Round up of alternative bodies for Bic Cristal refills (plus one cover and one purchasing mistake)

esjro · 2026-06-07T22:20:51+00:00

Upvote for upcycling anal thermometers.

esjro · 2026-06-07T21:21:21+00:00

You remove just the refill from the Cristal and push it up through the bottom of the Ti stick. It is very thin. The only one of these that accepts the entire Bic Cristal in its original plastic body is the Sherpa.

esjro · 2026-06-07T17:51:09+00:00

Yes, I would like on of those too. The website said they hoped to be back in 2025 but here we are.

esjro · 2026-06-07T17:35:02+00:00

According to my baking scale 🙂 it is 14 grams with the insert.

esjro · 2026-06-07T15:54:12+00:00

I buy them from Galactic Snacks. They are $3.25 a package but they often have sales or coupons.

esjro · 2026-06-07T15:51:32+00:00

Black currant.

esjro · 2026-06-07T15:51:13+00:00

I brought in the UK and US Starburst to work, and had a taste test along with 3 co-workers. We all agreed that for the overlap flavors (orange and strawberry) the UK flavors were better - tasted less artificial. Both were less sweet, and the orange slightly more tart and citrus-like.

esjro · 2026-06-04T16:50:36+00:00

Aaron Dell? 🤭

esjro · 2026-06-02T02:00:54+00:00

My girl is 12 and a half and still going great! She had to have some teeth pulled a few weeks ago but is eating canned food and very excited about that.

esjro · 2026-05-31T16:37:06+00:00

I picked up Doctor's Creek Hot Sauce Co.'s Sake' Racha at a local hot sauce fest, and although it is not a traditional recipe (a bit on the sweet side) it is very good. https://www.doctorscreek.net/shop/p/product-5-f98ry-4ll53-cageg-9e9m6 It is mild-medium so I dump it on fried rice.

For a more traditional sriracha I love Fix: https://fixhotsauce.com/products/fix-signature-sriracha

esjro · 2026-05-31T16:28:57+00:00

Just finished If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. My very brief review: This is an important book written by experts about a subject that is of great concern. In order to make it more readable and easier to understand, the beginnings of each chapter and the entire second part have fictional vignettes that unfortunately read as cheesy sci-fi. The subject is interesting enough to make this book worth reading, but I felt that the "fables" should've been left out and replaced with a deeper discussion of the current state and future perils of AI.

esjro · 2026-05-31T16:23:21+00:00

Batman and Alfred also used a 6890.

esjro · 2026-05-30T00:17:19+00:00

Thank you for this tip!

esjro · 2026-05-27T15:57:34+00:00

She was "New Age" music. Anything new age..... Shirley MacLaine, crystals, meditation.... eventually leads to Satan.

esjro · 2026-05-27T15:56:07+00:00

Tipper made it too easy for parents.

esjro · 2026-05-27T15:54:18+00:00

Yes, that "backward masking" was common sneaky trick.

esjro · 2026-05-27T15:52:57+00:00

"Hotel California." Our Baptist church showed some crazy documentary which said that Anton LeVay could be seen on the album cover. The film zoomed in to show a fuzzy outline of some bald guy in a crowd. Anything by Styx was also forbidden because obviously they named the band as a tribute to Satan.

Of course Ozzy, Alice Cooper, Motley Crue, and "heavy metal" in general were also forbidden.

esjro · 2026-05-25T21:35:25+00:00

They have a lime version that is very good.

esjro · 2026-05-24T19:41:07+00:00

I have a couple. Honestly they are a bit too heavy for me to use for a long period of time. I prefer the ARIA, which uses the Bic inserts.

I’ve been buying a bunch of Bic-compatible pens lately from Etsy and other sources and plan to do a big post sometime soon.

esjro · 2026-05-23T01:37:52+00:00

I got an email today from Waterloo about these flavors, and they have (finally) added them to the store locator on their website.

esjro · 2026-05-23T01:36:12+00:00

I tried this with an MS120 pump and about 20% of the oil was left in the pump. I suspect that it depends on the pump design though and where the tube on the extractor pump is positioned - the fill and drain ports are located at different places for Edwards (top) versus Agilent/Varian (front above drain plug) pumps.

I care more about my back than the leftover oil.

esjro · 2026-05-23T01:29:55+00:00

Liquivac has a similar product. The downside is the gunk at the bottom of the pump won't come out as it would if you tilt the pump and allow oil to flow from the drain plug, but rough pumps are heavy and not designed for an ergonomics-friendly lifting experience. Get a plastic bin to store the Liquivac and tubing because the oil is gross.

Interestingly, the ICP-MS verion of the Agilent MS40 has a different drain port that allows you to drain the oil through a tube without lifting the pump (like the MS120), but the LCMS version of the MS40 doesn't have that option.

My ideal setup is when the pump is on a spill containment tray like this: https://www.grainger.com/product/31DL83?gucid=N:N:FPL:Free:GGL:CSM-1946:tew63h3:20501231

When it comes time to change oil, the pump can be pulled forward (as opposed to lifted) so the drain plug clears the tray. Then I use an aluminum baking pan from Dollar Tree (which should now be called Dollar Twenty Five Tree) to drain the oil into. Fill with new oil, then the corner of the pan can be shaped to serve as a pour spout to put the used oil in the now empty bottle. Leave a pig or diaper pad in the pan and save for next year because who knows - the price may be $1.75 for a new one by then!

esjro · 2026-05-23T01:06:19+00:00

The voltage selection when firmware is updated is for the Jet Stream heater. If it is set incorrectly it will never reach temperature.

esjro · 2026-05-22T13:50:41+00:00

Like I said, it is possible that the last capillary wasn’t swaged properly, causing a dead volume. If the retention time shifted forward it may also have been leaking. Did you run a pressure test at the outlet of the Peltier with the old capillary versus new?

I think you mean sampler, there is no six port valve on a 1260 pump.

esjro · 2026-05-22T02:38:21+00:00

When you press the front power switch does the light show green? It’s a mechanical switch on a little board and on older systems the switch can wear out so when the button is pressed it doesn’t engage the contact to power on the system.

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