Minor things that please you

[Rothman]

I recently bought an old NES to do a little retrogaming (my son likes Sonic and Mario). I was testing out different cartridges on it, and some you had to do the old method of blowing in the console to get them to work. I did a little googling, and it turns out, the easiest fix for this (other than just a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol to clean the pins), is to take apart the NES, take the 72 pin connector off, and boil it in water for 10 minutes. After 5 minutes of boiling, take a NES cartridge out and insert and remove it from the connector a bunch of times just to bend the pins just right. I reattached it and hooked everything up and now every game works great the first time.

I still need a new battery for my Zelda cartridge.

[JayhawkCO]

I still need a new battery for my Zelda cartridge.

Why does a cartridge need a battery?

[Rothman]

I still need a new battery for my Zelda cartridge.

Why does a cartridge need a battery?

Because that's how it saved games when it was issued in the Old Times.

[kphoger]

Why does a cartridge need a battery?

To save your game.

https://www.dkoldies.com/blog/-complete-list-of-nintendo-nes-games-with-save-batteries

[JayhawkCO]

Huh. Never knew. I'm sure it's likely cheaper to pick up a new cartridge than to fix the battery.

[Rothman]

Why does a cartridge need a battery?

To save your game.

https://www.dkoldies.com/blog/-complete-list-of-nintendo-nes-games-with-save-batteries

Jinx!

[Rothman]

Huh. Never knew. I'm sure it's likely cheaper to pick up a new cartridge than to fix the battery.

But I've had the cartridge for nearly 40 years.

[JayhawkCO]

Huh. Never knew. I'm sure it's likely cheaper to pick up a new cartridge than to fix the battery.

But I've had the cartridge for nearly 40 years.

Looks like I was mistaken again. Can get some batteries pretty cheap.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/302511905498?_skw=nes+battery+save&itmmeta=01KAEKWPWVHNTQR8SC5YNQJQ5E&hash=item466f1d5ada:g:olQAAMXQnYJRAKAP&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAAA8FkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1cyGzbrYLDAK0vum2e%2B%2BzCwNNPqBDSS%2BA%2BOPYcBwTO7J%2Bjn1OZX9g8hBZ3NLZDOHnD1Y0FzBLga464JHOA7GYHv%2BjR4KtM%2BZgPybgEPrXqzZ7ipAqTgjz2X4cqafg9bomaKv%2FOCLLFPbWUtwVkaZ7tQ75pC0G2Kzb3MQTkudBEDObGvgVOHoh%2FEAjOwaGmQFybWvF%2BGJzezNk3fNQlkOdkS3jWwot8qDZIU89yOfiGGbXNWQmL%2FdlT2Qis96%2Fi16QoBj6WVhMIWEfwTCWJtNvYgBSyxA%2BkryIyx6lswqFlJ9Q%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABFBMzO7y09Nm

[Molandfreak]

A huge and well-known drawback to replacing the batteries is that everything from the previous save file is wiped from the cartridge. Within generations 1 and 2 of Pokémon, this means that to keep all the Pokémon you may have got from official events need to be constantly traded between games with fresh batteries to keep them. These days, the glitches and cheat codes you can use to get them are well-documented, but back in the day I had a friend who lost all his progress when the battery in a game ran dry.

Why does a cartridge need a battery?

To save your game.

https://www.dkoldies.com/blog/-complete-list-of-nintendo-nes-games-with-save-batteries

Jinx!

[Max Rockatansky]

I don't believe there is a 8 bit or 16 bit cartridge that I own that actually has enough power to hold a save.  Good thing ROMs are a thing and we're plentiful in the mid-1990s.  Save States were always superior anyway.

[LilianaUwU]

Why does a cartridge need a battery?

To save your game.

https://www.dkoldies.com/blog/-complete-list-of-nintendo-nes-games-with-save-batteries

DKOldies is a scam, by the way.

[kphoger]

DKOldies is a scam, by the way.

From what I'm reading, it's more than they sell used stock for an inflated price, calling it "refurbished" without actually having done anything to refurbish it.  Actual scam, no.  Sleazy business, yes.

[Scott5114]

DKOldies is a scam, by the way.

From what I'm reading, it's more than they sell used stock for an inflated price, calling it "refurbished" without actually having done anything to refurbish it.  Actual scam, no.  Sleazy business, yes.

Eh, if you say something has been refurbished and it hasn't, that meets the definition of "scam" to me. You're not getting what the vendor said they would provide you.

[kphoger]

Eh, if you say something has been refurbished and it hasn't, that meets the definition of "scam" to me. You're not getting what the vendor said they would provide you.

They probably wiped it off with a paper towel and called it 'refurbishment'...

[1995hoo]

As I type this, I'm sitting on the living room couch and our cat is sitting on my lap. She would appear to be asleep to any reasonable observer. Except...

I was just listening to Paul McCartney from this part Friday night. Apparently, our cat likes the song: Despite being "asleep," she started tapping her tail on my arm in time with the bagpipe part. And now that the song is over, she's stopped.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Backspacing South Asian scripts. Sometimes they erase in a weird fashion.

[Max Rockatansky]

Today I finished the last two blogs I had left to write for Kern County on Gribblenation.  With those two closed out I'm back to current with my photo stock for the year.  Presently there is 90 schedule blogs (69 for California and 21 for Hawaii) between tomorrow morning and the end of May 2026.  I probably won't have anything new until December 20th which means I can take a break from writing for a couple weeks.

[vdeane]

Google has FINALLY fixed their search results for my site to show my site's name instead of the URL!  It took several months after I added the appropriate metadata.

[Scott5114]

Google has FINALLY fixed their search results for my site to show my site's name instead of the URL!  It took several months after I added the appropriate metadata.

Yeah, in my experience Google couldn't give two shits about how it crawls and indexes smaller sites. You're lucky it only took months.

[Max Rockatansky]

Google has FINALLY fixed their search results for my site to show my site's name instead of the URL!  It took several months after I added the appropriate metadata.

Yeah, in my experience Google couldn't give two shits about how it crawls and indexes smaller sites. You're lucky it only took months.

On the flip side Google often pushes us to the top of searches given we are based on Blogger.  I get some amusement when there is some super niche topic that has us appearing at or near the top of results on Yahoo. 

[vdeane]

Google has FINALLY fixed their search results for my site to show my site's name instead of the URL!  It took several months after I added the appropriate metadata.

Yeah, in my experience Google couldn't give two shits about how it crawls and indexes smaller sites. You're lucky it only took months.

On the flip side Google often pushes us to the top of searches given we are based on Blogger.  I get some amusement when there is some super niche topic that has us appearing at or near the top of results on Yahoo. 

Yeah, it's interesting.  On the one hand, there are still a ton of pages on my site that Google knows about but hasn't indexed for whatever reason (and also a plethora of pages that have "issues" but don't appear to be real pages, so no idea what's going on there).  On the other, I just did a search for when the direct connection between I-87 and I-84 opened, and my site was result #2* (maybe I should have just checked the I-84 exit list rather than searching, but that's how I discovered this, so it worked out for the best).  I'm also #2* for "new york thruway exits" (right after the Thruway Authority's own list), so I think I'm doing fairly well overall.

*Technically tested on Startpage, but they get their results from Google, so close enough.

[vdeane]

I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner, but Windows 11 still has the window peek functionality.  Since I pretty much always have at least one window open on each monitor at a time, if I want to look at my desktop wallpaper, I can still do so one monitor at a time by peeking a window on the other.  Neat little workaround; maybe I should get around to updating my season "themes" of road wallpaper with the custom email/reminder sounds I use now (so that I can actually hear them) and maybe even revamp the images to include some more recent shots.  I had been holding off because I wasn't sure if I'd be keeping this.

[1995hoo]

Yesterday morning I said the following in the "Minor things that bother you" thread:

I was on an early-morning Acela today. It was 18° outside when I boarded. So, naturally, the AC was on blowing cold air.

The heat finally came on 40 minutes later in Baltimore. My feet warmed up after I reached New York. I wonder whether I might wind up in the same railcar on the way home tonight.

So this morning, Amtrak sent me an e-mail apologizing for the lack of heat and sending a $100 voucher for future travel. I guess sometimes it literally pays to complain.

[Max Rockatansky]

I schedule my tire rotation this morning for 9 AM.  It only took 20 minutes walking in the door until they were done, and I was on my way home.

Also, the 24th and 26th were both declared Federal Holidays by Presidential order.  The unexpected long weekend next week certainly is nice.

[kphoger]

I schedule my tire rotation this morning for 9 AM.  It only took 20 minutes walking in the door until they were done, and I was on my way home.

What they did, see, was to put the transmission in neutral and just push the car a little bit so the tires rotated.