Competent diagnostic equipment is very expensive and so it the software for each brand/line. For a small shop it's just not feasible to buy it all.:(

I guess so.
 

.

Today I learned I could fell a tree even if I totally misread the lean. Turns out gravity is in charge.

That's a nice piece of timber. Felling is the easy part, catching is tough. ;)

You're supposed to be able to throw your hat out there and land the trunk on it. Takes a minute to get yer hat back.

And don't throw the hard hat out there, if you're good, it gets expensive.

Uncledigr tried it and I put a whole in his fedora.:cool: He wore that holed hat for years.

I'll assume ya got lucky.:o

Picking it up is an absolute bitch.:yesnod:

That I did.

I hope you were wearing your brown pants.

Fortunately, it's too early in the season for white shoes.

I mean really...Who wears white before Memorial Day? Pfft.

Today I learned about the Hells Bells. No, not Hell's, Hells. And they're not really bells, they just look like bells.

Attachment 68174

The article is a pretty interesting read.

In 1933-34 while the Great Depression was in full swing, Chicago staged "A Century of Progress International Exposition." This was a full blown Worlds Fair registered with the Bureau International des Expositions.

Their Motto was...
"Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms"

Today I learned that not all toilet flushing mechanisms are created equal. A few days ago, I picked up a $13 replacement mechanism at the local hardware store. It leaked worse than the mechanism I was replacing. :mad:

Pro tip: pass on everything that isn't a Fluidmaster 400AH High Performance Toilet Fill Valve[/url]. About $6.50 at Walmart.

You'll thank me later. ;)

FIFY.:D

HA!

Well done, sir. Well done.

Pay attention to Glinda because plumbers are going to start becoming scarce in 10 years. :yesnod:

Dude, they're scarce right now! Why do you think I did it myself!?


Ok, not really, I've done this before. I like being able to do little fix-it jobs myself. This new flusher was really easy to install (much easier than the previous, junky, malfunctioning flusher), and when in doubt, there's always YouTube DIY videos.

But beyond all this, I'm not willing to pay $60 just to get some bozo to show up for a little home repair project I can do myself. :banghead:

$60? Would he come in the house or just tell you what to do in the driveway? :haha:

My buddy(the plumber) was at his sister's house when she had a heavily advertised outfit come and as promised in the ads he put on his disposable booties over his shoes. But while he was there he made a half dozen trips out to his truck... with the booties on.:facepalm:

:rolleyes: That's the going rate out here - $60 minimum charge, whether they fix your plumbing problem or not. "Additional charges may apply."

I guess that's better than them never putting the booties on to begin with. I had a guy out here last week to figure out why my internet connection had suddenly died. He wore his big dirty clunky boots into the house every time he came in from his truck. Turns out someone at HQ mixed up my service request order with someone else's and somehow managed to switch our phone numbers. Of COURSE my internet service suddenly disappeared - I'd been given a completely different phone number/account that didn't get internet from that provider.

Repair guy had to go back to the office THREE TIMES to get Eric the Imbecile at HQ to straighten everything out. Tracked crud in on his boots every damned time he came in the house. At least it wasn't raining.

*smh*

Actually those booties will pick up/track in, more shit than a boot will. :haha:

I learned that fresh-water sponges exist.

Very Cool^^^

The surgeon woke up early because he had to perform surgery that morning. He went to take his shower, no water. He placed an emergency call to a plumber who assured him that he would be there and have the situation rectified in plenty of time for the doc to make his surgery.

The plumber came and went to work, and was finished in 20 minutes. He presented the doc with a bill for $400.

The doc said "My God, man, I'm a doctor and even I don't make that kind of money!"

The plumber responded "Yeah, when I was a doctor, I didn't make that kind of money either."

TIL that if you're googling for a wallpaper image, and specify a size, you get a small image on the side of your screen. Click 'view image' to see the full size image, and you don't get that, you get a much smaller image. It's goddamned tiny as a matter of fact. And, no, it wasn't a tile-able image.

Why in God's name allow me to specify an exact size when that mean's absolutely nothing?

It's strange to see Google working at making themselves less relevant.

Oh, and when I went to the site to see the picture, it's bigger than I asked for.

So fuck me today, I reckon.

Today I learned about The Pittsburgh Left.



How I got there.

Aside from not being able to understand the sweety's voice and not being able to figure out the pictures, that was a pretty good video.
When I learned to drive in LA in the '50's, that fast left turn was common. I mastered it.
I have not seen it in at least 40 years.
But it is another reason why self-driving cars are a pipedream, especially in Pittsburgh.

So I wait, even flash my lights and they don't move because they're not paying attention. :mad:

I learned that story bouncing around the net about seeing a plastic bag at the bottom of the Marianas Trench is bullshit.

link

I learned that recent scholarship considers the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin spiriting away +- 130 children to be essentially true. It is a story of emigration rather than rats, pedophilia, plague, or magic. It seems lands in the East had been depopulated by the Mongols and young people in over-populated Germant sought a better life in Transylvania etc...

Slime mold is smart?

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segmen...s-slime-molds/

Despite having no brain or neurons and being just one giant goopy cell, these slime molds keep defying our expectations. They can solve mazes, recreate the Tokyo railway network (animation below), learn, and even anticipate events. They can make rational and irrational choices that mirror our own. Not to mention they’re visually stunning too.

Intelligence is organized matter.

I believe this, and all the weird--ethical?--implications.

...


Earlier, Bruce's Inflation (cosmic) thread had me thinking-- the universe was too hot for atoms to form, for 380,000 years. That's a long time-- long enough for matter, such as it was, to organize into intelligence? Could it have survived, evolved, adapted to a cooling universe, become embedded in the later, more structured matter that was to form? Or, as a rare form of intelligent matter inside the hot soup of exotic stars?

Could things like the unexplained disparity between matter and anti-matter constitute a conscious decision by the universe, or pockets of conscious agency within large chunks of the universe? Kind of like, a huge de-centralized "slime mold" ??

...

What if intelligence is the default state of matter, and we've been grossly mis-classifying what intelligence is?

Slime mold is smarter than most people? Yeah, I'll buy that. :yesnod:

I'll have what flint's having.

I'll buy it, though I tend toward the reverse perspective: it's not that the universe is as smart as we are, it's that we're as dumb as slime molds.

We've been assimilated.
.
.
.
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaw.

Yes, agreed. Not specified in my original post is my militant anti-anthropomorhic perspective. We are an illogical yardstick with which to measure anything against.

it may just be a matter of scale. we may be too small to see the overarching intelligence at work around us.

A-couple-of-days-ago IL ÷ is called an obelus, and TIL use ALT + 246 to type it.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journ...037537669B4B7#

Poop Particles

I've been telling you about poop molecules for years

I thought that had been poo pooed

But hospitals use commercial toilets that flush much more violently than home toilets with a tank. They will stir up a lot more aerosols than yours, and the little yours does kicks up keeps your immune system healthy. If you don't feel your toilet is kicking up enough poop particles scrub the toilet with your toothbrush. :blush:

I clean my Bathroom and don't worry about it.

Today I learned that the word Pączki has a little squiggle on the a, and that squiggle is called an ogonek. Pronunciation of pączki is something like "poonch-key", and the ogonek (which means little tail in Polish) nasalizes the vowel sound.

For the uninitiated, pączkis are a Polish thing - filled heavy donuts eaten on Fat Tuesday, big in Detroit environs -centered around Hamtramck -people will commute quite some distance to get genuine Hamtramck pączkis

Damn it Monster, between the sliced turkey and the grapes is a vast wasteland of baked Sirens calling dieters to their doom. I have never browsed the section and have no trouble resisting the Siren's call. But today, there was a small table all by it's lonesome near the grapes. This scandalous table piled high with...

Attachment 69891

It says Lemon, I couldn't tell, it was just cloying sweet.
The label say each one is 310 calories, 300 from fat.
Hard to believe there is less than 10 calories of sugar.

Only 300? Those must be paczki lite. They are nasty imo. Especially the (very popular) custard and prune varieties

I miss read the label, probably from the sugar rush, only 100 calories from fat.
You can see from the label they are lovingly crafted from only the finest pure ingredients DuPont and Monsanto can supply.

So we find a big enough banana we can build a brain for Commander Data?

Would a positronic brain be made of cisistors?

If bananas generate antimatter, we can use them for the warp drive engines.

We'd need 30,000 pounds of bananas.

and Commander Data to peel them.

Sam Keane says fifty million bananas eaten would be enough to make you radiation-sick from effects of potassium-argon decay.

Of course, other sickening mechanisms come to mind.

Apparently not everyone can do this.

I'm surprised that isn't universal.

Half the time I do it on accident just closing my eyes...

I can easily do it on command, but don't like the sensation. Probably because the muscle doesn't get much use, and so tires quickly, and the sound is annoying. So basically there is no up-side.

Usually I do it involuntarily. I'm going to have to pay attention to why that is. What triggers it.

edit: Or just read the freaking article and learn why I do it involuntarily.

I can't. First weird thing my body can't do. Quite excited by that news when a friend posted it on facebook. This physical freak business gets expensive, especially with age. :D

The article mentions that people who can't do it directly can do it with a big yawn.