Posts by Stevie 7282 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2008
Icing window-unit A/C is often the sign of a lack of proper coolant level. Dunno why, but it is a diagnostic that saves a lot of messing around with thermostats.
That said, I had a unit that iced up regularly until I took the front facia off and discovered that someone had "reconfigured" the blind copper pipe part of the thermostat. Once that was bent back into the proper shape and proper place, the A/C gave two more years of sterling service sans icing before quitting.
The correct method to deal with a frozen overflow pipe, as demonstrated by my father some years ago, is:
1) Boil expensive electric kettle
2) Stand on rim of bathtub in slippered feet and pour boiling water from expensive electric kettle out of window over pipe
3) Lose footing and slip from rim of bathtub
4) Grab for window and lose grip on expensive electric kettle
5) Fall backwards into bathtub, injuring back and cracking skull, spilling commemorative toothbrush mug into tub so it can shatter and inflict small wounds on body and feet as bathtub exited
6) Recover twisted, mangled but still expensive kettle from bushes where it bounced after striking the back garden path. Never find lid
7) Yell at all the children in the house, accusing them of complicity in frozen pipe fiasco by risible chains of logic
8) Hit any child who laughs
I have one of thethe. The management tried to take it away but I took mine becauthe I athked for a thtapler thixteen yearth ago and I have yet to thee it so I bought my own red thapler and I thaid I wathn't going to thurender a thtapler that I had bought with my own money and anyway why do we all have to have black thtaplerth when the red oneth look nither and ...
There might not be degrees Kelvin in the revisionist UK now, bilat29, but when the SI system was still new and people were still grumbling at the need to buy a third set of textbooks in a decade there certainly were degrees Kelvin and I was taught how to do hard thermodynamic sums using them at the University of Global Warming circa 74-77.
What's more, when I left dear old Blighty in the summer of '84 the radio stations routinely gave the weather in both degrees *Centigrade* (not Celsius, which has mysteriously been turned upside down so it still works the way people expect instead of the numbers getting smaller as the water in the kettle gets more dangerous) and degrees Fahrenheit despite modern revisionist "education" saying it weren't so.
Not only that, the "Guided NAAFI" episode of The Goons had Prime Minister Seagoon speaking the line: "Ah Grytpype-Thynne! Friend, confidante and author of Ten Years as a Russian Spy at Number 10" in it, since removed by clever young revisionist things obviously bent on denying the Burgess & McClean fiasco, so that the primary joke of the entire show falls flat. I know this because I recorded the 25th anniversary broadcast of that very show (Radio 2) and I possess the butchered travesty that is the official BBC library version available circa 1995.
Have you lot done nothing but lie and cover up since I left? No wonder the Empire is sinking with all hands.
And here we see the major misunderstanding of the hinge on which the issue swings. Sex is not the be-all and end-all of a relationship (but it is almost always a major player in the disintegration of one).
The point of the female race (in a world of bonkbot reality) will be exactly what the point of the male race is: for everything not connected with sex for pleasure alone.
Romance. Raising a family. Relationships. Companionship.
Oh and actually doing stuff of course.
The only thing moved out of the way is anything one partner might want or need that the other finds distasteful or is for whatever reason unable to provide. Injury, genetic issues, the toll of time on the human body, all these abrade a human relationship out of all proportion to the benefits a relationship provides.
With the advent of proper robot totty (of both sexual accommodations) people will be able to work on the other stuff life throws at them and be the stronger for it.
I'm sure it will be problematical for some, just as gambling, alcohol, porn and internet gaming are today. I still reckon it's a worthwhile use of technology even though I'll be dead before it happens.
It will also likely be banned in a number of American States and anywhere else Roman Catholic sensibilities on procreation hold sway, and I imagine that "male" tottybots would be deemed the work of Satan in Islamic countries who routinely treat women as all-but worthless. That alone is worth the R&D to make it happen.
Once again so-called "scientists" get bogged down in taxonomic arguments and Science Fictional ponderings (from a woefully under-read perspective as usual) instead of doing real science and making Robot Totty a reality while it still matters.
Thus do they consign the promise of guilt-free techno-bonking to the same sorry future they've made for interplanetary space travel, where a can't-do "robots instead of humans" sensibility has stalled us in the spaceflight stone ages and lumbered us with Mars roombas instead of giving us Fireball XL5 and Robert the anthropomorphic co-pilot.
Thrashing's too good for this bunch, but it would be a good start. Then the cattle prod for anyone who starts talking about renaming stuff instead of breaking out the retort and reflux condenser.
It is naive to suggest that PostgreSQL can replace Oracle database product stacks, unless those Oracle databases are small, uncomplex, stand-alone deployments.
If that is the case in your enterprise you should already have done it as a trivial swap and be deep into mitigating all the downstream assumptions that were found to be untrue in fact.
Our enterprise is wedded to the RAC/Dataguard model for reasons that stray into other vendors' product lines, both software and hardware.
Besides, I was fooled into attempting to adopt MySQL (for a small project then using MS SQL Server) years ago based on promises of features that were documented but not properly implemented in the software, for a complete and utter fail. First and last time I followed "everyone knows" wisdom.
I've learned by experience to treat such claims of equivalency with a very large pinch of salt.
Smells like a well-funded astro-paedo honeytrap to me.
Stage 2: Advertise cheap rocket flights to Mars using voiceover copy taken from Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles and footage from Expanse.
Stage 3: "Please step through this Mars Rocket hatchway".
Stage 4: Release the tiger.
Not much in the way of expert music consumers in an online store though.
Can't get a recommendation based on actual music appreciation filtered through a human brain as opposed to some Bayesian algorithm using my previous purchases to show me stuff "others looked at".
No more happy discoveries made by walking in to browse and hearing something amazing on the PA system. Just more of what I already know endlessly on and forever.
Never thought I would collude in bringing about the sort of nightmare I used to read about in the dystopic SF of the early 70s.
You think you are revenge proof after death Mr Dabbs, but my startup EcksKobulProgrummers is working on an app called DabbsDrubb (or maybe DrubbDabbs, we haven't decided on which though DabbsDrubb is obviously better Brian so suck it up) which will give lie to that belief.
Anyone pestered by messsages from The Journalist Formerly Known As Dabbs can, with a few taps and a small transfer of funds, be directed to an archived article of yours open for rewrite. Key passages will be identified and suggestions offered as to how they might be "improved".
After these insidious and slanderous changes have been committed, the user can use a companion app called "TwitFace" to conduct a social media linkenblitz so that the maximun number of people get to see, for example, that Mr Dabbs was earnestly promoting OS2 five years after the world said "meh", or that the said Mr Dabbs was a staunch believer that the numerous shortcomings of his Apple gear were all addressed by Windows XP - in 2017!
Of course, none of this need come to pass. Were a suitably generous cheque made out to "Stevie Nest Egg Account" and left in a ziplock baggie in the cistern of the third stall in the Islington Dog & Bonio's men's room, this could all be simply like one of those NHS IT projects that never see the light of day.
I wish everyone luck with this project, but have to wonder who will be providing the paddles five years after rollout.
As for these "smartcards", they sound like the PINs we had in the late 60s and which I've been urging everyone to have another look at for Lo! these many years. They only work properly if they are part of the security badge of the user and lock up the equipment when the card is not present any more though.
And of course one must make it a dismissing offense to lend out your card.
Safari is a pay-as-you-go rental service thtavrequires a persistent internet connection.
I have all the CD Bookshelves but those were knobbled by being done as non-pdfs, meaning that once the Java part was broken by upgrades the search engine was worthless. I might go on about the worth of a search engine that couldn't cope with non-alphanumerics in a product concerned with perl, pr php, or apache or ... well, you get it.
O'Reilly could be delightfully thick sometimes, as could some of their authors and editors.
To clean your bifocals soonest, vile Terry!
How can you mistake the noble form of Ambassador Slith, resplendent in eyeshields and hip-cloak for that interfering busybody?
To be on the receiving end of my best 415-C (Righteous approbation brought on by diplomatic faux-pas committed by inferiors)!
All this argument about side-impact bars is well taken, but the fact remains this car ran into the trailer at very high speed while the driver's brain was somewhere else.
Perhaps it's time to look at the question of speed while under "autopilot". Maybe limiting it to, say, 40 mph would ensure that people only used the function at survivable roadspeeds.
When I say 'survivable', I am of course referring to the car occupants. The poor buggers standing amongst the scenery are on their own.
The Joséphier will be delivered with an adhesive adapter, to easily fix and remove it to any non-porous surface without leaving any marks. Alternatively, it can be mechanically mounted to all other types of surfaces.
Translation: It comes with double-sided sticky tape to glue it to tile, or, after the thing has fallen off the tile in the first warm day or when the thermostat gets hacked by some kid, or if you have wallpapered walls in your bog, you can go to Home Despot, buy some screws and do the job properly.
Because if you've dropped 500 bux on this idiot thing another 10 for screws and wallplugs ain't gonna break the bank. And who are you kidding? If you bought this you also hired a team of men with Central American names to mount it on your bathroom wall.
So, basically, he has nothing.
Not news, of course, but this should become the Republican Motto.
Health care plan after six years bleating about how they could do better? Nope.
Tax reform that makes sense? Nope.
Any sort of vision for America as a country in the world of the next fifty years? Nope.
Vote Republican. "We Got Nothin".
No. Too lame. (Tool lame).
Besides, I don't need one. I have a chainsaw-onna-ten-foot-pole.
Drywall and Shingling hammers are half axe. A slide hammer doesn't look anything like a hammer. Veneering hammers look like hammers but you don't use them to belt the veneer into place.
I'm appalled at the lack of basic tool knowledge by so-called "engineers".
I like hammers. I even wrote a song about them when people kept telling me to go to my "Happy Place" some years ago titled "My Happy Place Has A Hammer In It (BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG)".
Also a fan and owner of a basement full of power tools including sanders (table and portable, pad and belt), routers (plunge and fixed), saws (chain, reciprocating and circular, table and portable ranging from dangerous to "you must be f*cking joking" in the case of the chainsaw on a ten foot pole and the repurposed angle grinder saw of certain death), drills (floor-standing, portable, non-hammer and hammer - for some cross genre tooly fun), and a rather nice biscuit joiner. Oh, and a couple of Dremel Rotary tools, a Dremel oscillating cutter, a Dremel lathe (naff, but fun) and the Delta Chopsaw of Extreme Spiffiness and Universal Utility, best use of money ever spent.
In the garage there are two weedwackers, one that I can't get spares for (ding for relevance to article) and one which can mount a circular saw on the end (Yeeha!) a power mower, Troll (the Snow Blower of Supreme Spiffiness), a Toro brand leaf blower/vacuum that was once rated as the most powerful in the world and had me doing the helicopter dance the first time I turned it on and two hedgeclippers (corded and cordless). And another chainsaw.
And that's just the stuff with an electric or gasoline motor built-in. I also have an awesome .22 gauge concrete nail bazooka, but that has no continuous mode and must be reloaded every time I want to have some loud nail-based fun.
I forgot the bandsaw I picked up in a garage sale a while back but haven't used yet.
Not necessarily.
In the pre-internet age it wasn't impossible for two people to be issued the same SSN because of paperwork latencies.
I know this for a fact.
At age 50 it should become apparent when the reports from the SSA start being sent out.
Innocent until proven guilty. Even when it comes to duplicate SSNs.
As far as I can see this freeze-spray/belt with hammer technique works only in two cases:
a) On TV
b) In the movies.
But as I said to Charles 9, all he has to do is set up a video feed that can be relied upon (hence the timecode) and film himself doing this in whatever ideal conditions he chooses, and I will say wherever he likes and however many times that he is right and I am wrong when I say that cutting the steering wheel with a ten dollar hacksaw is faster, cheaper and all-round a better idea than freezing whatever part Charles deems best to defeat a Club device.
The Club (and its distant cousin, the Krooklock) work by having a spring-loaded ball bearing engage in detents along the shaft. When the lock is turned, a metal cam holds the ball in place. Older Krooklocks could be beaten by attempting to telescope them in rapid bursts (if one was strong enough) which I think caused the innards to shift and defeat the lock, but newer designs aren't susceptible to that attack mode.
My own feeling is that this freeze-the-lock idea might be made to work if one could use a cryogenic liquid, but pouring one into a Club's keyhole while sitting in the driver seat would require more balls than I have (and more heavily insulated ones than I deem practical for the fast getaway).
Parenthetically, to beat the "U bolt" type bike locks once thought to be the bee's knees for bike theft defeatage on account of the revolutionary cylindrical key/keyhole, all one needs is a Bic crystal pen casing apparently. Actual witnessed science performed in NYC.
By the way, you really should read the comments on any "Instructable" you link to support a dodgy claim.
A large proportion of the comments on the one under your link are calling Shenanigans. *I'm* not saying it was faked, but plenty of others were when you linked to it.
So I'm even less inclined to accept that you can damage a club lock cylinder with "a can" of refrigerant (even the con-artist on your linked instructable claimed he used two).
Disbelieve.
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