The Room 102 thread - for things you love or just having a bloody good praise!

[Rossell]

Is your fitbit shaped like a calculator?

[Wrathbone]

Deep Heat. It reeks to high heaven and burns like hell, but when you need it, good grief does it do its job.

[Medicine Man]

I quite like the smell of it.

[Wrathbone]

It’s not that it’s a bad smell so much as its persistence. I used some first thing this morning and the whole house still smells of it.

[Raid]

At least it's not TCP. If I so much as unscrew the cap, the house smells like a hospital for days afterwards.

[Medicine Man]

As much as I like/don't mind those smells I think the problem is as soon as someone whiffs it they know either a) you have overly vigorously yanked your crank or as is the case with TCP b) you have some manky infection that just wont shift on it own possibly boabie related.

[Alan]

Face ID!

Man I thought I’d hate it but now I’ve left button iPhones behind it’s fantastic! It’s so fast, never misses and is especially great for saved passwords. It makes using my iPad much less enjoyable but I can’t justify a pro.

Bonus 101 every current Iphone is too dang big, even the smallest just doesn’t work well one handed. All screen SE size with Face ID please!

[Wrathbone]

My laptop (Windows 10) uses it and for the most part it’s fine, although it doesn’t recognise me without glasses or from anything other than a perfect angle.

[Raid]

My Surface Pro 4 is pretty good at recognising me from most angles.

I don't think I'd want it on my phone, because the fingerprint reader on mine doesn't require me to bring the phone up to my face to unlock it. The fingerprint reader is perfectly placed on my Pixel 2 XL so that I can unlock it easily when I reach into my pocket to pull the phone out, so it's ready for me as soon as I can see the screen.

[Alan]

That’s what I thought but it triggers at such a wide angle it’s never an issue. Especially passwords where it knows you’re looking at the screen so it just fills them in. Even with a hat or a scarf covering my mouth so great for glove weather.

I also really like that it obscures your notification previews till you’re looking at the screen so nobody can get a sneaky look at your latest texts on the lock screen. It’s real neat. I’m converted.

[Rossell]

Looking through some old photos from last years trip to San Francisco.

Went into a sandwich place on Pier 39 and made my order. They asked for a name as is the norm. They obviously don't have many Nigels in the United States.

My receipt had Nacho written on it.

Even better was when they called my name out in front of everyone.

Little things like that make you laugh

[Wrathbone]

When you do something that feels like you're Hollywood's idea of a hacker. My work laptop is goosed from a Windows update, and though the replacement is arriving today I need the licence key for some very expensive software that is required for some urgent work, and nobody can find the key. Google suggested the key could be retrieved from the registry, which presented another problem as the laptop is currently stuck in a looping boot cycle where it tries to undo updates, fails and restarts (recovery USB repairs also fail). I then discovered that the registry can be accessed from a command prompt, which I can get to from the recovery USB.

As an aside, the hardware-level encryption password that should be presented at bootup is not appearing at all, and all files on the HD can be accessed with zero security. Apparently a botched Windows feature update bypasses encryption entirely. Good job, MS.

Anyway, I got into the regsitry, but the key I needed was in HKEY_CURRENT_USERS, which is showing barebones items as I'm not logged in. I managed to find a way to load the hive for my user account into HKEY_USERS and then make the required .dat file visible (making hidden files visible via CMD was surprisingly tricky given that I've not used DOS in anger since the late 90s). And voila! There was my licence key, in glorious plaintext! It was exactly like the end of Jurassic Park.



I will now be wearing leather trenchcoats and indoor sunglasses and going by the alias VVh4cKb0n3.

[Rossell]

Best weekend in a long time. Went for my first run in nearly two years Saturday morning, nearly died but made it. Managed to find one of the Beefy Boys popup vans around my area to celebrate (some of the best burgers you'll ever eat).

Then on Sunday, walked/climbed Pen Y Fan in Wales. Got hugely sunburnt and my body aches but made it and that's another ticked off the list

[Alan]

I was just thinking, how bloody great was the 9700pro?

[Wrathbone]

A close friend has had a health scare for a while now, and after 18 months of doctors poking and prodding him (and some viscious drugs) they've finally ruled out the possibility of lukemia or anything else too serious. He's essentially been given the all-clear.

And as a Brucie Bonus, they've discovered that he has antibodies for COVID-19. Not a bad turnaround!