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

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, razark said:

Do you drink it cold, or do you add hot water to it?  I've heard both methods, but cold coffee has never appealed to me, unless I add a lot of sugar (or other additives¹) to it

I drink it cold, sometimes with ice.

1 "pot" of coffee makes 14 (8-ounce) cups of the tastiest cold black coffee ever made by human hands. I drink probably about 5 cups (2-3 glasses) a day.

I add no sugar (or anything else) to it, but I've been drinking black coffee since I was about 13 so that's no surprise.

I drink this in the summer, and hot coffee in the winter. I much prefer cold brew's taste, but hot coffee uses less grounds per kilo-awake-unit and also feels better when you're nearly shivering.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

6 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I've been drinking black coffee since I was about 13

Same. 

I've continued this with my 'next generation'. 

Easiest way to wake my teens: drop off a cup of hot black gold and keep moving. They emerge from their caves moments later and I don't get that look from the wife that says 'No Lee Ermey with the kids this early'. 

[steve9728]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Same. 

I've continued this with my 'next generation'. 

Easiest way to wake my teens: drop off a cup of hot black gold and keep moving. They emerge from their caves moments later and I don't get that look from the wife that says 'No Lee Ermey with the kids this early'. 

[TheSaint]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Same. 

I've continued this with my 'next generation'. 

Easiest way to wake my teens: drop off a cup of hot black gold and keep moving. They emerge from their caves moments later and I don't get that look from the wife that says 'No Lee Ermey with the kids this early'. 

Whenever we need to get up early for a trip I tell my wife I want to buy a metal trash can and throw it down the hallway outside my kids' bedrooms. You know, just for old times' sake.

[StrandedonEarth]

2 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Whenever we need to get up early for a trip I tell my wife I want to buy a metal trash can and throw it down the hallway outside my kids' bedrooms. You know, just for old times' sake.

Reminds me of air cadet summer camp, but I’m sure the servicemen here have heard worse. Best was when they cranked up “Danger Zone”

[AlamoVampire]

My heart nearly skipped a few beats just now. I went to go get a burger and fries. Nothing special. But when i got home i heard a jet passing over me. Again thats normal, i live under a departure and arrival corridor with airliners passing between 3500-4500 feet over me. But the sound that got my attention wasnt normally what i hear. 737’s, 767s, md-11’s, a310, a319, a320, a321, a300 are what typically over fly me (military and general aviation not withstanding) so i know their engines. But this? This was a sound ive not heard in AGES. Im talking more than 15 YEARS since i heard this sound. I start looking and i see it. A small rear twin engine airliner. I did take a few pics. I could not believe my eyes so i quickly hit flightradar24 to confirm. It was a Boeing 717-231. I could not believe my eyes!! I thought they had stopped flying them!!

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[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, AlamoVampire said:

My heart nearly skipped a few beats just now. I went to go get a burger and fries. Nothing special. But when i got home i heard a jet passing over me. Again thats normal, i live under a departure and arrival corridor with airliners passing between 3500-4500 feet over me. But the sound that got my attention wasnt normally what i hear. 737’s, 767s, md-11’s, a310, a319, a320, a321, a300 are what typically over fly me (military and general aviation not withstanding) so i know their engines. But this? This was a sound ive not heard in AGES. Im talking more than 15 YEARS since i heard this sound. I start looking and i see it. A small rear twin engine airliner. I did take a few pics. I could not believe my eyes so i quickly hit flightradar24 to confirm. It was a Boeing 717-231. I could not believe my eyes!! I thought they had stopped flying them!!

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I enjoyed working almost under the approach corridor to YVR, seeing them lined up 5 back while outside on smoke breaks

[AlamoVampire]

Bet those were fun sights. The airport i live near while busy at times usually doesnt see inbound traffic stack like that

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[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Lifehack: teach the six foot teenage food vacuum that lives in your house about canned Corned Beef Hash. 

Problem solved. 

[kerbiloid]

Just suddenly discovered, that a link with blue caption  of a renamed user in old posts keeps his original name, but the popup window on the mouse hover shows his current name.

(For ethical reasons, didn't try to copy the old link into a new post to watch if it makes possible to address to a user by his old name.)

Edited August 5, 2023 by kerbiloid

[Nuke]

i finally assembled those damn magnetic rotation sensors. they are damn nifty. i say damn sensors because the dev board i got was so freakishly small i had to forgo a more sane header and use magnet wire to solder it to something i can connect to. i hate magnet wire. its hard to strip, hard to solder, puts out horrible fumes when you do, and on top of that you have to make it a flux mess because the solder will refuse to stick to it. once i wired up the six pins, i lined them up in parallel and stuck them to some kapton tape, wrapped a few times turning them into crude kapton ribbon cables giving the thing a bit of a spaceage look. to think, a gimbal unit that probibly saw service in the vietnam war, its that old, connected to 3d printed housings for modern sensors hooked to an arduino which would probibly beat down every ounce of computing power they had back then. and its just an avr based board. still need to make wireing harnesses that dont look like a jumble of loose jumper wires.

i also completely refurbed 4 sets of gimbals, i was expecting  to have to scrap some of them, i have 9, but some were damaged during disassembly but i think i can restore 2 or 3 more of them. 

as for resolution about 12k ticks across the full axis range. way better than the basic hall sensors i was using. its 14 bit, but there is still some unused portion of the axis range. id need a different gear ratio to use the full range, the sensor can do a full 360 rotation (its actually intended to live in a motor housing to provide accurate feedback about the orientation of the rotor). its spi, so its fast as hell. it can probibly keep up with my monitor refresh if i use a newer arm based dev board.

im also very angry that my wireless microscope doesn't work wirelessly with my pc, requiring a phone or tablet for that feature due to bad software (honestly it defeats the purpose if i have to use a tiny screen, my near vision is trash). if i wanted to squint id have just used the double stack of magnifier glasses i had to use. granted i could hook it up with a usb cable, but thanks to a certain cat, my longest micro-usb cable is 2 feet.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Nuke

[AlamoVampire]

I had some rats in my garage and spent a few months trying to end them. I succeeded. Glueboard got the larger one, snap trap crushed the smaller. I was wondering why i had not smelled death and decay. I think they flash mummified thanks to the heat. tip: put traps along walls as rats and mice run along walls rubbing whiskers on it to stay on track. Patience too

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[Nuke]

i once ended a bedbug infestation with my thumb. 

[AlamoVampire]

How? Last i knew an infestation was hundreds to more than thousand…?

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[Nuke]

every other day id strip the bed, find a couple victims, squish, squish, squish. they go in a satisfying plop, like a blood filled water balloon. after a month they were all dead. unlike other household pests, they dont breed very well. sex requires the males break through the carapace of the females with their sharp stabby bedbug pickle. this can lead to death before the female lays any eggs or during feralization. the eggs they do lay have a very small success rate. so all i have to do is tilt the natural death rate slightly to collapse the population.

[AlamoVampire]

Sounds mini apocalyptical lol

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[Nuke]

in the end we do not go out in a bang but in a pleasant little plop sound. 

[AlamoVampire]

I want to go out either in my sleep or in an epic fashion leaving my mark literally on history lol

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[tater]

12 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

I had some rats in my garage and spent a few months trying to end them. I succeeded. Glueboard got the larger one, snap trap crushed the smaller. I was wondering why i had not smelled death and decay. I think they flash mummified thanks to the heat. tip: put traps along walls as rats and mice run along walls rubbing whiskers on it to stay on track. Patience too

I have a carport that is adobe on 2.5 sides. We have pck rats, and they get into engine compartments, so I kill them. Always use those "t rex" plastic snap traps (I add googly eyes in different configurations). The glue traps are horrid. Years ago I bought a set of traps and it came with glue traps, and I caught a lizard. Took ages to free him. Never used another until I needed to after remodeller screwed up and didn't fill a hole and we had some mice inside the house—so I put the trap under that, since there was no food in the ceiling they were in, and would have to leave to eat. Got them the next morning, but I had to kill them myself. That still happens with the snap traps occasionally (I try and keep them where they will function with max 1-shot lethality) as well, which sucks, because it's not fun to have to put them out of their misery—and I will not just leave them there, the pack rats we have (desert wood rats) are attractive, intelligent creatures, and if they did not destroy the cars, I'd not kill them at all, and certainly don't wish them to suffer.

[steve9728]

Went out with my friends last night. One of them, finished his post-graduate last year, and successfully get into DJI days ago.  Because his position required some expensive hardware and software, it gave the lad a bit of a shock: Man, I just get on the sit for a week and haven't done anything, and DJI just spend forty thousand RMB on me!

Another friend: Have you ever wondered, if there's a possibility that your company just found a meat bag for those fancy expensive equipment?

[JohanFos]

Other than that I bought ksp2, I don't know. I won 2 games of dota, ate cheese sandwiches and drank kefir.

[DDE]

1 hour ago, JohanFos said:

I drank kefir

One of us. One of us. One of us...

[AlamoVampire]

My attack on the rats was multi prong. I carpet bombed my garage with poison (safe poison, designed to target rodents but be inert towards non rodents at least per package indications) as well as a snap trap and glue boards. Had those failed i was prepared to go full nuclear. After all i have a 6.2 liter V8 sitting in that garage. But, I knew they had consumed the poison as the plate i had laid out covered in peanut butter (was using up the last of the pb i had from baiting the snap trap) laced with the poison and it was picked clean. So i knew they were as good as dead but they took too long. So relaced the snap with pb and poison, recarpet bombed with poison and laced the glues with a dollop of pb. Had all of that failed i was going to remote start my camaro and gas my garage with exhaust. The camaro will run about 10 minutes on a remote start before the cars computer shuts it down. 10 minutes even if exhaust leaks into the house wont hurt me or my cat or dog (stupid house has hvac air return immediately next to the inner garage door) but that 10 minutes is lethal to rodents. But they got glued and snapped. Id prefer insta kill but ill take what i can when defending my home. The snap was instant kill. 
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[tater]

This is about 15 miles away, and I can see it clearly from my house (we're at least 1000 feet above that part of town)

 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, tater said:

This is about 15 miles away, and I can see it clearly from my house (we're at least 1000 feet above that part of town)

 

 

Whelp, that's one way to get rid of the surplus.