totm nov 2023 Thread to discuss negative things in a very general way, just see where it goes y'know?

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, IncongruousGoat said:

In the house I've been living in for the last 2 semesters, there have been weeks when we've had to buy 120 eggs, just for that week. Partly it's because one of us is (was, I suppose - he's left now) a boxer, and would eat 8 eggs for breakfast every day, but still. 120 eggs.

At one point Thing Two came in and asked my wife, who was still in bed, what was for breakfast. (He was nine at the time.) She asked him what he wanted. He said, "Eight eggs." She had a chuckle and said, "Sure. But you have to cook them yourself." So he went out into the kitchen, scrambled up eight eggs, cooked them, and ate them. The kid got my metabolism.

[Geonovast]

19 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

"Eight eggs."

There was a restaurant in central Wisconsin that we used to frequent as kids, called The Sunshine Inn.  They were quite well known for their huge portions at normal prices.

Omeletes were all one size,  13 eggs.  Pancakes on the kids menu were roughly the size of a birthday cake.

A few years before I moved out of state it burned down, and they never re-opened.  I miss that place. 

[roboslacker]

It's my High school engineering class. The Teacher's been out all week, so not much has been happening. In other words, it's exactly the same as it's been all year.

[Cunjo Carl]

Negative things in a general way, huh? Hmm... let's go with disease sucks! Like for reals though.

[richfiles]

All I wanna do is just open my window, and let some fresh cool air inside...
Can't do that, cause the current set of neighbors have seen to it to apparently have a relay race, where they instead of batons, they apparently pass off a lit cherry to keep a pervasive cloud of smoke lingering outside my windows at all times of the day and night... 3 am... Smoke out my windows. 1 pm... Smoke. 8:46 pm... Smoke AND coughing! I have got to get back into a house of MY OWN again! This is insanity! I'm gonna need to start using the AC soon, just to stay cool, if this local smog cloud doesn't dissipate! 

I hate smoking, and that's all I've got to say about that. 

[Superfluous J]

90 minutes into a 2 hour training session at work. It's actually really interesting stuff and really useful but DEAR GOD I HATE TRAINING SESSIONS.

[Chel]

My existence

Edited May 14, 2019 by The_Cat_In_Space

[Bill Phil]

Ya'll ever fix a garbage disposal and then the faucet breaks?

Man. You fix one thing and something else breaks.

[Superfluous J]

36 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

You fix one thing and something else breaks.

You just described homeownership.

[Flibble]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

You just described homeownership.

Definitely.

[StrandedonEarth]

11 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Ya'll ever fix a garbage disposal and then the faucet breaks?

Man. You fix one thing and something else breaks.

The only thing worse is when you break something else while trying to fix something. 

It wasn’t broke, dadgumit, why’d ya try to fix it?

[Gargamel]

Folks, We've had to remove some posts involving various intoxicants, as they violate rule 2.2c.  Please remember that many of our forum members are minors.  Thanks!

 

[Chel]

Writing essays should be pretty easy for me, but I struggle as I have to have all the information from references only, so I can't use any of my own findings. This sucks, as i'm forced to do it in a way that simply doesn't work. I can give a bunch of information on a topic, but then have to hunt for references about that information, or otherwise it isn't counted. I despise it a lot. 

[Shpaget]

Church bells going off every 15 minutes, including during the night.

Last weekend I was in Switzerland, and apparently over there this is a thing. Why whould anybody think that everybody needs to know what time it is while they are asleep is beyond me.

Noise pollution is a thing, you know.

[richfiles]

Internet went down some time in the early morning yesterday. Stayed down till 5:18 pm that evening.

[richfiles]

No internet... It was horrible... I was forced to use my time productively! 

I was forced to get stuff done... I repaired the control board* for my Air Conditioner (no more whining about smokers outside my window... I've finally given in, now that I fixed it).
I went outside... Hung out with a friend, saw Detective Pikachu again, ate at a really good Chinese buffet...

 

*All last year, I assumed the relay that controls the compressor had "welded" itself in the closed position. It's a potential failure mode for high voltage relays. Basically, the compressor ran constantly, and the control board couldn't shut it off. I had to either kill the breaker or unplug it periodically, to keep the compressor from running too long. My AC is mounted high up on the wall, nearly at ceiling level, and there's no way to service it without removing it, so switching the breaker was easier than taking it down last year. This year, since I had to put it in anyway, I opened it up, desoldered the relay... Only to find it was perfectly fine... I kinda had a miserable feeling when I saw that. It meant bad electronics, not the easy to replace relay.  I did get a reprieve however... There were 4 relays on the board, and spots for 6 relays. They all led to one chip: a ULN2003. This chip isn't a normal chip. Rather, it is seven Darlington transistors with built in snubber diodes tied to a common pin. Once I realized that's all it was, I knew I could literally just solder a new darlington transistor over the old pins... But then I realized, I didn't need any additional parts at all! The chip contains 7 of these transistors, right? The board is a generic design that can do both heating and cooling, but since it was built to the manufacturer's requirements and installed into an AC, only the cooling parts are installed. Since there are 6 potential relays, and 2 of those are unused in the application, it means the chip already has THREE built in spare darlington transistors that I can just jumper into he compressor circuit and use. If I happen to blow another, big deal! I can still jumper two more times before I need to even bother replacing the chip! Honestly, I expect the refrigerant or the compressor itself to fail before I make it through all three spares. LOL! 

[steve_v]

42 minutes ago, richfiles said:

Internet went down some time in the early morning yesterday. Stayed down till 5:18 pm that evening.

My internet connection goes down regularly, every time my (ISP provided) fibre ONT drops the ball.
So regularly in fact that I have a script on my router to control a smart-plug and cycle power to the little turd whenever it happens. It has been triggered 7 times so far today.
Thankfully these dropouts only last as long as it takes for the ONT to boot up and connect, but it's still incredibly annoying.

My ISP is of course utterly clueless when it comes to technical issues, their email support seems to have no idea whatsoever how to read system logs, ethernet frame statistic dumps, or wireshark captures. These are met with the textual equivalent of vacant stares.

I asked these muppets to switch ethernet ports on the ONT some 3 weeks ago, and nobody has come back to me yet. Inquiries on the status of this request are met with "I'll check with our tech team", "have you tried another ethernet cable", and  best of all "It must be your equipment"... despite my providing screeds of debugging output that says otherwise.

This is actually one of the better ISPs I have used,  not one that I have tried has ever been capable of answering the phone in less than 20 minutes or providing any kind of useful tech support when they finally do.

 

28 minutes ago, richfiles said:

But then I realized, I didn't need any additional parts at all! The chip contains 7 of these transistors, right?

Nice catch
Personally, I hate those relay driver chips with a passion - they're pretty common, and If they're fully utilised and one channel fails I have to order a replacement and screw around with surface-mount soldering - rather than just swapping in a 10c transistor that I probably already have.
I recently had to do this job on a stupidly expensive Italian serial-bus I/O board, and ended up cannibalising another one because I couldn't wait for that damn chip to arrive.

I would have just bodge-soldered a darlington across the thing, but one doesn't give that kind of nasty to a customer...

Edited May 17, 2019 by steve_v

[Shpaget]

52 minutes ago, richfiles said:

ULN2003

That's an interesting failure mode. Is there a flyback diode on the relay coil?

[steve_v]

26 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Is there a flyback diode on the relay coil?

On the boards I have seen, no. Snubber diodes are in the package and accountants don't like duplication:

Edited May 17, 2019 by steve_v
Evict errant "s"

[richfiles]

8 minutes ago, steve_v said:

I would have just bodge-soldered a darlington across the thing, but one doesn't give that kind of nasty to a customer

accountants don't like duplication

Yup! We save those nasty bodges for our own sorry selves! 

Ah yes... When you make a million units of a product, a 10 cent savings is $10000 saved on the bill of material.
Yeah, those chips can be a pain, but this time it was also it's own savior. Hehe...

I'd debated linking the diagram. I didn't expect anyone would care that much. Glad to be proven wrong! 

Edited May 17, 2019 by richfiles

[steve_v]

1 minute ago, richfiles said:

We save those nasty bodges for our own sorry selves

On the topic of electronics, any good with Fanuc servo controllers that only boot up properly when the cabinet is >10℃? At this point I will absolutely take a bodge job.

[Shpaget]

Right. Those tenths of a cent add up.

I keep forgetting that building something for yourself is a lot cheaper if you don't cheap out, but mass production is a different beast.

Just now, steve_v said:

On the topic of electronics, any good with Fanuc servo controllers that only boot up properly when the cabinet is >10℃? At this point I will absolutely take a bodge job.

A 10W ligthbulb.

[steve_v]

10 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

A 10W ligthbulb.

I have considered that, and it is incredibly tempting. The thing was made in 1989 so there's probably a dodgy cap in there somewhere, but I'll be blowed if I can find it.
It's going to get one more poke, then it's cabinet heater time and hope it lasts until I am far far away.
 

Edited May 17, 2019 by steve_v

[richfiles]

15 minutes ago, steve_v said:

On the topic of electronics, any good with Fanuc servo controllers that only boot up properly when the cabinet is >10℃? At this point I will absolutely take a bodge job.

Oh... Intermittent issues... (technically, this IS a thermally dependent form of intermittent issue).
NOTHING... Absolutely NOTHING brings out the frustration in servicing electronics like an inter-friggin'-mittent fault! 

My old job used to actually be servicing an old line of brushless servo drives. Of course, they were an ANCIENT design, from the late 1980s, maintained for industries that still relied on the old installations. There was no "boot up"... They were a combination of analog sensing and control, PWM, and digital glue logic in a PAL chip. A casual search online suggests that on some models, a ceramic current sense resistor can get pretty toasty, sometimes enough to weaken and crack the solder joint. Heat does cause thermal expansion. Examining a board for cold or cracked solder joints can sometimes nip those intermittent faults, but if that's not it, it might need further evaluation or servicing. Outside of that general advice... One post I found suggested that an individual had never found a solution, and just perpetually left them on instead... 

Yup, checking electrolytic caps too. That can be a source of issues, but as I said, an issue on cold power on feels like it leans toward cracked solder... Or a bad anything else...

Intermittent issues... If only you could heat your drive with the energy of your frustration! 

Edited May 17, 2019 by richfiles

[steve_v]

31 minutes ago, richfiles said:

Absolutely NOTHING brings out the frustration in servicing electronics like an inter-friggin'-mittent fault!

Tell me about it, I end up servicing anything remotely electrical that I'm asked to look at, and intermittent faults often land in my lap after others have had a go at them. Such is the case here.

Old CNC machines are particularly interesting to work on, but they are so expensive to buy new that ancient kit tends to get passed around, faults and all.
Most have undocumented modifications from 20 years ago, and some even come with free bags of blown up IGBTs and 30mm of oil and swarf in the bottom of the control cabinet... Those are extra fun.
 

31 minutes ago, richfiles said:

There was no "boot up"

Yeah, I used that term very loosely. I should probably have said "pass rudimentary self-test and provide ready signal to the NC". If the fault would just stay put long enough to isolate it...
 

Ed. One of my other tasks at the moment is assisting a machinist to recomission an old CNC mill from storage. A gas-axe looks to have been involved when it was dismantled, and parts of the control console, as well as all the electrical drawings are nowhere to be found. Not a single cable is labelled, of course.  This has made it a somewhat "negative thing" so far, but I guess if I get paid by the hour...
The big black magic-smoke mark in the spindle motor terminal box appears to be cosmetic though, so that's something.

Edited May 17, 2019 by steve_v