Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cerebus]

More likely just gathering for Fat Friday (Friday sandwiches from a greasy spoon).

Fried in lard, or better still beef dripping, I hope?

Edited to add: Many of the lads here from the South will never have enjoyed the epicurean delights of a "fried slice" made with beef dripping. As my father came from "Reet up North" I was brought up on them, despite living literally 200 yards from the South Coast.

[bd139]

My grandmother, from London, used to make that and put chips between two bits of it. Those were cooked in lard. Also why my grandfather only lasted 60 years. She never ate it herself 

[mnementh]

pffft. Amateur. See this.

Local boy. His brother lives in San Antoine. *yawwwwnnnn*

To be fair; I was going for amusing, not ghastly.   

mnem

[Specmaster]

More likely just gathering for Fat Friday (Friday sandwiches from a greasy spoon).

Nah, its more likely to be a case like I experienced when I was still at school and I used to have a Saturday job selling Pink Paraffin from an old Bedford "O" series tanker like the one in the photo, which had a manual pump at the rear. It was the owner and myself every Saturday in a town called Braintree, and we would take a side of the road each and call at each house to see who wanted to buy some paraffin that week, collect their cans, fill them and return them, collecting the money. One day I knocked on the back door of this house as normal and the lady of the house, opened it in the nude and gave me her order. I took the cans back to the tanker and started to fill them and told the owner of what happened, and he said, right I'm taking the cans back and see what happens when I ask for the money, I may be some time he said.

Minutes later he returned, all crest fallen, it seemed that she had got dressed while I was filling the cans up for her, and so his expectations came to nothing. So maybe one of the OR engineers had a similar experience and told his colleagues on the dog and bone, so they all piled round to see for themselves   

[AVGresponding]

More likely just gathering for Fat Friday (Friday sandwiches from a greasy spoon).

Nah, its more likely to be a case like I experienced when I was still at school and I used to have a Saturday job selling Pink Paraffin from an old Bedford "O" series tanker like the one in the photo, which had a manual pump at the rear. It was the owner and myself every Saturday in a town called Braintree, and we would take a side of the road each and call at each house to see who wanted to buy some paraffin that week, collect their cans, fill them and return them, collecting the money. One day I knocked on the back door of this house as normal and the lady of the house, opened it in the nude and gave me her order. I took the cans back to the tanker and started to fill them and told the owner of what happened, and he said, right I'm taking the cans back and see what happens when I ask for the money, I may be some time he said.

Minutes later he returned, all crest fallen, it seemed that she had got dressed while I was filling the cans up for her, and so his expectations came to nothing. So maybe one of the OR engineers had a similar experience and told his colleagues on the dog and bone, so they all piled round to see for themselves   

Clearly she was hoping you'd take the cans back, and threw on some clothes when she spotted your boss carrying them back.
What a missed opportunity!

[Specmaster]

More likely just gathering for Fat Friday (Friday sandwiches from a greasy spoon).

Nah, its more likely to be a case like I experienced when I was still at school and I used to have a Saturday job selling Pink Paraffin from an old Bedford "O" series tanker like the one in the photo, which had a manual pump at the rear. It was the owner and myself every Saturday in a town called Braintree, and we would take a side of the road each and call at each house to see who wanted to buy some paraffin that week, collect their cans, fill them and return them, collecting the money. One day I knocked on the back door of this house as normal and the lady of the house, opened it in the nude and gave me her order. I took the cans back to the tanker and started to fill them and told the owner of what happened, and he said, right I'm taking the cans back and see what happens when I ask for the money, I may be some time he said.

Minutes later he returned, all crest fallen, it seemed that she had got dressed while I was filling the cans up for her, and so his expectations came to nothing. So maybe one of the OR engineers had a similar experience and told his colleagues on the dog and bone, so they all piled round to see for themselves   

Clearly she was hoping you'd take the cans back, and threw on some clothes when she spotted your boss carrying them back.
What a missed opportunity!

Yeah, but I was naive then and grossly inexperienced in all things sexual. Now I look back and wonder what would have happened if I hadn't told the owner about her, she was proper fit too.   

[Saskia]

heard one today for your scrabble fans:
Musikpodcastschlummertastenabschaltautomatik.

[Specmaster]

heard one today for your scrabble fans:
Musikpodcastschlummertastenabschaltautomatik.

Sadly there are not enough squares on the board to all that to be played anyway, and translated that becomes "Music podcast Snooze button Auto shut-off."

[Cerebus]

Contrary to the Oscar the Grouch meets Scrooge front that Med puts on, I have evidence that he's going out Trick Or Treating tonight:

[Specmaster]

Contrary to the Oscar the Grouch meets Scrooge front that Med puts on, I have evidence that he's going out Trick Or Treating tonight:

Oh that was sweet, his mum sent you his first ever photo of him dressed as Papa Smurf, never realised that he'd been a Smurf fan all his life, maybe that's where his love of all things blue started 

[mnementh]

mnem

[med6753]

Contrary to the Oscar the Grouch meets Scrooge front that Med puts on, I have evidence that he's going out Trick Or Treating tonight:

Oh that was sweet, his mum sent you his first ever photo of him dressed as Papa Smurf, never realised that he'd been a Smurf fan all his life, maybe that's where his love of all things blue started 

Fucking comedians. 

Sorry I missed Discord. Last few days haven't been sleeping well and today I crashed and damn near slept all day. 

[mnementh]

They fucking canceled Halloween. The boi dressed up as Ichigo from Bleach; did a damn fine job too. But not even a trunk or treat nor nuthin' fer him ta go to. 

mnem
*p00t!*

[vk6zgo]

heard one today for your scrabble fans:
Musikpodcastschlummertastenabschaltautomatik.

For English readers, German makes sense to read, once you get past the idea of compound words, apart from the habit of some Schematic draftspeople of using archaic technical terms.(Drossell, instead of Induktor, in one case).
To hear, not so much!

Similarly, I managed to communicate in Italy by guessing words which looked  familiar, & waving my hands around a lot (Australians, particularly from WA, do the latter, anyway).

France was a shock, as the words look similar to Italian ones, but most of the time letters are dropped off in its spoken form.

[bd139]

They fucking canceled Halloween. The boi dressed up as Ichigo from Bleach; did a damn fine job too. But not even a trunk or treat nor nuthin' fer him ta go to. 

Yeah 2kg of sugar free Haribo here and no one knocked 

[med6753]

They fucking canceled Halloween. The boi dressed up as Ichigo from Bleach; did a damn fine job too. But not even a trunk or treat nor nuthin' fer him ta go to. 

Yeah 2kg of sugar free Haribo here and no one knocked 

Eat some and report back. Then again, we don't want to know. 

[med6753]

They fucking canceled Halloween. The boi dressed up as Ichigo from Bleach; did a damn fine job too. But not even a trunk or treat nor nuthin' fer him ta go to. 

mnem
*p00t!*

Did you really think trick or treating was gonna happen? 

[Specmaster]

No way did I think it was to happen this year. With the pandemic getting so bad it’s not worth the risk.

[URI]

Sorry for missing discord tonight.
I had another regular meeting of a local club (virtually due to covid19) and it got late playing an online version of acquire..   

[Specmaster]

Contrary to the Oscar the Grouch meets Scrooge front that Med puts on, I have evidence that he's going out Trick Or Treating tonight:

Oh that was sweet, his mum sent you his first ever photo of him dressed as Papa Smurf, never realised that he'd been a Smurf fan all his life, maybe that's where his love of all things blue started 

Fucking comedians. 

Sorry I missed Discord. Last few days haven't been sleeping well and today I crashed and damn near slept all day. 

Yeah, you was missed, it awfully quiet on discord tonight, there was plenty of silence on the audio channel with the few racking their brains trying to think of something to say interesting to keep the chat flowing. I reckon that you might have been breathing to many paint fumes and it’s upset your sleeping pattern. Take care old friend, you should crack open some windows when painting.

[25 CPS]

They fucking canceled Halloween. The boi dressed up as Ichigo from Bleach; did a damn fine job too. But not even a trunk or treat nor nuthin' fer him ta go to. 

mnem
*p00t!*

Did you really think trick or treating was gonna happen? 

The advice, like everything else up here, has been all over the map contradictory and inconsistent.  They finally said that trick or treating could be done safely a couple of days ago but by then Halloween had been so thoroughly cancelled it was too late to turn it around.  This after telling everyone to scratch Halloween to save Christmas, and then pretty much the same day they outlined how to manage trick or treating safely, Trudeau started making noises about putting Christmas on the chopping block.

Halloween's normally pretty quiet on my street and this year was almost a writeoff which is a shame given that Halloween landed on a Saturday night with good weather and a full moon plus the time change for a nice long sleep into tomorrow morning.  There might have been 10-12 houses giving out candy in total on the four or five blocks my street spans between the two main streets it crosses and around 12-18 groups of kids.  I've been wanting to get out an old lab coat from work and set up a bunch of Nixie test equipment on my porch to do a Mad Scientist's Lab except the previous Halloweens I've been home for have had wet weather, so scratch that idea.  This year would've been perfect for doing that except for everything else wrong with the pandemic.

What really ticked me off was the nasty piece of work neighbour.  She never gives candy out.  But tonight she went one step further, she spent most of it sitting on her front porch smoking cigarettes watching the whole bust go down as the handful of trick or treaters wandered up and down a street that was mostly dark, confusing all of them by being out on her porch as if she was going to give out candy but not actually giving out candy.  That's just cruel.  On October 31st, she's a witch.  The rest of the year, she's what you get when you change the first letter.  If you aren't going to do Halloween, don't hang out on your front porch, period.

[med6753]

They fucking canceled Halloween. The boi dressed up as Ichigo from Bleach; did a damn fine job too. But not even a trunk or treat nor nuthin' fer him ta go to. 

mnem
*p00t!*

Did you really think trick or treating was gonna happen? 

The advice, like everything else up here, has been all over the map contradictory and inconsistent.  They finally said that trick or treating could be done safely a couple of days ago but by then Halloween had been so thoroughly cancelled it was too late to turn it around.  This after telling everyone to scratch Halloween to save Christmas, and then pretty much the same day they outlined how to manage trick or treating safely, Trudeau started making noises about putting Christmas on the chopping block.

Halloween's normally pretty quiet on my street and this year was almost a writeoff which is a shame given that Halloween landed on a Saturday night with good weather and a full moon plus the time change for a nice long sleep into tomorrow morning.  There might have been 10-12 houses giving out candy in total on the four or five blocks my street spans between the two main streets it crosses and around 12-18 groups of kids.  I've been wanting to get out an old lab coat from work and set up a bunch of Nixie test equipment on my porch to do a Mad Scientist's Lab except the previous Halloweens I've been home for have had wet weather, so scratch that idea.  This year would've been perfect for doing that except for everything else wrong with the pandemic.

What really ticked me off was the nasty piece of work neighbour.  She never gives candy out.  But tonight she went one step further, she spent most of it sitting on her front porch smoking cigarettes watching the whole bust go down as the handful of trick or treaters wandered up and down a street that was mostly dark, confusing all of them by being out on her porch as if she was going to give out candy but not actually giving out candy.  That's just cruel.  On October 31st, she's a witch.  The rest of the year, she's what you get when you change the first letter.  If you aren't going to do Halloween, don't hang out on your front porch, period.

Here's how you can karma the bitch. Get a paper bag. Fill it with dog shit. Place it at her front door. Light it on fire. Ring the doorbell. Run.

Oops...sorry, Canadians are too nice to do that. 

[mnementh]

The last we'd heard through the school Beth is interning at was that face-to-face ToT-ing was out; but that the substitute was to be a bowl of prepackaged sealed candies on the front porch at least 6 feet from the door, and no actually coming out.

We prepared to do that; spent $40 on the name-brand chocolates (I swore when I was twelve that I'd never be the kind of asshole to spend hundreds on stupid decorations but cheap out on the candy ) at the local drug store (huge fucking boxes of 'em half-off of what was a reasonable price already); now we've all gorged ourselves half a bite at a time and ready to slip into diabetic comas. 

mnem

[med6753]

No way did I think it was to happen this year. With the pandemic getting so bad it’s not worth the risk.

Yea, not visiting my Mother for Thanksgiving this year. Last place I want to be is packed like a sardine in a plane for 5 hours. And she understands and doesn't want me in that situation. Drive out there? 2.5 days out, 2.5 days back....across the Great Plains prone to Winter storms/blizzards this time of year? Ah....no.  And the thought of taking Amtrak is even less appealing.

We are tentatively planning a get together in August 2021 to celebrate her 90th birthday. Hopefully by then this pandemic crap will settle down.   

[mnementh]

Well, hopefully by then we'll have a vaccine in general distribution by then; COVID is not going away. The best we can do is make it so that speaking with your neighbors is no longer the functional equivalent of Russian Roulette.

In Other News:

   


It was nice while it lasted...

I'm putting my 4070A in the Cupboard of Doom. I've managed to toast CAD$34 worth of AD811AN op-amps and still no closer to grokking its major malfunction.     Maybe I'll buy a big bag of cheap AD811s from China; maybe I'll look for a cheaper and/or more durable alternative part.     

Someday. For now it's time to put the ol' icebag on my junk and move on with my life.

mnem