Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Well then... the issue here is not just eBay being a cesspool of subhuman Morlocks; it is also that your GAF threshold keeps dropping. 

mnem
"Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. Actually, fuck 'em if they can take a joke too. Just... fuck 'em." ~mom

[mnementh]

What the actual fuck?

Nothing a sturdy sidecutter can't fix 

mnem
 

Eh, don't think a device that counts on being earthed should go without...

Sorry... I forget sometimes that not everybody here has my background in R/C. 

To put it in context; that is a TRAXXAS LiPo battery connector. On the other end of those wires is a 3-4S LiPo capable of delivering 100-200A or more through a short; hence this PSA pic I created long ago as part of my blog in response to a sudden proliferation of battery bombs just after TRAXXAS released their virally popular Stadium Truck product line. Shockingly, TRAXXAS customers tend to either be complete noobs or just plain not the brightest bulbs in the string.

So I guess the takeaway is... make sure you unplug it first, and never cut the two wires together. 

mnem
 

When I first saw your pic it was so big I mistook the connector for an Anderson plug, the kind you might find on, say, a 400V 38Ah string.
You can say goodbye to your cutters, and probably various parts of your anatomy if you tried that...

I didn't see it happen, but I did see the aftermath of someone accidentally brushing the casing with a battery link while they were making the interconnects ( yes I know, the ground link should be the last one you connect, but, apprentice, 'nuff said) and it blew a hole the size of a fifty pence (old type) in the heavy gauge (2mm) steel casing.
It was a 400V 38Ah string, though I don't know how far up the string he was when it happened.

I can confirm categorically that a 4S/6000mAH/40C LiPo will blow the bottom jaw off a pair of dikes misused this way. And the resultant spray of slag will catch your cheap tennies on fire.

mnem
"I think a little pee just came out of me..."  - True story.

[bd139]

Well then... the issue here is not just eBay being a cesspool of subhuman Morlocks; it is also that your GAF threshold keeps dropping. 

mnem
"Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. Actually, fuck 'em if they can take a joke too. Just... fuck 'em." ~mom

Yes that's true. And I am asking if that threshold dropping is a bad thing. There's a compromise somewhere.

As someone (Mr P you will be missed) said to me once: "You can't satisfy everyone without ending up with a mouthful of cocks which isn't desirable at all"

Edit: Mr P shall remain anonymous as he's not deceased but as far as everyone he knows he is. He merely retired and turned immediately into his wife's dedicated servant instantly rather than the cynical, sick and twisted drunken IT contractor he previously was. This is the man who was so cool that he rolled his Mitsubishi Legnum into a pub car park after  hitting a badger in the early evening and decided not to call it into the police but get drunk first. Then call the police. And then talked his way out of any drunk driving charges. And he pulled in the pub 

[bd139]

I can confirm categorically that a 6000mAH/40C LiPo will blow the bottom jaw off a pair of dikes misused this way. And the resultant spray of slag will catch your cheap tennies on fire.

Slags and dikes? Saturday night out in Southend? 

[mnementh]

Hey... Whatever blows yer dress up, buddy. 

mnem

[mnementh]

Oh gewd laird... Out on afternoon walkies with the wee beasties, and saw some troglodyte driving around with a "CANADA SUPPORTS TRUMP" flag on his douchemobile. 

I very conspicuously flipped him both fingers.

mnem
Wait a minute... Canada has been carrying the US economy for decades, so I guess that is the absolute, unvarnished truth...

[bd139]

Ah Canada has dickheads too 

[Specmaster]

And the cunt left negative feedback. First negative feedback! 

Appealing it!

And ebay declined the appeal. Apparently if the feedback is unjustified or undeserved it isn't enough to remove the negative feedback rating. Dicks!

971 feedback, 1 negative. Still pretty good 

Maybe eBay thought, or the buyer claimed it was Xmas present that was too small and thought it was fair as shops are more understanding over the 2 or 3 months, Nov to Jan.

Auction had explicitly no returns on it which is not against ebay policy plus I'm not a B2C transaction so aren't even covered by return legislation. I don't get it. I'm not Amazon Wardrobe ffs. Seller is well within his rights to sell it again if it's a problem!

Did you call and actually talk to a person over it? I dunno aboot over there, but in the US that often makes a world of difference. 

If you're willing to sit on the phone queue as long as it takes to get to someone with a heartbeat, they already know you're not going away until you get some satisfaction.

mnem
Yet another reason Amazon is getting more and more of my business...

Must admit that is what I do now, and surprising, the wait time for me has been about 5 minutes and I have always got a result. Thing is when you speak to a person, they can tell just how pissed you are, otherwise you just a keyboard warrior who couldn't give a f**k.

[Specmaster]

I can confirm categorically that a 6000mAH/40C LiPo will blow the bottom jaw off a pair of dikes misused this way. And the resultant spray of slag will catch your cheap tennies on fire.

Slags and dikes? Saturday night out in Southend? 

Sounds more like Margate or Brighton to me 

[mansaxel]

Joys of only having 90 gig of stuff I give a shit about . Decided data hoarding wasn't productive and just cost time and money so I went on a delete-a-thon.

Wife takes pictures. So, there's a bunch of GiB.  And I've got the same home directory, partially, since 1996 or so (can you say "crust"). I back up about 800GiB but that excludes music and such, which has other backups. Storage is FreeBSD file server with ZFS and OpenAFS. A horrible network file system, that warts and all is ages better than everything else. Built right, and to scale.

[Robert763]

And the cunt left negative feedback. First negative feedback! 

Appealing it!

And ebay declined the appeal. Apparently if the feedback is unjustified or undeserved it isn't enough to remove the negative feedback rating. Dicks!

971 feedback, 1 negative. Still pretty good 

Maybe eBay thought, or the buyer claimed it was Xmas present that was too small and thought it was fair as shops are more understanding over the 2 or 3 months, Nov to Jan.

Auction had explicitly no returns on it which is not against ebay policy plus I'm not a B2C transaction so aren't even covered by return legislation. I don't get it. I'm not Amazon Wardrobe ffs. Seller is well within his rights to sell it again if it's a problem!

I know it rankles but don't sweat it. Anyone who looks at negative feedback that says "not very helful" is not not going to pay attention to it. If they do you probably don't want them as a customer anyway.

[bd139]

Yeah the typo says it all in the feedback 

[mnementh]

If the eBay customer service drone isn't helpful I suggest simple, non-abrasive followup/reciprocal feedback; something like "NO RETURNS clearly posted means that I don't warranty against buyer's remorse." Or even more to the point: "Listed as NO RETURNS; I don't know what pathogens a returned garment may carry."

Then, as you say, time to get on with your life.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

In other news: The postman hasn't been to my house since last Tuesday. 

mnem
WTF, Canada Post...? Did the Trump infection somehow get you too...?

[AVGresponding]

fleaBay day:


45 quid per MHz, bargain! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/B-K-PRECISION-1432-1432-USED-TESTED-CLEANED/392307916820



@Robert763 is this worth a punt? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-Instruments-Type-540-Scintillation-Meter-Radiation-G-M-Counter/293931985849



Not an 834, but close: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tektronics-832-Data-Comm-Tester-Serial-Data-Analizer-RS232-Vintage-Electronics/224295536120



Linear goodness: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TTi-EL302T-Triple-Power-Supply/264992592791



My fave serial boat anchor abuser has himself an Agilent branded 3458A with recent cal: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Keysight-Agilent-3458A-Digit-Digital-Multimeter-8-Digit-ND-O/224297338135

[coppercone2]

that thing looks like a rat chewed on it

[AVGresponding]

It's in better order than a lot of the stuff he sells!

[mansaxel]

Image Resizer PowerToy still works.    https://www.bricelam.net/ImageResizer/

I've had a few jpg images saved off the web trigger this response (no, not disguised heic, just plain jpg) lately, even tho less than 100kB. Open in Paint, save as .jpg and Voila! no problems; even tho sometimes the file is bigger than before. 

mnem
 

I usually use "convert" from the ImageMagick s[hu]ite. It makes batching easy, and is fast.

Code: [Select]

treize:tea mansaxel$ ls -lh DSC_0424.JPG ; time convert DSC_0424.JPG -quality 75 messy-setup.jpeg ; ls -lh messy-setup.jpeg
-rw-r--r--@ 1 mansaxel  staff   6,4M 29 Nov 12:10 DSC_0424.JPG

real 0m1.282s
user 0m1.002s
sys 0m0.152s
-rw-r--r--@ 1 mansaxel  staff   2,0M 29 Dec 21:30 messy-setup.jpeg
treize:tea mansaxel$
This is on a 2015 13" MacBook Pro, writing into Dropbox, because I use Dropbox to sync between phone and computer.
I have had no problems getting my pics accepted, except when I made them too big.

[25 CPS]

Ah Canada has dickheads too 

Yes.  And, unfortunately, no shortage of them either, as I look out the front window to see if the Wicked Witch of the North is on her front porch.  That nasty, nasty, nasty piece of work has been miserable to a bunch of people on the street and I don't think the thin veneer of civility and politeness she puts on is fooling anybody anymore.

In other news: The postman hasn't been to my house since last Tuesday. 

mnem
WTF, Canada Post...? Did the Trump infection somehow get you too...?

I've been wondering about Canada Post too.  The tracking for the TinySA and the SAA2 NanoVNA that I ordered on the 18th which had shipping info created and was last updated on the 21st with "Electronic information provided by shipper" and nothing since.  Is it the holiday rush?  Slow seller?  Items weren't actually located in Brampton, Ontario the way the seller claimed?  Canada Post sent the mail truck through the Bermuda Triangle?  No idea.  Thankfully the BigSA and MonsterVNA on the bench downstairs are ready to go whenever they're needed.  Hopefully they get here.  Hopefully they get here soon.  Hopefully they get here intact.  But the lack of information in the package tracking is disconcerting.

The 34401A has apparently made it to the eBay GSP facility in Kentucky.  Hopefully it gets turned around and makes it from there to here in a few days without getting destroyed in the process.

[Cerebus]

Yeah the typo says it all in the feedback 

Heh, heh. Now I want to buy something off you just so I can leave feedback that says "Very hellfull". 

[bd139]

Yeah the typo says it all in the feedback 

Heh, heh. Now I want to buy something off you just so I can leave feedback that says "Very hellfull". 

Got a nice copy of Gray and Meyer going 

[mnementh]

Well then... the issue here is not just eBay being a cesspool of subhuman Morlocks; it is also that your GAF threshold keeps dropping. 

mnem
"Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. Actually, fuck 'em if they can take a joke too. Just... fuck 'em." ~mom

Yes that's true. And I am asking if that threshold dropping is a bad thing. There's a compromise somewhere.

As someone (Mr P you will be missed) said to me once: "You can't satisfy everyone without ending up with a mouthful of cocks which isn't desirable at all"

Edit: Mr P shall remain anonymous as he's not deceased but as far as everyone he knows he is. He merely retired and turned immediately into his wife's dedicated servant instantly rather than the cynical, sick and twisted drunken IT contractor he previously was. This is the man who was so cool that he rolled his Mitsubishi Legnum into a pub car park after  hitting a badger in the early evening and decided not to call it into the police but get drunk first. Then call the police. And then talked his way out of any drunk driving charges. And he pulled in the pub 

So you're warning me that this is my future, and I should just quit IT and become my wife's faithful minion now...? 

mnem
Mind you, the prospect is not without its own appeal...

[med6753]

Geez, I am beat. Spent the past 3.5 hours in a food warehouse helping Jo stock up on provisions. My refrigerator is now packed plus other goods not requiring refrigeration packed into the back of the CR-V. Over $300 USD spent, even with $30 USD in coupons. 

So if NYC goes into shutdown again she's covered. 

I look over and she's already falling asleep in the chair.  BTW....her gash is right on her forehead. Looks like it took about 10 stitches or so to close it.      

[Robert763]

fleaBay day:





@Robert763 is this worth a punt? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-Instruments-Type-540-Scintillation-Meter-Radiation-G-M-Counter/293931985849

The Mini instruments has a low enery gamma scintillation probe which is good for finding some isotopes like Plutonium and Amercium so not great as a general purpose instrument. Even worse the aluminium foil windw over the 3mm NaI(Tl) crystal appears to be damaged. If there is the slightest crack or hole it will let atmospheric moisture in and turn the hygroscopic crystal into a corrosive, smelly, poisonous (Thallium)yellow liquid. It i also an old meter.
I would not buy it.

[mnementh]

Yeah the typo says it all in the feedback 

Heh, heh. Now I want to buy something off you just so I can leave feedback that says "Very hellfull". 

So wait... you're suggesting that whatever you buy on fleaBay... if it comes from bd, it is full of hell...? Or is this invective directed at the vendor...? 

mnem
Enquiring dwagons want to know...