Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

I think I spent too much time in the UK and too much time reading and writing English on forums, e-mailing friends, reading datasheet, watching movies etc....    I am contaminated... I am neither French anymore, nor English just yet... I am a hybrid, a bastard, literally... 

I am also contaminated, but stuck here in the middle coming from the other side...

Hey someone on here already posted this one just a few weeks ago I remember, is that all you've got ?! 

I am certain there is more ... I did not hear enough church words ... 

As one might imagine, there has been some considerable discussion aboot this scene over the years.
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d’enculé de ta mère.” is what has generally been accepted as the literal words he spoke...

"generally accepted"... well there is not much room for any doubt, it's exactly what he said, no more no less...

However, the translation thereof is more that it is either a string of semi-random swear words chosen for alliterative flow

That's it. It's just for the movie, not real life...

Oi, leave my Mother out of this  

LICK ME, Spec!


@Vince - As I said, there has been considerable discussion over both over the years... I've had to sit through such discussions lasting for days back on the SciFi and Dominion chats & boards. 

The discussions generally vacillated between Beavis & Butthead type commentary and insanely nit-picky arguments over the exact pronunciation and tense of the words said, and whether that actually made material difference in the connotative meaning of what was said, such that it could be construed as to means something as a whole.

As I possessed even less compréhension du français then than I do now, I really didn't know or even care.

All I know or care is that I spent days herding cats trying to mod my fellow nerds towards sanity, lest the board self-immolate Godwin-style. And over the years, I have stumbled across dozens if not hundreds of similar "discussions" in pretty much any forum setting you can think of.

There is nothing there to take offense to or needing correction. This is not what I said. I was just passing on the Cliff's Notes version of the discussions I had experienced. 

mnem
The Past, The Present, and The Future walked into a bar. It was tense.

[med6753]

Yeah, the same over here in the UK, farmers get special prices for the diesel for their tractors and other farm equipment, and they have I believe a red dye added to indicate that it is of an agricultural grade and cannot be used for road vehicles and again the police and MOT inspectors can pull over road vehicles and dip their tanks to ensure that the duty has been paid for road use, get caught with the coloured fuel in your tank, big fine coming your way pronto.

We also have "off road" diesel with the red dye. And same consequences if you get caught with it "on road". 

[mnementh]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

mnem
"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

Ugggghhh.

Turns out CthulhuBot doesn't like the Virtual Wall/Lighthouses that came with it. It is a model 805, and only works with the latest-model lighthouses which cost $100/pair. The ones which came with it have some form of RF handshaking using Zigbee modules... I kid you not... and only work with most of the 500-700 series and the later 880 model which uses the same chassis and MB as the 805, but has the Zigbee and support components and its own FW and... 

Short version is that these Virtual Wall units won't even turn on unless a RF-compatible Roomba comes within a meter or so of them. I have no idea of the protocol, and so far, all my searches on the subject return so much useless garbage my brain just seizes up.

I think I'm going to put the Roombas down, back slowly away and work on my daughter's Halloween costume. She's a witch without a broom to ride, and I need to fix that... 

mnem
'twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimbal in the wabe...

[cyclin_al]

@Vince

BTW, regarding exceptions to the rule that the French don't change the spelling of English words, here's one, off he top of my head:

fioul

I have never heard that word before, french or english 

After looking it up, it is what we call furnace oil (it might be fuel oil in formal paperwork).  SWMBO would call it mazout.

[med6753]

Thanks for showing your 321A with excessive brightness, looks quite different to mine, especially as you had to turn the lights out to show it.
I had a very very quick peak inside it last night, all the notorious OC170 transistors are still present, as are the original capacitors.
There are some old repairs to some diodes (with damage to the terminal strip), the end of the battery holder has gone where a mains cord has been soldered on.

David

You're welcome. My Type 321A is still loaded with the 2N2207 transistors too. I had one in the sweep section develop a tin whisker short. I replaced it with a vintage 2N2207 and so far no issues. I should have tried a 2N3906 but didn't realize at the time that in most cases a silicon transistor can just drop right in with no changes.

The recently restored Type 547 has two 2N2207's in the sweep mag circuit and both were bad. Again, I replaced them with vintage 2N2207 not realizing that in later production Tek changed them to silicon 2N4890 with no circuit changes.     

[cyclin_al]

I think I spent too much time in the UK and too much time reading and writing English on forums, e-mailing friends, reading datasheet, watching movies etc....    I am contaminated... I am neither French anymore, nor English just yet... I am a hybrid, a bastard, literally... 

I am also contaminated, but stuck here in the middle coming from the other side...

Hey someone on here already posted this one just a few weeks ago I remember, is that all you've got ?! 

I am certain there is more ... I did not hear enough church words ... 

That's strange because the very first word he says is precisely that ! 

" Nom de dieu "

Ici, c'est vraiment un grand défi de trouver les mauvaises mots assez doux comme ça.

It really is a big challenge to find curse words that are as mild as that one... <smiley covering ears>

Défi is used all the time here in the names of bicycle tours & races.
Every special activity that school does involving the kid is called a défi...

[cyclin_al]

What ever happened to the word "Gasoil"? That was the French word for car diesel back when I lived there.

It still is in France. Either gazoil or gazole. The French-speaking Belgians call it diesel. Dunno about Switzerland and Québec.

I always thought "gaz" was simply an abbreviation for gasoline... now you know the Quebec version!

[Neper]

I always thought "gaz" was simply an abbreviation for gasoline... now you know the Quebec version!

Gaz is first and foremost the French spelling of gas of any kind. Like the stuff used for cooking or heating.

150 years ago, it was so much a synonym for progress and modernity that they not only had pubs called 'Café du Progrès' or 'Le Télégraphe' but also 'Café du Gaz'.

This one used to be in Calais, France, right next to the premises of the former municipal gasworks in a street very appropriately named 'Rue du Gaz':

https://www.fotocommunity.de/photo/cafe-du-gaz-avenue-du-point-de-vue/43746588

[AVGresponding]

Well, this item

Hmm, I just won an ebay auction on a re-re-listed item, for £3 less than I offered the seller a couple of months ago...

"If you sit patiently by the river long enough you will be able to watch the bodies of your enemies float past."

          just arrived, and I am NOT a happy camper. It took DHL 10 fucking days to deliver it, with no tracking updates after 3 days, and no reply to my email to customer services. So much for "DHL Parcel - Next Day". I was about to phone them up and express my dissatisfaction when I got home from work, but there it was on my doorstep, getting wet.

The packing was on the cusp between poor and barely adequate, which is normal for Pro-AVIT (the ebay seller). There are extra scratches on the front panel which I'm guessing was done by one of the sellers' packing and shipping morlocks.
I will take it apart tomorrow and power it up afterwards and test it. Here's a pic of the front panel:



I'll post better pics after I do my 30-second teardown.


Currently nursing a mild headache, probably caused by ground-crewing a scissor lift for most of the week. The beeping it makes every time any control is activated is incessant and loud, and craning my neck to spot for the driver as he manoeuvers it 12 metres up in amongst the structural steel and gas pipes doesn't help either.
The only break I had was yesterday afternoon, to take my car in for its MOT (yes my wheel speed sensor fix worked, and it passed with only 1 advisory), and the replacement ground crew managed to get his phone run over. Some people...   

[Saskia]

I think I spent too much time in the UK and too much time reading and writing English on forums, e-mailing friends, reading datasheet, watching movies etc....    I am contaminated... I am neither French anymore, nor English just yet... I am a hybrid, a bastard, literally... 

I am also contaminated, but stuck here in the middle coming from the other side...

Hey someone on here already posted this one just a few weeks ago I remember, is that all you've got ?! 

I am certain there is more ... I did not hear enough church words ... 

As one might imagine, there has been some considerable discussion aboot this scene over the years.
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d’enculé de ta mère.” is what has generally been accepted as the literal words he spoke...

"generally accepted"... well there is not much room for any doubt, it's exactly what he said, no more no less...

However, the translation thereof is more that it is either a string of semi-random swear words chosen for alliterative flow

That's it. It's just for the movie, not real life...

Oi, leave my Mother out of this  

[Saskia]

oh whutaday ...

the newly bought car did not pass road safety inspection.
Dealer ordered the parts to fix it. Was supposed to be ready yesterday, but was not.
Yesterday the building permit was not there. So I cancelled the mortgage deliberations with the bank.
This morning I got an email from the realtor with the building permit attached.
So I had to run back to the bank and arrange the mortgage stuff (done)
then go to the notary and sign the contract. (done)
Tomorrow I need to get to Hanover somehow to pick up the bloody car. 

Totally bust my diet, did not make my 10 kms yesterday and today and also had a lunch break at my favorite restaurant at the end of the universe.

I will do penance later.

[Saskia]

oh, fergot sumthin:
also stopped by at my favorite distributor and picked up a 15 HE 19" rack for 35€ and a UT161E DMM for (undisclosed, but small).

[Specmaster]

Well despite all the discussion here about raising the low 11ft 8" bridge to 12ft 4" it seems it wasn't enough OR they never raised bar just before bridge, this lorry managed to hit the bar just 8 days ago 


 

[AVGresponding]

Yes well, if there's one thing we can be sure that we'll never run out of, it's idiots.

[xrunner]

This one is probably more use for TEA
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/173909819576
Not many M12 or 1/2" fasteners in most TE.  suppose you really need both to cover all options. One covering the middle range of those two would be ideal.
 Fortunatly I can tell most common sizes by eye. It's fairly easy to tell imperial from metric by the (generally) finer thread on metric than similar size imperial.

True but I did say TEA-ish. 

I'm going to sort what I have in the garage first, which is SAE and metric and it's all jumbled up. It's probably no smaller than M4 or #4 SAE. But I'm tired of trying to find 2 or 4 or 6 of the same screw for a project. Plus I'm trying to use all metric these days because I like it better. For example I had to fix some loose "decoration" on top of my two chain link fence gates which had to be re-tapped to really get it fitting tight. I went with metric bolts (I already had the tap in a tap & die set I had).

In my electronics hobby closet I have yet more accumulated screws and bolts. These are more TEA-ish (is that a new term  ) than in the garage. So, for example, in one box I have what I call "PC screws", which I know all go into building PCs and are obvious to my eye. I think they are all metric but I'm not 100% sure because I never needed to find out. Then in another plastic box is yet a jumbled-up mess accumulated over the years, from who-knows-what electronics I took apart such as hard drives, radios, small devices of all sorts. I just kept all the screws and threw them in that box. Now we're talking M2 and tiny SAE sizes, and the washers and nuts to go with them, provided I'm lucky enough to find a matching set.

Then in my 3D printer room are more screws for that hobby. Now we're talking 100% metric from M2 to M5. I have all the needed sizes some of which I ordered in boxes to have on-hand for different things I try to mount on the printer. The rest came from things I accumulated that didn't quite work. I sorted them easily because there was no doubt it's all metric, so I could just eyeball it or compare to other screws in the area.

But yea that other set of thread checkers is a possible purchase. 

[Andrew_Debbie]

Filed under too far gone:

HP 6264B linear supply

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194468003842

The corrosion is impossible to miss.    A second glance turns up many spots that got toasty warm. 

A shame.

[mnementh]

And now for something completely... ON-TOPIC!




well, fuck. I've had this cabling spudger since my VCR-overhauling days. It has been "the day's MVP" more times than I can count. *has a moment of silence for s'pud*

I guess now it's TWO spudgers! 

While I'm at this whole On-Topic thing... shifting gears to the new "crafty" project required massively clearing off the bench. So while I had it cleared off, I decided to do some much-needed upgrades.


   

First, a PDU upgrade for my most-used juice-hungry tools. Swapped over to a standard 15A plug and added some nice rubber feet to keep it planted, then located such that the switch/breaker was reasonably easy to reach. I still need to find some decent way to manage the Dremel and small heat-gun laying on the floor right now.




Next, if you direct your attention upward, you'll notice the HOLY FUCKING ASSCRACKERS THAT'S BRIGHT!!! LED panel light now hung from the ceiling. I got a two-pack of these for aboot US$15 on sale off Bezos' Crack Shop; I needed one in the laundry room because it has a single Edison bulb fixture for the whole space.   They make these in much bigger and brighter varieties for sparsely-lit garages and supposedly 60 watts apiece actual LED power, not equivalent; tho I'd guess more like ~30 watts. Still a effing lot of light for cheap in a dead-easy package.

Of course, things will not stay this tidy for long.    I am loving this extra-deep workbench; when I need extra room for large work I just shove everything back under the shelves. 

mnem

[med6753]

The packing was on the cusp between poor and barely adequate, which is normal for Pro-AVIT (the ebay seller). There are extra scratches on the front panel which I'm guessing was done by one of the sellers' packing and shipping morlocks.
I will take it apart tomorrow and power it up afterwards and test it. Here's a pic of the front panel:

If this seller is known for skimpy packaging why do you buy from him? Or why not send him a note telling him that his packaging sucks and needs to improve?

[Vince]

There are extra scratches on the front panel which I'm guessing was done by one of the sellers' packing and shipping morlocks.

Was it on Ebay ? If the scratches were not there in the ad.. then it's not conform to the ad so you could file  a claim, return it or get some of your money back ??

[med6753]

Well despite all the discussion here about raising the low 11ft 8" bridge to 12ft 4" it seems it wasn't enough OR they never raised bar just before bridge, this lorry managed to hit the bar just 8 days ago 


 

Lorry? I don't see no stinkin lorry. I see a truck, but not a lorry. 

[mnementh]

...The only break I had was yesterday afternoon, to take my car in for its MOT (yes my wheel speed sensor fix worked, and it passed with only 1 advisory), and the replacement ground crew managed to get his phone run over. Some people...   

Hey, at least he didn't run over your phone with a scissorlift... 

mnem
think (+). charge (-).

[AVGresponding]

...The only break I had was yesterday afternoon, to take my car in for its MOT (yes my wheel speed sensor fix worked, and it passed with only 1 advisory), and the replacement ground crew managed to get his phone run over. Some people...   

Hey, at least he didn't run over your phone with a scissorlift... 

mnem
think (+). charge (-).

Of course not, I'm not a fuckwit that leaves his phone on the floor where a 2.5 tonne scissor lift is driving around.

[AVGresponding]

There are extra scratches on the front panel which I'm guessing was done by one of the sellers' packing and shipping morlocks.

Was it on Ebay ? If the scratches were not there in the ad.. then it's not conform to the ad so you could file  a claim, return it or get some of your money back ??

For a couple of scratches? Probably not. If it fails in any way to operate correctly, then yes.

[mansaxel]

I propose Finnish so that you can follow the pommijätkät channel.

I speak Swedish as mother tongue, and Danish (which differs to Swedish about as much as, say, Hoch-Deutsch and Platt), well enough to fool Danes that I'm native. English is OK but not perfect, German is working knowledge, and french is "order at restaurants without disaster, most of the time"; much better when reading. The best litterature on the Maginot line and the Séré de Rivières  system is in french, so just dive in.

Having a small (about 10 million speakers) mother tongue makes for more opportunities in learning other languages.

[mansaxel]

@Vince

BTW, regarding exceptions to the rule that the French don't change the spelling of English words, here's one, off he top of my head:

fioul

Oh no, I think we need to stop or we will get kicked out of TEA, people will hack the server to delete our accounts ! 

Yes " fioul " is a french-iazation of " fuel " you are right. Sounds the same but using a more French looking spelling so easier to remember.
What's more.... we use the term "fuel" to describe diesel fuel only, and only the kind you use for heating ion the house, not the one you put in your car, even though they are the same technically, whereas of course in English " fuel " can be either petrol or diesel fuel, or anything else that can burn really...

The proper term is "POL" which is supply chainese for "Petroleum, Oils, Lubricants".   

Did I tell I'm reading the US Ordnance Department history from the second world war?