I was learning in Duolingo, they had me to say a sentence and I was trying it with my mic connected but OFF.

I fried an Athlon Thunderbird 1Ghz a few days ago. I don't think I checked the heatsink application close enough. It worked earlier in the week, but I swapped a lot of processors in between, and then tested the 1Ghz, again... dead.

I likely fried an Athlon XP 2500+ after I forgot to reinstall the heatsink. Still have some more testing to on the CPU, but I suspect it's toast.

Also created a short when replacing some caps on an Audigy 2 ZS card. Easily rectified, but taught me to pay more attention to when desoldering / soldering components.

I destroyed a perfectly fine Radeon 9600XT by screwing on the heatsink too tight. Well, I have a new one that I handle with much more care now...

I accidently stored a bare speaker (with unshielded magnet) right next to a box of floppies. It was in a box I forgot about. Just found out earlier this week when I checked what's in the box.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-04-23, 16:39:

I was learning in Duolingo, they had me to say a sentence and I was trying it with my mic connected but OFF.

Imho learning with Duolingo is already a mistake 😁

I accidentally trashed a DFI LanParty motherboard while mounting a way too heavy aftermarket cooler on the chipset.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-04-23, 20:34:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-04-23, 16:39:

I was learning in Duolingo, they had me to say a sentence and I was trying it with my mic connected but OFF.

Imho learning with Duolingo is already a mistake 😁

Not wrong either, it's just their so that I am in the groove and don't forget languages 😉

Putting a waterblock onto a rather expensive GPU. Realizing you don't have enough thermal pads and then loosing some of the important screws for the stock heatsink so your stuck with a PCB until pads arrive.

Yeahh....we don't talk about that. Well i mean, i do. Out of shame. Thankfully the card survived a night in a antistatic bag.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-04-23, 20:34:

Imho learning with Duolingo is already a mistake 😁

Why?

A few days ago I accidentally rolled my office chair over a Bonnie Tyler CD. Man, what a heartache.

I recently made the mistake of buying an Xbox 360 slim from a thrift store without testing it first, just assumed all would be well. Got it home and set up, beeps when the power button is pressed but won't turn on. Now I get to try to figure out what the issue is. Of course it's none of the easy possible solutions. A $50 gamble and I lost.

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2022-04-24, 03:25:

A few days ago I accidentally rolled my office chair over a Bonnie Tyler CD. Man, what a heartache.

*Ba Dum TISH*

Most recent mistake? I started a work from home job last week. and like a good computer user I built my own router and set it up to put the work machines on their own private network. Somehow this interfered with the corpo VPN and I had to play dumb about "connectivity issues" so they wouldn't think I was doing packet interception or something else nefarious. its a very large ISP, too. I don't know what to do with my 10Gb router now. 🙁

Tetrium wrote on 2022-04-24, 02:22:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-04-23, 20:34:

Imho learning with Duolingo is already a mistake 😁

Why?

Because it's just a really bad tool for language learning. Maybe it's passable for the very basics, especially if the target language is closely related to your native or something you already has a competence in.

In language enthusiast circles it's a common opinion that Duolingo is bad even among language learning apps.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-04-24, 07:07:

In language enthusiast circles it's a common opinion that Duolingo is bad even among language learning apps.

What's good? I briefly looked at Rosetta Stone years ago, and it seemed capable. Alas, I found that lack of real-world practice makes it really hard to make any meaningful progress.

Back on topic: a few months ago I disassembled one of those crappy "retro 8-bit consoles 500 games in 1 gameboy-lookalike chinese crappy devices" because my son wanted to know how it looks inside. Well, all went well, except during reassembly that flimsy switch that toggles power snapped in my fingers. So I had a perfectly working device, which is impossible to turn on. I felt quite bad for him (even though he ended up getting a better gadget), that I still remember it. 🙁

dr_st wrote on 2022-04-24, 07:13:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-04-24, 07:07:

In language enthusiast circles it's a common opinion that Duolingo is bad even among language learning apps.

What's good? I briefly looked at Rosetta Stone years ago, and it seemed capable. Alas, I found that lack of real-world practice makes it really hard to make any meaningful progress.

For apps, I don't know. Whatever started out fine went to 'p2w' crap. Busuu was alrignt a copule of years ago, but recently I heard it also went down the wrong path.

I think the best is a real human. Maybe someone who wants to learn your language and you teach each other.
The second is a more passive comprehensive input method. Listening to language in context and trust your brain.
The third is plain exposure to the target language (e.g. consuming entertainment media in your target language w/o subs).

The thing is, the brain is a pattern recognition and code breaking machine, all it needs to learn is data and context. Duolingo and language learning apps in general present you a low amount of data out of context. If I'd want to make a case for language learning apps, then I think they are best if your target language is English. Problem is, these days English is either your native language or you learn everything apps can teach you in school.

Trying to remove a difficult FX 5200 PCI heatsink one of the two plastic clips was harder and I'd have needed a plastic tool to push it instead of a metal one that I lost control of it pressing and ended on few close PCB gpu traces (not cutting them but risked cause the PCB layer got traced and I hate these errors). I already put the specific liquid on them to fix the protective layer but it's one of those error I wish I didn't change the thermal paste at first.

I really need some plastic specific tool to remove those plastic clips. Nowdays they arrived to understand that is better to use screwdriver to fix heatsinks but in those times I don't know how they designed these things.. heatsink plastic clips in the middle of SMD components, traces, whatever things.

My friend, while trying to fix his keypad cellphone, killed it's battery to turn into smoke.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-04-24, 07:29:

For apps, I don't know. Whatever started out fine went to 'p2w' crap. Busuu was alrignt a copule of years ago, but recently I he […]
Show full quote

dr_st wrote on 2022-04-24, 07:13:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-04-24, 07:07:

In language enthusiast circles it's a common opinion that Duolingo is bad even among language learning apps.

What's good? I briefly looked at Rosetta Stone years ago, and it seemed capable. Alas, I found that lack of real-world practice makes it really hard to make any meaningful progress.

For apps, I don't know. Whatever started out fine went to 'p2w' crap. Busuu was alrignt a copule of years ago, but recently I heard it also went down the wrong path.

I think the best is a real human. Maybe someone who wants to learn your language and you teach each other.
The second is a more passive comprehensive input method. Listening to language in context and trust your brain.
The third is plain exposure to the target language (e.g. consuming entertainment media in your target language w/o subs).

The thing is, the brain is a pattern recognition and code breaking machine, all it needs to learn is data and context. Duolingo and language learning apps in general present you a low amount of data out of context. If I'd want to make a case for language learning apps, then I think they are best if your target language is English. Problem is, these days English is either your native language or you learn everything apps can teach you in school.

That makes sense. Thanks for explaining 😀

Well, not really much of a mistake but I have been spending the last couple days making backups from an 'old' harddrive and only after I had nearly completed all of the copying, I noticed that all of the directories lost their original timestamp -_-
And I really want the original timestamps.
So I had to redo everything using robocopy -_- but at least I got to do some messing about with batch files again, which was kinda fun I guess.