The officially-unofficial "Work is cancelled so it's time to play with my Prop again" thread
JRoark
Posts: 1,215
They say there is a silver lining to every cloud. So when our office had a huddle this AM and decided it was time to close-up shop for a while out of safety concerns, there was an after-discussion about what we would do to pass the time:
SR: "Looks like I'll finally have some time to plant a garden this year"
AD: "I need to clean-out and paint the garage. I've been putting this off forever"
SK: "I'm going to sleep for three days and spend all of my nights soaking in a hot tub"
DW: "I'm teaching my grandson how to carve"
ME: "I'm going to lock myself in my office and play with my Prop"
(-insert the sound of a stunned and uncomfortable silence here-)
They *thought* I was odd before. Now they KNOW I'm at least a half bubble off of plumb.
So in the spirit of commiseration, who else is off work and planning on making some mischief with their Propeller(s)?
SR: "Looks like I'll finally have some time to plant a garden this year"
AD: "I need to clean-out and paint the garage. I've been putting this off forever"
SK: "I'm going to sleep for three days and spend all of my nights soaking in a hot tub"
DW: "I'm teaching my grandson how to carve"
ME: "I'm going to lock myself in my office and play with my Prop"
(-insert the sound of a stunned and uncomfortable silence here-)
They *thought* I was odd before. Now they KNOW I'm at least a half bubble off of plumb.
So in the spirit of commiseration, who else is off work and planning on making some mischief with their Propeller(s)?
Comments
But none of this applies to me. Nothing we do involves large crowds and neither my company nor many of our customers can afford to stop work for a month. Not because we need the money, but because our customers and their customers badly need our services.
I am currently deep into the recoding of a system I built around 1990. Despite several incremental upgrades it's still full of code written when a well-equipped computer had 640K of RAM. And the new system does have a Prop, bridging data between some older serial devices we can't get rid of and the new ethernet-linked system. It's a mission-critical system for an oil refinery and while we've promised to start installing it on April 6, they have hinted really, really hard that if we can have it ready earlier than that they will be ready to go.
A few of my coworkers' wives are teachers, and they have been asked to keep reporting to work while their students stay home. Those with kids of their own are tearing their hair out figuring out how to deal with that. People who depend on the hospitality industry for their livelihood are in panic mode.
While the oil refinery is my current problem I recently put in another system, actually a bunch of identical systems, for a company that makes the mix for daiquiri shops. Let me tell you, when one of your ingredients in a 1,000 liter batch is 80 proof rum, reliability and recoverability after a power failure are top priorities. I expect that customer's demand to explode over the next month.
Its amazing how there is a lack of uniformity anywhere. My wife is a teacher (Houston-ish). They were off on Spring Break when the district “extended” it by a week due to coronavirus concerns. Yesterday they advised all staff to return to school briefly and remove their personal effects from the classrooms. No kids. Schools in her district will be closed “until further notice”. The district right next door has a policy similar to the one you describe.
For the sake of my wife, maybe I should lay-in more rum. She’s stuck with me now!
Quite catchy don't ya think?
Yes, very catchy, but you may still want to hang on to your regular job until you have that first million or two.
All very good points. What really concerns me is that genetic engineering hardware and techniques have now reached the point where a moderately wealthy person can purchase the equipment and pursue it as a "hobby". Having worked in the medical equipment area for many years and seen the safety and containment measures taken by research labs to isolate pathogens from the world at large the thought of a basement genetic research lab gives me the screaming willies.
7,000,000,000 people on this planet?
And Tom Hanks supposedly has it?
And other well known individuals?
H. L. Mencken
Who would be fool enough to think that politicians can lead people to safety? Maga's?
The same "fools" who still believe that hijacked planes hit the twin towers and the pentagon and that OBL was killed and tossed overboard out of respect for Islam on 5/01/11. Many of whom are fans of Greta now.
I cringe when he routinely destroys our language but hey, he's actually trying to follow through on his MAGA.
If I didn't have kids in USA, it would be kinda cool to see the snowflakes experience some socialism, to knock some sense into them. They'd only let it happen once
Personally, I will pull out an old copy of The Stand and re-read it again, the full uncut version or watch it in bits and pieces on youtube if it's not up on Amazon (not Hulu or Netflix, already checked). Then again, if I was a UFO type, Dream Catcher would work as well. Then go to work, business as usual.
Back to debugging my date/time library...
Sure, didn't you read/see "Inferno"? Tom Hanks solves puzzle clues in a race to prevent the intentional release of a killer virus. The movie ending is completely different than the book, thankfully. Typical Hollywood, but much more exciting than the book's final futile fizzle.
As to my gripe of non-uniformity regarding schools etc, the governor of Az just closed all schools in Az.
https://google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=29&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwihluqjk57oAhWPFjQIHXqhB0kQFjAcegQIARAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fazgovernor.gov%2Fgovernor%2Fnews%2F2020%2F03%2Fgovernor-doug-ducey-and-superintendent-kathy-hoffman-announce-closure-arizona&usg=AOvVaw27zW3EbundBAP2Cg2R8mUl
Has anybody seen Jaws and his girlfriend around lately?
As I mentioned earlier my company is not affected by this, so I continue to work. Also the construction guys who are putting in my new kitchen don't seem to be affected.
ORDER OF THE HEALTH OFFICER OF THE COUNTY OF ALAMEDA DIRECTING ALL INDIVIDUALS LIVING IN THE COUNTY TO SHELTER AT THEIR PLACE OF RESIDENCE EXCEPT THAT THEY MAY LEAVE TO PROVIDE OR RECEIVE CERTAIN ESSENTIAL SERVICES OR ENGAGE IN CERTAIN ESSENTIAL ACTIVITIES AND WORK FOR ESSENTIAL BUSINESSES AND GOVERNMENTAL SERVICES; EXEMPTING INDIVIDUALS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS FROM THE SHELTER IN PLACE ORDER BUT URGING THEM TO FIND SHELTER AND GOVERNMENT AGENCIES TO PROVIDE IT; DIRECTING ALL BUSINESSES AND GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES TO CEASE NON-ESSENTIAL OPERATIONS AT PHYSICAL LOCATIONS IN THE COUNTY; PROHIBITING ALL NON-ESSENTIAL GATHERINGS OF ANY NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS; AND ORDERING CESSATION OF ALL NON-ESSENTIAL TRAVEL
DATE OF ORDER:
MARCH 16, 2020
It is something already familiar around the world. Take it seriously. Yes, I'll line up projects to to work on from home, thankful I can do that. There is loophole for travel to a place of work to fetch tools necessary for work from home. If I run out of Propeller projects, my wife has a long list of @home projects waiting!
My day job is law. I just received an email from the chief judge that a “quarantine court” has been set-up to deal with the due process issues arising from anyone who has tested positive but refuses to voluntarily self-isolate. This court will also hear matters pertaining to refusals to test when symptoms are consistent with Covid-19. In that same email, all of my hearings and trials for the next 60 days were summarily reset. The unspoken undertone was the courthouse is basically closed, and unless you have a darned-Skippy good reason to be there, dont show up.
So yeah. I’ve got my P2-Eval Rev B board, a nice cache of adult beverages, and I’m not afraid to use either of them!
Think of it as "brain sanitizer".
The Sturgeon Genteel says: "When used as directed, the Parallax P2 has shown remarkable efficacy in the treatment of pre-COVID-19 symptoms: boredom, listlisness, depression and bing-watching "Lord Of The Flies" on Netflix."
Go with it.
I must be playin golf, because this is all par for the course.
Cause and Effect. The prior matters for the future.
It now haunts us.
Some cheap switching power converters I ordered from China a month ago are still held up. So with all this free time I undertook to make my own. Got a big ferrite toroid out of my stash two days ago, wrapped a primary and secondary, wired up a power MOSFET, programmed a P1 to drive its gate (via a gate driver IC that won't be named to avoid upsetting tonyp12), and fired a test kiln with it. (The test kiln tests glazes and not power converters - except in rare circumstances.)
This same P1 gets a 4-to-20 mA input from a thermocouple transmitter. Closing the loop allows precise firing profiles to be automated. So now I have even more time to kill.
I fixed that for ya.