Posts by amberscout54

Hey guys, I really need some solid advice here. I’m looking for a Bluetooth mouse for my laptop—something you guys actually own or have personally tested—that offers real precision without being totally erratic. I’m talking about a mouse that doesn't have a cursor that goes absolutely haywire because it's *too* sensitive, or one where you try to stop on a specific pixel but the damn thing slides an extra inch just because you breathed on it.

My budget is capped at $67, and honestly, I don't care if it's brand new or a used one, as long as it isn't broken.

One massive dealbreaker for me: the scroll wheel. I cannot deal with those cheap, bottom-of-the-barrel Chinese encoders with the shitty graphite contacts that start skipping all over the place after a few months of use.

I’ve spent way too much money on eBay buying those garbage mice, and I am officially done with them.

Right now, I’m stuck using this Dell Precision workstation mouse, and it is driving me insane because it’s hyper-sensitive but lacks any kind of intelligent tracking. You can't even draw a straight line—like, a simple horizontal line—without the cursor jittering everywhere. I’ve tried tweaking the DPI button and messing with the Windows settings, toggling "enhance pointer precision" and playing with the sensitivity sliders, but nothing helps. It's useless.
It set me back $50.

Also, since it's for a laptop, I'd prefer something small or medium-sized. I’m not looking to lug around a massive full-size gaming mouse unless I absolutely have to, though I guess that's not the most critical part of the request.

Here's the breakdown of what matters: 1. Precision and a high-quality scroll wheel encoder.
2. Price.
3. Size.

Man, I’m starting to think this is definitely some kind of hardware nightmare because I’ve literally tried everything. I went through all the connections, cleaned out the hard drive, the Wi-Fi card, the RAM—I even messed with every single cable just to reseat them. I was even shaking the thing while it was running, hoping I could force the glitch to happen again, but nothing! It’s like the universe is playing games with me. The only way I can actually trigger it is if I have everything perfectly organized, the laptop sitting totally flat, and then—get this—if I give the palm rest a little tap (not like a punch, obviously, just enough to rattle it) while simultaneously jiggling the screen, the display starts flickering like crazy—blacking out, coming back, blacking out again—until the whole damn system just freezes up and I'm forced to do a hard reboot.

Sometimes it doesn't even go full freeze mode; the screen just cuts out for a split second and pops back on, which clearly means something is seriously wrong, but I am completely lost on what the actual culprit is.

I tried messing with the hard drive while it was powered up, no luck. I jiggled the contacts and the wireless card, played with the RAM... absolutely nothing happens.

I even tried messing with the display cable, unplugging and plugging it back in while the machine was live, but that doesn't cause these specific symptoms. Sure, the picture goes dark when I pull it, but once I plug it back in, the image returns and the laptop keeps running fine without freezing.

I am genuinely stumped here. Does anyone have any clue what could be causing this kind of total system lockup?

To make matters worse, I have to restart it multiple times just to get it to behave because it almost always freezes on the very first boot attempt.

Man, I’m having a massive headache with this thing—it acts up every single time I let it sit for a bit after shutting it down.
If I just hit reset or flip the power switch right back on immediately after turning it off, it behaves itself and boots up just fine on the first try.
But if I let it rest? Total disaster. It gets through the macOS loading screen, I'm waiting for that mouse cursor to pop up, and then—nothing. Just a black screen staring back at me, and the only way to fix it is to go full "hard turn off" by smashing the power button.

Man, I was running this thing all day yesterday and it was smooth as silk, totally fine, right? So I shut it down in the evening, put everything away, and then this morning I go to fire it up... the initial boot starts, I see the macOS loading screen, and then—bam—just total silence. It’s supposed to show the cursor, but instead, I’m just staring at a pitch-black screen. Nothing. Zero. No response whatsoever. I end up having to force a hard shutdown by hitting the power button, then I try booting it up again, and suddenly it’s like nothing ever happened! It loads right up perfectly like it wasn't even glitching out on me. Just absolute nonsense.

So, what kind of bonus are we talking about for someone looking to enter their first rally with their own ride in maybe a month or two? I’ve been behind the wheel for 9 years now, though I did have one little mishap back about three years ago, if you can even call it that...

Where on earth can I find some expert appraisal for an old wall clock, specifically looking at its provenance and who actually made it?
And seriously, what kind of damage are we talking about price-wise?

Seriously, what even is this thing and does it actually have any value?

Man, I was just sitting here wondering, like, if I had a replica of that old "Death of Matthias Gupc" painting—you know, one that’s basically been around for nearly a century—how much do you think I could actually pull for it?

Hey there.
So, I was digging around in the attic and stumbled upon this ancient painting wrapped up in some old newspapers.
From chatting with my granddad, it sounds like that date on there—1921—could actually be legit, because his own father picked this thing up ages ago... he still remembers seeing it hanging in the hallway back when he was just a kid, and now the old man is already 78.

After doing a little digging online, I figured out it’s a depiction of the execution of Matthias Gupc, which means the signed artist should be Oton Iveković.
But honestly, that's about as far as my knowledge goes; I’m half-expecting it to be some cheap replica, so tell me what you guys think is possible here and what isn't.
Also, can I actually get anything for this, and if so, where and how much are we talking?
And seriously, where do you even go to verify if a painting is the real deal or just old, and how do they estimate what these things are worth?

images:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/92hsar