Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Sam Spastic]

Oh dear, in my senior year in high school, the math teacher went to the hospital for surgery. I was chosen to teach the juniors for 2 weeks.  Others were chosen for freshmen and sophomores.

A teachers assistant would have been nice as I was pranked every day.

[Sam Spastic]

ps

Sadly I graduated 2nd in a class of 44 my gf was valedictorian. No scholarships for classes smaller than 50.

[Zucca]

Am I the only one getting delay from china? My new hot air station and my air analyzer are not shipped yet. Bloody corona?

[Sam Spastic]

Have plenty of bleach spray for the packages.

[med6753]

Gee....slept late and wake up to this. 

[tggzzz]

Indeed. Being accidentally effective is not being effective 

Oh, that's getting deep into philosophy!

If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, does it become a wrong thing? You probably won't get the good karma brownie points, but that's a different issue.

Philosophically speaking you always have to separate the intent from the outcome and define the causality carefully and where credit is due. I always work on the basis that I should never take credit for a good outcome if it wasn't intended, always take negative credit for a bad outcome if it wasn't intended and when things just work, ignore them because they're not very interesting

Well that is sensible, honourable, and the way I try to do things.

But I was talking about philosophy, which is orthogonal to those concepts

[BU508A]

Am I the only one getting delay from china? My new hot air station and my air analyzer are not shipped yet. Bloody corona?

I've ordered via ebay on 4th of February an EFRATOM LPRO-101 10MHz reference.
It got shipped 11 to 13 days later.



Edit:
Ebay is stating a possible delay:

[Zucca]

My two orders were places on 14 and 11 Feb, still "to be shipped".

Thanks! I fühle mich nicht mehr allein.

[bd139]

I ordered a ton of SMA connectors at Christmas. No sign of them yet 

[BU508A]

I ordered a ton of SMA connectors at Christmas. No sign of them yet 

You should watch out for this dude, maybe:

[e0ne199]

Finally, I've found out, why the guys from UK are so shy  using discord.



https://www.zdnet.com/article/uk-police-distance-themselves-from-poster-warning-parents-to-report-kids-for-using-kali-linux/

Yeah; let's worry that your kids are showing some signs of intelligence and STEM-related competency.

This shows just how fucking clueless law-enforcement is as a whole regarding cyber-security in general; they're just now responding the the widespread and visible threats of a decade ago. I remember similar warnings about SUSE, FFS.    And RedHat before that...



At least the guys at Kali have a sense of humor about it all...

mnem
*starts digging a bunker in the back yard*

those moronic people at big IT companies spend too much money only for patching their security holes or probably tired of paying IT security experts so they hire police to remove "the root of the problems" which is stupid as f*ck 

[xrunner]

I ordered a ton of SMA connectors at Christmas. No sign of them yet 

I got some MOSFETs stuck in China because of the new coronavirus problems. But, they said they would scrub everything with alcohol before shipping, so I'm not concerned. 

[med6753]

I ordered this on December 27 to fashion as a replacement handle for the 535A. Initially said it would arrive February 12th. Now has dates of March and April. Shipped via China Post and has no tracking. I'll lay odds it never shows up. 

[med6753]

Nixiefreqq.....I know you are waiting with much anticipation the 485 vertical board swap but I don't think it's gonna happen today. Other life's priorities must be taken care of first. Trust me, I'd rather be working on the 485. 

Perhaps tomorrow. 

[WastelandTek]

I had a couple of MAR-6 show up about a week ago, I think I got that order in just under the wire.

[mnementh]

At least the guys at Kali have a sense of humor about it all...

mnem
*starts digging a bunker in the back yard*

those moronic people at big IT companies spend too much money only for patching their security holes or probably tired of paying IT security experts so they hire police to remove "the root of the problems" which is stupid as f*ck 

mnem

[nixiefreqq]

Nixiefreqq.....I know you are waiting with much anticipation the 485 vertical board swap but I don't think it's gonna happen today. Other life's priorities must be taken care of first. Trust me, I'd rather be working on the 485. 

Perhaps tomorrow.

well ok.  guess you could say that makes me sad.  (refuse to say it made me feel blue).

will probably go downstairs now and continue sanding the dro puck in a direct tv lnb.  already moved the LO from 10.750 Ghz to 11 Ghz.  wonder how high it will go before it fails?  problem is that my goal was to move it down in frequency by supergluing the inner dielectric bit from a ceramic cap to the dro, with the goal of moving it down in frequency.   that was a total failure even though some guys on utube said it would work.  got a little too aggressive restoring the puck to its original condition and removed too much material.  (no experiment is a failure if you learn something from it.)   12 Ghz or bust!

will check back tomorrow to see if you fixed the tek. 

[bd139]

Anyone in UK need a death-inator?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/372957387420

(Hewlett Packard 6516A)

I'm tempted but I can't think of a legitimate use for it other than murder.

[BU508A]

Anyone in UK need a death-inator?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/372957387420

(Hewlett Packard 6516A)

I'm tempted but I can't think of a legitimate use for it other than murder.

Ungh!
This is not really looking good. I'd carefully inspect this thing BEFORE I'll get it anything near mains power.
Rust on the outside for a high voltage device is imho never a good sign.
I hope, that the buyer of this thing knows what he is doing.

@bd139: glad, that you want to stay away from it. I'm really interested in reading more posts from you here. 

[tggzzz]

Anyone in UK need a death-inator?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/372957387420

(Hewlett Packard 6516A)

I'm tempted but I can't think of a legitimate use for it other than murder.

At 18GW it could replace all the UK renewable energy plant! (3000V, 6MA)

[grizewald]

Indeed. Being accidentally effective is not being effective 

Edit: As for faking knowledge, in the "IT trade" it's normal to play this off against the old idiom that in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Thus I got a Perl job once having never written a line of Perl and learning enough of it to look professional in relation to the rest of their staff in the weekend that elapsed between getting the job and starting there. 

When I started contracting, a long time ago when I was about 20, I'd never written a line of C in my life. I spent the weekend before my first day with a copy of K&R and wrote a program to play noughts and crosses.

Nobody noticed the fact that I'd lied my way through the interview! 

[Cerebus]

I wouldn't say that I was so bored that I'm obsessing about the details of my digikey delivery, but:



Ordered in the depths of early morning today (i.e. late last night), due with me by 10:30 am tomorrow. You really can't complain about that service when it's a small order that just went over the 'free shipping' limit by a few quid. Now watch UPS make a complete pig's ear of it once it gets to Stanstead.

[nfmax]

Indeed. Being accidentally effective is not being effective 

Edit: As for faking knowledge, in the "IT trade" it's normal to play this off against the old idiom that in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Thus I got a Perl job once having never written a line of Perl and learning enough of it to look professional in relation to the rest of their staff in the weekend that elapsed between getting the job and starting there. 

When I started contracting, a long time ago when I was about 20, I'd never written a line of C in my life. I spent the weekend before my first day with a copy of K&R and wrote a program to play noughts and crosses.

Nobody noticed the fact that I'd lied my way through the interview! 

I first used C++ in anger in my hotel bedroom the night before the trade show opened (SPE ATCE 2001, IIRC). The bug fix 'worked', in that we were able to demo the pressure sensor.

I don't like C++

[bd139]

Anyone in UK need a death-inator?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/372957387420

(Hewlett Packard 6516A)

I'm tempted but I can't think of a legitimate use for it other than murder.

Ungh!
This is not really looking good. I'd carefully inspect this thing BEFORE I'll get it anything near mains power.
Rust on the outside for a high voltage device is imho never a good sign.
I hope, that the buyer of this thing knows what he is doing.

@bd139: glad, that you want to stay away from it. I'm really interested in reading more posts from you here. 

Agree. Dangerous as hell.

Hahaha. Honestly I am shit scared of high voltages and rather like low voltage stuff so hopefully I'll not kill myself too quickly.

[grizewald]

I don't like C++

I'm not against any programming language in principle, but C++ provides people who don't care about the guy who has to take over the code the ability to write stuff which is truly incomprehensible.

I've used most languages (including lots of assembler) over the years but C is still my absolute favourite. I like to call it "structured assembly language".