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

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, Delay said:

School servers are down, and I need to send an e mail until Saturday. But I won't be home for three days, so I can't access my PC and thus not my e mails.

Why do things have to fail when you need them most?

I wanted to write "I'll be gone for a day or two" as a cheap joke. I guess I still did.

Smartphones can do the email thing.

[richfiles]

2 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Are we talking mounting components on PCBs, or full-on building with protoboard?

Production circuit boards. They're not that particularly complex, but I'm mounting through hole magnetic field sensors (hall effect sensors) to one side of the board, and leadwires to the other side. I have to maintain both spacing between the insulation of the leadwires and the board, and the angle they sit at, and flush cut the leads, and have a requirement to reflow the flush cut with solder. I do a 100% functional test of every sensor on every board. I have to clean the boards in Isopropyl alcohol and then bake the boards to evaporate anything left on them, conformal coat them, and bake them again to cure the conformal coating.

Individually, the boards aren't complex, but there are a lot of very "fiddly" requirements for them to pass. I think they go into medical centrifuges.

5 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Smartphones can do the email thing.

Not me, for the past three days... Verizon, Sprint, and Comcast/Xfinity have all had spotty service. For three days in a row, I've found myself with periods where I have no terrestrial internet, no mobile data, and no mobile service at all. Like, I couldn't even make a call or send a text, much less an email!

[StrandedonEarth]

On 8/15/2019 at 11:44 AM, StrandedonEarth said:

My wife got fired after just four months at the best job she’s had, as a “supervisor”

Further to this, my wife has heard from one of her former employer's clients that an email went out stating that my wife "has chosen to pursue a different opportunity which is effective immediately"

That sounds pretty bleedin' dishonest to me. I can't help but wonder if that is legally actionable (libelous?). It's sounds close to the truth (depending how you spin it) but she did not "choose" to "pursue a different opportunity" but was forced to after being terminated. 

The only NDA I recall from her termination letter was not "reaching out" to former co-workers, but nothing about former co-workers or clients reaching out to her. This is a small city so eventually running into them is inevitable.

Never mind the other inaccuracies in the email, praising their other staffers of questionable abilities.

[kerbiloid]

NDA in a small city.
Oxymoron...

Edited August 25, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Lisias]

4 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

The only NDA I recall from her termination letter was not "reaching out" to former co-workers, but nothing about former co-workers or clients reaching out to her. This is a small city so eventually running into them is inevitable.

YOU did signed that NDA ? (call your layer before trying the stunt, however).

[Shpaget]

A freshest of the gripes:

Like I mentioned earlier, I was contacted regarding building a certain model. The project is not yet officially started but I had to start preparation since when they give me the green light, the deadline will be rather short. Anyway, in the documentation I was given there is a requirement that the model be built according to ISO 5455 standard. Not knowing what that was I started googling, but other than to find out that it deals with scales and stuff there was not much more available for free. It costs ~ $40 and I was unwilling to buy it, but since it's a requirement (and grey web did not provide me with the goods) I finally gave in and went to iso.org to get it. $40 later I got my PDF and scroll through it, only to hit the end of file after just 4 pages. Out of those 4 pages, the first one is just the title, the second one is a list of countries that agree on the contents and others that don't, the fourth page is intentionally left blank. Only the third page is actual content of the standard, and what does it say? Well, it lists some standard scales and says that if none of those are suitable for you you can make up your own. Yes, I checked, and that is the entire thing.

The kicker? The standard was written in 1979 and the PDF is just a scan from that document. They didn't even bother to retype it. It's a crappy scan that they pulled through an OCR software and ran with it without even the slightest effort to format it to fix horribly inconsistent line spacing, kerning or even font size.

Definitely the worst $40 I've ever spent.

Screw you ISO, may your ice creams melt and your fingers get all icky.

 

[Lisias]

The best engineers never go to Space - but, boy, we attend a lot of funerals.

Edited August 25, 2019 by Lisias
ugh. grammars… =/

[StrandedonEarth]

14 hours ago, Lisias said:

YOU did signed that NDA ? (call your layer before trying the stunt, however).

Actually, there was no NDA, and neither my wife or myself signed anything. The termination was verbal, with my wife picking up her final check (including severance) and termination letter two days later. The closest thing to an NDA in the termination letter was a reminder not to reach out to her former co-workers, and that's it. Again, she didn't sign anything related to the termination ever. Waiting to see what the separation papers (yet to be submitted electronically) say 

All the idiots had to write in the email was that she was "no longer with us," which faults nobody.This was presumably the same silly micromanager that had to proofread her outgoing emails, changing little things like "lots" to "tons."

Edited August 25, 2019 by StrandedonEarth

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Actually, there was no NDA, and neither my wife or myself signed anything. The termination was verbal, with my wife picking up her final check (including severance) and termination letter two days later. The closest thing to an NDA in the termination letter was a reminder not to reach out to her former co-workers, and that's it. Again, she didn't sign anything related to the termination ever. Waiting to see what the separation papers (yet to be submitted electronically) say 

No one can force your wife to wave rights. The US Constitution and Legal system are crystal clear on this. You can be induced to wave your rights, but not forced into it. There must be consent.

However, exercise prudence. To win a legal battle, you don't need to win in court : you can induce the adversary to bankruptcy on legal fees. And I don't think these guys are that dumb - they are obviously dishonest, but this doesn't means necessary they are stupid. There're loopholes on the law about what can be considered consent, and even if this would not ultimately stick on court, the legal fees can be enough to make you wish you had given that consent after all.

In time, do you know this site? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glassdoor

[Nuke]

i chased the last bug out of my power system for my raspberry pi tablet. the cc-cv charger module didnt put a diode on the output. and so power backfeeds into it and discharges my batteries. i added my own diode and now it holds a charge. 

just in time to have to redo everything from scratch because the pi4 moved the damn ports.

[Delay]

23 hours ago, Delay said:

Today I learned more about electricity than in 5 years of nearly continuous coverage in school...

 

NEVER MIND.

All it took to destroy the illusion of understanding what the heck electricity even is was a capacitor discharge. I understand that the capacitor stores less and less during discharge, but I'd expect that to be done at one voltage and one current (therefore same power), but that is clearly not the case: it's exponential.
What?

That being said I'm also glad that I was proven wrong so quickly, I prefer that over using a long-term false understanding any day.

Edited August 29, 2019 by Delay
"nevermind" is actually incorrect!

[StrandedonEarth]

5 hours ago, Delay said:

 

NEVER MIND.

All it took to destroy the illusion of understanding what the heck electricity even is was a capacitor discharge. I understand that the capacitor stores less and less during discharge, but I'd expect that to be done at one voltage and one current (therefore same power), but that is clearly not the case: it's exponential.
What?

That being said I'm also glad that I was proven wrong so quickly, I prefer that over using a long-term false understanding any day.

Well, it helps to understand exactly what a capacitor is, which, in principle, is two parallel plates (like the schematic symbol),  connected to the plus and minus sides of a circuit, and it charges much like filling a balloon.

In fact, voltage is much like electrical “pressure”. A balloon is harder to fill the more air you put in it, and if you let air out it comes out slower as the pressure inside the balloon falls. A capacitor works in much the same way. 

Oversimplified, but that’s all I have time for right now. 

Edited August 29, 2019 by StrandedonEarth
Ytpo

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

In fact, voltage is much like electrical “pressure”.

Voltage is a measure of (envy, jealousy) between the opposite electric poles.
Conductivity is a measure of weakness in resisting their temptation.
Capacity is a measure of ability of a pair of scrooges in resisting the temptation of (envy, jealousy) to each other, and their frustration caused by this.

[StrandedonEarth]

So I was camping on the weekend, and got back this afternoon. When I let  our mountain lab juvenile out of the back seat of the truck, she managed to pull my laptop off the truck seat and onto the driveway (I was not the one to load my computer or the dog in the truck; I guess I should have been).

When I tried to boot my PC, I got HDD not found, along with spiderweb cracks on the screen. After reseating the HDD cables, the machine booted up okay, but the bottom third of the screen is, um, dead, as in just pretty colors instead of anything legible.

As I was weighing my options, I realized I can at least plug into the TV, and there are other monitors in the house I could use, so it's not a total loss. I'm posting on it now, in fact. But I can see that these options are going to be inconvenient and awkward and as unergonomic as all getout, although buying a mouse-and-keyboard set might help.

Of course, I already have a separate wireless mouse, but USB space is at a premium on my machine, since the USB ports on one side seem to be burnt out and useless. This machine is getting old, you see, I think I've had it for seven years now. But it's the best PC I've ever had; it was worth about $950 CAD when I bought it with AirMiles points. Yeah, the nVidia GT630m ain't that great a graphics chipset, nm the Intel 4000 onboard chipset backing it up, but it has 8GB RAM and and a 1TB HDD. The best part is the i7 3630QM, listed at 2.4GHz but I've seen it turbo up to around 3.2GHz, so not too shabby. With KSP, I can dare to get a little Whackjobian with the part count, but things like EVE get choppy.

So I'm not sure what to do now. I really don't want to spend another grand on a PC right now, but I'm not sure it's worth replacing the screen, which I have to wait until Tuesday to get a price for. If I had to buy a new laptop I'd want to keep it more at the $600 range, but even then I'd rather not. The question I need to ask in the computer question megathread is what modern (7th-8th generation) CPU would be equivalent to my old 3rd-gen i7, as far as KSP demands go? Never mind graphics.... The only other game I've played lately is Civ6, but now with KSP2 on the horizon... IJDKWTD

But I don't want to really delve into specs right now, I'm mainly griping that an old friend has been crippled...

 

[Delay]

Integral calculus can be hard for absolutely no reason.

I have made a mistake somewhere - a square root yields an imaginary number, but I can't figure out where...

[Bill Phil]

18 minutes ago, Delay said:

Integral calculus can be hard for absolutely no reason.

I have made a mistake somewhere - a square root yields an imaginary number, but I can't figure out where...

What are you integrating?

[Delay]

10 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

What are you integrating?

Homework.

The basic task was this: A train accelerates from 0 to 60 km/h in 5 minutes, travels at 60 for 30 minutes and then decelerates at the same rate as it accelerated. Calculate the track length. (That's simple)

Suppose that train accelerated to 70 km/h for the first half of the track (same acceleration as before). Assuming instant changes in velocity, how fast does the train travel on the last half of the track?

Edited September 2, 2019 by Delay

[Bill Phil]

8 minutes ago, Delay said:

Suppose that train accelerated to 70 km/h for the first half of the track (same acceleration as before). Assuming instant changes in velocity, how fast does the train travel on the last half of the track?

I'm a little confused. Is the train decelerating on the last half or still at 70 km/h? Or is it asking for a function describing velocity?

[Delay]

9 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

I'm a little confused. Is the train decelerating on the last half or still at 70 km/h? Or is it asking for a function describing velocity?

Sorry, I missed a crucial piece of the task. The train is supposed to arrive at the same time as if it were travelling at 60 km/h.

[Chel]

Everything must come to an end some day. People, this forum, companies, species, planets, galaxies.

It's scary yet fascinating at the same time to think about it...

[kerbiloid]

12 hours ago, Delay said:

The basic task was this: A train accelerates from 0 to 60 km/h in 5 minutes, travels at 60 for 30 minutes and then decelerates at the same rate as it accelerated. Calculate the track length. (That's simple)

Suppose that train accelerated to 70 km/h for the first half of the track (same acceleration as before). Assuming instant changes in velocity, how fast does the train travel on the last half of the track?

12 hours ago, Delay said:

The train is supposed to arrive at the same time as if it were travelling at 60 km/h.

But why integrals?

So, you have 3 fixed numbers: same distance, same duration, 70 km/h.

Either one of three is excessive, or they contradict each other.

[Delay]

7 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

But why integrals?

So, you have 3 fixed numbers: same distance, same duration, 70 km/h.

Either one of three is excessive, or they contradict each other.

The train travles at 70 km/h for only the first half of the track. The second half's velocity is what is solved for if time of arrival and distance are the same.

And I solved it! I'm not exactly sure why it didn't work before, but I tried integrating in m/s and then multiplying by 3.6 rather than trying to convert from m/s to km/h mid-task.
I converted the units to m/s, m/s^2, s, etc. to calculate the values more easily.

Well, at least this unit conversion error didn't cost millions.

[Bill Phil]

20 hours ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

Everything must come to an end some day. People, this forum, companies, species, planets, galaxies.

It's scary yet fascinating at the same time to think about it...

“Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”

- Dr. Manhattan

[Chel]

6 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

“Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”

- Dr. Manhattan

Watchmen ended, however

 

[StrandedonEarth]

14 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

“Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”

- Dr. Manhattan

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

- Q