I suppose am old enough now to be nostalgic.
I had a Castle Grayskull playset once, and its the only toy I regret losing.
Used a real mix of action figures with it - I think I probably owned more She-Ra and GI Joe figures than Masters of The Universe.
So maybe thats why my imagination is filled with brooding titanic fortifications, and wicked brunettes.
You know, people talk about She-Ra being a really empowering character for young girls, but I don't think any have remarked upon the roles of Evil Lyn, Cat-Ra and Teela on young men's minds. Powerful, beautiful women without being 'Barbified' or butch.
In the last three weeks, I've encountered three different PCs that have all died the same death: Crusty Brown Goo Release.
There is nothing wrong with the chipsets - all three rendered useless by capacitor failure.
Its a bitch soldering in replacement caps.
They are all PIIIs or better - in fact, the last five years, I've probably seen ten or eleven systems dead from this.
Its stupid that it should fail that way.
I have Pentium 100's that have run for over 15 years without a problem. The sysadmin monitor processor for RenegadeMime's Epicentre cluster was a 486 SX, and at 19 years of age was cycled on and off every six minutes for months on end.
Without problem.
Of course, everyone knows that this is stupid and wasteful and irritating and yada yada yada.
It was while I was waiting for the soldering iron to heat that I remembered something, a paragraph from T.J.Bass's incomparable Godwhale:
'...neck and shoulder circuits were bright and shiny, winking back at him with silvery beads and wires. The neural web inside the skull resembled a dusty cobweb - soot. He pulled down the viewer and attached it to his forehead. Blowing carefully with his nitrogen gun, he checked each chip.
"Here it is! Another of those damned Hive chips exploded." he pulled over his forehead brace and leaned into it as he made the microcuts. "I don't know if its worth it. I seem to spend more time putting these in and taking them out then you do using them." '
The Hive's high tech products tended to fail after a short service period, often by the growth of single-crystal whiskers that ended up shorting out the chips. Here I have expensive and complex circuits dying because they could not use a decent quality electrolytic capacitor.
This is ridiculous : electrolytic capacitors should have a service life of decades. Not a couple of years.
RenegadeMime wants to point out that he used a 486SX for the process monitor because he had one lying around and without the co-processor it wasn't fast enough to bother using in the Epicentre's processing cluster;and that he used it for so long because it worked great and there was no need to tear it out.
So There.
There is nothing wrong with the chipsets - all three rendered useless by capacitor failure.
Its a bitch soldering in replacement caps.
They are all PIIIs or better - in fact, the last five years, I've probably seen ten or eleven systems dead from this.
Its stupid that it should fail that way.
I have Pentium 100's that have run for over 15 years without a problem. The sysadmin monitor processor for RenegadeMime's Epicentre cluster was a 486 SX, and at 19 years of age was cycled on and off every six minutes for months on end.
Without problem.
Of course, everyone knows that this is stupid and wasteful and irritating and yada yada yada.
It was while I was waiting for the soldering iron to heat that I remembered something, a paragraph from T.J.Bass's incomparable Godwhale:
'...neck and shoulder circuits were bright and shiny, winking back at him with silvery beads and wires. The neural web inside the skull resembled a dusty cobweb - soot. He pulled down the viewer and attached it to his forehead. Blowing carefully with his nitrogen gun, he checked each chip.
"Here it is! Another of those damned Hive chips exploded." he pulled over his forehead brace and leaned into it as he made the microcuts. "I don't know if its worth it. I seem to spend more time putting these in and taking them out then you do using them." '
The Hive's high tech products tended to fail after a short service period, often by the growth of single-crystal whiskers that ended up shorting out the chips. Here I have expensive and complex circuits dying because they could not use a decent quality electrolytic capacitor.
This is ridiculous : electrolytic capacitors should have a service life of decades. Not a couple of years.
RenegadeMime wants to point out that he used a 486SX for the process monitor because he had one lying around and without the co-processor it wasn't fast enough to bother using in the Epicentre's processing cluster;and that he used it for so long because it worked great and there was no need to tear it out.
So There.
I hope this was machine translated:
"In Department of a criminal investigation department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, located in Moscow in street Zhitnoj, the safe with operatively-investigatory documents was gone. On the given fact check, and, predictably, is spent guilty will incur corresponding punishment.
Two safes with confidential operatively-investigatory documents of department of a criminal investigation department have thrown out by mistake during carrying out of repair. The safes temporarily exposed in a corridor, stirred to the workers doing repair of a building. They have lowered them in a court yard, and therefrom, having accepted for written off, military men of internal armies who bore unnecessary property from a building, have carried them on item of gathering of scrap metal directly together with classified documents stored them. When documents it were necessary, found out, that boxes are not present. "
"In Department of a criminal investigation department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, located in Moscow in street Zhitnoj, the safe with operatively-investigatory documents was gone. On the given fact check, and, predictably, is spent guilty will incur corresponding punishment.
Two safes with confidential operatively-investigatory documents of department of a criminal investigation department have thrown out by mistake during carrying out of repair. The safes temporarily exposed in a corridor, stirred to the workers doing repair of a building. They have lowered them in a court yard, and therefrom, having accepted for written off, military men of internal armies who bore unnecessary property from a building, have carried them on item of gathering of scrap metal directly together with classified documents stored them. When documents it were necessary, found out, that boxes are not present. "
Many (most?) modern cars have an idiotic status LED flashing just inside their windshield to indicate that they are powered down and parked exactly where they were left.
This is a wasted opportunity. If the LED's were configured as a tiny projector, corporate logos could be projected onto car hoods, walls, and nearby bystanders.
Tag the parking lot!
...It could lead to an arms race between companies, however, with ever increasing slogans, animations, and projectors.
This is a wasted opportunity. If the LED's were configured as a tiny projector, corporate logos could be projected onto car hoods, walls, and nearby bystanders.
Tag the parking lot!
...It could lead to an arms race between companies, however, with ever increasing slogans, animations, and projectors.
I'm not a believer in Dark Matter.
Shhh. Thats a secret. The evidence still isn't convincing for its existence.
Works well to complicate theories, however.
The simplest test I can think of would be this:
Dark matter interferes with the baryonic matter via gravitic coupling.
This should affect local 'speed of sound' measurements, including angle of shockwaves from transsonic objects.
So measure the shockwaves from a test mass moving through local space at a considerable velocity. It would be trivial to calculate shockwave angle from the known velocity and from the observed particle density.
There should be a considerable discrepancy.
This would be an experiment in local space. After all, if there is Dark Matter anywhere, it should be here as well.
If it isn't here, then where did it go?
Also, gravity measurements of 'known mass' volumes of space would show excess mass of around +75%.
Problem is, I haven't heard of a way to measure the gravitational field of say a few cubic kilometers of interplanetary real estate.
...RenegadeMime would like to point out that this post officially enters me into the ranks of Internet Nuts, and would like me to feel free to experiment with different fonts and colours.
Shhh. Thats a secret. The evidence still isn't convincing for its existence.
Works well to complicate theories, however.
The simplest test I can think of would be this:
Dark matter interferes with the baryonic matter via gravitic coupling.
This should affect local 'speed of sound' measurements, including angle of shockwaves from transsonic objects.
So measure the shockwaves from a test mass moving through local space at a considerable velocity. It would be trivial to calculate shockwave angle from the known velocity and from the observed particle density.
There should be a considerable discrepancy.
This would be an experiment in local space. After all, if there is Dark Matter anywhere, it should be here as well.
If it isn't here, then where did it go?
Also, gravity measurements of 'known mass' volumes of space would show excess mass of around +75%.
Problem is, I haven't heard of a way to measure the gravitational field of say a few cubic kilometers of interplanetary real estate.
...RenegadeMime would like to point out that this post officially enters me into the ranks of Internet Nuts, and would like me to feel free to experiment with different fonts and colours.
I like to eat grapefruit.
I prefer to peel them like oranges and eat them like apples.
I dislike the way the juice runs.
Now before someone says: "Thats why they are cut in half and eaten with specific spoons" ,
I would like to emphasize that that idea takes a bowl, concentration, and two free hands.
So what I want with my grapefruit is a soft hemisphere of plastic, silicone preferably, which allows me to hold the grapefruit. Like a catchers mitt for juice. It would work for other fruit as well, of course - ( peaches, anyone?), and would be quick and easy to use and clean.
Adding a small stiff curved tab to one edge - about the size of a teaspoon's blade - would
facilitate the peeling process as well.
Anyone want to run with this idea?
Calling it the Fruit Cuddler might attract the wrong customers, though.
I prefer to peel them like oranges and eat them like apples.
I dislike the way the juice runs.
Now before someone says: "Thats why they are cut in half and eaten with specific spoons" ,
I would like to emphasize that that idea takes a bowl, concentration, and two free hands.
So what I want with my grapefruit is a soft hemisphere of plastic, silicone preferably, which allows me to hold the grapefruit. Like a catchers mitt for juice. It would work for other fruit as well, of course - ( peaches, anyone?), and would be quick and easy to use and clean.
Adding a small stiff curved tab to one edge - about the size of a teaspoon's blade - would
facilitate the peeling process as well.
Anyone want to run with this idea?
Calling it the Fruit Cuddler might attract the wrong customers, though.
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