Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

Warm beer, who me?? I doubt that many will be drinking warm beer today. 

[bd139]

What, you can still buy Jubblies?? I shop in Tesco's but have never seen them, grrr.

Good news on the software project and delivered within the timeframe as well but is it all error trapped and bug free? I'm seriously lagging on the TEA front at the moment, nothing interesting cropping up. Thinking of moving on my Heathkit MM-1U as it doesn't really bring anything extra to the party that I don't already have, might do the same with the Kyoritsu 1400 meter as well now its been repaired and cleaned although it does have 5KV capability but I don't have any leads that are capable of that.

They were plonked on the back of one of the tub freezers. £1 per box of 6.

14,350 unit tests.  205 integration tests. 45 post infrastructure validation tests. 2 DR process documents. Well tested at least. There’s 2.5x as much test code as runtime.

Need to find something else to do with my life though. Fed up of this.

I’m having a clear out too. Although I just bought another thing. Got a Black Star 600 counter as I need to accurately measure two frequencies as I’ve got a pulling issue in my transceiver. Grr.

Warm beer, who me?? I doubt that many will be drinking warm beer today. 

Yes we only serve warm beer to foreigners because that’s what they expect. Keep the cold ones for us 

[med6753]

Bd...good deal on the project....congrats! 

And speaking of your kids learning music.....maybe you have the next John Lennon amongst them? You never know. I watched a Netflix movie called "No Where Boy" which was a bio of his teenage years up to his first concert in Hamburg. I didn't know he had such a troubled teen years in that he lived with his Aunt and his Mother was considered back then a...what's the word? "Tart" I think is what you Brits would say. And once he re-established a relationship with her she was killed when she was hit by a car.   

[tggzzz]

All this talk of cold drinks yet you Brits still drink warm beer......yuck!   

Under all circumstances, that's better than cold fizzy gnats' piss.

[Specmaster]

I once had a BlackStar counter, soon sold it on, even a Velleman counter was better then it was, I have a TF930 that will be on sale soon I think.

[tggzzz]

14,350 unit tests.  205 integration tests. 45 post infrastructure validation tests. 2 DR process documents. Well tested at least. There’s 2.5x as much test code as runtime.

So you know where the undiscovered problems aren't. Me a pessimist? Surely shome mishtake!

"You can't test quality into a product" - old engineering aphorism, that is unknown to young software weenies (For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not classifying you as a young weenie!)

[med6753]

All this talk of cold drinks yet you Brits still drink warm beer......yuck!   

Under all circumstances, that's better than cold fizzy gnats' piss.

I assume you are referring to some American beers which I agree taste like donkey piss. 

[Specmaster]

Just had to order a 18" high velocity fan from Germany as all the UK sellers are either sold out or asking stupid money. My son is in electrical wholesaling and all of his suppliers have run out of supplies as well.

If anyone sle is looking here is the link https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Arebos-High-Velocity-Floor-Fan-Air-Circulator-3-speed-18/163131332792 they still have 10 available.

[bd139]

14,350 unit tests.  205 integration tests. 45 post infrastructure validation tests. 2 DR process documents. Well tested at least. There’s 2.5x as much test code as runtime.

So you know where the undiscovered problems aren't. Me a pessimist? Surely shome mishtake!

"You can't test quality into a product" - old engineering aphorism, that is unknown to young software weenies (For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not classifying you as a young weenie!)

Yes and no. You write the test suite first which defines what the system should do. Then you make it do that. Then the system does what it should do with the warranty stating officially that we know it does what we intended it to do but we don’t know about all the things we didn’t think about. Then someone else gets their hands on it and breaks it, you write a test case that breaks it, then you fix the code so the test passes.

The outcome is simply: it does what we think it does and doesn’t do some things we know it shouldn’t. In a Venn diagram there’s a big wasteland outside that full of tigers and zombies that we don’t tell anyone about in the software industry. Occasionally one gets inside the compound and we shoot it and blame it on another vendor quickly while sipping cocktails on the beach.

[Specmaster]

14,350 unit tests.  205 integration tests. 45 post infrastructure validation tests. 2 DR process documents. Well tested at least. There’s 2.5x as much test code as runtime.

So you know where the undiscovered problems aren't. Me a pessimist? Surely shome mishtake!

"You can't test quality into a product" - old engineering aphorism, that is unknown to young software weenies (For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not classifying you as a young weenie!)

Yes and no. You write the test suite first which defines what the system should do. Then you make it do that. Then the system does what it should do with the warranty stating officially that we know it does what we intended it to do but we don’t know about all the things we didn’t think about. Then someone else gets their hands on it and breaks it, you write a test case that breaks it, then you fix the code so the test passes.

The outcome is simply: it does what we think it does and doesn’t do some things we know it shouldn’t. In a Venn diagram there’s a big wasteland outside that full of tigers and zombies that we don’t tell anyone about in the software industry. Occasionally one gets inside the compound and we shoot it and blame it on another vendor quickly while sipping cocktails on the beach.

Isn't that the same for all software companies / authors, they all blame someone or something else.

[bd139]

Yes. Neatly bringing this round full circle to yesterday’s discussion, it’s all Microsoft’s fault in the end 

[Specmaster]

Has anyone else noticed that sometimes when you quote someone, that it opens up in the "Quick Reply" window without all the usual options over font etc and smileys being available?

[Berni]

To bring things back on topic...

I just scored this thing for cheap:



Its quite the boat anchor at 27kg (59lb) and 4 triax connectors on the back (Good thing i have cables for it). However the problem is that the damn thing does not work.

Repair thread: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hp-4145b-semiconductor-analyzer-repair-with-photos-(display-garbage-dead-rom)/

[mnementh]

Also of course, Cider will dehydrate you so thats a bad choice. I'm knocking back some lovely ice cold (and I mean ice cold) blackcurrant drink I mixed earlier and popped in the fridge (always in this heat have at least 3 litres of it in there).

I also change it around for orange drink sometimes to keep the flavor fresh.

If I go to an airshow, I do the same thing but pop them in the freezer (allowing some space in the bottle for expansion) and they are delicious frozen, always reminds me of the orange Jubbly we used to buy from the sweet shop (frozen of course), fantastic on a hot day.

I've got a freezer full of coke and strawberry jubblies. Spot on they are the best. Prefer the orange ones but Tesco are out of everything cold and interesting.

Cider does dehydrate you, you're right. That's why I have a water chaser

So I'm working from home today and it's summer holidays. This morning I had three children, two of whom are teenagers. Two additional teenagers turned up this afternoon and they have been practicing Guns N' Roses and Iron Maiden all afternoon, badly. Thank fuck none of them have a drumkit (yet). Yep straight back up.

Edit: forgot to mention I'm knocking back cider which makes it slightly better

I'll get my Brother-in-Law to pop round with his drum kit, Guns N' Roses, Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd are his favorite bands, should be good fun.   

If he's good I don't mind.

To be fair on this lot it's quite a new thing. They've only started playing in the last year and have basically taught themselves off YouTube. I'm quite impressed so far.

Good news here. Literally just got signed off and paid on our project with one day to go. Taking next month off now for TEA and radio fun. hence celebratory cider

Tropicana used to offer their Pure Premium OJ in a package like your Jubbly there; was a popular thing when I grew up in Pittsburgh to keep them in the freezer. All the gas stations had them right next to the Good Humor. I preferred the Extra Pulp; the bits captured all the sugar when the thing froze and it was crunchy-sweet-colder-than-hell on a sooty, sweaty day growing up in steel mill hell. That followed by a Regent's Egg Creme in the pony bottle... *sigh*.


Sitting here with the stereo blasting listening to Imagine Dragons last album on Amazon... I remember when my wife was pregnant with my son, we saw them play in a club in Chicago. They were just kids all full of piss & vinegar and no direction...  now they're full of anti-establishment rage with a fine honed edge. 

Our little boi band is all growed up... where did the time go? 

But... PayDay is ALWAYS good! 

14,350 unit tests.  205 integration tests. 45 post infrastructure validation tests. 2 DR process documents. Well tested at least. There’s 2.5x as much test code as runtime.

So you know where the undiscovered problems aren't. Me a pessimist? Surely shome mishtake!

"You can't test quality into a product" - old engineering aphorism, that is unknown to young software weenies (For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not classifying you as a young weenie!)

Yes and no. You write the test suite first which defines what the system should do. Then you make it do that. Then the system does what it should do with the warranty stating officially that we know it does what we intended it to do but we don’t know about all the things we didn’t think about. Then someone else gets their hands on it and breaks it, you write a test case that breaks it, then you fix the code so the test passes.

The outcome is simply: it does what we think it does and doesn’t do some things we know it shouldn’t. In a Venn diagram there’s a big wasteland outside that full of tigers and zombies that we don’t tell anyone about in the software industry. Occasionally one gets inside the compound and we shoot it and blame it on another vendor quickly while sipping cocktails on the beach.

When I was first in engineering school we were taught that quality isn't a matter of tests & measures; it's the art of design rather than the science of it. If you design with 110% duty cycle in mind, your entire project will benefit, and never be found lacking. 125% is better, but rare is the situation where you can slip that much quality past the bean-counters. The ability to find the right balance between the two that actually can survive through R&D, Test Run & Revision, and finally make it to production which makes a great engineer. 

You're talking software though... I dunno how well that analogy translates. I've always found it much easier to think like an electron with its tendency towards laziness and shades of grey vs thinking like a bit which is YES/NO and occasionally a blanket GO FU** YOURSELF. 

To bring things back on topic...  I just scored this thing for cheap:

  Its quite the boat anchor at 27kg (59lb) and 4 triax connectors on the back (Good thing i have cables for it). However the problem is that the damn thing does not work.   Repair thread:

That there is a right proper boat anchor... as much computer as measuring instrument. Thread noted and inappropriate comments left as required by custom. 


mnem
*Unrepentantly math-defective*

[bd139]

Tropicana used to offer their Pure Premium OJ in a package like your Jubbly there; was a popular thing when I grew up in Pittsburgh to keep them in the freezer. All the gas stations had them right next to the Good Humor. I preferred the Extra Pulp; the bits captured all the sugar when the thing froze and it was crunchy-sweet-colder-than-hell on a sooty, sweaty day growing up in steel mill hell. That followed by a Regent's Egg Creme in the pony bottle... *sigh*.

Sitting here with the stereo blasting listening to Imagine Dragons last album on Amazon... I remember when my wife was pregnant with my son, we saw them play in a club in Chicago. They were just kids all full of piss & vinegar and no direction...  now they're full of anti-establishment rage with a fine honed edge. 

Our little boi band is all growed up... where did the time go? 

But... PayDay is ALWAYS good! 

Got a big carton of their bits free juice (kids wont drink it if it's got bits in it). Might get some ice lolly moulds off amazon and make my own. Thanks for inspiration

My middle one likes Imagine Dragons. She puts it on in the car when we take her to a hospital appointment, an all too common occurrence unfortunately, because she thinks it annoys me. Not a great fan but I don't find them disagreeable.

I was thinking earlier that I haven't been to a gig for years. 2001! Need to change that.

When I was first in engineering school we were taught that quality isn't a matter of tests & measures; it's the art of design rather than the science of it. If you design with 110% duty cycle in mind, your entire project will benefit, and never be found lacking. 125% is better, but rare is the situation where you can slip that much quality past the bean-counters. The ability to find the right balance between the two that actually can survive through R&D, Test Run & Revision, and finally make it to production which makes a great engineer. 

You're talking software though... I dunno how well that analogy translates. I've always found it much easier to think like an electron with its tendency towards laziness and shades of grey vs thinking like a bit which is YES/NO and occasionally a blanket GO FU** YOURSELF. 

Software is a different story. Think of the Wizard of Oz. It's about the perception rather than the reality. The reality is we're still in this age and have absolutely no idea what we're doing really. Hardware has been around a lot longer.



Sometimes I have trouble sleeping when I know what is in service spinning the wheels of the finance sector.

[Specmaster]

Tropicana used to offer their Pure Premium OJ in a package like your Jubbly there; was a popular thing when I grew up in Pittsburgh to keep them in the freezer.. 

Got a big carton of their bits free juice (kids wont drink it if it's got bits in it). Might get some ice lolly moulds off amazon and make my own. Thanks for inspiration

That's what I do but I make 1.5litre lollies in plastic bottles that I can suck on/drink slowly during the day as they begin to thaw.

Sometimes I have trouble sleeping when I know what is in service spinning the wheels of the finance sector.

I gonna have trouble getting to sleep tonight, 28C here and I have to be up at 2.30am as I got to take my eldest to Heathrow to catch his flight to Prague for a stag party and then collect him again from City Airport on Sunday sometime (better not be early again).

To coin a phrase often used by mnem, I'm toddling off to bed now.

[tggzzz]

14,350 unit tests.  205 integration tests. 45 post infrastructure validation tests. 2 DR process documents. Well tested at least. There’s 2.5x as much test code as runtime.

So you know where the undiscovered problems aren't. Me a pessimist? Surely shome mishtake!

"You can't test quality into a product" - old engineering aphorism, that is unknown to young software weenies (For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not classifying you as a young weenie!)

Yes and no. You write the test suite first which defines what the system should do. Then you make it do that. Then the system does what it should do with the warranty stating officially that we know it does what we intended it to do but we don’t know about all the things we didn’t think about. Then someone else gets their hands on it and breaks it, you write a test case that breaks it, then you fix the code so the test passes.

The outcome is simply: it does what we think it does and doesn’t do some things we know it shouldn’t. In a Venn diagram there’s a big wasteland outside that full of tigers and zombies that we don’t tell anyone about in the software industry. Occasionally one gets inside the compound and we shoot it and blame it on another vendor quickly while sipping cocktails on the beach.

Oh, I'm fully aware of TDD and its benefits and limitations! It has been SOP for hardware since before I was born. Indeed, I once introduced it into an organisati, and it was a major improvement over their existing practice! I really shouldn't be surprised that software weenies triumphantly reinvent things,because they do it so frequently.

My objection is that, while TDD is necessary, it isn't sufficient. "The light is green therefore the software works" syndrome

Anyone that doesn't believe that's should show me the unit tests pricing that ACID behaviour or forming behaviour or  idempotent behaviour is guaranteed. But you know that.

[tggzzz]

When I was first in engineering school we were taught that quality isn't a matter of tests & measures; it's the art of design rather than the science of it. If you design with 110% duty cycle in mind, your entire project will benefit, and never be found lacking. 125% is better, but rare is the situation where you can slip that much quality past the bean-counters. The ability to find the right balance between the two that actually can survive through R&D, Test Run & Revision, and finally make it to production which makes a great engineer. 

You're talking software though... I dunno how well that analogy translates. I've always found it much easier to think like an electron with its tendency towards laziness and shades of grey vs thinking like a bit which is YES/NO and occasionally a blanket GO FU** YOURSELF. 

Just so.

Software is a different story. Think of the Wizard of Oz. It's about the perception rather than the reality. The reality is we're still in this age and have absolutely no idea what we're doing really. Hardware has been around a lot longer.

Softies like to think they are special. I suppose they are in the sense of the old playground insult of a long drawn out monotone "speshul".

Sometimes I have trouble sleeping when I know what is in service spinning the wheels of the finance sector.

It is good to see that photo again

In the finance sector, the hardware isn't so wonderful either. In the early 80s my company did an appraisal of a finance system. I found the twats had used a 6800 peripheral on a Z80 bus (or vice versa, I forget), so I was able to point out the standard bus timing incompatibility.

[bd139]

Oh, I'm fully aware of TDD and its benefits and limitations! It has been SOP for hardware since before I was born. Indeed, I once introduced it into an organisati, and it was a major improvement over their existing practice! I really shouldn't be surprised that software weenies triumphantly reinvent things,because they do it so frequently.

My objection is that, while TDD is necessary, it isn't sufficient. "The light is green therefore the software works" syndrome

Anyone that doesn't believe that's should show me the unit tests pricing that ACID behaviour or forming behaviour or  idempotent behaviour is guaranteed. But you know that.

I was going to write a really long philosophical reply to this, but screw it I'm on holiday and I'm not being paid 

I'll summarize as the testing ideas actually coming from the engineers migrating to IT from their former careers rather than reinvention. It's more missionary work

As for testing ACID compliance and idempotent behavior it's only possible to test these superficially really so that's all that is done. The problem of testing both is that the possible conditions are unbounded so as per the Venn diagram analogy earlier, you can only test a reasonable subset.

And that is all testing is. Best effort. Knowing where to put the effort is the important bit.

In the finance sector, the hardware isn't so wonderful either. In the early 80s my company did an appraisal of a finance system. I found the twats had used a 6800 peripheral on a Z80 bus (or vice versa, I forget), so I was able to point out the standard bus timing incompatibility.

That doesn't surprise me.

It hasn't got any better. We just told someone we're killing their EDI service in Jan 2019 and they're getting all huffy. We're killing it because we're moving the entire cage to a different floor in the DC. Currently this is a leased site to site POTS line (not over PSTN) and our new cage doesn't have that facility. We can work around it but we don't want to drag it on any more. We had to buy the last spare modem off eBay. Plus the guy who knows how it works has just retired and I'm now responsible party because they know I've been seen around with a nicked linesman's set getting hands dirty when we moved office.

[Neomys Sapiens]

All this talk of cold drinks yet you Brits still drink warm beer......yuck!   

Under all circumstances, that's better than cold fizzy gnats' piss.

Yep. At least the UK has beer worth cooling. Anything from the US with the exception of craft beer is a waste of water and aluminium.

[bd139]

Indeed. I actually found Bud Light here in a supermarket the other day. We're going down hill now.

[tautech]

Indeed. I actually found Bud Light here in a supermarket the other day. We're going down hill now.

When my youngest did two 6 month tours on harvest and based in northern Texas they tried most of them but settled on 'ronas as their fav. Thirsty work in 100^o+ everyday. 

[xrunner]

When my youngest did two 6 month tours on harvest and based in northern Texas they tried most of them but settled on 'ronas as their fav.

I'm in North Texas - Shiner is good too. 

[tautech]

When my youngest did two 6 month tours on harvest and based in northern Texas they tried most of them but settled on 'ronas as their fav.

I'm in North Texas - Shiner is good too. 

He loved it over there except being based in Vega which is a dry area so they had do periodically do a booze run to Amarillo to stock up. They worked just a bit south but all the way north into Montana which reminded him so much of home......excepting their winters. 
Wants someday to get back and catch up with all your great folks there but he's got a couple of machines of his own now and the mandatory monkey around the neck with owning his own business.

I'll ask him about Shiner.
His reply was  . 

[mnementh]

In the finance sector, the hardware isn't so wonderful either. In the early 80s my company did an appraisal of a finance system. I found the twats had used a 6800 peripheral on a Z80 bus (or vice versa, I forget), so I was able to point out the standard bus timing incompatibility.

That doesn't surprise me.

It hasn't got any better. We just told someone we're killing their EDI service in Jan 2019 and they're getting all huffy. We're killing it because we're moving the entire cage to a different floor in the DC. Currently this is a leased site to site POTS line (not over PSTN) and our new cage doesn't have that facility. We can work around it but we don't want to drag it on any more. We had to buy the last spare modem off eBay. Plus the guy who knows how it works has just retired and I'm now responsible party because they know I've been seen around with a nicked linesman's set getting hands dirty when we moved office.

Yeah, because you have a butt-set and can move a station in a pinch, they automatically assume you have a full set of T1 loopbacks and thousands of dollars worth of line-quality test equipment so you can figure out all by yourself before lunchtime what the Telco's 3rd tier bridge line has been poking at for a month with 6 different OTHER techs who never manage to arrive while the bitch is in heat. 

Oh, and BTW... I'm here to replace the Barracuda you tit-monkeys euckered trying to fix it yourself rather than call us or just do a effing power-cycle. Your ghost in the T1 is DEFINITELY outside my SOW.

No lie on the hardware either... I was doing a refresh in the IDF at a drive-through a couple months ago... backed into a huge beige-and-1/2-inch-of-dust-colored datacube BEHIND the rack and woke up a prehistoric 4U Packard-Bell server in there just chugging away. And yes, it was online and in service; when the green monchrome LogiSys display on top crackled awake, you could see it parsing (I think) SQL data chunks. I got a chill like somebody had just walked over my grave, I tell you what. 

All this talk of cold drinks yet you Brits still drink warm beer......yuck!   

Under all circumstances, that's better than cold fizzy gnats' piss.

Yep. At least the UK has beer worth cooling. Anything from the US with the exception of craft beer is a waste of water and aluminium.

Mmmm,  Guinness... the beer that eats like a meal. 

Indeed. I actually found Bud Light here in a supermarket the other day. We're going down hill now.

When my youngest did two 6 month tours on harvest and based in northern Texas they tried most of them but settled on 'ronas as their fav. Thirsty work in 100^o+ everyday. 

Corona is Mexican for "Donkey Pee"; Dos Equis isn't fit for human consumption. 


mnem
"Whiskey for my men, and beer for my horses!!!" ~ some drunk bastard