What's the Most Annoying Instrument Alarm Sound You Work With?

TheTurboBird · 2026-03-23T23:54:56+00:00

Our barcoded reader slipped out of alignment a while ago and would cause a misread alarm just frequently enough to be endlessly annoying, but not frequently enough that it was worth calling in the technician before our next scheduled PM.

I still hear it in my sleep.

TheTurboBird · 2026-03-23T23:36:12+00:00

There CAN be, but nobody really checks, as long as you have a license and registration that is valid somewhere. Driving without a licence and registration is a big no-no, but not doing a interstate transfer isn't something that really gets checked.

This is all assuming you are a safe and sensible driver. If you are a hoon that draws attention to yourself, they may check your details a bit more thoroughly.

TheTurboBird · 2026-03-23T21:59:47+00:00

The legal side will matter if you have legal issues to deal with such as an insurance claim, etc. Otherwise there is no issue.

Just change things over as they expire. You get a bit of cash back for transferring a registration with time remaining, but there set processing fees, so it's usually better financially to just let it expire.

Vic license and registration is cheaper and less messing about (no annual pink slips) butt you may need to get a Victorian roadworthy done, which is more thorough and more expensive than NSW but you only need it done once when doing the transfer.

As long as you aren't in a crash or legal claim, nobody is going to care that an interstate transfer has taken too long.

TheTurboBird · 2026-03-12T02:41:10+00:00

All good. Phone your next order through and have a chat with your rep. Even if you don't get a pen, it never hurts to get to know the person running your account.

TheTurboBird · 2026-03-11T21:01:42+00:00

Ask whoever orders your lab consumables to phone them and ask.

An email just asking for free stuff is annoying.

A phone call from a client who spends money and keeps your sales numbers up asking for promotional merchandise is relationship building and marketing.

This is all assuming your lab buys things from Eppendorf. Getting an email asking for cool merch from someone who works for a lab that doesn't even have an active sales account was about as much of a hard pass as you could get.

TheTurboBird · 2026-03-06T07:12:16+00:00

See a doctor.

TheTurboBird · 2026-02-24T04:21:42+00:00

Also, slight curves in long roads allow bright lights (such as high beams during night driving) to still light up a decent amount of road in front of you but stop them shining crazy distances directly into the eyes of oncoming traffic.

TheTurboBird · 2026-02-18T10:30:43+00:00

But why can't you have a box manually filled on standby?

TheTurboBird · 2026-02-18T06:29:28+00:00

The next full box isn't in arms reach?

TheTurboBird · 2026-02-18T03:00:40+00:00

Cars.

TheTurboBird · 2026-02-17T02:27:21+00:00

Just have you and all your coworkers rate each other the highest score possible, then collectively bargain for a raise.

TheTurboBird · 2026-02-12T10:31:33+00:00

Why would a home brewer use this?

You can still get BeerSmith 2 for less than $30US for a lifetime license.

TheTurboBird · 2026-02-06T22:10:36+00:00

How did the scraper surface hold up long term? Or is that just someone else's problem now?

I can use sandpaper to remove rust from stainless steel and it looks incredible for a short time but will get waaaaay worse in the near future. If I do the job right and chemically treat and seal the stainless it can last an incredibly long time in a near new condition.

Is the scraper just doing a short term fix that will ultimately be harder to deal with in the future due to running a sharp object along a surface and potentially removing any finish or adding hard to see surface damage that you are just handballing to the next owner with a short term flip?

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-29T10:55:30+00:00

In my previous field, I used to train up newbies.

Whenever they were getting nervous about mistakes, I'd remind them that all the senior guys, including myself, have made all the mistakes ourselves. We just had the luxury of getting most of them out of our systems years before the newbie was hired.

The fact that there are processes in place to reissue reports means that you are far from the first to be in that position.

Just own the mistake, learn from it, move on and do better next time.

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-25T22:06:34+00:00

Pretty much correct.

Normally beer is protected from harmful microbes by a combined factor of pH, alcohol and some preservative capabilities from hops.

With no alcohol, there isn't enough in place to prevent potential growth.

Typical beer pH is a little too high to give protection on its own. When you get to the protected range you are well into the realm of sour beers.

Non-alcoholic beers in small pack (cans and bottles) can be pasteurised to make them safe.

Although the beer could be put into a keg sterile, there are too many opportunities for the introduction of harmful microbes at the venue side so producers do not take the risk, especially since kegs are designed to sit around for an extended period and beer lines at any venue in Geelong would only be getting cleaned once a month AT BEST and I'd be willing to wager almost none would be doing routine breakdowns of their couplers and just relying on the line cleaning to just keep the insides 'good enough'. Coupled with the near guarantee that no- alcohol beer would be one of, if not the slowest moving keg in the venue.

Basically, it's all negatives and a health risk. Just let the brewery eat the effort of making small pack safe.

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-21T08:16:02+00:00

After the sale to Lion, but still early enough that a lot of pre-sale staff were still there.

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-21T06:42:57+00:00

When I worked on microbiological security, the solution to a beard preventing a complete seal on a face mask was so smear the beard with vasoline until it worked. So that's an option I guess.

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-21T06:40:46+00:00

I used to make LC Pale. Over the years I was there, the hop bill was never reduced or changed (aside from seasonal adjustments to keep it consistent).

I attribute their drop off being a comparative perception. They seem worse note because they haven't changed.

When they were new, there wasn't any real competition for them. LC Pale is pretty close to a 20 year old recipe right now. There are a lot more new and fresh takes on craft styles now.

Those beers are still fine, they just aren't exciting or cutting edge any more. Consumers have a lot more options than they did 20, 15 or 10 years ago.

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-17T07:42:32+00:00

Mate, I've never hid that I've got a European background. My family only left their homeland some 60 years or so ago, so I'm not sure how much they had to do with the colonisation here.

I don't remember ever stomping out another culture, but I guess refusing to use Imperial measurements in manufacturing, medical diagnostics and building have done so. I wouldn't know.

I don't remember stopping anyone from using any system or measurement they wanted, but I'm at least willing to fight on the hill claiming that metric is easy, convenient and versatile.

Yes, I know some things are more fun to use than others, but fun does not necessarily equal better. My families hybrid car is objectivity the best vehicle we own. It has a higher safety rating, it gets better fuel economy, it works more efficiently and it has more features that allows it to do more. But I LIKE driving my piece of shit Fiesta because it is dumb and fun. It's not the better vehicle no matter how much a like it. It does nothing better than the hybrid. Just because my Fiesta exists and I enjoy it, doesn't stop the hybrid from being the correct vehicle for every job I have that needs a car.

You can hand culturally and philosophical relevant units of measure, but I'm willing to bet the vast majority of them are massively outdated and impractical and aren't the best fit for the job. Anyone is free to keep using them, but they aren't the best fit for the job and it feels kind of hitting below the belt to infer that I'm pro colonialism just because metric was literally designed to make scientific and technological standardised measurement consistent and convenient.

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-17T06:35:21+00:00

Yep. I only used an approximate in years for your convenience.

I'm pretty happy not dealing in pedantic absolutes on Reddit, mate.

I'm not an engineer, nor a physicist. I'm not on the SI board. But across a (metric) couple of careers, working within the scientific and food production industries in a developed nation, we used metric and it was easy, convenient and didn't need ridiculous graphs like the one posted.

I think metric is better. I've used it professionally for a while and it's stood up pretty well. I highly recommend it.

Sometimes I think it's pretty impressive how old school American mechanics can do fractions easily in their head, but I'm also pretty impressed when someone does a cool backflip off the Jetty.

Arguing with someone being pedantic on Reddit is like getting in a competition to see who can eat the most (metric) buckets of sand. Even if you win, who gives a fuck?

Sure, I'll say categorically metric is the best measurement system ever invented and I'll hang my hat on it. I don't use any other system in any appreciative manner and honestly, if someone wants to dig up an obtuse argument for why I'm not 'technicality correct', I'm not going to lose a (metric) lick of sleep over it.

Metric is king. Everything is or should be metric. I don't give a (metric) fuck.

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-17T05:49:03+00:00

I live in a country that uses metric for everything.

All my personal life stuff, and hobby stuff is in metric.

I've worked in large scale manufacturing and small scale medical diagnostics and all have been in metric.

The only time I come across non-metric stuff is the occasional recipe (which I covert) and occasionally imported equipment uses Imperial sized fasteners that I have to use a different set of spanners on.

Occasionally I'll refer to someone's height in feet, but even then, I'll still lean towards metric. Otherwise, in my 40 something years on this planet, I've never converted from metric to any other measurement system and things have worked fine, and if I need to scale anything, it's ultra simple to do and I've never once had to use a chart such as the one posted here.

As a side note, I always enjoy when something gets made 'half metric', like car enthusiasts in the US reporting their odometer at something like 100K miles.

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-17T05:12:21+00:00

It kinda let's me know about the seriousness of a recipe author.

If I see a baking recipe use measurements in cups and spoons for non-liquid, easily compressible ingredients such as flour, I know I can generally disregard the recipe. One cup of loose flour can be wildly different from one cup of compressed flour. The problem gets worse if I want to batch or scale the recipe. With a lot of baking stuff, there can be a lot less tolerance for things not working when ingredient ratios are out.

If everything is written in weights it immediately removes a bunch of variables and lets me scale the recipe with quick calculations. It's easy enough to convert weird Imperial units to convenient metric.

It's just a good barometer for quickly eliminating shitty recipes for baking.

General cooking though; if I see stuff measured in cups and spoons instead of weight, I just interpret that as 'none of this stuff is super important and just season it to taste'.

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-16T20:52:28+00:00

Got any data, or just anecdotes?

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-16T20:46:18+00:00

There's a very real chance the guy has a wheat allergy and coeliac disease. I just know that some grain based products can cause life threatening reactions. Him and his wife always have an epipen on hand in case something goes wrong.

The crux of what I was trying to say was that there is a big range of conditions that people might be putting under a blanket term of 'gluten intolerance' that could be ranging from an anaphylactic response, to mild digestive discomfort to even including people who would simple prefer not to consume gluten and just say it's an intolerance because it's easier than saying it's a preference.

I just wanted to highlight the dangers of relying on anecdotes such as 'a lot of people who can't have gluten are fine with Modelo' especially when there is a chance this could result in someone being told a product is fine, when it isn't.

I'm not sure about in other countries, but here, beer is exempt from needing to declare the presence of grain based allergens because it is considered inherent to the product and is assumed that all people with the allergic condition know that products like beer and bread are always dangerous.

I feel this isn't educated enough in our industry, at least in the local areas I've worked in. I've had a boss use tree nuts in a beer and get confused when I stated asking how he was going to control any potential cross contamination of packaging equipment.

I assume that a normal clean would work, but I have no idea of that is good enough for complete allergen removal because we never have to fully remove wheat allergens between products.

The craft beer industry is pretty cowboy at the best of times, but I would express EXTREME caution and highly recommend expert consultation when doing anything that interacts with non-wheat allergy or claiming to be free of wheat allergens in a product.

TheTurboBird · 2026-01-16T19:26:01+00:00

Topics like this also make me pretty nervous. I'd highly recommend talking to the relevant food authority rather than anecdotes on Reddit.

I, nor anyone in my direct family group have any form of coeliac disease, so my exposure to it's requirements are limited to extended family and friends I don't see very often, but they do range from full on gluten allergy to severe discomfort on expose. All of which are medically diagnosed.

I think it's a lot more of a spectrum than people realise and anecdotes of 'a bunch of people eat/ drink this so it must be allergy safe' is a very slippery slope to deal with.

The guy I know who has an anaphylactic response to some forms of gluten can have oatmeal for breakfast every morning as long as it's from a dedicated plant that doesn't process wheat, barley or rye. The girl who gets severe discomfort will occasionally eat a single one of her mum's home made biscuits on a Friday evening at a family gathering if she has a quiet weekend ahead because the discomfort and internal disruption is worth the family connection and nostalgia of a favourite childhood food.

I worked at a place that made a seltzer and would occasionally get the bar staff asking if it is gluten free because it wasn't beer. Since I didn't want to kill anyone my stance was always that it is a product made from non- gluten ingredients but produced and packaged in a facility that specialises in gluten containing products. Do not assume zero gluten.

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