VanHorn: Cheap plastic soled dress shoes. I measured an inch spark, nice and fat.
Brand name, VanDeGraff, I think

Winter: Ah, you can't beat a good masochist. Well, actually, you can...
+

Singer: Days are short in south hemisphere now and weather
is cold. So posts are going north especially on
week-end. +

Brown on lightbulb changing:
Roman B. knows where you can get light bulbs changed for
free and they also throw in a new socket.

Scott D. knows how to do the change process in 3 less steps than anyone
else but it takes more time. He also knows a way that takes 1 more
step, but cuts the total time in half.

Bob Blick will also show that light bulbs are most useful when in
motion, and has a contraption that can detect failure and change said
bulbs automatically (of course whilst still in motion).

Finally, a few will point out that the bulb should not be forcibly changed,
instead it should be motivated to change by providing an environment wherein the bulb can change itself.

Students/Newbies DEMAND help on changing and the subsequent blinking their light bulb.
Wouter refers them to examples on his web site and mentions his light bulb programmer.
He even sells light bulbs in small quantities!

.....

Tweed, Lathrop:
Most fish tank pumps pump air, not water.

But water pumps are out there. I know because I bought the pump for my
temperature controlled water bath at a pet shop and it was sold as a
"fish tank pump". Of course that was in 1980, so maybe the fish have developed
better technology by now.

• Jinx on geography:
  > .....has claimed that maps in Australia and NZ place south at the top of the map.
  > Is there any truth to this?
  
  "some"
  http://www.wizard.gen.nz/box/
  http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/mcarthur-large.jpg
  
  And having to move around upside-down, there's a very active
  manufacturing sector in handrails and sticky tyres

........+ 

Pefhany, referencing the engineer's sacred text "Dilbert":

> Hm, *what* country is *that* ???
> And how do you *know* it is the only PIC available ?

Probably the People's Democratic Republic of Elbonia. They only have one
PIC and it's a 16F84A, replacing the older 16F84 that was destroyed by
angry mobs in the popular uprising of 1998.

........

Pemberton,Blick,Taylor,Peter,Ferguson:

I've just been digging through my junk box and found a pair of laser
pointers. .... Another option would be a scanned display ...
(in case you can't tell, I'm looking for yet another strange/unusual
  project to stave off boredom and I've run out of ideas!)
.......
Yes, you can use the polygon mirror/motor....
The real drawback is brightness - you'll only be able to use it in a dark room.
.......
Avoid the brightness drawback, turn the pointers around, paint directly on the retina.      You did ask for twisted.
........
You could sell these as a kit. Alas the box would have to be large
enough to hold the supplied white cane and opaque blind man's
'sunglasses' needed for completion.
.....
They make fold up canes, so the box wouldn't have to be that big.

........

Bill (or Pookie?) on dealing with static :
I was taught that rinsing glass photographic items under cold tap water
would remove any static charge. This should work for kitty also.
.......

Jinx and Barry G. on learning of BAJ's successful doctorate dissertation:

Ah to be in the ranks of all those other illustrious doctors -
Crippen, Zoidberg, Seuss, Pepper, Scholl, Smith (oh the
pain, the pain of it all)............... ;-)

Dr Who?

Who said AVR[Chat] guys have no sense of humour? Madsen,Weston : Subject: Cobol for AVR

Cobol is the colour blue if I'm not mistaken.
..
Are you thinking of COBALT ?
..
No no, Cobol is from Battlestar Galactica.
Adama is always talking about the 'Lords of Cobol".
My goodness, was he referring to a bike-riding gang of programmers?
..

Robert, Danny, Lathrop
Re:Boot Camp software allows Intel based Macs to boot Windows XP:
How many people will now buy Macs with the idea:
"Well I've often wanted to try MacOS, but if it doesn't work out at
least I can drop back to Windows"
...
... Seven ..... Eight if you count that one guy... ...
...
     I think you're overestimating by 7 or 8.

VanHorne:
I had a friend into motorcycles. It wasn't intuitively obvious to him
that Armor-All is not a good idea on seats and tyres.

Newton, Barr,Pearce,Couture on Cats:

Some part of my brain that has obviously been totally damaged over time
wants to say that the solution to that problem is to have several more of
that same model mouse trap laid about so that no mouse in its right mind
will attempt to come close to the house. That seems to work for us. We have
only seen one (rather diseased) mouse anywhere in the area since we got
them. NEVER in the house.
....
They also protect against polar bears in your house.
....
Good point. I hadn't thought about it but I must admit that I haven't
seen a single polar bear in my house in all the time that I've had my
cat. :=)
....
And Elephants. Except for the ones that have learned to hide in thimbles, of course.
....
Hmm, when I was at school they hid in strawberry patches by painting
their toenails red ...
...
Q: How can you tell if you have a elephant in your refrigerator?
A1: His footprints in the cheesecake
A2: You can smell the peanuts on his breath

And any furthur responses in this thread should be moved to [OT]
....

RM, VanHorne, Newton, Smith, Hartford et al:
OR: how to go from solar arrays to hemmoroids in 120 posts

What DO you do about hail?

  Live in southern California.

    What DO you do about earthquakes :-) ?

       Stand near a lady with large breasts.

         That will be hard to find in Cali.

        Earthquakes are very overrated as a danger.
        http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds_dying.jpg

            Since I live in a country that doesn't have legal executions,
            does that increase my risk of dying in an earthquake? hides under my desk*

            ..the odds of dying from any cause is 1:1.

The odds of dying from ladies with large breasts, or the odds of dying if you
are a lady with large breasts is unfortunately absent. Immediate studies
are required, I feel. No, wait, I think, I think! What would Freud say?

   Well Sigmund Freud wouldn't say anything because he's dead,
.. but his Great- (-great?) granddaughter, Emma, would be very suitable to include in the study of these phenomena! ;-)
(She also has the extremely rare honour of having her name immortalised in rhyming slang, during her life.
That club is even more exclusive than, say, reigning monarchs, or people who have walked on the Moon! :-)

What is it?? haemorroid?

RM,Lag,King,Winter,Couture:

... developers of arguably* the world's only commercially
sucessful non-aerospace non-military Stirling engines....
* I expect argument.

5 minutes or the full half hour?

No he's already had his arguement...

Oh no you don't! ;-)

That's just contradiction, not an argument!

................

Then, there's the DIODE thread............

dave j lagzdin of davesaudio Says:

From: Mongol Herdsman
Subject: Re: [PIC] PICLIST admin stuff

I propose to consider new [ASP/SQL] tag on this list.

Actually PIC based devices could serve as light web clients within
ASP.NET/MS SQL applications. This kicks off huge market. Hope MCHP
people will understand it not too late.

For example, your know, here in "Texas" sized Inner Mongolia we would
like to equip every camel with cheap Internet-over-GPRS enabled
PIC-based mobile to report to California based web server about the
current condition of the camel and its load.

The "data logger" software on the server would report in real time
about camel status, and would predict camel possible failure, so a
herdsman would receive warning SMS and could care of the situation in
timely manner.

We have a good number of camels roaming around the desert.
So the project seems to be quite big.

Some good/gold level PIC professionals are on the list to consult
with. And for ASP.NET/MS SQL part of the project we'd like to have
consultants on the list too to keep the development consistent.

So, again, why not new [ASP/SQL] tag on this list.

dave j lagzdin of davesaudio Says:

Virchanza wrote:

>> Say I tell you that a particular transmitter transmits with a power
>> of 500 mW, well you can express that as decibel milliwatts as follows:
>>
>> 10 * log10(500 milliwatts) = 27 decibel milliwatts
>>
>> What I'm curious about though, is why so many people write 27 dBm
>> instead of 27 dBmW. Why does everyone leave out the underlying unit of
>> "watt"?

Gokhan SEVER responded to me as follows:

"P is defined as 10*log10(p / 1mW) with a unit of dBm. And here m means
decibels relative to a power of one milliwat (1 mW). Therefore we don't
need
to use an extra milliwatt in our final calculation. "

I don't agree with this. For instance, let's say I take the following
four sentences:

The current is 1 amp.
The current is 10 amps.
The current is 100 amps.
The current is 1000 amps.

Now let's say I convert them to milliamps, giving:

The current is 1000 milliamps.
The current is 10000 milliamps.
The current is 100000 milliamps.
The current is 1000000 milliamps.

Then I convert to bels:

The current is 3 bel milliamps.
The current is 4 bel milliamps.
The current is 5 bel milliamps.
The current is 6 bel milliamps.

Using "tenths of a bel" instead of bels, I get:

The current is 30 dB milliamps.
The current is 40 dB milliamps.
The current is 50 dB milliamps.
The current is 60 dB milliamps.

So the unit I'm left with is "decibel milliamps", or in shorthand: "db
mA". Note the presence of "A" to indicate amps.

Why one earth do people write "decibel milliwatts" as "dbm", i.e.
without the W to indicate watts? I remember when I was back in college,
we used to get docked marks if we left the units out; for instance if
you gave an answer as "5" instead of "5 amps", you'd probably only get
90% instead of 100%. So why is it OK to leave out the "watt" in "dBm"???
Where did this practise start, and why do so many people perpetuate it?

..............
Virchanza wrote:

>>Richard Seriani, Sr. wrote:
>> Your disagreement seems to be based on your misunderstanding of what
>> decibels serve to represent. Where did you get the idea that you could
>> convert amps directly to dB?
>>

I can convert whatever I want to decibels. (Why wouldn't be able to?)

I have 100 dogs = I have 20 decibel dogs
I have 1 million dollars = I have 60 decibel dollars
The universe is 6 billion years old = The universe is 98 decibel years old
The diameter of Jupiter is 142,984,000 m = The diameter of Jupiter is 82
dB m

.............

Olin wrote:
That's wrong several ways. First, there is no ratio here. 20 dogs compared
to what? You haven't specified what the 0 dB reference is. Second, you are
implicitly saying that the number of dogs is proportional to power. That is
rediculous, certainly without context. How do you know they're not related
to the power squared like volts are, or some other relationship?

To stretch things and make this example correct you could use dB to compare
the motive power of sleds. You could rate a 15 dog sled team some dB above
or below a particular snow mobile, for example. But you couldn't give your
sled team a absolute dB rating without specifying the 0 dB reference, like 1
Watt, 1 Horsepower, the equivalent of 10 standard sled dogs, etc.


Jinx wrote:
Those are quite industrial units and impractical for many applications.
Most people would commonly use the smaller unit milli-Dog (mD),
which replaced the old imperial unit, Pomeranian (1D = 3.874Po). A
notable exception is in use specifically and uniquely at Da Kine Bail
Bonds, the "Dwayne Chapman". One Dog is claimed to be applicable
and all you need for every situation

A new unit, the Hb (handbag), is being promoted by Prada and Gucci.
Roughly equivalent to a hecto-chihuahua, dBHb would be a useful
measurement of vacuousness

But there's also a lot of Shitzu around of course