Humor Random Comments Thread

[Fabri91]

Should anyone decide to build a nixie clock, don't do as I did and test them before soldering them.

I decided to take on this little project to get a bit of practice in soldering stuff and also because, well, it looks neat.

After soldering the first two of four tubes I soldered the third, which turned out to be defective. :facepalm: After I botched the removal process of the third I damaged the PCB by drilling out the solder of with too large a drill bit and damaging it. Positioning the tubes is akin to lining up 10 threads in their respective needle at once, so a good bit of the Sunday afternoon was spent moving the first two working tubes to a new PCB.

Seems to be working though, at least:

 

[Notebook]

Well done for persevering and looks excellent. Starting a nixie kit from Elektor at the moment. Afraid I'll have to take them as good. If I get a bad one, well such is life.
Shame you can't get sockets for them.

We used a lot of these as station clock where I worked. As you know they have a depth to them because of the structure.
I got a bit hypnotised one day trying to work out which digits were in front of which while waiting for a transmission start...Only happened once.

 

[Fabri91]

Well, these are IN-14 tubes, literally Soviet old-new stock as far as I can tell (as are the driver ICs, possibly), so checking them would have made sense. :lol:

Good luck on the assembly of your kit!

 

[Notebook]

Thank you, and to yourself!

Unfortunately it has a GPS chip with closer than I like pin spacing. Its not quite surface mounted dimensions, but nearly.
I think I'll wait till we get lighter mornings for the soldering...

 

[C3PO]

Having spare time is the greatest of all luxuries.

It's roughly on par with spare bacon.:facts:

 

[jedidia]

It's roughly on par with spare bacon.

There is no such thing as spare bacon. There's bacon, or no bacon, but never *spare* bacon.

 

[Urwumpe]

It's roughly on par with spare bacon.:facts:

Never seen anything like that.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Yeah, "Reverse the polarity of electron flow!" sounds fancy, but tend to end with a sudden loud BANG.

Had an episode like that last year, with a little cap soldered in backwards -

The thing hit me straight in the palm of my hand, so co wide-reaching confetti.

In my lab we have a number of older DC power supplies with paper capacitors that are now randomly failing. We use these power supplies for a couple of labs during the semester, and the students wonder why I step away from their bench when they turn the power on. :leaving:



We have replacement DC power supplies, but I consider this a character-building experience for the students. :lol:

 

[Notebook]

Character-building? Yes, that would work.

Standing behind the equipment rack while somebody is plugging in a very new and expensive board. Setting off a party-popper and blowing the smoke through to the front.

Luckily I could run faster than my rugby playing colleague...

Would be a strange way to hand in your notice these days.

 

[Notebook]

Re above, I can't believe how "stupid"? we were in those days. Half the tricks would have got instant dismissal or a chat with Human Resources in a modern environment.

I'm having an upper-and-downer(argument!) with a chap on another forum about a company I used to work for that had a complete change in its work practices just to stay in business.

Lots of redundancies and a different business plan. He worked for the same company after that change and seems to think it was the same company.

Given up trying to explain how unlike they were despite the name not changing.

I guess I'm turning into what a good friend said after I left, and he stayed.
A "miserable old g*t"! who can't forget how things were....

 

[Evil_Onyx]

Not stupid, just a different attitude to risk. Most work places are now much more risk adverse than they used to be. Even if in some roles have not fundamentally changed in hundreds of years, the modern mind set is to reduce risk from them if at all possible. Which in the industry I trained in, actually increased the danger level for the workers as the "Management" that wanted to reduce risk had no idea of the consequences of there actions.

:Edit:

Just to point out what I mean. Their actions lowed the frequency of accidents but increased the seriousness of injuries sustained when they happened.

 

[Notebook]

It was some thirty years ago, and a much different culture.
Watched the Chernobyl Netflix? production and have to say it was marvellous.
Haven't seen anything like it for years on UK TV.

Did identify with the miners...

If that made no sense, company I worked for made tv productions. I still think the stuff before was better..

 

[Linguofreak]

:Edit:

Just to point out what I mean. Their actions lowed the frequency of accidents but increased the seriousness of injuries sustained when they happened.

Just to clarify, do you mean that they introduced new accident types involving serious injuries / increased the frequency of existing severe accident types? 'Cause your description could also apply to cases where they chopped off the high-frequency/low severity end of the spectrum without introducing new accidents at the high-severity end, which, while not as desirable as chopping off the high-severity end, is plainly desirable.

 

[Evil_Onyx]

Less trips, bumps, scrapes and broken bones. More burns, digit amputations and fatal falls. It is quite a manual labor intensive industry. It is true the number of accidents are down but I put that down to the accessibility of more personal radios(or other comms equipment) than any other factor.

 

[Notebook]

Getting popular...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51132554

 

[Urwumpe]

Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.
Nai elyë hiruva. Namárië!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/16/jrr-tolkiens-son-christopher-dies-aged-95

 

[Fabri91]

All the tubes are working despite me being the one who soldered them together:

 

[kuddel]

All the tubes are working despite me being the one who soldered them together

Except, that you've soldered them all in parallel :lol:

 

[Fabri91]

My knowledge of woodworking is...functional, let's say:

 

[jedidia]

My knowledge of woodworking is...functional, let's say

But is it *pure*?

Sorry, I should probably leave the coding jokes out of unrelated topics... :leaving: