Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tggzzz]

Even that POS 485.

It is "special" or "differently abled".

[BU508A]

Found this:



"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function" --Al Barlett

[bd139]

Ah yes seen that. My father sent me that a few years ago now. Completely agree on his points. I think the issue is most people are hedging their participation on this against "I'm going to be dead when it's a problem". 

[Specmaster]

My heart sinks. 179 dispatched. Via Hermes 

Lets hope and pray that it arrives safely which I'm sure it will, anyway, you're working from home now till further notice aren't you?

[bd139]

Fingers crossed. I'll be surprised if Hermes can fuck up a Fluke. TBH our local regular driver is pretty good and reliable, just upstream you don't know about.

Yes working from home now. Everyone at the company is. I think it's a policy applied by our parent company as well so that's about 9000 people working from home suddenly. I get the feeling the infrastructure is going to bend soon. Already got problems with voice calls on slack and the inevitable problems of getting about 300 odd people using VPNs and stuff 

[Specmaster]

Crikey that’s a special one 

So....after all that time/money building/testing/aligning that transceiver you toss the whole kit in the closet? 

I dare not predict your next wacko move. 

Oh come on, this is nothing new is it? It's his normal cyclic behaviour. This is how bd recharges his batteries.

[tggzzz]

Found this:



"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function" --Al Barlett

Other takes on that point...
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/

[Specmaster]

Fingers crossed. I'll be surprised if Hermes can fuck up a Fluke. TBH our local regular driver is pretty good and reliable, just upstream you don't know about.

Yes working from home now. Everyone at the company is. I think it's a policy applied by our parent company as well so that's about 9000 people working from home suddenly. I get the feeling the infrastructure is going to bend soon. Already got problems with voice calls on slack and the inevitable problems of getting about 300 odd people using VPNs and stuff 

Yes, I think you're right, for many people, this working from home will become a permanent thing and companies will be making money from it as well. While working from home, your saving them massive amounts of energy costs, etc and I predict that many buildings will be either sold off or sub divided and let out as smaller units.

[Specmaster]

Crikey that’s a special one 

So....after all that time/money building/testing/aligning that transceiver you toss the whole kit in the closet? 

I dare not predict your next wacko move. 

Yup. Turns out I like making things but get bored after that 

I should throw that effort into product development. I’ve got some ideas.

There you go, you've said that before, just after I joined this elite club of ours 

[Specmaster]

@bd - I tend to agree, I got into satellite ham stuff for a while, interesting problems with antenna gain, different Doppler shifts on different frequencies for the up and down link, tracking - made 5 or so contacts, got bored so moved on to microwave stuff for a while.
EME stumped me - so I had a 'tantrum' and packed it up - I will get back to it eventually.
Currently repairing old gear some fun, some head f**k at times. If I get too annoyed I go mountain bike riding!
I do think I have a short attention span!
Rob

Sounds kind off familiar.

[bd139]

Fingers crossed. I'll be surprised if Hermes can fuck up a Fluke. TBH our local regular driver is pretty good and reliable, just upstream you don't know about.

Yes working from home now. Everyone at the company is. I think it's a policy applied by our parent company as well so that's about 9000 people working from home suddenly. I get the feeling the infrastructure is going to bend soon. Already got problems with voice calls on slack and the inevitable problems of getting about 300 odd people using VPNs and stuff 

Yes, I think you're right, for many people, this working from home will become a permanent thing and companies will be making money from it as well. While working from home, your saving them massive amounts of energy costs, etc and I predict that many buildings will be either sold off or sub divided and let out as smaller units.

It really has to be a permanent thing and something I've been a proponent of for a long time (I've worked from home 90% of the time since 2009). At the moment we burn vast amounts of energy moving people around for what is fundamentally tradition and a lack of trust. That means we then have to drag all the required supporting resources to wherever people congregate to do work. This costs more energy. In line with the other direction of this thread today, it's insane and unsustainable. Travel needs to go down and we need to invest in logistics, distributed working models and reduction of energy consumption. I think peak insanity is actually Tesla. While the direction is marginally better, we're still moving a mountain or two every day for absolutely no fucking reason at all and enabling that. Need to start fixing society rather than enabling existing behaviour with new tech.

Crikey that’s a special one 

So....after all that time/money building/testing/aligning that transceiver you toss the whole kit in the closet? 

I dare not predict your next wacko move. 

Yup. Turns out I like making things but get bored after that 

I should throw that effort into product development. I’ve got some ideas.

There you go, you've said that before, just after I joined this elite club of ours 

Yeah and I got absolutely bloody nowhere with it 

[med6753]

Even that POS 485.

It is "special" or "differently abled".

I'm going to be grossly politically incorrect and insensitive and state without a shadow of a doubt it's retarded. 

[xrunner]

There you go, you've said that before, just after I joined this elite club of ours 

Wow, I didn't know I was in an Elite Club. I always said I never join any club that would have me as a member. 

Yeah and I got absolutely bloody nowhere with it 

I haven't made any ham contacts in a couple of months. I was down to just using FT8 anyway just to make long distance contacts. It just got boring. I'll still try to work a DXpedition but other than that it just sits there unused. Oh but I do talk to people on two meters still, to practice social distancing skills. 

[Kosmic]

Yes working from home now. Everyone at the company is. I think it's a policy applied by our parent company as well so that's about 9000 people working from home suddenly. I get the feeling the infrastructure is going to bend soon. Already got problems with voice calls on slack and the inevitable problems of getting about 300 odd people using VPNs and stuff 

We are doing progressive rampup over here. I start on Friday 

They are supposed to progressively upgrade the infra to support the load.

[AVGresponding]

I object!

Proper Flukes have their rotary switch decently recessed in the middle of the casing.

Everything else is either antique and suitable only for display purposes, or deviant from respectable proportionality!


EDIT: In that case David, he can afford to buy a proper 87 instead of some lower grade 179!

The 179 is central and recessed IIRC?

My bad, some kind of random brain-fart was making me think of a 77 or something   

[Specmaster]

Fingers crossed. I'll be surprised if Hermes can fuck up a Fluke. TBH our local regular driver is pretty good and reliable, just upstream you don't know about.

Yes working from home now. Everyone at the company is. I think it's a policy applied by our parent company as well so that's about 9000 people working from home suddenly. I get the feeling the infrastructure is going to bend soon. Already got problems with voice calls on slack and the inevitable problems of getting about 300 odd people using VPNs and stuff 

Yes, I think you're right, for many people, this working from home will become a permanent thing and companies will be making money from it as well. While working from home, your saving them massive amounts of energy costs, etc and I predict that many buildings will be either sold off or sub divided and let out as smaller units.

It really has to be a permanent thing and something I've been a proponent of for a long time (I've worked from home 90% of the time since 2009). At the moment we burn vast amounts of energy moving people around for what is fundamentally tradition and a lack of trust. That means we then have to drag all the required supporting resources to wherever people congregate to do work. This costs more energy. In line with the other direction of this thread today, it's insane and unsustainable. Travel needs to go down and we need to invest in logistics, distributed working models and reduction of energy consumption. I think peak insanity is actually Tesla. While the direction is marginally better, we're still moving a mountain or two every day for absolutely no fucking reason at all and enabling that. Need to start fixing society rather than enabling existing behaviour with new tech.

Ditto here as well, but as you rightly said, it's a matter of trust, overcome that and it becomes far easier to solve bigger global issues like global warming, as there would be naturally considerably fewer journeys being made, the abolition of rush hour traffic jams which is just possibly the largest source of pollution, and then we can all continue with our fossil fuel burning cars which for the large part would then only be used for social uses rather a means of getting to and from work.

[Specmaster]

I object!

Proper Flukes have their rotary switch decently recessed in the middle of the casing.

Everything else is either antique and suitable only for display purposes, or deviant from respectable proportionality!


EDIT: In that case David, he can afford to buy a proper 87 instead of some lower grade 179!

The 179 is central and recessed IIRC?

My bad, some kind of random brain-fart was making me think of a 77 or something   

Yep, to me a fluke with a edge operated range switch isn't a proper fluke.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
 At the moment we burn vast amounts of energy moving people around for what is fundamentally tradition and a lack of trust.
[...]

There is more to it than that, though.  We are fundamentally social beings, we need to interact with other humans.  Doing so only online (directly from our brains floating in an aquarium or something, in the extreme) is not going to work...   we can definitely interact with people online (like we are doing right now) but we also need "real" interactions.

[AVGresponding]

Yep, to me a fluke with a edge operated range switch isn't a proper fluke.

The 8060A fanboys probably just put our names on some kind of list...

[McBryce]

I wouldn't consider myself an 8060A Fanboy, but the first Flukes I ever used at university were side button devices and this was the time that my appreciation for the quality and accuracy of Fluke devices emerged. So although I prefer the modern rotary switch devices, I still consider the old Flukes to be great devices.

McBryce.

[med6753]

I could not care less.

Side button and rotary



Push button



Or "slap" button



It's all good.   

[AVGresponding]

Sorry, I just can't get along with those piano keys.

[bd139]

Yeah and I got absolutely bloody nowhere with it 

I haven't made any ham contacts in a couple of months. I was down to just using FT8 anyway just to make long distance contacts. It just got boring. I'll still try to work a DXpedition but other than that it just sits there unused. Oh but I do talk to people on two meters still, to practice social distancing skills. 

I gave up on 2m here. It's just people growing tomatoes or being dicks. I grow tomatoes but there's really not much to talk about. They just grow by themselves 

Yes working from home now. Everyone at the company is. I think it's a policy applied by our parent company as well so that's about 9000 people working from home suddenly. I get the feeling the infrastructure is going to bend soon. Already got problems with voice calls on slack and the inevitable problems of getting about 300 odd people using VPNs and stuff 

We are doing progressive rampup over here. I start on Friday 

They are supposed to progressively upgrade the infra to support the load.

Woohoo. Similar but guess who is at the front of the queue 

[...]
 At the moment we burn vast amounts of energy moving people around for what is fundamentally tradition and a lack of trust.
[...]

There is more to it than that, though.  We are fundamentally social beings, we need to interact with other humans.  Doing so only online (directly from our brains floating in an aquarium or something, in the extreme) is not going to work...   we can definitely interact with people online (like we are doing right now) but we also need "real" interactions.

We did that just fine before we had machines that could jaunt across the country whenever we felt like it

I wouldn't consider myself an 8060A Fanboy, but the first Flukes I ever used at university were side button devices and this was the time that my appreciation for the quality and accuracy of Fluke devices emerged. So although I prefer the modern rotary switch devices, I still consider the old Flukes to be great devices.

McBryce.

They're all good!

[Mr. Scram]

My heart sinks. 179 dispatched. Via Hermes 

That was short even by your standards. What DMM are you going to buy now?

[mnementh]

...This is how it looks like (again crappy photo due to smartphone cam and bad light conditions):   

That's just too good! Bravo, sir. 

Thank you, I appreciate that; it was a lot of work to get to this point.    One good thing that rack brings to me is that my stack isn't really a stack anymore since I can pull a single piece of it even if it's at the bottom and I don't have to remove all other things put on it.      I can now progress faster with repairing/modifying my TE hopefully.   

Yes... your rack-fabbing is just fab! 

I like the fact it had an actual specific objective: Elimination of type 5 JENGA. The other 4 aspects of the JENGA constellation of syndromes will require considerably more work... or judicious application of thermite. 

mnem