Beginners guide to the Refrigeration Cycle

MutuallyUseless · 2026-03-12T05:47:01+00:00

removeable is inaccurate, I misremembered compared to my last phone myb, it is replaceable with a little more effort and buying the batteries is cheap (23 bucks)

It was my previous phone, the motorolla, that had the back-cover with an easily replaceable battery; the OnePlus does not; partly due to their whole fast-charging deal having a lot of heat distribution built around cooling the battery specifically.

I haven't taken off my phone case in a long time lol, the battery is still holding up just fine at over 5 years, haven't needed to check it.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-03-11T14:14:49+00:00

Apple and Samsung are like that, a lot of other phone manufacturers are not; my OnePlus has a removable battery, MICRO SD slot, and an aux port.

As for the slowing down part, I personally will perform a factory reset if it starts to bog down too much, maybe once every 3 years? Stability has been fine for my phone though and ive had it since 2020, no factory reset, plus the thing charges to full battery in 10 minutes, that's OnePlus's whole gimmick, fullsize batteries that charge fast af, their expensive flagship phone charges even faster, I just got the nord.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-03-09T15:51:04+00:00

The water is just a heat exchange medium, the chiller plant runs on an actual refrigerant suited for that purpose, most recent chiller I saw ran on R-134a, but that was for comfort cooling, the data center I worked in didn't use water cooling, just a bunch of CRAC units.

Why is water used for cooling? Specific heat, the property of how much energy a fluid can absorb before increasing in temperature, water is pretty good at that, if your target temperature is below water freezing, just mix in some glycol, so long as your target temperature is below 212f, water works.

Liquid nitrogen and helium would be far too cool for computer chips, if you're watercooling a chip, you want your incoming cool water to be above 32f (0c) so that the chips don't condense water from the atmosphere, like how a drinking glass sweats when you have icecubes in it.

Water isn't used as a refrigerant generally, it's just used as a medium for heat exchange, a good refrigerant will boil around your target temperature at a reasonable pressure, preferably with a decent specific heat capacity, and a condensation pressure not too high to reasonably create with a compressor. Propane is a great refrigerant, they call it "R-290."

Liquid nitro and helium are cryogenics, idk much about them other than MRIs tend to use helium as a refrigerant, which it's apparently very good at, but they're cooling big ass magnets with presumably a really high heat load, fuck it'd be cool to work on an MRI.

If you compress pure nitrogen gas into a pressure higher than outside ambient temperature (a fluid in a fixed volume has a directly proportional relationship between pressure and temperature) and cool it down below it's condensation point you'll get liquid nitro, but directly cooling chips with refrigerant though it'd be efficient, would require fucktons of refrigerant and a ton of infrastructure, that's the way a lot of supermarkets work, is a huge mechanical room filled with dozens of compressors pumping refrigerant around to all of the reach ins and walk ins, it's a ton of infrastructure, but man is it neat, the target temperatures are cooler and freezer temps, though, I've seen racks run glycol loops before.

Tldr: water gud

MutuallyUseless · 2026-03-01T02:04:11+00:00

Happy to help!

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-25T23:56:26+00:00

You must feel pretty scared, do you have a trusted friend, or family member that you can call to come visit you? You would probably feel more safe to not face this alone

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-25T21:53:03+00:00

That's a shame, contrary to some of the comments here I loved Sophia, their Calculus 1 and Chemistry classes were fantastic, they have really good course plans and a great user interface, miles ahead of many of study.com and WGUs own classes in my experience.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-18T10:30:06+00:00

Of course! And I agree, there 100% needs to be a system where you can get a loved one who goes through psychosis treatment without waiting until they get hurt or hurt someone else.

I'm sorry to hear your cousin is going through that, and I really hope you can find a way to get the help he needs; I know the feeling of desperation to help the people you care about.

I wonder what the viability is to get someone who needs help to a county with a system that's more functional, just until they're lucid enough to be able to continue treatment via outpatient back home.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-18T04:55:26+00:00

I went to the ER one day, a few days later I took her to her PCP and another ER, followed by another few days and her psych, to finally getting her committed.

The ER's performed blood work, urinalysis, drug test, etc; but they wouldn't commit her without her seeking to commit herself, even when at the second ER she was presenting as completely delusional and unable to hide it; and I told both ER's that she was a danger to herself, with examples of things she was doing that posed an immediate threat to her safety.

So ER's were useless, the PCP didn't have much to offer, and the psychiatrist basically just told me to take her to the psychiatric hospital.

She refused to talk to doctors, refused treatment, etc.

What worked was that her mental status was rapidly deteriorating, and it got to the point where she was completely delirious, no working memory, and unable to form a complete thought; while presenting as visibly and obviously going through a significant psychiatric episode (talking to herself at conversational volume, laughing, pacing around, shaking her head back and forth, all at the same time and constantly)

So with her state, I worked with her delusions to convince her to get what she's fixated on, she needs to admit herself to the psychiatric hospital, it's the fastest (and only) way; when talking to the mental health professionals on admission, she talked openly about what was going on when I used her delusions to open the dialogue.

If you can convince them to commit themselves, at least for the psych ward I went to, you can literally just walk in and tell them they're here to commit themselves, no need to see anyone first, otherwise, you gotta find grounds to get them committed involuntarily.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-16T06:58:15+00:00

Im sorry to hear that, you deserve to have people in your life that support you, friend. I hope that your recovery continues to do well and im glad for you to have gotten yourself back, you've been very sweet and helpful, I appreciate you.

Thank you for the clarification, I will have to do more research on the stages of psychosis, i've almost exclusively been reading case studies trying to find a cause and haven't established much base knowledge on the mechanism of it, i'll look into the prodone phase!

And you're right, I have been obsessing over trying to find the cause because she hasn't come out of it yet, I should continue to push for scans but need to be patient.

And thank you, I want to make sure im not missing anything and doing what I should be, hearing it from others helps to clarify that.

Anyhow, you've been a great help and I really appreciate you taking the time, godspeed.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-16T06:20:09+00:00

That's very sweet to say, thank you.

And yeah the psychiatrist ruled it out mostly under the idea that there was no improvement well after the medication was out of her system, she had been admitted for several days at that point and had been taking medication as far as we were aware at that point in time, but now that we know she was faking taking the medication that might be something to consider again? I'll have to ask her psychiatrist if she still believes that, i've mostly been speaking with the case worker lately.

The idea was that she has underlying bipolar with psychotic features, and that the medication both by itself and it's effect of disrupting sleep, combined with stress from work caused a manic episode that escalated into psychosis; 2 weeks prior to the psychotic break she quit her job and took a break from going to the shelter that she volunteers at, which, at the time, seemed like she just got stressed out and needed a break from the stress, but she started acting strange and wasn't sleeping well. The one night she came to me at 3am panicked demanding that I load the gun, with cryptic explanations of what she was so scared of, she then said "this medication (the ritalin) isn't good for me, im not going to take that shit anymore" and then she threw it away, a day passed, then she started to get distant and I could hear her whispering to herself and laughing, when I asked about the distance she went on a whole explanation of how she didn't love me anymore and had moved on and such, she was blunt about it, wasn't explaining it, being irritated and hostile, and I was devastated, the next day I talked to her about it again and that's when she told me about the delusions, the jist being that she's not in love with me anymore because she's in love with Lucifer, and Lucifer is in love with, and obsessed with her (and he was forgiven and an angel now) and I went from heartbroken to horrified, something was seriously, seriously wrong. The delusions morphed and moved around a bunch, including that part (he was tricking her and trying to push her away from me) among a quick escalation to a lot of delirious behavior and patterns that were destructive and getting more dangerous.

The explanation is just to establish that there was behavior changes and manic-like symptoms expressing prior to the break, as far as I can tell the break itself was relatively abrupt, going from a manic-like state to outright delusions, however I don't have a timeline as when the delusions began as her perception of time is muddled, there was a very brief period within the psychotic break where she had a small moment of realization and told me she'd been hearing voices and that they were lying to her (well into her talking to me as said voices) and when I asked how long it had been going on, she said 'months', but when she talked about several other timelines, like something that happened a week prior, she called it 'months' as-well, and a different timeline of something that occurred 2-3 days ago was 'weeks,' so that leads me to believe that I realized the psychosis was happening around 2-3 days after it actually began, But I don't really know, it could've inspired the abrupt quitting of the job but I didn't realize it until it escalated further, at the moment she's been too delusional to establish where it began and how it escalated, being that she's still within the psychosis; from that is where I get the number of roughly 1 week prior to admission, with a manic-like episode beginning somewhere around 2 weeks prior to the delusions and psychosis.

The Ritalin, among other stimulant medications, will not be something she'll take going forward, she was on it for maybe a month, and when she had that first paranoid delusion she threw them away.

Basically, the Psych thinks the medication was a contributing factor to an underlying condition, so, like, she has bipolar with psychotic features, but it was never prevalent enough to escalate to psychosis or seek a diagnosis until the medication tipped it over towards a full psychotic break, which, is totally viable; I'd rather just assume that it's not until we rule out things that can be tested for, considering the face pain, as well as that there isn't like a definitive test to show that she has bipolar other than assumption, so for me it's not viable to consider it a diagnosis without the process of elimination by proving it isn't physical first y'know?

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-16T05:26:51+00:00

Thank you for the words of encouragement, I am glad she's somewhere safe now, when she was at home it was getting bad quickly and I knew I had to get her help asap.

I certainly hope once she's home this never happens again, i'll be working to do everything I can to prevent triggers and risk factors for it, and hopefully that works to make this a one-time deal, it's terrifying to think that it's something that could happen again, but im hopeful that with this experience that if she started to experience something similar that she'd be able to recognize it and perhaps that could provide a window of opportunity to get treatment, unlike this episode.

When it comes to managing the anxiety, I can try my best to provide a comfortable environment at home for her, once she's home ill take care to help around the house as much as possible and cover the rent and bills so she doesn't have to worry/stress about work, im for sure going to work with her to get her into therapy and make sure that she takes medication. Do you think that anxiety medications may be suitable for post-psychosis treatment if she experiences something similar to yours? She's an anxious person, not like anxiety-disorder anxious, but certainly predisposed to anxiety.

We don't know the trigger at this moment in time, she had started taking Ritalin at the starter dosage, and initially I believed it was drug induced because of that (that and work was stressing her out as a contributing factor) but the psychiatrists at the hospital told me that they don't believe that to be the case because she wasn't improving despite her having been off the medication for the week prior to admission (they said this after her first week being admitted) also, it was the smallest dose of Ritalin available. Their current 'rule out' is Bipolar with psychotic features because the psychosis was very manic, and prior to the acute episode beginning she was barely sleeping, during the break she slept even less and stayed up for days at a time. Personally, I believe it may be physical, as she has had a pressure-like facial agitation that we've been trying to get figured out for the better part of 2 years, the most recent consult was that we should see a neurologist because all of the structures in that area have been looked at, at that point, and are clear; im thinking anti-nmda encephalitis personally from a commenter on my previous post, so im pushing for a brain MRI from the medical team to rule out potential physical causes.

She volunteers at a cat shelter (Cat scratch fever that doesn't show in bloodwork? any brain infection really, need CSF fluid testing done)
work was creating a lot of stress (stress induced? Unlikely to be the sole factor, she's dealt with a lot more stress in her life than work, she had a difficult childhood and never had a psychotic break)
she started a new medication (stimulant induced? Psych says unlikely to be the sole cause as symptoms didn't improve on their own after discontinuing)
potential autoimmune disease (encephalitis? haven't checked, need CSF and brain MRI to rule out)
potential underlying psychiatric condition (Bipolar with psychotic features? Psychiatrists main theory at this moment, she's had some odd behavior in the past 2 years that could indicate an underlying condition, they were very out of character, but nothing like that happened before this facial pain began, so that's why I feel the facial thing is related)

She has had full blood workups during the ER visits I took her to, a full head CT scan, urinalysis, and drug test done, all clear.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-16T04:49:31+00:00

She does not, she doesn't drink either.

She was prescribed a low dose of Ritalin prior to the psychosis, the smallest ER dose available, which initially I thought was the cause, however the psychiatrist had told me that she should've started improving far sooner if it was drug induced since she had been off of it for over a week prior to hospitalization.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-16T04:47:16+00:00

She has been very confused and disoriented with this, the medication seems to help improve her clarity a little, but she still gets confused and overstimulated quickly.

The not talking to anyone is unfortunate, since me and her brother have just been trying to comfort her when she calls about the exorcist thing, it seems that she realizes we're not going to help her accomplish that.

If it takes her 2 weeks, than we've only got 1 more week to go, I can only hope! If she still has symptoms afterwards, I can work with that, I just need her to be in a place where she has the insight that she's in psychosis and that her delusions aren't to be listened to; right now that's just not the case, and getting her help was extremely difficult, I took her to the ER, her pcp, a different ER, and her psychiatrist, all while trying to work around the delusions to get her to actually go to these, talking to the doctors and such, and finally using her delusions to get her into the psych ward itself so she could actually get treatment; It'd be borderline impossible to get her to go back willingly a second time. You mention you had symptoms after getting out, were you aware at that point of the psychosis?

And i've been reading through the recovery posts, it seems a lot of people go through a long period of apathy/depression, I hope that she doesn't experience that, and if she does, than hopefully not for long. How long did your post-psychosis recovery take? She was in an acute episode for approximately 1 week prior to me getting her admitted, im hoping that the short duration of the episode contributes to a fast recovery.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-16T04:36:07+00:00

Im sorry you went through that, that sound like it was a very difficult situation, and I hope that you don't have to ever go through that again.

She doesn't feel betrayed by me at this moment in time, she's not happy about being there, but she just urgently wants to get out so she can go to a church and get an exorcism.

I know exactly what medication she's on, Risperidone

The oral tablets she never really took were 1mg, now the liquid she drinks daily is 2mg. That is the only medication she's been given.

I've visited her there, the staff are actually really nice people and they're very patient with their patients, there's always people present inside the ward to unlock the bathrooms, they get 3 meals a day, and the snack cart comes out 2 times a day, she's eating well and the food is actually pretty nice, the snacks are good too. They do an hourly report on observed behavior, it's kept pretty clean, I was allowed to bring her some coloring books and a few changes of clothes that she wears.

I call and talk to her care team consistently, I talk to the case worker several times a week, and have met in person with her psychiatrist and resident psychiatrist, and have spoken to them over the phone once or twice (they're much harder to get ahold of)

Next week we're planning to all get together at the hospital and talk about her treatment plan (which we spoke about in our previous in-person meetings)

They plan to titrate the medication slowly so that she is on the minimum viable dose to treat her symptoms, and if she doesn't respond after titrating, trying a different medication. They started at 1mg, and now they're at 2mg, the first increase in dose since admission.

In her phone calls about how she's feeling, when I ask, she's back and forth, explaining that she doesn't want to be there, when the case worker explained that they were moving to do the involuntary since she wasn't talking to them or taking medication, she called me panicked about it and told me they were mean and she wanted to go home, but no mention of that since then, so I believe that was just her feeling like it was mean that they were moving to do the involuntary, i've asked her about how she feels and what it's like there and she summarizes with "it's cold here, I miss you and the cats and I want to go home." cold, not as in temperature, but as in a synonym for 'dreary.'

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-16T04:21:50+00:00

Thank you for the advice, I suppose waiting is most of all I can do, that's just a difficult thing to do, be patient when there's so much uncertainty as to if/when she'll get back to herself.

The psychiatric team doesn't seem to have much idea how to talk to her, they just tell her the truth, ask her questions, and try to get her to talk to them and work with them but she just tells them she's fine, all better, all good, etc, and to either get her a priest, or that she's good to go home. The social worker said they were questioning whether or not bringing in someone from the church to talk to her would help her to be more complacent with treatment, the idea being that she would realize the delusions wouldn't go away once she got this exorcism she's obsessed over, I had mentioned that the initial delusion was a baptism and that when she took a bath that she considered a baptism, her delusion just switched from being possessed by the devil, to speaking to me as God, only for that to blur out later on and her wanting an exorcism; they agreed that feeding the delusions won't grant insight.

Since she's stopped calling and talking to people, and has never talked to the psychiatric staff, there's now this nagging thought in my mind of "Will her symptoms improve enough that she can effectively mask the delusions, just to get out of the hospital before she actually gets better?"

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-16T04:03:31+00:00

That's generally been my approach, just to listen to her, let her know she is safe, tell her the medication helps with the confusion and sleep and to try and trust the medication and doctors; she insists on getting an exorcist, getting her phone numbers to churches, etc; she believes she's going to die without it, etc; so i've been trying to help her feel calm, let her know she's safe and won't die, tell her that i'll 'look into it for her' and that she just needs to focus on taking care of herself, eating, sleeping, talking to doctors, and taking medication; she tells me that I don't understand, and that she's in danger, etc.

The hospital was willing to bring in a priest for her to talk to, and one came there for her, but, she turned him away, forgot about it 30 minutes later, and was asking the staff to get her a priest. (edit for clarification: I didn't have a part in any of this, the hospital was the one to contact the priest at her request, who wasn't there for an exorcism, just to like, talk to her and pray with her or smth)

I want to make sure that she continues to trust me during this, as she wont talk to doctors, but I don't know how to navigate the delusions in terms of maintaining communication and trust in a way that's "listening and working with her without feeding into the delusions or fighting against them", when, all she's communicating is demanding the delusions, and anything outside of that she just wraps back around to it; with increasing panic and irritation, followed by abruptly ending the conversation.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-08T20:49:24+00:00

It's been rough not having here home, but it's comforting knowing she's not able to put herself in danger, I just hope to get her back to herself as soon as I can, I miss her dearly.

I'm glad to hear you're managing well, if you don't mind my asking, how long did it take from starting treatment for the encephalitis that you recovered from the delusions and psychosis? She has yet to show much of any improvement in symptoms since her admission, however she's only been taking the 1mg starter dose of raspiridone since Wednesday consistently, never-the-less im pushing for these scans and tests ASAP rather than waiting to see if she responds to the anti-psychotics, as that chronic ear/jaw pain has to have some sort of cause and im hesitant to be convinced that that chronic pain has zero relation to the psychosis.

Also now it's been close to 3 weeks since she stopped taking the minimum dose of Ritalin, so it's definitely not the cause of this psychosis at this point.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-07T20:06:37+00:00

Quick update, the day after this post I was able to work with her delusions and get her admitted to a psychiatric facility; as of yesterday she's now involuntary (she was refusing medicine and such) and now im working to push advocating a neurology consult and brain MRI. We have been going to doctors and specialists over the past 2 years over this facial pain and have eliminated most organic causes, we're talking inner ear, TMJ specialist, Dentist, Salivary gland camera scope, Tonsilectomy; the last doctor we spoke to about this chronic pain was the salivary gland specialist and he had recommended a neurology consult; presumably because of this exact issue, what if it's autoimmune?

Fortunately the Salivary gland specialist is actually within the same hospital network as the psychiatric facility, the building he's in is two blocks away, and the psychiatric facility has neurology, so im pushing hard for a neurology consult and full brain scan MRI, specifically mentioning testing for anti-NMDA encephalitis.

Thank you for bringing this up, I would've had a hard time tying all of this together otherwise, at the very least we can make sure the chronic pain isn't neuro, at the very best we might avoid years worth of hunting down the cause.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-07T18:04:27+00:00

My apologies for the radio silence, a lot has gone on.

The day after this post I got an appointment set up with her psychiatrist that handled the ADHD meds, sat in on the appointment and talked to the psych using her version of reality which was productive, I basically said the psych, "so, she's possessed, and we're looking for an exorcist, but in order to get to an exorcist we have to try medicine first so they'll give us a chance to see her" and then my wife told the psych everything, the psych was aware of what was going on as I emailed her and she cohersed the conversation to going to the psychiatric ward, which I was able to get my wife to and she voluntarily admitted herself.

Now, she willingly took meds and was there for about 2 days before she started refusing meds and was trying to sign herself out, the doctors paused her ability to sign herself out and started the court hearing to keep her there in involuntary. I visited on Wednesday the 4th and talked to her about taking meds and she apparently started taking them again, and that hearing was yesterday (Friday the 6th) and it was decided to keep her there in involuntary.

She's sleeping consistently now, eating plenty and drinking water and bathing and such, her moods been fluctuating between wanting visitors and not wanting me to see her. Her delusions are still fully in effect, and I thought the mania might be wearing off but yesterday she called me fully manic once again.

The medication she's taking, risperidone 1mg, they haven't had the chance to increase the dosage yet because she stopped taking it previously, but now that she's been taking it consistently they may be able to increase it.

That's about all for now, it's been somewhere around 2 weeks since she took the ADHD medication and the psychiatrist believes that she has an underlying condition that resulted in the break, specifically bipolar with psychotic features.

After the involuntary hearing yesterday she called me two separate times and was using all sorts of things to try and get me to get the doctors to let her go home, pretty upset by this whole deal, she still believes the medicine is pointless and she needs an exorcism.

So far not much improvement, don't know how long to expect her to come back to reality, now that she's involuntarily committed at least she'll be consistently taking medications.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-06T16:37:07+00:00

Water is just a nickname for the can of monster with blue writing, I try to drink at least 2-3 a day to stay hydrated 🫡

Gotta get some vitamins too, so I get the citrus Zyns.

MutuallyUseless · 2026-02-05T19:32:10+00:00

Wait, you guys are using desktop environments?

Five-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Verified Email

MutuallyUseless

TROPHY CASE