Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[xrunner]

For me, pizza comes from the freezer

Reminds me of the joke where little Billy asks his mother "Where do I come from?"

'Uh-oh!" thinks Mum, who embarks upon the whole classic "birds & the bees" lecture.

"Gee!", says Billy, somewhat taken aback, "Johnny at school comes from England!"

Well around here we have Papa Murphey's. What you get from their shop is an uncooked unfrozen pizza with your toppings. Then you take it home and bake it yourself at the time of your choosing (up to two days later). Works out well. 

[Zucca]

Windows updates has reminded me that my main computer is not compatible with Win11.

Mine too, and I am happy! finally no excuses I need to jump on Linux. Even wife likes Linux now, finger crossed.
Win in a VM if needed.

PS: I also hope M$ will lose a lot of customers with that idiot move. Linux right now is very very attractive. M$ will bleed.. I hope.

[Specmaster]

Perhaps this may provide the answer, but as far as I can see it is not definitive.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263732/where-does-pizza-pie-originate

Don't be foolish, we have the definitive word from the Dragon, there is no need for further debate. It was indeed truly genuinely stupid of me to challenge any claim from him and expect anything good to come of it.

Harsh words..... he might just be yanking on your chain of course, he is known, like you, for your dry humour. Other than that, I have zero idea personally. I didn't use Google, I used DuckDuckGo and that doesn't seem as good as Google me, but perhaps Google might just hold the key. Try this out, does it help?

https://www.crustkingdom.com/why-is-pizza-called-pie/

I WISH I were being that clever; nope, just utterly ignorant on this point. Full stop.

Thanks for trying to throw me a lifeline; not sure I deserved it this time.

mnem
Oh, look... more research.

Well you both know me, looking for the good in people and also knowing how the pair of you have your witty little banters  while tearing chunks out each other, with you stoking your fire production plant and C sharpening his ceremonial cutlery, in particular his gutting knife  .  You both know that I hold the pair of you in high regard and have learnt much from you  .

Normal service has been resumed 

[mnementh]

...What are your goals, TEA or otherwise, for 2022? Mine are to acquire less TE, shrink my repair queue, and spend more time in the forum.

(And catch more typos before submitting a post.)

Mine is to stay at the same address for more than 11 months for a change. And to not start any more international incidents. 

mnem
*heeds Hypnos' siren call*

That's a good plan, indeed. Regarding staying put, have all your your lab goodies come out to play or are they still in storage?

   

Today we emptied the garage, and filled it up again. And some of the "Dwagon Cave" too...



Still only got to about 1/2 empty on the ToD tho. It were a lot of work, and a lot of backache too.

   

But there were some rewards as well. Underneath the 1054Zed were my Lambdas, my working (as of 2.5 years ago) 2465, and my 3478A among other things. Now all I need to do is empty the other side of the dwagon cave so I can make a place for the workbench and get it all set up.

And bribe the eldest dwagonling to put up with my grumpy arse long enuf to help me finish the job. 

mnem

[Zucca]

Not trying to pick a fight with Z, but seriously... wood-fired oven as a baseline criteria? Ridiculous.

Let me finish building my pizza wood oven in my back yard (yes done as the old times, brick by brick). Once is done I invite you and your family down in SC, USA and we will continue our discussion in front of a decent pizza.
I am very grateful about America, before Colombo discovered it, we had no tomatoes. Tomatoes went popular in Europe around the 16th, and all of them are originally from America.....

So every pizza you see with a tomato souce in it, even in Neaples, has a very important piece of American DNA in it.

Hope this will make you even more happy....

[mnementh]

Not trying to pick a fight with Z, but seriously... wood-fired oven as a baseline criteria? Ridiculous.

Let me finish building my pizza wood oven in my back yard (yes done as the old times, brick by brick). Once is done I invite you and your family down in SC, USA and we will continue our discussion in front of a decent pizza.
I am very grateful about America, before Colombo discovered it, we had no tomatoes. Tomatoes went popular in Europe around the 16th, and all of them are originally from America.....

So every pizza you see with a tomato sauce in it, even in Neaples, has a very important piece of American DNA in it.

Hope this will make you even more happy....

I knew that tomatoes were brought back, and were actually believed to be poisonous for quite some time (they are a member of the nightshade family), so no idea why they were brought back when the trip was so dangerous... but as someone who greatly enjoys cooking, I'll continue to be skeptical of the merits of wood-fired pizza from afar. Smoked meats, "Hell yeah!!!" however. 

That said, by all means carry on... and I'll be more than happy to be proven wrong in person, as long as I get to eat the pizza.

mnem
Ifni save you if I bring my son along tho... he is to pizza as I am to lasagna.   

[Zucca]

I'll continue to be skeptical of the merits of wood-fired pizza from afar. Smoked meats, "Hell yeah!!!" however. 

Oh now I got it, it is not the smoked taste...
The only reason wood is a must, is the temperature!
We italian need about 600°C for about 45-60 seconds (yes I even timed the pizzaioli in neaples)
Of course the base need to be high in temperature as well. And keep it high, this is why you want a thick stone base as heat buffer/storage.

In other words we need a Metcal oven for pizza (short cooking time at high energy)

This is why second to wood there is only gas (nice touch with a stone base),  and electric is just as last resort.

Only after the temperature is right, I have to tell you cherry wood gives the best taste. but in such short period of time the kind of wood does not play a huge role.

Anyway I think some people wants to see some TEA and not pizza here. So I stop for now.

[TERRA Operative]

Inductive pizza stones? Hmm, interesting concept.

[cyclin_al]

Not trying to pick a fight with Z, but seriously... wood-fired oven as a baseline criteria? Ridiculous.

Let me finish building my pizza wood oven in my back yard (yes done as the old times, brick by brick). Once is done I invite you and your family down in SC, USA and we will continue our discussion in front of a decent pizza.
I am very grateful about America, before Colombo discovered it, we had no tomatoes. Tomatoes went popular in Europe around the 16th, and all of them are originally from America.....

So every pizza you see with a tomato souce in it, even in Neaples, has a very important piece of American DNA in it.

Hope this will make you even more happy....

This sounds like a very interesting project.  SWMBO wants an outdoor wood-fired bread oven.  Something that will do well for both bread and pizza would be to my liking 

NOTE: the best local pizza could only be obtained by my friends who lived in an apartment above a pizza shop.  They knew the pizzeria staff well enough that they could order a half-baked pizza wrapped in tinfoil for takeout.  Pizza was then transported by skis on an evening outing to a cabin in a near-by park.  Pizza was finished baking on the cabin wood stove, then freshly served devoured by skiers with a healthy appetite.  Good times those 

[med6753]

Subject: Pizza. Love it. Can't eat just one slice. At least 3, perhaps 4. But alas haven't had it in a long time since it ain't on a diabetic's diet plan. 

I believe there are still at least one or two pizzerias in Brooklyn that still use wood or coal fired ovens. And I also think they have been voted consistently the best American style pizza. I know nothing of Naples style pizza.

My immediate area has a very large Italian immigrant population. It seems every other last name ends in an "o" or "i". Little private vineyards abound for wine making plus sometimes I think there are more goats than people.  In town is a little pizzeria obviously owned by one of these Italian families. They have been voted several times the best pizza in the entire Mid-Hudson Valley Region.     

[med6753]

Also, you can tell you're pulling up to an Italian household without even knowing the name. How? The statues. Either a grotto of the Virgin Mary or a statue of St Francis. Must be part of their Roman heritage. 

[mnementh]

I'll continue to be skeptical of the merits of wood-fired pizza from afar. Smoked meats, "Hell yeah!!!" however. 

Oh now I got it, it is not the smoked taste...
The only reason wood is a must, is the temperature!
We italian need about 600°C for about 45-60 seconds (yes I even timed the pizzaioli in neaples)
Of course the base need to be high in temperature as well. And keep it high, this is why you want a thick stone base as heat buffer/storage.

In other words we need a Metcal oven for pizza (short cooking time at high energy)

This is why second to wood there is only gas (nice touch with a stone base),  and electric is just as last resort.

Only after the temperature is right, I have to tell you cherry wood gives the best taste. but in such short period of time the kind of wood does not play a huge role.

Anyway I think some people wants to see some TEA and not pizza here. So I stop for now.

Huh.... so you're saying the wood fire is to crisp things after cooking on the stone?

Hmm... I'm afraid I stumbled onto your "secret" quite by accident, having owned a stone for many years; it always worked better in a gas oven, but still never able to get the crispy crust the way I like, and eventually if I kept cooking it would just turn the toppings to a rock. 

In an electric oven even the stone didn't save the top from drying out before the bottom was cooked, so I started "finishing" the pizza after cooking on the stone by first baking directly on the bottom rack at 450°F for a few minutes, then turning on the broiler for a few minutes at the end. I considered this a "fair band-aid solution", but only for "at home" baking and consumption.

I'm a fan of "thin & crispy"; if it's done right the surface of the crust will be a little bubbly and a few flaky layers. This is the closest I've ever been able to get to that at home. 

mnem

[Brumby]

I am less driven to extricate the true origins of any food item - just to appreciate what is on offer to me locally at this point in history.  Why?  Simply because the global community has increased mobility and communication, allowing for greater variation in what now exists - and discerning the true development path of any given variant would, it seems, require a PhD study.

I have a local shop that offers a dish that I like.  I acknowledge the origins of that dish come from an Italian background, but it has taken on a range of global influences that has made it what it is today.  It does not pretend to be "original" or "genuine" - and it doesn't have to be for me to enjoy it ... which I do.


But this:

For me, pizza comes from the freezer

..... for the ones I have encountered from supermarket freezers ..... my response is:  No.  Just, no.   

[0culus]

Here's a little RF black magic for the denizens of the TEA thread. 

You might think that the shielded open standard and short circuit standard found in expensive microwave cal kits (such as my -hp- 85052A, as well as it's far more expensive descendant the 85052B) are going to be really close to perfect. Well, they aren't! Turns out it is impossible to build a short or an open that is anywhere near ideal, due to fringing capacitance problems with the center pins and other nonideal properties of real life. Instead, the open and short standards are made so they are as close to 180º apart as possible across the entire specified bandwidth of the cal kit. This means, at high frequencies, your open or short is actually going to curl around the Smith chart, and sometimes the open is a short and the short is an open!

If you are used to the NanoVNA, the calibration routine simply assumes all your standards are perfect, which is a good assumption at low frequencies. It is a poor assumption as you go up.

Notice in the phase plot below, S11 is measuring the short standard and S22 is measuring the open standard. I did this to ease presenting the data simultaneously. In particular notice that at 14.462 GHz, the open standard is actually a short (-180º)!! Also note that the scale is 45º/div and the two are always right about 4 divisions apart.

[mansaxel]

Today's frustrating non-repair:

I've got a Sony CDP-D11 rackmount CD player, 1HE, balanced out,  has GPIO closures and RS232. Nice machine, in other words. But it is very erratic. It either won't start up or takes ages to do so. It will have issues with scratched discs that other players go through with the usual Reed-Solomon probably working its ass off, but still cope.  I've looked at voltages. It basically looks OK. And it was working perfectly as I had it open on the bench. Then, as it's been closed up and bolted in the rack, it starts acting up again.

 

The quest goes on. Also, I've got the wrong revision service manual.

[Neper]

And it was working perfectly as I had it open on the bench. Then, as it's been closed up and bolted in the rack, it starts acting up again.

Reminds me of the first CD players at Deutschandfunk, made by Studer. They had their fair share of toothing troubles and after yet another firmware (EPROM) update during the day, they apparently hadn't been used again until the night shift. Suddenly there was excited shouting from the control room of the main studio during the ARD Klassiknacht. I rushed out of the NCR to see if I could assist and found an open-mouthed studio technician next to one of said CD players. What happened?

The CD players ran on fader start and as soon as he opened one of the corresponding faders, the CD tray would come out. Fader closed, CD tray back in. But no start. He spent the rest of the night with deactivated fader start, running forth and back between the CD players and the mixing desk, starting them manually.

The error correction also had its surprises. One night, it got so bad that I had to stop what should have been a Schumann symphony but rather sounded like a balalaika orchestra. 

[mansaxel]

And it was working perfectly as I had it open on the bench. Then, as it's been closed up and bolted in the rack, it starts acting up again.

Reminds me of the first CD players at Deutschandfunk, made by Studer. They had their fair share of toothing troubles and after yet another firmware (EPROM) update during the day, they apparently hadn't been used again until the night shift. Suddenly there was excited shouting from the control room of the main studio during the ARD Klassiknacht. I rushed out of the NCR to see if I could assist and found an open-mouthed studio technician next to one of said CD players. What happened?

The CD players ran on fader start and as soon as he opened one of the corresponding faders, the CD tray would come out. Fader closed, CD tray back in. But no start. He spent the rest of the night with deactivated fader start, running forth and back between the CD players and the mixing desk, starting them manually.

The error correction also had its surprises. One night, it got so bad that I had to stop what should have been a Schumann symphony but rather sounded like a balalaika orchestra.

And those Studer players still were, like the PR99 reel-to-reel recorders, among the best you could get.  I know the guy who sold us the Studer desks we have in most of our control rooms. He now sells another brand, this time a German one. They're good, but not without their problems. 

War story: The control surface TFTP boots from the main matrix computer. So, if the control surface is located network-topologically far from the matrix, the boot is going to take ages. (TFTP does not have a data-in-flight concept, beyond one 512 byte disk block. So speed is equal to 1000/rtt_ms * 512 bytes per second. Or wire speed of network, whichever is lower.)  And to me, this was perfectly obvious, but not to the manufacturer.  To their credit, once I'd been able to braindump this, the manufacturer's customer engineer said, "I understand now, this makes sense" and they stopped asking for more bandwidth..

[Specmaster]

<snip>

I'm a fan of "thin & crispy"; if it's done right the surface of the crust will be a little bubbly and a few flaky layers. This is the closest I've ever been able to get to that at home. 

mnem

I don't much care for the thin and crispy pizza, give me a deep pan anytime 

[Martin Miranda]

Spent some time last night troubleshooting the non-working, undocumented nixie panel meter in my 432B Power Meter - it would flash on briefly on initial power up, then go out.  Of course it's one of those 'replace this as a sub assembly; there is no documentation' things, with cramped, hand-taped boards that must be assembled to work and without any kind of silkscreen - great fun to work on.


Had to break it out of the enclosure with a couple of extender cards and a vise to hold things steady.  Rube Goldberg city:


Think it's a dead cap in the power supply; removing it got the display to turn back on.  Need to place a DK/Mouser order for some pieces-parts.

Piglet of course assisted with the troubleshooting.


-Pat

  i want one. 

[AVGresponding]

For me, pizza comes from the freezer

..... for the ones I have encountered from supermarket freezers ..... my response is:  No.  Just, no.   

There's a lot of crappy ones; finding the good ones is an art in itself, sometimes a bit of trial and error too.

[nfmax]

According to Twitter, the earliest appearance of the word Pizza is in a 10th Century manuscript of magic spells. https://twitter.com/tweetistorian/status/1288371685150744577?s=21
Following the spell, you make a ‘bread pizza’ and give it to a little man who will give you a cloak of invisibility in return. Sort of like MIT...

[mnementh]

<snip>

I'm a fan of "thin & crispy"; if it's done right the surface of the crust will be a little bubbly and a few flaky layers. This is the closest I've ever been able to get to that at home. 

mnem

I don't much care for the thin and crispy pizza, give me a deep pan anytime 

meh. Never cared that much for any of the "rising crust" variants (which of course, is what most of the "white-bread suburban" pizza shops offer), aside from a few local shops on the strip that started making "breakfast pizza" and coffee.

Sounds weird, but 'til you try it you don't know what you're missing. No tomato sauce, but scrambled eggs, choice of breakfast meats and cheese on a rising crust, all cooked til the cheese is as brown as the bottom... that and a tall coffee with too much cream and sugar are a great way to jump-start your heart on the drive to work. 

mnem

[mnementh]

I WISH I were being that clever; nope, just utterly ignorant on this point. Full stop.

Thanks for trying to throw me a lifeline; not sure I deserved it this time.

mnem
Oh, look... more research.

Well you both know me, looking for the good in people and also knowing how the pair of you have your witty little banters  while tearing chunks out each other, with you stoking your fire production plant and C sharpening his ceremonial cutlery, in particular his gutting knife  .  You both know that I hold the pair of you in high regard and have learnt much from you  .

Normal service has been resumed 

Blessed be the peacemakers in the afterlife, for they shall be given no quarter in the here and now.

C isn't that bad; he can take it a little too far sometimes, but we both have that stubborn streak. If he does break out the conversational cutlery, I still always have the emergency rations... 

mnem

[AVGresponding]

Meanwhile in Russia:

[mnementh]

   Spent some time last night troubleshooting the non-working, undocumented nixie panel meter in my 432B Power Meter - it would flash on briefly on initial power up, then go out.  Of course it's one of those 'replace this as a sub assembly; there is no documentation' things, with cramped, hand-taped boards that must be assembled to work and without any kind of silkscreen - great fun to work on...

i want one. 

Is it wrong that I want one now too, in part because this one was such a assache to Pat...? 

mnem
We'll gang up on 'em! That'll show 'em who's boss!