totm aug 2023 What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

[tater]

My daughter dubbed it the "trash pumpkin."

[AlamoVampire]

@tater Can you keep us all updated on how your trash pumpkin(s) do? Im also curious to see how many pumpkins come from your pumpkin plant  

150007302022

oo new page!

Edited July 30, 2022 by AlamoVampire

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, tater said:

My daughter dubbed it the "trash pumpkin."

Yup, that's pumpkins alright. 

Good for you, around here unattended compost just grows blackberries. The carnivorous kind that would even scare @kerbiloid's... things... 

[tater]

9 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Good for you, around here unattended compost just grows blackberries.

I'd prefer that, tbh, but it's way too dry here for those. Will be interesting to see what happens. Thing has dozens of flowers, the picture doesn't do the full extent of the thing justice. July 5 it was about 5 big leaves, plus a few more small ones, maybe a meter across. The tank visible on the left is a 500 gal propane tank for reference.

FWIW, when I kill rodents (and I kill every one I possibly can), I throw them in that compost pile, so the trash pumpkin has a taste for flesh.

9 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

Im also curious to see how many pumpkins come from your pumpkin plant  

We are as well. We have pack rats, squirrels, mice, and deer around, so it'll be interesting to see if they survive.

Edited July 31, 2022 by tater

[kerbiloid]

31 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

@kerbiloid's... things... 

The Day of Triffids, one of its ecranizations.

Now with pumpkins.

[tater]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

The Day of Triffids, one of its ecranizations.

 

[TaintedLion]

Not today, but I broke my arm the other day so I got a cast for next 6 weeks

[tater]

One of my rat traps (have to have them, pack rats eat wiring harnesses in the cars) accidentally killed a fairly substantial rattlesnake (Black-tailed), maybe a meter long.

He is now feeding the trash pumpkin.

 

 

[kerbiloid]

That's right. The triffids were venomous.

[StrandedonEarth]

3 hours ago, tater said:

He is now feeding the trash pumpkin.

"Feed me, Seymour!"

I'd be tempted to hide some sort of speaker unit in the trash pumpkin (if we had one). We once had a birthday balloon with a cheap recorder/player in it, the trick would be triggering it. Kludge it together with a motion-detector Halloween decoration, maybe...

[Superluminal Gremlin]

had an argument of is tea is better than coffee (It IS). It got very heated. 

[Superfluous J]

32 minutes ago, TKMK said:

It got very heated. 

I see what you did there.

I can't speak in absolutes about coffee or tea. There are many coffees that I prefer to many teas, and many teas I prefer to many coffees.

[GDJ]

1 hour ago, TKMK said:

had an argument of is tea is better than coffee (It IS). It got very heated. 

GGRROOAANN....:D

[tater]

3 hours ago, TKMK said:

had an argument of is tea is better than coffee (It IS). It got very heated. 

I drink both, but I drink coffee daily, and tea occasionally.

[Ultimate Steve]

I've tried a new gimmick to help me procrastinate less on stuff. I've made a list of the things I need to do and I've tied a fund value to each one, and I'm trying to run a KSP career mode using only rewards from completing items on that list. It's a bit more complicated than that, with chains, streaks, and milestone multipliers, but that's the core of it. It has been pretty effective so far.

I spent today designing a Minmus mission after completing a successful Mun mission. However, even though I have divided all building upgrade costs by 10, it's still a lot of money, and usually I would need a level 2 tracking station for this. I decided to try doing it without this upgrade using math.

I did the math for a Minmus transfer from a 100x100km orbit. Assuming I can eyeball the inclination close enough, I need to hit a window about 5.5 degrees wide (although it's a bit more than that since I only checked if the apoapsis intersects Minmus, and not the rest of the trajectory). Should be doable.

I have acquired the funds to undertake this mission, although the rocket isn't the most safe thing in the world. I'm going to bed now and I will fly the mission tomorrow. I will update you tomorrow with if I did the math right or not.

I don't know if I will sleep well, pre launch jitters certainly hit different when you have put hours of work into obtaining the necessary funds, and can't revert if something goes wrong!

[Ultimate Steve]

15 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I've tried a new gimmick to help me procrastinate less on stuff. I've made a list of the things I need to do and I've tied a fund value to each one, and I'm trying to run a KSP career mode using only rewards from completing items on that list. It's a bit more complicated than that, with chains, streaks, and milestone multipliers, but that's the core of it. It has been pretty effective so far.

I spent today designing a Minmus mission after completing a successful Mun mission. However, even though I have divided all building upgrade costs by 10, it's still a lot of money, and usually I would need a level 2 tracking station for this. I decided to try doing it without this upgrade using math.

I did the math for a Minmus transfer from a 100x100km orbit. Assuming I can eyeball the inclination close enough, I need to hit a window about 5.5 degrees wide (although it's a bit more than that since I only checked if the apoapsis intersects Minmus, and not the rest of the trajectory). Should be doable.

I have acquired the funds to undertake this mission, although the rocket isn't the most safe thing in the world. I'm going to bed now and I will fly the mission tomorrow. I will update you tomorrow with if I did the math right or not.

I don't know if I will sleep well, pre launch jitters certainly hit different when you have put hours of work into obtaining the necessary funds, and can't revert if something goes wrong!

So!

I should have known something was wrong!

The first thing that went wrong was I was off by like 7 degrees, so I did a correction that involved some guesswork, bringing me back onto my predicted course. I then eyeballed a plane change burn.

But then something *really* went wrong.

It was a classic unit conversion mistake. Always write down your units, people! I had calculated that Minmus moved 1.2 degrees per hour, which was correct. However I then took my 9 day travel time, and I forgot to convert 1.2 degrees per hour to 7.2 degrees per day (Kerbin days are 6 hours). As a result, my calculated phase angle was off by a factor of 6.

I then tried delving into actual orbital mechanics math (the stuff I had been using involved an ideal trajectory with an encounter at apoapsis, which is much easier to calculate, because angular position as a function of time is a very hard calculation to do. Time to apoapsis is just period divided by 2, which is a very easy equation to solve). I attempted to solve for the needed eccentricity needed to encounter Minmus at a certain time and angle (true anomaly) obtained by a protractor and some estimation, with the periapsis and a few other things known.

However, no matter how hard I bashed it with a hammer, I always ended up with one more equation than unknown so I couldn't solve it at my current level of understanding.

I ended up just time warping until I got a Minmus encounter (about 200 days) as I was on an orbit that loitered at Minmus altitude a lot and was at vaguely the correct inclination. I thought it would take a long time until I was aligned at the ~65 degrees required, and was prepared to estimate a correction if I came close to that value, but I got a perfect encounter without having to do anything a few orbits later.

Val got to Minmus and back safely! Although, it was not because of my math, it was in spite of it!

[Hyperspace Industries]

Found the remains of a phone in a trashcan at school, naturally it had already been gutted, no camera, circuits or battery, but the backlight and polarizers for the lcd are still in usable condition.

[Superluminal Gremlin]

could be still salvegable

Most interesting thing was i got a new phone. SE 2. No KSP. Not on weekdays:(

 

[Hyperspace Industries]

32 minutes ago, TKMK said:

could be still salvegable

Not really, it would require so many new parts that you may as well build a new phone, and anyways, the sum of it’s parts is more useful to me.  I’ve been wanting bigger polarizing filters for a while now.

[tater]

Jif peanut butter had some sort of possible contamination a couple months ago, and it's been hard to find since. last night it was back on the shelves, so I bought some.

In the intervening weeks, we had bought a Peter Pan, and a Skippy. No one liked the Peter Pan much, hence the Skippy. Skippy was OK. So last night we opened PB #3, put 3 different colored post-it tabs on the bottom of 3 bowls, and had an all-family blind taste test. The ranking was unanimous, Jif, Skippy, then Peter Pan hated by all—I will use it to bait rat traps to feed the trash pumpkin. Skippy might get used for cookies.

 

 

[kerbiloid]

Unknown plant seed + rattlesnake blood and venom + GMO peanut butter of three different types, colors, and edibility...

Don't stop. Please, just don't stop!
This just must fruit into something interesting!
Hundreds of Holy Wood movies just can't mistake all at once.

Edited August 3, 2022 by kerbiloid

[tater]

Years ago I got a personal email from Apple when that was first a thing. I didn’t use it much, but once smart phones were a thing I ended up using it more and more. I got mine early enough my address is my first name. Just my first name.

As a result, everyone on Earth with a new iPhone who has my first name (or my first name as a last name) tries to get my email. I get those notices about someone trying my account a few times a month, LOL.

I also get people who have a variant I suppose (name1, nameA, etc) who mistakenly sign up with my address. I’ve gotten flight confirmations from a politician, online dating notices from a guy in London—“Fiona liked your profile!” (I “forgot my passwd” changed it, and turned everything off). Even got sent a pdf of a guys psychiatric chart. 
 

Lately I have been getting the hair appointment receipts from some finance guy in London (different guy). Spends £130/mo on hair! £90 of that is coloring, lol. Today I just got a link from some fancy bank to activate his online banking. Bank only accepts “high worth individuals.” Trying to decide how bored I might be at lunch…

[Superluminal Gremlin]

thats hilarious

[TheSaint]

8 hours ago, tater said:

Years ago I got a personal email from Apple when that was first a thing. I didn’t use it much, but once smart phones were a thing I ended up using it more and more. I got mine early enough my address is my first name. Just my first name.

As a result, everyone on Earth with a new iPhone who has my first name (or my first name as a last name) tries to get my email. I get those notices about someone trying my account a few times a month, LOL.

I also get people who have a variant I suppose (name1, nameA, etc) who mistakenly sign up with my address. I’ve gotten flight confirmations from a politician, online dating notices from a guy in London—“Fiona liked your profile!” (I “forgot my passwd” changed it, and turned everything off). Even got sent a pdf of a guys psychiatric chart. 
 

Lately I have been getting the hair appointment receipts from some finance guy in London (different guy). Spends £130/mo on hair! £90 of that is coloring, lol. Today I just got a link from some fancy bank to activate his online banking. Bank only accepts “high worth individuals.” Trying to decide how bored I might be at lunch…

I have a Yahoo address that I have been using since 1995 that is just my first initial and last name. I constantly have people handing it out to random places all around the country, so I get all sorts of interesting emails. Usually just junk, but occasionally I wind up having conversations with folks along the lines of, "I don't know who gave you this email address, but it isn't theirs."

In other news, I have a new toy tool.

It's printing a test print as I type this, but once I get the hang of it I'm going to start with printing out some miniatures for our Traveller campaign.

[StrandedonEarth]

12 hours ago, tater said:

we had bought a Peter Pan, and a Skippy.

No Kraft PB there? That's tops around here, along with homemade...