2007, so that's quite a long road from manga to anime.... Don't ask me why. But at least it's not an Isekai.
Posted by: Mauser at
09:32 PM
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October 18, 2025
Kimi to Koete Koi ni Naru
So that Mother's Basement channel did a fall season review, which didn't much change my plans to skip most of it. After all, I tried that "Gatcha" show and deleted it mid second episode. But the segment on Kimi to Koete Koi ni Naru, or "With You, Our Love Will Make It Through" piqued a small amount of interest. Not in the main characters, a big blue dog person and a high schooler who falls for him, but in another student and a catgirl who's a bit higher on the "Kemono Mix" scale than we usually get.
The bigotry angle is played a bit heavy-handedly, but there is also some humor. I figure I'll give it a try unless the melodrama gets too heavy.
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09:56 PM
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October 04, 2025
Grok Fail
I know there's some way to make Grok improve a generated image, but I don't know what it is. On the other hand, this result is so off base from what I described that I don't know if there's any point in trying to fix it.
Posted by: Mauser at
02:21 PM
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October 01, 2025
Fall Season fail
It will be a good time to catch up on my backlog....
Spy Family, even though I kinda bounced off of episode 17 (Bragging about getting a dog) is back.
And The Five Wedding Rings, which I totally didn't expect another season of, is back. It's got a cat-girl, IIRC, and an idiot MC.
On the other hand, there's another series that has a catgirl of a not very well designed sort, but I'm not going to follow it because the hero's cheat skill is... Gatcha.... Seriously?
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06:00 PM
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September 01, 2025
If shonen battlers were honest
If shonen battlers were honest:
"No one has ever beaten my Superpugilist Strike! It is undefeated!"
"You just said you've never met an opponent so tough that you've had to use it."
"That's why it's never been defeated."
"How do you even know it works?"
Narrator: It didn't work.
Posted by: Mauser at
03:22 PM
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whups...
Somehow I made it this far into the season without realizing I was missing My Dress-up Darling. This has been remedied.
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12:43 AM
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August 25, 2025
Dropped like it was hot!
I didn't have much hope for Kizu darake Seijo yori Houfuku wo Komete/With Vengeance, Sincerely, Your Broken Saintess. I didn't even look at it until I had 8 episodes.
Aside from the plot being, I guess a girly version of Redo of Healer, the real problem is the animation - a kind of 2D cgi reminiscent of early Flash animation, with pieces in a very sketchy line style. Everything that moves squashes and stretches or rotates in the viewing plane. And everything that can move, does, pointlessly, while the bulk of the characters do not move at all, and mouth animation pops from shape to shape.
Seriously, it looked so intolerably bad that I just purged it all.
Posted by: Mauser at
07:20 PM
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August 24, 2025
Nyaight of the Living Cat
I hadn't been keeping up, so I forgot how freaking FUNNY this is. Aside from everyone's ludicrous attachment to cats, this show pulls out all the zombie movie cliches.
Then they go and drop a reference like this:
Then they go and drop a reference like this:
And the hero helps them escape some charging cats by throwing down a cucumber!
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06:14 PM
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August 13, 2025
Dan da Dan - Ep. 06
This show is still on fire. Between the over the top rock band for the exorcism, to the business at the end of Momo's new part time job, I was thoroughly entertained and amused as hell.
Posted by: Mauser at
07:42 PM
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