Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Kosmic]

One instance of this I saw was a guy who clearly had years of experience producing commercial metrology grade voltage references who got shouted down often enough by the voodoo voltage reference "experts" that he gave up in disgust. The forum lost a fantastically useful resource that day. Similarly, Conrad Hoffman (whose bona fides stretch back as far as solving resistor reliability problems on the Minuteman programme) conspicuously cut back his participation in the face of similar overblown egos.

I seen Mr D posting again this year, but he is clearly not as active. I definitely miss his contribution 

[Saskia]

Oh, indeed. Every L2 technology is going to suck. Its suckyness, further, is inversely proportional to the perceived mean competence level of the envisioned user. Therefore, now near-extinct L2 systems like SDH (what those who achieve 56kbit in a 64kbit frame slot call Sonet) who never were supposed to be touched by mortals have an abundancy of useful status report bits and diagnostics and if your head is bell-shaped enough, can tell you exactly what's going on. This process in Ethernet is 130% based on guesswork and rumours, with baling wire and surplus gaffers tape holding the chewing-gum repairs together.. And, since its bastard child 802.11 (i.e WiFi ^(tm)) was supposed to be some Ethernet-compatible toy for line-of-sight comms in offices, it's inherited all the suck and invented its own to ice the cake.

I was supposed to be dealing with routing protocols, not this.

When you retire you should take your time and write a book about all the network design history you experienced on your skin. It would be not only a nice document to read, but also a warning for the current/future network eng. generation.

It's always a pleasure to understand something no college could ever teach.

Two problems:

1) Stuff gets out of date too fast. When I was actively building and managing service provider networks everything went over SDH or ATM at some point. I doubt any service provider has commissioned new SDH or ATM capacity in the last 10 years. Similarly, SDN (software defined networking) was a glimmer in the eye, now it's everywhere. Sure, there's core principles that don't change, but that only makes up the first three chapters of a 10 chapter book that's going to be of any use to practitioners or want-to-be practitioners.

2) Speaking as a one time professional writer who had colleagues who had written or were writing technical books: It's a pain in the arse. You don't get paid anywhere near enough for the effort that goes into it. Only worth doing as a labour of love. And that's talking from the position of writers who were commissioned to do a book; if you're starting out with "I'm gonna write a book" and you need to find a publisher then you have a whole new layer of pain to push through.

Basically, writing technical books is not fun and distilling a career's worth of information into a book in a rapidly changing field is probably not going to be that helpful to your readers.

Having translated quite some stuff for O'Reilly and written a book on my own I absolutely concur that
- the content is out of date far too fast
- the job does not pay enough to make a living (unless you get paid as a professional translator, but you can forget that in that field)
- you are treated like shit
- it is absolutely not worth the hassle and pain.

[Robert763]

I'm sorry that Tony caught this , but as he said, if you stick your head up
It's not just electronics, I see the same thing on engineering and automotive forums. It is particuarly frusrating when it comes to electrical safety and EMC. There is, rightly, a lot of interest amonst home machinists on fitting Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) to mchine tools. One advantage of VFDs is driving a 3 phase motor off a domestic single phase suppply. The numbeor of VFD installations you see put forward as exemplar where the VFD is uncased, no EMC filter, incorrect controls etc is astounding. The VFDs are components and need to be enclosed and, in theory, assessed for CE (UKCA ) compliance. I've commented on such poor installations and get indignat responses from "experienced electrician"(s) saying it's all fine and enclosures etc are not needed and they have done lots of "16/17/18th" edition work. This ignores the fact that the regulations they refer to are for fixed wiring installations, not equipment design which is what integrating a VFD is. There is also a lot of expousing on power voltage and current of Star / Delta 3 Phase motor connections and VFD input by people who obviously have never heard of √3 or power factor, of if they herad the term clearly don't understand it.
It also happens over legality of things like LED headlamp replacements in cars and radioactive items. I'm no lawer, but have beed taught how to interpret technical legislation (and determine compliance for UK EU and American aircraft modifications) so hve a fair idea. People still insist that because they passed the MOT or whatever, i.e. they were not caught, it is legal
I gave up on one geiger counter group because the owner insisted that it was legal in the USA to remove the radioactive source from a smoke detector to use as a check source. It's not, and technically it's even illegal in the USA to use an intact smoke detector as a check source, not tht anyone would bother about that.
Does it matter? Possibly not, but were do you stop? The people down the road were clearly having a party on new years eve and a friends son went out and got in a fight. Similar minor infarctions but in these cases hey are possibly catching and exposing others to Covid 19.
Rant OFF

[Saskia]

Kamera flipped after a bit of haggling.
Operation "get rid of surplus stuff" is underway ...

[bd139]

Kamera flipped after a bit of haggling.
Operation "get rid of surplus stuff" is underway ...

Congratulations. Waiting for the next £1 listing day here 

BTW if anyone wants a Gigabyte GeForce 1660 6Gb let me know. Fully working. Sensible offer (check ebay prices and you'll get a discount ). UK only due to Brexit export shite.

Edit: Also Ryzen 3600 (retail boxed with cooler) and 4x 16Gb PC3200 Corsair LPX DDR modules going

[Saskia]

afaik you have free access to the EU market as part of that brexit deal. Plus you are also in Schengen (due to Gibraltar being in Schengen)

[Saskia]

Kamera flipped after a bit of haggling.
Operation "get rid of surplus stuff" is underway ...

Congratulations. Waiting for the next £1 listing day here 

BTW if anyone wants a Gigabyte GeForce 1660 6Gb let me know. Fully working. Sensible offer (check ebay prices and you'll get a discount ). UK only due to Brexit export shite.

Edit: Also Ryzen 3600 (retail boxed with cooler) and 4x 16Gb PC3200 Corsair LPX DDR modules going

I got my last 1660 (Zotac, not Gigabyte) for 130. I guess you want more for it ?

[bd139]

Yeah they're going for insane prices here, up to 300GBP because of the GPU shortage. Would accept 200 inc shipping (UPS fully insured)

afaik you have free access to the EU market as part of that brexit deal. Plus you are also in Schengen (due to Gibraltar being in Schengen)

Yeah it's more shipping stuff across border is difficult already at the moment outbound. It'll be fine by March.


Edit: changed the prices after seeing this shit  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393071146744

[med6753]

I'm in total agreement with everything stated here concerning the buffoons, blowhards, know-it-all's, and egomaniacs. They are everywhere and a can of bullshit spray and a shovel is almost a mandatory carry.

Tony goes to the trouble of producing and publishing video's of his TE activities. Who else in our group of addicts does that?

Don't all answer at once. 

Exactly, no one else. Now I have no problem pointing out to him if something is factually incorrect. But IMHO the callousness in which it was done earlier is unjustified. 

 

[Robert763]

afaik you have free access to the EU market as part of that brexit deal. Plus you are also in Schengen (due to Gibraltar being in Schengen)

No, dispite what Boris said.
There are no tarrifs, but lots of non tarrif barriers For example no raw meat.
England, Scotland, Wales and NI have never been part of Schengen.

[BravoV]

I’m (genuinely) writing that book on software at the moment. 

Ironically it merges neatly with Cerebus’ post and has a chapter titled “ego driven development” 

The best bit of advice I have for management is that when dealing with software developers, look for the quiet, slightly worried looking chap/chapesse in the meeting and afterwards take them for a beer and listen to them.

This reminds of the poor chap at this video ... 

[mansaxel]

Only worth doing as a labour of love.

I'm aiming, if writing, for "Labour of hate", which has its own internal furnace.

I'm afraid that we've gone too far, though. The average fooldevloper these days believes a router always does NAT and that you must use HTTP to talk to another computer.  The good ones can  be corrected, but I'd rather revive valve equipment and stay in my bubble of "you have to have some clue to even grasp what this device does." The lack of interpersonal interaction is truly rewarding.  At the same time, I'm honestly scared that I've acted like one of those half-wits that have been mentioned in the few last posts, because I do truly lack most clue I would need to open my mouth; instead just copying others.

Oh, well, time to make dinner. (And get yelled at by children who don't think fish is food unless deep fried in batter. No, they're not from the UK, but they've been there.)

[mnementh]

The best bit of advice I have for management is that when dealing with software developers, look for the quiet, slightly worried looking chap/chapesse in the meeting and afterwards take them for a beer and listen to them.

As someone who has been frequently employed by organisations to review and fix problems, exactly that. My one bit of advice has always been "instead of complaining that the developers are whining, listen to what they are whining about". And lo and behold a hidden cost centre appears which consumes cash faster than satan's crack habit and eats more souls than the man himself too...

The problem here of course is the "m" word... people who are congenitally incapable of hearing anything except their own glorious voice and the sound of slapping themselves on the back.

These are the ones you are advising to listen to the grunts in the trenches; another recursion of that old "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing... etc" soul-eating scenario that makes anybody with half a wit either run away or lose it completely.

mnem
Of the two, crack is probably less life-threatening.

[Saskia]

Yeah they're going for insane prices here, up to 300GBP because of the GPU shortage. Would accept 200 inc shipping (UPS fully insured)

afaik you have free access to the EU market as part of that brexit deal. Plus you are also in Schengen (due to Gibraltar being in Schengen)

Yeah it's more shipping stuff across border is difficult already at the moment outbound. It'll be fine by March.


Edit: changed the prices after seeing this shit  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393071146744

no problem, I could bite my arse that I missed out on that 3060ti for 175. Was about 10 minutes too late.

[mnementh]

Problematic way of operating isn't it. My previous job was persuading people that they needed to finish the last several rewrites and all the bugs first before they took a new one on and rammed it into EKS at the same time 

business: "we have a problem houston!"

arch 1: "lets solve it with microservices"

arch 2: "on kubernetes!"

arch 3: "on amazon!"

arch 1 drags arch 2 and 3 off to the broom cupboard for something obscene

arch 4, now demoted, tutting and sitting in the corner saying: "Udi Dahan was right" unable to speak any other words after the conference he went to warped the peanut in his head.

arch 5, now also demoted, with one eye, a long beard sitting in an opposite corner under a pile of broken Surface tablets and confiscated USB sticks containing PII data: "Pfft wrong! Back in my day it was UML and Rational ClearCase and Enterprise Integration Patterns"

Edit: in walks someone from ThoughtWorks with a bermuda shirt, shorts, MacBook Pro and hipster beard and several hundred pages of powerpoint all with a black background just to be cool.

business: rubs hands together "this guy really looks like he knows what he's on about"

"Dance as old as time, song as old as rhyme..."





One gratuitous moustache-fight and neural remapping later...





https://goats.com/comic/2005/02/16/february-16-2005/

goats has been around since the 90's; these are from the colorized reboot. Jon can get a bit preachy aboot religion & politics, but he's disturbingly prescient with a lot of his "satire".

mnem
I am the overclocked lemon.

[bd139]

Hahaha that's some good shit that is. The first cell is a meeting I've been in before 

[mnementh]

Yeah, I totally heard you going "Oh Christ..." when I reread that a few weeks ago... 

mnem

[AVGresponding]

I'm sorry that Tony caught this , but as he said, if you stick your head up
It's not just electronics, I see the same thing on engineering and automotive forums. It is particuarly frusrating when it comes to electrical safety and EMC. There is, rightly, a lot of interest amonst home machinists on fitting Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) to mchine tools. One advantage of VFDs is driving a 3 phase motor off a domestic single phase suppply. The numbeor of VFD installations you see put forward as exemplar where the VFD is uncased, no EMC filter, incorrect controls etc is astounding. The VFDs are components and need to be enclosed and, in theory, assessed for CE (UKCA ) compliance. I've commented on such poor installations and get indignat responses from "experienced electrician"(s) saying it's all fine and enclosures etc are not needed and they have done lots of "16/17/18th" edition work. This ignores the fact that the regulations they refer to are for fixed wiring installations, not equipment design which is what integrating a VFD is. There is also a lot of expousing on power voltage and current of Star / Delta 3 Phase motor connections and VFD input by people who obviously have never heard of √3 or power factor, of if they herad the term clearly don't understand it.
It also happens over legality of things like LED headlamp replacements in cars and radioactive items. I'm no lawer, but have beed taught how to interpret technical legislation (and determine compliance for UK EU and American aircraft modifications) so hve a fair idea. People still insist that because they passed the MOT or whatever, i.e. they were not caught, it is legal
I gave up on one geiger counter group because the owner insisted that it was legal in the USA to remove the radioactive source from a smoke detector to use as a check source. It's not, and technically it's even illegal in the USA to use an intact smoke detector as a check source, not tht anyone would bother about that.
Does it matter? Possibly not, but were do you stop? The people down the road were clearly having a party on new years eve and a friends son went out and got in a fight. Similar minor infarctions but in these cases hey are possibly catching and exposing others to Covid 19.
Rant OFF

Whilst it's true that a VFD isn't considered part of the fixed wiring, its supply is, and still has to meet current regulations, and would most certainly require that any terminations are properly enclosed.

The VFD itself and the machine tool it powers would come under PAT regulations, which unsurprisingly also require properly protected terminations, amongst other things.

Separate VFD's are less common for us nowadays especially as many of the water pumps have integrated drives, but we still do have them, and they are always either in an enclosure, or have correctly IP rated integrated enclosures around their terminals.


The MOT situation really grates on me; I do know of one (amongst no doubt very many) MOT station that will pass any vehicle as long as it will roll, even if only while being pushed.

Thanks Mr Cameron, and Mr Osborne for all those cuts, at least it was worth it because we now have no national debt/deficit. Oh, wait...

[Saskia]

ok, payment for 2nd camera also received. That means: back down to reasonable amount of cameras.

[mnementh]

Right now I'm procrastinating against finishing the design work on this, which has been printing for 15 hours and is 18% done... it still needs the matching art-supply cups.

Somebody poke me with a cattle-prod, please.

mnem
No. Alternately, yes. Maybe... I dunno; Life is unfair...

[Saskia]

I'm sorry that Tony caught this , but as he said, if you stick your head up
It's not just electronics, I see the same thing on engineering and automotive forums. It is particuarly frusrating when it comes to electrical safety and EMC. There is, rightly, a lot of interest amonst home machinists on fitting Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) to mchine tools. One advantage of VFDs is driving a 3 phase motor off a domestic single phase suppply. The numbeor of VFD installations you see put forward as exemplar where the VFD is uncased, no EMC filter, incorrect controls etc is astounding. The VFDs are components and need to be enclosed and, in theory, assessed for CE (UKCA ) compliance. I've commented on such poor installations and get indignat responses from "experienced electrician"(s) saying it's all fine and enclosures etc are not needed and they have done lots of "16/17/18th" edition work. This ignores the fact that the regulations they refer to are for fixed wiring installations, not equipment design which is what integrating a VFD is. There is also a lot of expousing on power voltage and current of Star / Delta 3 Phase motor connections and VFD input by people who obviously have never heard of √3 or power factor, of if they herad the term clearly don't understand it.
It also happens over legality of things like LED headlamp replacements in cars and radioactive items. I'm no lawer, but have beed taught how to interpret technical legislation (and determine compliance for UK EU and American aircraft modifications) so hve a fair idea. People still insist that because they passed the MOT or whatever, i.e. they were not caught, it is legal
I gave up on one geiger counter group because the owner insisted that it was legal in the USA to remove the radioactive source from a smoke detector to use as a check source. It's not, and technically it's even illegal in the USA to use an intact smoke detector as a check source, not tht anyone would bother about that.
Does it matter? Possibly not, but were do you stop? The people down the road were clearly having a party on new years eve and a friends son went out and got in a fight. Similar minor infarctions but in these cases hey are possibly catching and exposing others to Covid 19.
Rant OFF

why for crying out loud does Timmy come to mind ...

[Cerebus]

Oh, well, time to make dinner. (And get yelled at by children who don't think fish is food unless deep fried in batter. No, they're not from the UK, but they've been there.)

With chips (fried in beef dripping), and mushy peas. And scraps, don't forget the scraps. (Whoops, my internal Northerner is showing.  )

[bd139]

We have scraps on chips over here in SW London 

[Specmaster]

The video just shows your lack of understanding.

Gee, could you possibly be a little more subtle rather than a swift kick in the nut sack? 

What follows is qualified. I haven't watched the video in question, so I'm not commenting on the case in hand. I'm most definitely NOT commenting on Tony's competence or understanding.

I can understand the bluntness as a possible result of accumulated frustration. Something I've increasingly noticed recently around here (the whole board) is the amount of pontificating done by people who clearly don't know what they're talking about. There are people who act, in their interactions with others, as if they are experts. (Robert replied while I was writing this, I'm quite pleased that I guessed exactly where he was coming from.)

As an example: One frequent, high post count, poster who is always handing out advice about circuit design and component selection recently posted a question about a constructing a kit they'd bought. It was clear that the individual in question could not recognise basics. They couldn't spot particular types of components in the schematic, they were confused as to which of the supplied components belonged where in the circuit and how to identify them from the components that had come in the kit. They didn't even realise that generic part designations weren't an arbitrary manufacturer's part number. Yet, I've seen the poster in question hand out many an expert sounding opinion on how people should do things when clearly they haven't actually acquired the most basic level of electronics expertise.

So, I too am feeling a bit of frustration with the types that let their egos do the talking while not really knowing about that they are talking about. It's not fair to the people who want to learn something to present yourself as an expert but spout a lot of half-baked nonsense. It dilutes the efforts put in by people who do know what they're talking about, because now they have to deal with correcting the idiots (which usually results in an argument) as well as supplying useful information. I've noticed the disappearance of several people who clearly had genuine expert level knowledge and experience in some areas, were genuinely helpful, and put a lot of effort in, once they ran into the  self-appointed 'experts' who seemed in capable of recognising the real thing when they met it, and just continued arguing for their half-baked theories, generating much heat and no light.

One instance of this I saw was a guy who clearly had years of experience producing commercial metrology grade voltage references who got shouted down often enough by the voodoo voltage reference "experts" that he gave up in disgust. The forum lost a fantastically useful resource that day. Similarly, Conrad Hoffman (whose bona fides stretch back as far as solving resistor reliability problems on the Minuteman programme) conspicuously cut back his participation in the face of similar overblown egos.

I guess we are back on the resistor symbol question again?

[AVGresponding]

Oh, well, time to make dinner. (And get yelled at by children who don't think fish is food unless deep fried in batter. No, they're not from the UK, but they've been there.)

With chips (fried in beef dripping), and mushy peas. And scraps, don't forget the scraps. (Whoops, my internal Northerner is showing.  )

I'm a Northerner, and I've never cared for "scraps", or as we call them "bits". And you can ask at any decent chippy for unbattered fish, makes a nice change sometimes.