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

[Chel]

40 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

“Goodbye, Jean-Luc. But all good things must come to an end, you know”

- Q

"cya m8 this probs is the end so ya know just deal with it"

- Typical Australian 

[Kernel Kraken]

It's Marching Season! Which would be great if it wasn't reaching 100° F and humid consistantly and our uniform was 2 layers of shirt, black slacks, long socks and black Mickey D's worker shoes. 

[qzgy]

5 hours ago, Kernel Kraken said:

It's Marching Season! Which would be great if it wasn't reaching 100° F and humid consistantly and our uniform was 2 layers of shirt, black slacks, long socks and black Mickey D's worker shoes. 

Wow. Hope no one passes out from heat stroke or heat exhaustion. 

[Geonovast]

5 hours ago, Kernel Kraken said:

It's Marching Season! Which would be great if it wasn't reaching 100° F and humid consistantly and our uniform was 2 layers of shirt, black slacks, long socks and black Mickey D's worker shoes. 

Ha!  I wish that's what I'd had to deal with in HS marching band.  Our uniforms were insanely thick wool.  There were no shortage of ~100F, several mile long parades.  If we were lucky, we didn't have to wear our hats, which did not breathe.

I don't remember us ever being lucky, unless we were in our home town.

[Kernel Kraken]

18 hours ago, qzgy said:

Wow. Hope no one passes out from heat stroke or heat exhaustion. 

Too late. I've counted 2 so far, probably more since I'm not outside much due to being in the Pit, the best part of the band.

 

17 hours ago, Geonovast said:

Ha!  I wish that's what I'd had to deal with in HS marching band.  Our uniforms were insanely thick wool.  There were no shortage of ~100F, several mile long parades.  If we were lucky, we didn't have to wear our hats, which did not breathe.

I don't remember us ever being lucky, unless we were in our home town.

Jeez. 

[tater]

My espresso machine broke... sounds like the gearing that drives the tamper (super automatic espresso machine).

I'm a sad boy, must buy a replacement ASAP.

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, tater said:

My espresso machine broke... sounds like the gearing that drives the tamper (super automatic espresso machine).

I'm a sad boy, must buy a replacement ASAP.

What? No repair efforts?

 

[Geonovast]

I've heard espresso machines can be quite expensive.

3D printers have gotten cheap.

If it's just a plastic gear...

[tater]

1 minute ago, TheSaint said:

What? No repair efforts?

I've repaired the machine twice in the last... 9 years?

Once was the boiler. Last repair was pretty trivial. This seems like a much more catastrophic problem (I pulled the back off this morning). The transmission kit is like $84, and it sounds like that might be the issue. Still, it's done a good job for something like 9 years, replacing it is not out of the question.

[TheSaint]

7 minutes ago, tater said:

I've repaired the machine twice in the last... 9 years?

Once was the boiler. Last repair was pretty trivial. This seems like a much more catastrophic problem (I pulled the back off this morning). The transmission kit is like $84, and it sounds like that might be the issue. Still, it's done a good job for something like 9 years, replacing it is not out of the question.

Mmm. After that long it may be in the, "If I fix this, what's next?" phase.

[tater]

2 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Mmm. After that long it may be in the, "If I fix this, what's next?" phase.

That's my concern, really. I take it entirely apart, and the next thing goes.

I can send it off for repair in Colorado Springs, and they are actually pretty reasonable, but with shipping, etc it'll end up being a couple hundred bucks (though it won't matter what additional parts are needed, they quote based on the complaint, and if they also need smaller parts, they have those, vs me having it in pieces and having to then order some additional bits I don't have. The thing has made over 25k shots of espresso (it counts a double shot as 2). 2 people usually drinking coffee (usually strong Americanos, on weekends/evenings straight espresso later in the day), a couple double shots each per morning.

It's worked out to less than $0.08/cup for the machine cost, call it another $0.42 for the coffee per drink ($14/lb beans). The coffee I'd be buying anyway, though. That's $0.50/cup vs ~$3 bucks at a coffee shop (wel almost never get coffee out as a result).

[TheSaint]

14 minutes ago, tater said:

That's my concern, really. I take it entirely apart, and the next thing goes.

I can send it off for repair in Colorado Springs, and they are actually pretty reasonable, but with shipping, etc it'll end up being a couple hundred bucks (though it won't matter what additional parts are needed, they quote based on the complaint, and if they also need smaller parts, they have those, vs me having it in pieces and having to then order some additional bits I don't have.

And you'd have to do all this WITHOUT COFFEE!!! Just buy a new one.

Edited September 10, 2019 by TheSaint

[tater]

25 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

And you'd have to do all this WITHOUT COFFEE!!! Just buy a new one.

This is the critical issue (though I have a french press for backup, I like the easy "push button, get coffee" nature of the super automatic espresso machine at 6 in the morning).

[StrandedonEarth]

3 hours ago, tater said:

My espresso machine broke... sounds like the gearing that drives the tamper (super automatic espresso machine).

I'm a sad boy, must buy a replacement ASAP.

And if you buy the same model of espresso machine (since it seems to have served you well), you’ll have a cache of spare parts...

[tater]

59 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

And if you buy the same model of espresso machine (since it seems to have served you well), you’ll have a cache of spare parts...

Turns out the new ones (different model, mine is almost a decade old!) have many identical internal parts. Also, my buddy's just failed (similar age, identical to mine), and he was thinking of repairing his and taking it to his office. We can likely make one work out of the 2 of them. My machine will live on, I think.

[Barzon]

since he will save you money, will you pay for part of his new coffee machine?

[tater]

5 minutes ago, Barzon Kerman said:

since he will save you money, will you pay for part of his new coffee machine?

Other way around, I'll give him my parts. He'll pay me back with home brew beer.

 

[TheSaint]

4 minutes ago, tater said:

Other way around, I'll give him my parts. He'll pay me back with home brew beer.

Coffee? Beer? Hey! This is the negative things thread!

[Delay]

What is voltage?
What is an electric field?
What is electric potential?
How does a capacitor even work?
How do joules and watts tie in with electricity?

Why am I even asking these questions. Why do I need to ask these questions. Am I really that dumb? That I'm not able to figure out the answer to any of those questions in a manner that doesn't create 10 more?

At this point I have no other conclusion left. I have to infer that I'm mentally not capable of grasping the implications of (moving) electrons doing some thing I cannot describe in further detail.

I'm an idiot. Period. I'm nearing my 18th birthday and I have the deduction skills of an infant.

"Electricity is electrons moving through a wire." I know that's incorrect (lighting aren't moving through wires), but that's where my knowledge ends. That's how much I can claim to know ábout electricity without lying to myself.

Edited September 16, 2019 by Delay

[GearsNSuch]

2 hours ago, Delay said:

I'm an idiot. Period.

A lot of life is like a true or false test. This is false. 

2 hours ago, Delay said:

(Electricity stuff)

Am I really that dumb?

No. Most people don’t understand it even after several years of college classes. I don’t think that the field of electricity (pun intended) is really fully understood fully by anyone. It’s complicated stuff, and sometimes the best explanation is “this thing does that because... er... I’ll get back to you on that “

I don’t mean to sound like some sappy self-help book, but don’t stop trying to learn just because it doesn’t click right now. Keep trying hard, reading, watching videos, and asking questions that generate ten thousand more (that’s how people make amazing new discoveries, by the way). If you never get it, it’s not that you’re dumb or defective. Your skill set might just be elsewhere (It was the same for me. Leave the pitiful current of electricians and join the rapidly advancing field of Mechanical Engineering! Or you could always be a baker. Baking is good. Lots of smart people become bakers.). But most of the time, if you keep on working hard as you have been, it’ll click, even if it takes years.

(Sorry for failing at not sounding like an office wall inspirational poster)

Edited September 16, 2019 by GearsNSuch

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, GearsNSuch said:

It was the same for me. Leave the pitiful current of electricians and join the rapidly advancing field of Mechanical Engineering!

Ok but I still gotta take Physics II to proceed... 

[Delay]

6 hours ago, cubinator said:

Ok but I still gotta take Physics II to proceed... 

Yeah, exactly. This is the required material for school. Before my exam I need to know this stuff.

For some of these things it is "merely" a lack of understanding. I know that voltage can be defined as the difference in electric potential between two points, and I know what a difference is. But I don't know what electric potential really is, so I can't work with the definition. Something with electrons and the electric field, that much I know.

How this explains the functionality of a capacitor is beyond me.

[GearsNSuch]

9 hours ago, cubinator said:

Ok but I still gotta take Physics II to proceed... 

(Inspirational poster falls off wall into garbage masher)

 

3 hours ago, Delay said:

But I don't know what electric potential really is

Same here!

There are lots of good resources that explain that out there. One or two might even be comprehensible!

Just a quick Google search yielded this one: https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/circuits/Lesson-1/Electric-Potential

You may already have seen it, but I thought it explained the concept of electric potential well.

My (probably erroneous) take:

Spoiler

 Charges are shoved, against their will, into a capacitor by the flow of electricity and like charges gather on two parallel plates separated by an insulator. If the gap is bridged lower downstream, the charges are so happy to see one another that the even run through other electrical components to meet. Electric potential is the amount of desire to hold a family reunion, proportional to the distance of separation and amount of charge.

But keep looking and learning until you have a firm grasp of the concept. It doesn’t sound like you’re as bad at it as you think you are. And besides. 

You play Kerbal Space Program. You clearly aren’t just banging rocks together here.

Edited September 17, 2019 by GearsNSuch

[Shpaget]

Earlier I posted in the "positive"thread about building a CNC machine, a hot wire foam cutter. I did some test cuts and it worked great. Well yesterday, I tested it out on full profile, trying to cut the thing I made the machine for and I hit a snag. The mechanics are smooth, but occasionally the wire starts to wobble inside the foam producing regular waves, making the part unusable. Apparently, this is not unheard of in foam cutting world and the solution is tension the wire, turn up the temperature, turn down the temperature, slow down, speed up, change the length of wire, thickness of wire... Well, I already made a huge pile of scrap foam and seems I'll have to make more until I get rid of the problem. It seems that the wire enters some harmonic interaction with the foam and changing some parameters should remove the effect.

[cubinator]

Today I took a spill riding an electric bike. Factors that went into this:

1. A stretch of road on my route was closed, and I had to take a detour. This flustered me.
2. I tried to signal my lane change and turn, but
3. The handlebars on this bike are too low, and I lost balance.
4. I was also braking pretty hard while trying to signal, and I lost balance and had to jump off.

I am ok, just minor scrapes in various typical places and a little sore on my left arm which I landed on. My head and brain are a-ok because my helmet is what went 'bonk' on the ground. 

Wear your helmets, folks. It's easy for stuff like this to happen.