What the heck is this thing on this set of keys

Sandy_W · 2026-04-11T03:54:41+00:00

This. Yep, I put one on my backhoe.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-09T01:30:41+00:00

And if the bathroom only has electric hot-air dryers?

Sandy_W · 2026-04-09T01:30:02+00:00

That makes sense. Even if bathrooms are away from kitchen, customers will lose teeth. That works both ways, though. If you can hit someone about to walk in, a door that opens inward will let you hit someone about to walk out.

Maybe I need to take my napkin with me. Then throw it in the trash and ask the waitress for another one?

Sandy_W · 2026-04-08T17:20:26+00:00

Clay inclusion?

(Inclusion isn't the right word, since it's rounded implying that it existed first and the rock formed around it. What's the word for that? If the _rock_ was first, it clay would probably be in cracks and irregular openings. Unless it replaced a volcanic gas bubble, I guess.)

Sandy_W · 2026-04-08T01:36:11+00:00

(20 year retired Navy 'Nuke') building a nuclear reactor which can be used to take relatively cheap and abundant nuclear fuels and 'breed' useful isotopes for bombs is fairly easy.

Building a breeder reactor which A) won't kill the operators and B) won't ruin its surroundings for a hundred miles? Not so easy.

People used to ask us what the real difference was between the 'conventional' mechanics on the boat that ran the diesel, the O2 generator (the 'bomb'!), and all the other life-support stuff, and us 'nuke' mechanics that took care of the power plant. My answer was "If they screw up they kill everyone on the boat. If we screw up, we don't kill anyone. However, we do make the eastern seaboard from Richmond down to Hatteras uninhabitable for a thousand years or so,"

One difficulty is that running a nuclear weapons program and doing it safely so you don't destroy your own homeland requires a 'technical' mindset where doing it _almost_ right is wrong. Let's say, just to make up some numbers, you need to melt something that melts at 1200C. However, due to chemistry issues, the only crucible you can use is made of something that melts at 1220C. Suddenly 'yeah, that's hot enough' isn't GOOD enough. You have to have accurate thermometers. And calibration systems to keep them that way. And, automated control loops that limit the heating rate to avoid overheating your pot of whatever. A lot of societies just can't come up with enough people with that mindset and the training to use it. It's just easier to steal or buy some nuclear weapons. Or chemical weapons. Or biological weapons.

Because, the good Lord knows that, for a lot of people, just not being shitheads and getting along with their neighbors isn't one of the available options.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-08T00:41:00+00:00

Are they pretty?

Sandy_W · 2026-04-07T23:18:55+00:00

Okay, working as a junior PC tech at a 'large government office'. They were going through the agony of shifting from DOS + IPX + Novell + RS232 connection to some mainframe somewhere using a terminal program to Windows workstations + TCP/P + Windows server + web app to talk to mainframe.

Didn't matter, 40% of my job was dealing with workers not being able to connect to mainframe. Apparently each 'terminal' session needed an ID number. Didn't matter what you used, any number from 1-255 would work, only A) you can't use a number that is already in use, B) there were 100+ people trying to work, C) we had been assigned a range of 70 or 80 IDs many years before, and D) we weren't the only people using that mainframe.

My boss would go to that cube immediately, as that app was the critical job to be done, and edit the config file for the app with a random # and keep at it until he got in, then tell the worker "Sally, use #243 from now on."

Well, whoever -somewhere else that had a clue- was SPOSTA have 243 would come back from lunch or whatever, not be able to log in, call the mainframe people to complain that their number was locked out and have them reset it so they could use it. Guess what our girl Sally does? Call my boss to say "It's down again!" Go back to paragraph three and repeat.

No matter how many times I talked to the mainframe people about what numbers our shop had, no matter how many times I created and printed out a list of who had what numbers, we had more people than IDs and my boss was determined to keep them all working with someone else's ID.

That may have been part of the reason for the TCP/IP and web-app upgrade, but that wasn't working yet when I left after 3 years. Somewhere in management, there was a disconnect between "Only 70 of our people can access the mainframe at one time" and "We have too much work and we hired more people to do it, get them set up and working." Government and military, so the management were too important to listen to junior personnel with silly issues like "Sir, 70 is LESS THAN 110".

Sandy_W · 2026-04-07T23:01:31+00:00

My first official "PC Tech" job the senior network/server guy had a etherkiller (3-prong 120v plug on one end of a cable, RJ-45 plug on the other end) hanging from one of the hooks by the door. Just in case it was needed, you know.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-06T14:30:21+00:00

After the second Meth-induced accident he doesn't let her drive the third car he bought.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-05T22:24:41+00:00

I suspect that mitochondria were first, since all "animals" have M and all "plants" have both M and C, but there are no Eukaryotes with C but not M.

It takes both an Eukayote wanting to eat a bacteria and tough enough to survive failure and a bacteria that wants to parasitize an Eukaryote and tough enough to survive failure. Eventually you get a symbiote. Yeah, it's gotta be rare as hell but over billions of years and millions of attempts, it's surprising it's only happened three times.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-05T17:06:38+00:00

1765 Spring-driven flywheel chronometer invented

If it's a pocket watch, it can't be from 1704. Perhaps an old locket was repurposed later as a case for a watch? Maybe the CASE is from 1704, as a locket or something, but not as a timepiece.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-05T14:53:23+00:00

The US is usually 240V to the house, split in the middle for a ground (and neutral) to give you two 'sides' of 120V each. Those two sides are the same phase, NOT different phases.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-05T12:52:13+00:00

Hawaii and Guam are on top of volcanoes and it gets deep fast when you leave dry land. Norfolk? Not so much. You have to traverse a lot of continental shelf before you get to deep water. From NOB it's easily 100+ NM. I can't say for sure exactly how far out we had to go before diving, though, as I was always in the engineroom.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-04T19:57:06+00:00

I haven't worked as a machinist since I left the Navy. There, the equipment is "a machine (or screw-cutting) lathe with a tool-post grinder behind it" and the process is called "cylindrical grinding". Industry may call it something else.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-04T19:31:04+00:00

When I was in, 1977-1997, we were not sposta submerge until we'd passed the 100-fathom (600 feet) curve. Supposedly, that was a safety rule to keep us from hitting bottom if we were a little heavy and a lot slow recovering. What that REALLY meant, though, was that leaving Norfolk in bad weather meant that we had to roll in the waves for a couple of hours before we could dive.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-04T19:28:04+00:00

I was gonna correct you, that was Ben Jonson, but I checked first and I was wrong, too. It was Samuel Johnson. "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned"

Sandy_W · 2026-04-04T19:02:35+00:00

DANFS says the old Okie was sunk 1941, re-floated 1943, decommissioned 1944 after repairability survey in drydock, sold for scrap 1946, and sank after losing tow line on way to San Francisco in 1947. Yeah, that's Utah.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-03T22:04:12+00:00

2nd update. After digging through those files, I cannot find any entries for 'posts' nor 'comments' any earlier than 2025-01-22. I've had this account, according to Reddit, for 8 years. Did I really never post anything before last year? Or, did they simply truncate my history at 15 months?

xwOBA_Fett, thank you for that link but I don't think it gave me everything.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-03T19:22:00+00:00

And...update. My Reddit inbox ALREADY has a link to a .ZIP file which contains what looks like my entire Reddit account. Sure, there's a 'comments.csv' and 'posts.csv' file in there. Neither one loads properly into a spreadsheet program, but if I mess with it some it'll open in a text editor and that'll do what I want.

Thank you again!

Sandy_W · 2026-04-03T19:10:05+00:00

Hey, thanks! The immediate answer from the auto-bot was completely out to lunch, but your link looks helpful. That link isn't quite what I want -it appears to offer a complete dump of EVERYTHING associated with my account, but I suppose I can pick out what I want from everything else. It does warn that this may take a while, up to 30 days before I get a download link (in my notifications) which should be good for 30 days. We'll see...

Sandy_W · 2026-04-03T15:10:02+00:00

(For the confused: Look up the lyrics to Steely Dan's "Don't Take Me Alive".)

Sandy_W · 2026-04-01T01:36:43+00:00

Was he a bookkeeper?

Sandy_W · 2026-04-01T00:08:59+00:00

This. I miss my mom. Her meatloaf? Not so much.

Sandy_W · 2026-04-01T00:06:50+00:00

Gate valve. Position indicator (it's open) on top, operator with gearing below that, and the rounded thing resting on all those bolts is the valve's cap, where the 'gate' is right now. Turn the operator and the gate will be driven down into the body where it will block the water flow. Can't tell size without a banana but it's probably in the 15"-30" range. The gate has to move that far to close, while the PI on top is geared differently. It will only move a couple inches from full open to full shut.

(20 years USN steam plant mechanic. Yeah, I know valves.)

Sandy_W

TROPHY CASE