Redhorse cafe

[subeeds]

Here's what it looks like to me: Your preferred group of hulking, concussion-collecting men, in funny clothes, carry a weirdly shaped, brown leather fetish over a painted line more times than another group of similarly attired men on the same patch of fake grass.

Look at the nice shapes under the funny clothes. We could use a waggling eyebrow emoticon.

[Toolbox]

When I read things like that, I realize I may well be from another planet. I grew up in Pittsburgh, back in the Terrible Towel, "One for the Thumb" days and have lived for 2 decades in a state where high school football is a religion. My family drank iced tea from a collection of McDonalds glasses with Mean Joe Greene on them until Bush 41 was in the White House. But, I still don't get it.

Here's what it looks like to me: Your preferred group of hulking, concussion-collecting men, in funny clothes, carry a weirdly shaped, brown leather fetish over a painted line more times than another group of similarly attired men on the same patch of fake grass. To celebrate their physical prowess, you overturn cars, loot, smash windows and assault people. Makes sense in a way that absolutely does not.

I'm not a football fan either and I can't stand the crazy fans, I just can't help but roll my eyes when I see them drunk a rowdy. The only sport that I care about is lacrosse, more specifically box lacrosse. With that said I only have to pretend to care about the Eagles and football.

[Toolbox]

One of the thing about working for such a large institution that is border line annoying are the annual "Goals" that we have to create, submit, and review at some later point in the year. They're just a waste of time since most people just create goals that are nothing more than what they already are doing or are already part of their jobs. I got a notice today that I had to have 4 of them submitted by end of business today!

[OLChemist]

Hot tea, please.

The plant were I works is small for a production facility and rather old. The heat/AC is not divided into a lot of zones. Our process uses steam heated equipment. The steam pipes are mounted on the ceiling of the production area, which is the floor of my office and lab. Most of the time, my office and lab are quite warm to hot. It is fun to dress for 27F outside, 72F in the rest of the building and 78-85F in my office. But on days when the boiler is off, I have no heat. They just started the boiler, it will be couple hours before the floor heats up. It's still 65F in my office. I'm huddled over the vents on my computer.

[Toolbox]

I feel 'ya on the cold office. They started phase 2 of the renovation , which is replacing the windows and the rest of facade. What is annoying is the fact that they decided to remove all of the windows first and insert plywood with foam insulation on it instead of remove and install the new ones right away. Now the building is not insulated properly and very drafty. I normally don't like to wear long sleeve shirts but I'll make an exception for today.

[Broken Arrow]

Are you sure that you are in the USA?

OLChemist, that sounds as if you were working in an municipal facility in Germany or school. They only knew two states; heater on max or off. Normal condition is overheated.

I can offer heated floor, floor temperature to be 96,8 F. The switch was close to shutting down.

Toolbox, have you ever heard of "Schilda" and the "Schildburger"? Sounds like your company is located there.

Take care of yourself and don't catch a cold.

[wardancer]

COFFEE !!!!! Long week and it's only thursday ! LOL

[subeeds]

COFFEE !!!!! Long week and it's only thursday ! LOL

Ain't that the truth.

[Broken Arrow]

LOL, stretched weekend from Thursday through Sunday to Wednesday over here.

I am tempted to run away for this period of the year.

[OLChemist]

Caffeine. The delivery vehicle isn't that important.

I need to whip my bits into gear for the weekend. I came out of my house two days ago and dang near tripped over a "parade route" sign. Lo and behold, the neighborhood Mardi Gras parade route has been changed. If I want to go anywhere Sat afternoon, I have to leave before the streets close at 3pm. I'm usually coming back from the studio then, so I'm going to have to go, much earlier in the morning. And I need to get anything loose off my porch and secured before the event. Last time a parade went down our street, I found a strange toddler on my porch making mud pies with cat kibble in my outdoor cat's water bowl, while his parents tried to help his sibling catch flying halloween candy.

There is a fair chance we're going to have sleet and freezing rain overnight Sat. I have to move my trip to the market to Sat morning. I shop at 6am because in addition to loathing my fellow man, especially when he surrenders control of a grocery cart to the bumper car trained, unlicensed minor drivers in the family, I hate shopping. It goes way better when I'm in my awake, capable of complex tasks, but pre-verbal state. I only have to navigate around the folks stocking the shelves.

Sat is looking crazy. And I'm going to need to sneak out early, so I can clear my porch off.

[Toolbox]

Are you sure that you are in the USA?

...

Toolbox, have you ever heard of "Schilda" and the "Schildburger"? Sounds like your company is located there.

Take care of yourself and don't catch a cold.

A few weeks ago I thought we were in Winterpeg (Winnipeg), Canada with the extreme lows but now we are moving into more of a Seattle/Vancouver like weather, which is mild and tons of rain. I think my state is trying to be Canadian, we even have Timmys!

I've never heard of those places that you mentioned.

[Toolbox]

I got a free day off of work yesterday because the Eagles won on Sunday and the parade was yesterday, which was going to disrupt the entire city. They closed down major roads, public transit was running on a super limited schedule, and the parade was cutting right through our "Center City" campus.

I stayed home and got high off of soldering fumes working on a little side project. I'm building a portable controlled scoreboard with a timer, which contains 77 segments plus a common ground for a total of 154 connections which will be bussed and multiplexed and driven by a driver chip and 3 transistor arrays. I still have much more to do yet, including finishing the digits, wiring in the micro controller and programming it, power supplies, keypads, buttons, and building the enclosure - all of which are not included in the 154 solder connection count above. I plan on trying to get as much of it finished this weekend but I ran out of pin headers and M-F Dupont jumpers - so that mare slow me down a bit. Maybe it'll be finished in time for next Sunday's pick-up lax game, if not we still have the app on the iPad, which is annoying to use because the iPad doesn't work with the gloves on.

[OLChemist]

I'm impressed. You either found chips where you can still solder connections, or you've got some d*nm agile hands.

[Toolbox]

I'm impressed. You either found chips where you can still solder connections, or you've got some d*nm agile hands.

I'm using DIP chips. The main drivers for the timer and scores and quarter/period are MAX7219, which are in 24 pin DIP packages and the Darlington Arrays (2 ULN2803 and 1 TBD62783APG) are each 18 pin DIP packages. For the MCU I'm just using an Arduino dev board since they are cheap, ready built, and very easy to program. The LEDs just come in strips that get cut to length and each strip get a power connection and a ground, which both are controlled by the Darlington arrays, which are controlled by the MAX7219, which is controlled by the MCU. I have, however, drag soldered surface mount devices with fine pin-pitch leads, it's actually pretty easy to do so long as there's solder mask between the pads. I'll post pictures once I have it up and running. If it all works out I may layout a PCB in CAD and send it off to somewhere like Oshpark and get a run of a proper PCB made.

[OLChemist]

You need to get one of Lady Ada's UART/BLE boards. You can send your scores to a nice match tracking app on your phone.

A few years back, I used Advanced Circuits to get some sensor boards made up. They did nice work.

I used one of those design your own PCB's for some high speed amplifiers for some PMT's. It was not good, but that was on me. The chemist doesn't have the best electronics background. I made some leads too long and they were perfect antenna for the 10Hz burst of EMI off the pockel-cell in my laser. I let the pros do it now.