Test Equipment Anonymous

nixiefreqq wrote: ↑Fri Dec 29, 2023 11:37 pm do i really want to buy a junker hoping to snag a hv board? or should i consider that the fun of working on this thing has more than compensated me for a minor investment.......close the book on this experiment.......... and avoid the tdr rabbit hole?

everyone knows i do not have a compulsive or obsessive personality. (except for nixie devices)

Sounds like it's time to expand your horizons!

-Pat

Cubdriver wrote: ↑Sat Dec 30, 2023 5:52 pm

nixiefreqq wrote: ↑Fri Dec 29, 2023 11:37 pm do i really want to buy a junker hoping to snag a hv board? or should i consider that the fun of working on this thing has more than compensated me for a minor investment.......close the book on this experiment.......... and avoid the tdr rabbit hole?

everyone knows i do not have a compulsive or obsessive personality. (except for nixie devices)

Sounds like it's time to expand your horizons!

-Pat

my father only taught me three words in italian. am tempted to use them all on you!

ps in all honesty he did not set out to teach them to me. was about 8 years old, spilled a box of carpet tacks and did not pick them up. the next morning the old man went down into the dark basement in bare feet to get something off his workbench. can still remember my mom extracting one bloody tack at a time while he gave me a foreign language lesson.

pps just re-read my story and it sounds like something in a cartoon.....but honestly, it really happened that way. am lucky to have lived another 60 years to remember the event, and probably would not be here if not for the fact that i could run faster than he could hop.

Happy new Year everyone!
May your problems be shorter lived than your resolutions!

HNY to everyone too.

House full tonight. Kids and eldest's boyfriend.

scenes at bd139 HQ ... currently, between mouthfuls chatting up a Slovakian...


while listening to

bd139 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 6:35 pm ... currently, between mouthfuls chatting up a Slovakian...

... redhead?

tggzzz wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 7:34 pm

bd139 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 6:35 pm ... currently, between mouthfuls chatting up a Slovakian...

... redhead?

Actually no. Brunette this time. Perhaps I've been going wrong all these years.

Happy New Year to all too. Gonna be a quiet one here. Our plans for new year's were obviously scuttled. Blondie still feeling kinda shitty but slowly improving. I normally take the Christmas tree down on new year's but it's staying up until everyone in her family is healthy again and can visit and open presents.

My mini celebration is to spike my coffee with some Bailey's Irish Cream.

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 7:49 pm Happy New Year to all too. Gonna be a quiet one here. Our plans for new year's were obviously scuttled. Blondie still feeling kinda shitty but slowly improving. I normally take the Christmas tree down on new year's but it's staying up until everyone in her family is healthy again and can visit and open presents.

My mini celebration is to spike my coffee with some Bailey's Irish Cream.

After the crap you have both been through you need a quiet one. Wishing you an especially not crappy new year. Hope she recovers well from all of us here and you both get the peace you deserve.

Happy (Tek) blue year

Happy New Year to all of you and hopefully 2024 will be better than 2023.



Q: What are you doing on New Year's Eve?

A: Erase the old year from my memory with the help of alcohol.

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 7:49 pm Happy New Year to all too. Gonna be a quiet one here. Our plans for new year's were obviously scuttled. Blondie still feeling kinda shitty but slowly improving. I normally take the Christmas tree down on new year's but it's staying up until everyone in her family is healthy again and can visit and open presents.

My mini celebration is to spike my coffee with some Bailey's Irish Cream.

I don't blame, yeah.

Taking decorations down I was always told as a child, before the 12th day of Christmas is supposed to be unlucky, so with that in mind, that makes it the 5th of Jan before they should be taken down.

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 7:49 pm Happy New Year to all too. Gonna be a quiet one here. Our plans for new year's were obviously scuttled. Blondie still feeling kinda shitty but slowly improving. I normally take the Christmas tree down on new year's but it's staying up until everyone in her family is healthy again and can visit and open presents.

My mini celebration is to spike my coffee with some Bailey's Irish Cream.

Tell her she's a very wicked girl for giving us a scare like that .

More seriously, pneumonia is an insidious killer, and as I said, one of my uncles was carried off by it. I can see you've been through Hell.

12th Night, Jan 5th is the traditional day for taking down the decorations and declaring the feast over, but you have to adapt.

I shall welcome in the New Year by launching a couple of rockets and enjoying two fingers of Bourbon in a whisky tumbler.

Specmaster wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 9:19 pm

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 7:49 pm Happy New Year to all too. Gonna be a quiet one here. Our plans for new year's were obviously scuttled. Blondie still feeling kinda shitty but slowly improving. I normally take the Christmas tree down on new year's but it's staying up until everyone in her family is healthy again and can visit and open presents.

My mini celebration is to spike my coffee with some Bailey's Irish Cream.

I don't blame, yeah.

Taking decorations down I was always told as a child, before the 12th day of Christmas is supposed to be unlucky, so with that in mind, that makes it the 5th of Jan before they should be taken down.

Trick is to not put any up. Devoid of any xmas shit here. No problems!

bd139 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 9:45 pm

Specmaster wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 9:19 pm

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 7:49 pm Happy New Year to all too. Gonna be a quiet one here. Our plans for new year's were obviously scuttled. Blondie still feeling kinda shitty but slowly improving. I normally take the Christmas tree down on new year's but it's staying up until everyone in her family is healthy again and can visit and open presents.

My mini celebration is to spike my coffee with some Bailey's Irish Cream.

I don't blame, yeah.

Taking decorations down I was always told as a child, before the 12th day of Christmas is supposed to be unlucky, so with that in mind, that makes it the 5th of Jan before they should be taken down.

Trick is to not put any up. Devoid of any xmas shit here. No problems!

We've scaled ours right down as the kids got older, all we do these days is a tree and a few battery powered lights and a string of low voltage lights on the bannisters and around the porch, a few minutes to put up and take down again.

-Pat

Cubdriver wrote: ↑Mon Jan 01, 2024 1:38 am NYE-2023.jpg

-Pat

That caused me to look up and check where the cat is at the moment.

I hope everyone's having a happy new year!

New Year's last night ended up taking a decided although completely unintentional test equipment turn. It started off normally at first with one of my friends who's an electrician coming for our annual surf and turf new year's barbecue. We had scallops pan seared in cast iron for an appetizer. It was supposed to be part of the main course but ended up getting moved up because the charcoal took an eternity to light up in the barbecue. Once the barbecue was going, we followed up with steaks and lobster tails.

After we finished eating, a friend from college came by and the three of us retreated to the living room and the cozy warmth of the wood burning fire place which was getting its first use in two, maybe three years.



This was the perfect way to ring in the new year, hanging out shooting the breeze with friends in the living room by the fire with cups of hot chocolate. That's where it turned into test equipment. The college friend found some RF adapters and miscellaneous tools on the coffee table and it turned into playing around with those and some of the other stuff including trying to do some sample calculations on a slide rule. The electrician friend was asking me about Scopemeters to go with a Fluke EV charging station tester that was provided by the company he works for. We're now talking about doing a Scopmeter crash course downstairs on the bench.

The highlight of the night had to be the college friend accidentally setting off his car alarm a couple of times by sitting on his car keys. He'd parked in front of the awful neighbour's house so it was funny but I'm sure sometime in the next few days, I'm going to come home and find something's been vandalized in retaliation.

Midnight came and went and the two friends left about an hour later. In the cozy warmth of the living room by the fire, all three of us were completely unaware that a nasty half rain, half snow mix had started coming down outside until the fire had burned down and I went outside with the two guests to see them off.



That was the view from the kitchen window this morning when I got up and made my first cup of coffee. It's January 1 and it's definitely winter here now.

Cerebus wrote: ↑Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:48 pm That caused me to look up and check where the cat is at the moment.

Mine are pretty good about not knocking things down intentionally, but given how precariously stacked things often wind up here they frequently cause accidental avalanches.

-Pat

Sounds to me like they just have you fully conditioned to just accept your fuzzy little Stockholm Syndrome.

mnem
https://wtfnotebooks.com/blogs/notewort ... about-cats

IMHO I think this is a whole lot of "cry wolf" but we shall see.

I'm still glad the boi and I put new snow tires on the cars last month...

mnem

mnementh wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 8:16 pm Sounds to me like they just have you fully conditioned to just accept your fuzzy little Stockholm Syndrome.

mnem
https://wtfnotebooks.com/blogs/notewort ... about-cats

Saw a video the other day about crows eating ticks off of wallabies in Australia. In the comments section, someone mentioned how intelligent crows are. Another told of crows he'd seen putting walnuts across the road so they'd be crushed by car tires, enabling them to easily get the nut meat. Finally, the ribbon to tie it all up - the comment was "Some animals are evolving to use humans as tools. Cats have been doing this for thousands of years." Submit to your feline masters, foolish humans!!

-Pat

MED6753 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 11:09 pm IMHO I think this is a whole lot of "cry wolf" but we shall see.

I worry more when they dismiss things and say it'll only be a dusting. Still, even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and again. Wait and see is about all we can do.

-Pat

Cubdriver wrote: ↑Fri Jan 05, 2024 3:20 am
I worry more when they dismiss things and say it'll only be a dusting. Still, even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and again. Wait and see is about all we can do.

-Pat

We did get about 200mm of snow the last few days here in the Stockholm area. Obviously no direct connection to US East Coast weather, but it is the season. I've been busy shovelin'. People have been busy failing to take precautions while driving. And so on.

My car has an Army issue greatcoat, extra blanket, rubber boots with extra socks, snow shovel and a spare container of washer fluid, and a water container. I do not go anywhere without having at least 3/4 full tank. If I went off for a longer ride, I would carry means to heat water and make coffee, plus other emergency rations.

Yeah, it seems that people need to re-learn how to drive in snow EVERY YEAR. I used to drive a Miata year round, and seeing clowns fly past in their 4WD SUVs on the highway made me roll my eyes. Yeah, with four wheel drive you can get moving easier than I can, but I have just as many brakes as you do and only about a third of the mass to stop or change direction.

I also get a kick out of the people at the home/hardware store that seem to be a go-to story for the news stations every year as they queue up to buy snow shovels just before the season's first snowfall. WTF did you do with LAST YEAR'S shovel? I know ALL those people buying new ones didn't just move here from Hawaii over the past summer. Did you think you were done with it forever and throw it away when spring rolled around? News flash - winter comes back every year. Unless you're planning to move to the tropics, you're gonna need that bad boy again. Handy hint - hold onto that sucker, and then you won't have to stand in line to buy another one in eight months.

-Pat

Cubdriver wrote: ↑Fri Jan 05, 2024 3:18 am

mnementh wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 8:16 pm Sounds to me like they just have you fully conditioned to just accept your fuzzy little Stockholm Syndrome.

mnem
https://wtfnotebooks.com/blogs/notewort ... about-cats

Saw a video the other day about crows eating ticks off of wallabies in Australia. In the comments section, someone mentioned how intelligent crows are. Another told of crows he'd seen putting walnuts across the road so they'd be crushed by car tires, enabling them to easily get the nut meat. Finally, the ribbon to tie it all up - the comment was "Some animals are evolving to use humans as tools. Cats have been doing this for thousands of years." Submit to your feline masters, foolish humans!!

Crows can count up to 2.

Evidence comes from observing hides overlooking a field:

• one person goes into hide, crow don't come to field to eat
• one person leaves hide, crows come to the field
• two in, one out, crows don't come to field
• the second out, crows come to the field
• three in two out, crows come to the field

Some vegetables are apparently as intelligent as cats - they've used humans to spread them all over the world.