Occasional Happiness

[Swede]

Oskarchem, I don't know how I missed it, but congratulations on your solo. It's pretty weird looking over and seeing nothing but an empty seat there. Nice job!

 

In the U.S. there is a strong move towards aqueous detergents for the sort of job you refer to. We have stuff called "Simple Green" which will cut any greasy mess I've ever encountered, some purple stuff too. And they are harmless. Look for them, they do a great job on both airplanes and human skin.

[oskarchem]

Ah, thank's yeah we have somthing like that here aswell, but I nobody thaught that the planes were so dirty beneath, thus we had no speciall detergent, so we were using avgas, works like a charm, all though, whilst lying under the plane with a small bucket of aviation fuel, some cloth and just under the fuel reservoir, I was thinking in how deep shit I was if those gas fumes decided to light up... Edited September 14, 2008 by oskarchem

[Swede]

Ah, thank's yeah we have somthing like that here aswell, but I nobody thaught that the planes were so dirty beneath, thus we had no speciall detergent, so we were using avgas, works like a charm, all though, whilst lying under the plane with a small bucket of aviation fuel, some cloth and just under the fuel reservoir, I was thinking in how deep shit I was if those gas fumes decided to light up...

 

I really hate to sound like a safety nanny, but cleaning anything with highly volatile gasoline can be pretty treacherous. There was a guy not too long ago near here who blew up his garage with gasoline. He was using gas to clean greasy car parts, and the fumes crept along the floor until they found the pilot light on a water heater. He hung on for 2 weeks, then succumbed to burns. Plus the Pb in the avgas...

 

All the old mechanics will say stuff like "Ya dummy, fergit' them highfalutin cleaners. Just pull some avgas outa the sump!" And you hate to say anything because they're 120 years old, but sometimes you really do know better.

[oskarchem]

Yeah, I know that it was pretty hazardous what I was doing. I wasen't really thrilled by the idea, but we were out side like 400-500m away from any source of ignition what so ever. But yeah, I'm not gonna be doing that anytime soon.

[Miech]

I got my Boss GX 700 guitar effects processor back to work. My uncle gave it to me because it didn't work, so I opened it to see what was wrong with it. It suffered from a completely charred PSU, but after replacing loads of formerly orange ceramic capacitors it works again. Yesterday I tried it, and it works perfectly, so it will find a nice place somewhere between my other guitar stuff (probably even in my live rig). I'm still surprised it still could be brought back to live, newer stuff would probably have toasted chips as well as I found out with some other pieces of (free) crap.

[Richtee]

WooHoo! Altho I got my start in rocketry, I have not really done much with it since re-aquiring the pyro bug. But...yesterday I took what would be a 2 Oz casing, and some of my finer corned BP. Mixed BP with poly glue and acetone. tapped into casing, then tapped a 3/32 rod down about 2/3 way thru powder. Just tried it out...off like a bat outta hell! Oh boy here we go.... :{)

[TheSidewinder]

Where's the Video!?!

[Richtee]

Where's the Video!?!

Just made a couple more.... one with a star "header",< more a tracer, use tucked into the top> the other just like the first, just a motor. I'll wait for tomarrow night :{)

[tentacles]

Busy pyro day for me again, rolled a kilo each of Chrys #6, Firefly (shimizu), and Buell Slow Gold. And I scraped the tire clean after those 3 and rolled that up into some mutt stars.

 

Mashed together a quick and dirty 3" mortar, shot a dummy shell up a couple times. Good fun.

 

Picked the neighbor's hops, they smell frigging amazing. I'll dry them tonight and vacuum seal them tommorow.

 

 

EDIT: I just have to gloat a bit, I sent off the money for the WASP4 today, should have it in 2 weeks or so.

Edited September 23, 2008 by tentacles

[mormanman]

I've been rolling some stars lately as well. I think its easier but there isn't the uniformity I like but I rolled some:

Crackler stars (my comp.), Red stars (my comp) and thats all. On Thursday I will roll some C 6 or TT to Flash core.

I don't use cores for my stars like some of you guys. I learned how to roll w/o cores before w/ cores and just never learned to use cores. I don't know how you guys do it.

[Mumbles]

That is what sizing screens are for.

[mormanman]

Oh I know I just don't have any and it doesn't bother me too much that I need to make some.

[Bonny]

Cooked myself up a nice big batch of pine charcoal the other day...should be a few lbs I think. My new retort is about 10" diameter and ~14" tall. It definitely holds a lot more than the small cookie tins I was using before. Once it got going it sounded like a jet engine. I'll probably do up one more batch. With winter coming it should be all I need to have lots ready for spring.

[Richtee]

Cooked myself up a nice big batch of pine charcoal the other day...should be a few lbs I think. My new retort is about 10" diameter and ~14" tall. It definitely holds a lot more than the small cookie tins I was using before. Once it got going it sounded like a jet engine. I'll probably do up one more batch. With winter coming it should be all I need to have lots ready for spring.

Just a LITTLE bigger and it would make a nice batch of lump for thr BBQ too :{) Lump is SOOO superior to briquetts for cooking. You'd be amazed!

[tentacles]

Bonny: Sweet! When the WASP gets here, you'll have to stop by and paste up some shells. I have 10lbs of antimony trisulfide on the way, just to let you know there will be plenty soon.

 

I made up some whistle break yesterday, it's just coffee milled K benz (ground it again with the red iron oxide) mixed with some crappy firefox anti-cake city domestic perc. Red gum riced it through 20 mesh screen, nice small granules, burns reasonably fast. Under confinement, it should work well enough.

[Bonny]

Bonny: Sweet! When the WASP gets here, you'll have to stop by and paste up some shells. I have 10lbs of antimony trisulfide on the way, just to let you know there will be plenty soon.

 

I made up some whistle break yesterday, it's just coffee milled K benz (ground it again with the red iron oxide) mixed with some crappy firefox anti-cake city domestic perc. Red gum riced it through 20 mesh screen, nice small granules, burns reasonably fast. Under confinement, it should work well enough.

 

 

Didn't know you ordered a WASP...sounds awesome. Antimony trisulfide...finally! I want to try making some dragon egg salutes with dark flash to load into a cake.

[flying fish]

I just aced my quantum mechanics final, giving me an 89% in the class! Certainly not my best score ever, but it is good considering it was the hardest course I've ever taken. I worked my ass of for an 89... Also, I think this has given me a new appreciation for courses that actually make sense (like virtually everything else apart from liberal arts).

 

Well, back to studying. I still have to take finals in Boundary Value Problems, Fields, and (uh-oh) Philosophy! I hate philosophy! That's why I only went to half of the classes, and never kept up with the reading, and is also why I'm going to curse a lot on this final exam. I don't think they should make engineers and applied scientists take exams for their liberal arts classes. Just as long as we put in some effort we should pass. I don't see how or why I would ever design, say, optical interferometers from a philosophical perspective. Well, maybe Descartes would, but he was also insane! Lets face it...these humanities are just to make engineers *seem* like well rounded people...We're really not .

[Richtee]

I just aced my quantum mechanics final, giving me an 89% in the class!

 

Yer such a good boy! Congrats... You get an "A" and the ribs are on me :{)

[Mumbles]

We can take classes pass/fail. C or better passes, and no implication on your GPA. Unfortunately, you can't take a class pass/fail for any requirements, such as humanities, literature, or ethnic study, etc. Yes, I have to take an ethnic study course. Apparently only asians, african americans, and latins outside of mexico are ethnic enough to count. Occasionally indian-americans count too. Because you know, my college experience is going to be really rounded out by reading women's literature about the african american experience. I hear it's really valuable when I will never see the light of day outside of a research lab.

 

They actually offer a chemistry ethnic study theoretically, but the course is never actually offered, only in the course handbook. It's about how atomic bomb testing in the southwest affected the Navajo indians.

[flying fish]

At my university I don't think we have pass/fail...unless you are transferring in some coursework or passing out of a class. I just want to PASS philosophy...I have stopped really caring what grade I get. So in a sense it is a pass/fail for me. As in I only care whether I pass or fail. Yeah, it will negatively effect my GPA if my score is lower than my GPA (which it probably will be). But what do I really need a GPA for? Applying to Grad school? Well yeah. But I'll light that firecracker when I come to it. As my adviser says "you need graduate school to have an interesting job in Physics" (in the mandatory Russian accent) so maybe I should start thinking about that.

 

My university is also all-engineering. There are no liberal arts majors here. Well, we have a "business" major for people that fail at engineering/applied science, but that's about it. So why we need liberal arts classes that are "up to the standards of" liberal arts colleges is beyond me.

 

I would have taken "literature of the fantastic" (sci fi and stuff) as my (required) humanities elective but it doesn't look like they are going to offer it again before I graduate. So I had to take philosophy... Luckily I'm signed up for "History of Economic thought" for my social science elective...which sounds like and probably is a boring topic, but the professor is epically awesome. Some guy from somewhere in the Bahamas with a thick Jamaican-ish accent and an outrageously good sense of humor.

Edited September 24, 2008 by flying fish

[Richtee]

Some guy from somewhere in the Bahamas with a thick Jamaican-ish accent and an outrageously good sense of humor.

Sounds like one of the teachers I had at Lawrence- but for dynamics. ""Da force treeangle show dat..." As if the subject wasn't confusing enough.

[oskarchem]

Sounds like one of the teachers I had at Lawrence- but for dynamics. ""Da force treeangle show dat..." As if the subject wasn't confusing enough.

 

I don't know why but I laughed my butt off reading that one, maybe it's just because I'm in a good mood.

 

Anyway, could anybody give me some awner to this? So I put together a new computer and all that, on the side there's a biiig fan (250mm), so I plug it on the motherboard, and all I get is a short circuit, anybody know to what this is due? Thanks

 

EDIT: I corrected the size of the fan, it's 250mm and not 200.

Edited September 25, 2008 by oskarchem

[tentacles]

That fan might draw too much juice for a motherboard header - what's the rating on a beast like that?

[FrankRizzo]

I think Tenacles nailed it. Those slow fans usually draw ~1A, which is more than a motherboard header should be asked to supply. I think my Gigabyte board has a max of .5A. Find a molex converter and use one of the supply lines directly off the power supply.

 

 

http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/directron_2019_181952482.jpg

 

 

Alternatively, the fan could be broken and shorted internally. You can test it with a 12V wall transformer that you might having laying around from a cordless phone or something...obviously note the correct polarity and that the transformer supplies at least 1A (1000mA).

[oskarchem]

Ahh, thank's Frank, I didn't think about the molex converter. I really need this fan to be working since it's getting quite hot inside... And I don't really want my components to be damaged by the heat.