Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

You still haven't survived the assembly part of your assignment. 

mnem
"Your mission, should you choose to accept it..."

I have delegated that to my 16 year old underling who assembled two Kallax units and a bed the other day under supervision. She is perfectly capable now. Must have done something right as a parent 

As the parent, you must know that when some part of it turns to shit, you're still the responsible party.

mnem
"Shit rolls downhill... but blame rolls back up." ~grand-dad quoting one of his drill sergeants

[AVGresponding]

*click-click-clicky-clickety-click... click!!!*        Ummm... 

Just try and do that on your smartphone!

[mansaxel]

Submitted a lowball offer for a 3478A. I don't think they'll accept, but hey, gotta try.

Also, am whipping an upgrade from Debian 9 to Debian 10 onto a RPI 2. Got to the point where I was going to install a Postgres client on it, and found it wanting to install a 9.something. No, thanks. Better upgrade now and take the pain early, when my customisations are few and easy to re-do.

I'd really want to netboot (like the Sun workstations in the 90s ) the bastards, to stop them from writing their SD cards to shreds. Until I can be arsed to research and implement that, I'll have to be content with remoting syslog and writing their collected data to a database on a vm in my vmware machinery.

Finally, the sourdough project is alive and kicking.

[mnementh]

*Sigh* All those delightfully fresh-baked carbble-hydrapes... 

mnem
*breaditarian-dwagon*

[mansaxel]

Restaurant was open here today. I skipped it but did neck some Gifflars on the way back 

Now on to laser printers ... Xerox B215 looking like the least shit option for the budget. Duplex, scan, copy, wireless, not too large, 1.6p/sheet, doesn't come with a half empty toner.

Our Brother is quite nice. I explicitly did NOT want a scanner, and I wanted wired networking. Of course, the as-shipped toner cartridges are Twiggy thin.

For scanners, I've got a Canon flatbed, and have plans to get a sheet-fed Brother. The latter to push all paper invoices and other correspondence into long-time digital storage. I've got friends who've built processing chains with OCR etc, so will try that.

[tggzzz]

I'm shopping groceries for my parents who isolate at home and most often I end up ringing their part of the receipt up in dc on the computer.  That's a nice calculator.

Not a bad way of teaching the characteristics of fixed point arithmetic

[Cubdriver]

Do they make L series glass for the EOS R?  I've been avoiding looking at them, and figure I'll stick with my DSLRs, but am certainly interested in your thoughts on it.  Have an early M with an EF adapter, too - it looks ridiculous with a big SLR lens on it.



-Pat

Y'all are juss killin' me widdis photo; every time I see it, for a moment I think a kitten laid a Canon-branded doody-bomb... 'e even has that expression on 'is furry li'l face.

mnem
Hey, I've seen worse in commercials on PrimeTime broadcast TV.

That was Peanut, the 'forever' kitten.  She was a third generation hand-me-down, and I'm guessing was at least in her mid-late teens when I lost her in 2014.  Definitely looked like a kitten - she was a tiny little thing.  Was, unfortunately, deaf as a post (thought that was occasionally beneficial - came home when the roofers were at work during the renovation to find Sparky, seen in the B&W pic, and Chloe, my ex's cat, hiding under the bed in terror from the nailguns.  Peanut was curled up blissfully asleep in the middle of the bed).  Anyway, once she came out of her shell, she would be on you like glue every so often.  I was playing with the M that night and she hopped up to see what was going on.  I grabbed the other camera and got that picture, and always liked it because it shows just how little she really was.  Never though of it as her pooping out the lens cap, but it does kind of look like it.  Haha - a new way to see the picture.

-Pat

[Specmaster]

Never had any problem with the absence of an = key. I have only ever owned and used RPN calculators.

A major advantage of using an RPN calculator is that nobody wants to borrow your calculator more than once.

You clearly are moving in the wrong circles then, loads of people here on this forum would certainly want to 

I would expect all members of this forum to have their own selection of calculators and have no need to borrow someone else's.

Anyone who doesn't have their own calculator or, worse still, uses an app on a cellphone or PC  should be drummed out of this forum.

Wow, thats gonna slash the membership of this forum down quite a bit I suspect.

[bd139]

Restaurant was open here today. I skipped it but did neck some Gifflars on the way back 

Now on to laser printers ... Xerox B215 looking like the least shit option for the budget. Duplex, scan, copy, wireless, not too large, 1.6p/sheet, doesn't come with a half empty toner.

Our Brother is quite nice. I explicitly did NOT want a scanner, and I wanted wired networking. Of course, the as-shipped toner cartridges are Twiggy thin.

For scanners, I've got a Canon flatbed, and have plans to get a sheet-fed Brother. The latter to push all paper invoices and other correspondence into long-time digital storage. I've got friends who've built processing chains with OCR etc, so will try that.

Gah had to compromise in the end. Turns out printing is needed for Monday. The turdblossom cheapest HP inkjet that I could get last time I currently own has given up. Past the buggered paper feeder for a month requiring manual coercion, the fact that the scanner never worked on Tuesdays (genuine issue!), the black cartridge just gave out during an important TE related print.



So in the end, HP Laserjet pro M148dw. AirPrint for the iOS peons in the house, Duplex, scanner, cheapish toner, copy feature. Apparently the wireless on it is cancer but I'm not quite as much of an idiot as the average user so I'm sure I can work it out.

I did have a very nice Brother laser a while ago which I got for £1 off ebay but the drum went after about 3000 sheets.

[mnementh]

That was Peanut, the 'forever' kitten.  She was a third generation hand-me-down, and I'm guessing was at least in her mid-late teens when I lost her in 2014.  Definitely looked like a kitten - she was a tiny little thing.  Was, unfortunately, deaf as a post (thought that was occasionally beneficial - came home when the roofers were at work during the renovation to find Sparky, seen in the B&W pic, and Chloe, my ex's cat, hiding under the bed in terror from the nailguns.  Peanut was curled up blissfully asleep in the middle of the bed).  Anyway, once she came out of her shell, she would be on you like glue every so often.  I was playing with the M that night and she hopped up to see what was going on.  I grabbed the other camera and got that picture, and always liked it because it shows just how little she really was.  Never though of it as her pooping out the lens cap, but it does kind of look like it.  Haha - a new way to see the picture.

-Pat

D'awww... that story reminds me of one our favorites when I was growing up, Harley Bitch.

She was a tiny little shorthair white/tortoise-shell foundling; happened right on the way home from the barn with food for our kitties. She just climbed into the food pan and started eating; didn't make a sound or even look up while I picked up the pan, carried it inside and set it down. None of our kitties would even get near the food pan until she was done and sauntered into a corner of the living room next to a heater vent, curled up and went right to sleep.

Her "I don't start any shit, I don't take any shit, I'm not in the shit business." attitude reminded us both of one of the town's local color characters, a 50-something biker chick whom everybody just knew as "that Harley Bitch";  when the time came, we both said the name at the same time. 

When she came out of her shell, she got along well with the others but was one of those bipolar lap kitties... very affectionate, totally "Human, fulfill your role and love me dammitt!" until she'd had enough, then right back about her business and couldn't care less about us or her kittie-peers ("Peers, harrumph!" ) until the next time she needed her attention fix.

*~mnemories~*

[mansaxel]

Submitted a lowball offer for a 3478A. I don't think they'll accept, but hey, gotta try.

They counteroffered with something just $5 down from the stated BIN. No way. Reiterated my lowball.

[SilverSolder]

Submitted a lowball offer for a 3478A. I don't think they'll accept, but hey, gotta try.

They counteroffered with something just $5 down from the stated BIN. No way. Reiterated my lowball.

To get the best deals - you have to be prepared to walk away...

[sokoloff]

I'd really want to netboot (like the Sun workstations in the 90s ) the bastards, to stop them from writing their SD cards to shreds. Until I can be arsed to research and implement that, I'll have to be content with remoting syslog and writing their collected data to a database on a vm in my vmware machinery.

As an interim step, you can switch them over to boot from USB sticks, which seem to have a somewhat better lifespan under write workloads than SD cards. I’ve switched several of my RPi3s over to boot from USB and haven’t had any corruption issues since on some log-heavy workloads since Dec.

Note that this is a one-way conversion though (at least as I understand it). Once set to boot from USB, they will no longer boot from SD.

[Cerebus]

Survived Ikea  . Will be on Discord after all

Yearse, but did Ikea survive you? (Part of me is hoping that you'll say "no".)

I've been shopping too. Acquired a new Makita cordless drill (DHP485) from Bodge it And Quickly because I've had it with my old Bosch and its craptacular NiCd/NiMh battery packs and also a fetching pair of linen/cotton blend trousers from Lidl for the princely sum of £7.99 for the next time we have stupidly hot weather (also lots of Italian food as it's Lidl's 'Italian week').

[Cerebus]

*click-click-clicky-clickety-click... click!!!*        Ummm... 

Just try and do that on your smartphone!

Pah! My calculator works better than that:

[bd139]

Random question. Trying to locate some replacement 6-32 pozi black dipped/anodised screws for something. Does anyone know where I can get them in the UK?

I can easily get hold of stainless ones easy enough but these need to be black.

Edit: last resort is stainless ones and a good old bottle of Carr's chemical black.

[capt bullshot]

Not exactly an calculator:

[AVGresponding]

Random question. Trying to locate some replacement 6-32 pozi black dipped/anodised screws for something. Does anyone know where I can get them in the UK?

I can easily get hold of stainless ones easy enough but these need to be black.

Edit: last resort is stainless ones and a good old bottle of Carr's chemical black.

Do you mean No.6 or 6mm?

Drywall screws? https://www.screwfix.com/p/easydrive-black-bugle-head-coarse-thread-uncollated-drywall-screws-3-5-x-32mm-1000-pack/63372

[factory]

Random question. Trying to locate some replacement 6-32 pozi black dipped/anodised screws for something. Does anyone know where I can get them in the UK?

I can easily get hold of stainless ones easy enough but these need to be black.

Edit: last resort is stainless ones and a good old bottle of Carr's chemical black.

Try https://www.accu.co.uk/en/search?query=6-32, they have black stainless UNC, you will need to enter 6-32 for the search to work.

David

[Saskia]

try the fractal design spare parts shop and get a set of spare screw set for a Define R whatever. There should be some in there.

Expensive though.

Went with daughter Hamburger feasting. Found out that the Burger joint had a price hike (+25%, FFS ...)

Thought: hey, a travel lens might be nice, I am sooooo sick of lugging round too heavy stuff ...

Went into our local best buy equivalent (Mafiamarkt) and haggled 100€ off the price of the 24-240 RF lens.
Yes, I know, it is not an L lens, but frankly, right now I don't care (see the part about lugging around heavy stuff).

Brought daughter home, got 3 hours of well needed sleep, swapped out the preamp and both channels are working. However something must have shot the tweeters, which makes me kind of cranky. Fortunately I still have a couple of spares, albeit not readily available. Will probably swap out the speakers for a pair of Quadral Amun or Montan.

So yes, 1 channel of that beautiful piece of art TA-E 86 is dead and needs fixing.

As for SLRs, I started out with a Nikon FM2, went to an F4s, added a Mamiya RB67, did a lot of slides, digitized them with a somewhat hacked Nikon slide scanner, then went to DLSRs and due to the lens issue am kind of locked into Canon.
Have a 5D-II and a 50D, gave my 550D (Rebel model which I bought in HNL) to my daughter.
Now got this mirrorless gizmo which is a hell of a lot lighter than the 5D-II.

Also picked up my surfcasting rod today, it was in for repairs after DHL broke off the tip (How dare they !!!!)
The shop told me to test it under full load, so I will try a pendulum cast and see how it goes. (take cover, incoming !!!!). TBH I expect the tip to break, as we are talking 5 - 6 oz of lead being hurled ~200m, if everything goes according to plan.
To give you an idea: Those rods are 13 - 16' and stiff as if they had gobbled down a bucket of viagra.
My personal record is about 150m, and I need to work on improving that.





Hubby is up and taking short walks, awaiting his get- back-on-his-feet-program to start.

Tomorrow will be visit Hubby and clean up the flat day, on Monday I will take my break and get into my fishing / walking routine to regain strength and recharge my batteries.

Will do a trip to my favorite dealer on Monday morning though, Reichelt is just around the corner and I am greeted by first name

[bd139]

Random question. Trying to locate some replacement 6-32 pozi black dipped/anodised screws for something. Does anyone know where I can get them in the UK?

I can easily get hold of stainless ones easy enough but these need to be black.

Edit: last resort is stainless ones and a good old bottle of Carr's chemical black.

Do you mean No.6 or 6mm?

Drywall screws? https://www.screwfix.com/p/easydrive-black-bugle-head-coarse-thread-uncollated-drywall-screws-3-5-x-32mm-1000-pack/63372

UNC (american) 6-32 unfortunately.

Random question. Trying to locate some replacement 6-32 pozi black dipped/anodised screws for something. Does anyone know where I can get them in the UK?

I can easily get hold of stainless ones easy enough but these need to be black.

Edit: last resort is stainless ones and a good old bottle of Carr's chemical black.

Try https://www.accu.co.uk/en/search?query=6-32, they have black stainless UNC, you will need to enter 6-32 for the search to work.

David

Yeah I found some there but they want to sell me 100 minimum for 34 quid. I need 8.

I've found some out of that HP scope I recently tore down and have used those for now. Chemical blackening looks like it might be the best option.

[factory]

Random question. Trying to locate some replacement 6-32 pozi black dipped/anodised screws for something. Does anyone know where I can get them in the UK?

I can easily get hold of stainless ones easy enough but these need to be black.

Edit: last resort is stainless ones and a good old bottle of Carr's chemical black.

Try https://www.accu.co.uk/en/search?query=6-32, they have black stainless UNC, you will need to enter 6-32 for the search to work.

David

Yeah I found some there but they want to sell me 100 minimum for 34 quid. I need 8.

I've found some out of that HP scope I recently tore down and have used those for now. Chemical blackening looks like it might be the best option.

Bugger looks like they've done an RS and don't want small orders anymore with the Corvid, this time last year they were happy to sell 6-32 x 2inch in black individually.

David

[tautech]

..............
Also picked up my surfcasting rod today, it was in for repairs after DHL broke off the tip (How dare they !!!!)
The shop told me to test it under full load, so I will try a pendulum cast and see how it goes. (take cover, incoming !!!!). TBH I expect the tip to break, as we are talking 5 - 6 oz of lead being hurled ~200m, if everything goes according to plan.
To give you an idea: Those rods are 13 - 16' and stiff as if they had gobbled down a bucket of viagra.
My personal record is about 150m, and I need to work on improving that.

Good effort ! 
Never could get that far probably due to not enough practice.
Found shock leaders were the key to not sending tackle into orbit but now with a kite rig 1000m casts are just simple. 

[cyclin_al]

Trying to catch up here ..... the page count is rolling by almost faster than I can keep up.
I find I do not bother posting since the context to my post would be 15 or 20 pages in the past!

@Zucca, congratulations on a great bike ride.  Brings back memories, since I drove through those areas when I was doing cross country ski races.  That, and I used to be able to do rides like that.  I SHOULD still be able to, but out of shape due to getting married, having a kid and numerous furry pets.  Canada is great for that sort of thing, except dealing with the car drivers in southern Ontario & Quebec.

Not only are kids bad for keeping in shape, but that's my excuse for no longer having a calculator.  All calculators in the house have been stolen by the primary school kid and are hoarded away somewhere unknown to me.  Yes, I use a calculator app on the phone and computer these days.  I protest that TEA group calculator qualification! 

@Saskia, good to hear that your hubby is doing much better.  I know that optics are a tempting rabbit-hole.  My optics are limited to a couple of Nikon M2 and a D90, which does leave a bit of funds left over for TEA.

@mnem, best wishes on your upcoming move.  I posted something in your ISP thread for you.

No one probably remembers, but I had what I thought was a problem with my pi-hole back in June.  Then I went through a bunch of silly events during troubleshooting. Well, I know what the actual problem is now, and got a workaround.  The pi-hole never was the problem at all.  It turns out Bell did an upgrade on the DSL modem/router, which did not complete properly and fuckerized (I rarely use such strong language, but it fits here) my home network.    They eventually sent another modem/router, which then also got the same upgrade.  At least the upgrade did not fail on the second modem.  That worked well enough that SWMBO and I could use our work computers and the kid could get Netflix on a tablet.  Vacation time put a delay on that and I finally got back to it.  The past week or so I have been trying to get things working properly during hours when everyone else is asleep and not needing internet.  It turns out the Bell upgrade added support for IPv6, or rather it introduced a significant bug.  The IPv6 does not actually work.  It messed up DHCP such that IPv6 compatible devices were given the same IP as IPv4-only devices.  That is not all either.  The settings to allow the pi-hole take over DHCP are no longer available.  For WiFi, the 2.4GHz and 5GHz are fixed with the same SSID (does not work for some of my older 2.4GHz only IoT toys).  There is no longer any setting for the 20 or 40 kHz bandwidth of the 2.4GHz WiFi.  And so on and so on with other minor things    So, my conclusion is my only choice is to isolate the Bell device and use it ONLY as a modem, with all the crap features disabled as much as possible and unused for the rest.
Any recommendations on a router with WiFi and Ethernet for North America use?
The modem speed is only about 1.5 Mbps even though I am paying for a 5 Mbps plan.  Hopefully, that might be improved in the future, but all bets are off (there is really no choice here on ISP or service level).
Devices in the house are wired as much as possible, using cat6 cable, so gigabit ethernet on at least 4 ports is required.
There are a couple of unmanaged switches to add devices depending on location.
The WiFi should be fully configurable (ie. the gandwidth, power level, channels), including the ability to use different SSID for 2.4 & 5 GHz.
WiFi should support a couple of VPNs running videoconference plus a device with netflix simultaneously (in theory that will be the maximum load).
Edit: If I want to configure vLAN, do I need to choose an appropriate device for that.  I recall recommendations here to put the electronics lab isolated from the rest of the network; probably a good thing to do again with devices that belong to work.

[cyclin_al]

There is a bunch of stuff that came up on gcsurplus.ca which is a government of Canada surplus sale site:
(all in $CAD, they seem to have started up operations again)
- Ando Optical AQ6317B Spectrum Analyzer; minimum bid $2500 (way too expensive for me)
- Agilent 33522A Waveform Generator; current bid $900 (I already have a HP AWG)
- Agilent E4416A Power Meter; minimum bid $400 (is this a good deal for something I do not need, but is interesting...?)
- TTC Fireberd 6000A Communications Analyzer; current bed $51 (could only find a sales & marketing brochure so do not know if it useful, but the price does not look bad)
- Hewlett Packard Dynamic 35665A Signal Analyzer; current bid $257 (good price?, but I should probably wait for a VNA instead)
- HP 8530A Microwave Receiver & 85101C Vector Network Analyzer; minimum bid $500 (is this too specialized or could it be useful for HAM radio?)
- Agilent E4405B Spectrum Analyser; minimum bid $1000 (too expensive for me)
- Agilent N9340B Spectrum Analyser; minimum bid $1250 (too expensive for me)
- Agilent 33250A Waveform Generator; current bid $800  (I already have a HP AWG)
- Tektronix TDS 540 Four Channel Digital Oscilloscope; current bid $256
- HP 8350B Sweep Oscillator Mainframe; minimum bid $100 (not sure I have any need for something like this)
There are a few other things that might be of interest to someone, but I listed what I thought was most interesting.
I have no pressing need for any of these, so feel free to go ahead and bid (unless you convince me I should).
Items showing a minimum bid have no current bids; these typically will be relisted after the auction expires with a lower minimum; patience can be a virtue but with the risk of it being sniped