W-ainy day

[altivo]

It wained most of the day because it was W-day.

I did get out in the early sprinkle to set more plants out into the garden (hot peppers) and plant some beans. Mosquitoes were fierce, but it was cool enough that I was wearing a long sleeve sweatshirt and sweat pants, so only my hands and face were uncovered. Still, it didn't encourage dawdling.

Watered everything before going back in, but then it began to rain anyway. Slow, gentle rain, the ideal kind for the garden.

On a whim, bought a couple of old slide rules off Ebay. I have a decent one, but it's the student rule that was distributed by the Cleveland Institute of Electronics, and has special scales and a bunch of electronics formulas on the back side. A great tool for doing electronics work, but I wanted a standard log log rule that I could take into an exam with me. The one with all the cheat formulas printed on the back would never do. Settled on a Pickett N-500-ES, the aluminum kind with yellow background instead of white. This one comes with the traditional leather belt holster that all the engineering geeks used to wear when I was in college, and the seller threw in a Dietzgen student rule and case as well. So now I am slide rule "rich."

At work I managed to lock up my desktop computer again, second time in a week, from apparent overheating. Except when the case is opened the heat sinks are barely warm. I suspect a faulty temperature sensor. The problem does appear to be related to BOINC software running in the background and ignoring settings to limit CPU usage. When BOINC is stopped, the problem doesn't occur. So I gave in and am draining the remaining work units from that machine, after which I will shut down BOINC on it.

Installed Virtual Box so I could compare it with VMware. So far, I'm favorably impressed. I loaded it with Debian since I had the installation CD handy, but I will bring my Solaris CD from home and try that next. VMware makes no claim to support Solaris and I haven't tried it with the product, but since Virtual Box is open source ware sponsored by Sun, it explicitly supports Solaris. (But not FreeBSD? I wonder why that is...)

Comments

[flaredragon.livejournal.com]

If it's raining there, then I imagine we'll be seeing it as we drive into your area. Should make for an interesting drive...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Just light drizzle, nothing heavy. I'm sure Dain knows how to manage that. Rain does cause traffic to slow down and jam up around Chicago though.

[cetasdolphin.livejournal.com]

It rained here today as well though quite a bit more than what they were expecting to do.

I used to have to overheating problems all the time with my older machines but my new box I have doesn't. Granted the thing has about 5 fans in it and depending on use it sounds like a jet engine is about to go off.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The fan noise drives me crazy. I've worked with mainframes that made less noise than some of these modern micros.

[cetasdolphin.livejournal.com]

Eh I would blame this on poor design with the cases they are making. They seem to want to force people to buy such things either liquid or oil cooling systems for computers both of which require specialized training to put in and bump up the cost of the machine higher than it should be. Granted I got my current one for 1100 at the time, it does have a quad core processor and a semi highend graphics card in it.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

What's W-day, anyway?

[calydor.livejournal.com]

Wednesday.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Oh, OK! The only thing I could find was this, which seemed less than applicable.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Caly's got it. It's just the Worst day of the Week in my World. I'm an early morning person, and having to work until 8 at night is really, really hard for me. When I was in library school I had an internship that made me work until 9:30 pm and that really messed me up. Fortunately it didn't last long.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah - having your rhythm thrown off is not nice indeed. I'm the opposite myself, but I know what you mean; I always hate it when I have to get up early.

[calydor.livejournal.com]

Since I'm in the mood to make people groan at terrible puns, I need to ask. Your computer gets locked up for BOINCing in the library; is that because of a violation of public decency laws?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, there are times when I think BOINC is in fact a violation of public decency, but that's only due to very lousy programming.

It does tend to draw attention to itself, though. Even though it isn't really overheating, it seems to think it is and cranks the fans up until it sounds like a manic vacuum cleaner on drugs.

[calydor.livejournal.com]

And you know how a manic vacuum cleaner on drugs sounds because ..?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I have an imagination of course. ;p

[saythename.livejournal.com]

You know...back in the Ancient 80s, I used to
think it was funny to buy "old tech" thinking
it would be worth money someday.

"Nerds = Money, they'll like this stuff"

Go Altivo.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Slide rules are not big money, at least not yet. I just paid $10 for two. That's less than the new price was, even corrected for inflation.

There are collectors, of course, and they pay huge prices for unopened boxes and rare models, even the giant six foot wooden ones that used to hang on classroom walls for teaching purposes. I'm told that the original counter displays from bookstores and drafting supply stores go for big bucks. You're probably just a little too young to remember them, but I do. Cylindrical glass or plastic cases with a turntable inside, rotated by a knob on top the way some places display wrist watches today. And of course, once they get the display unit, then they have to get one of each model rule that matches the time period and brand name to fill it up...

But, no, if you just want a slide rule, even one in perfect working condition with the original instruction booklet, you can have it for less than $10 usually.

Back in about 1973 or 4 I remember buying a new one for ten cents, actually. The college book store was getting rid of its entire stock and replacing it with electronic calculators. They sold the "good" models at half price and the cheap plastic "student" models for 10 and 25 cents.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've even seen a real slide rule.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Tsk. Such a kitten you are.

Find one and learn the basics. It's really a brilliantly clever device, and needs no batteries or anything.

A skilled user can produce the answer to a complex scientific calculation faster than a calculator user can. The main limitations are limited precision (usually three or four significant digits) and the fact that it takes more training to use the slide rule than it does for the calculator.

Even there, you can learn simple multiplication, division, and square roots in about three minutes. It's the trigonometry and logarithms that are complicated (and only the big scientific calculators do those at all.)

I imagine you've been exposed to the abacus, Chinese or Japanese style. That's another simple old device that skilled users work wonders on.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Hey I learned to use a manual set of calipers :)
I do still have mum's old abacus, I have seen my grandmother use one amazingly so :) We mainly had to use pencil and paper to do those calculations when growing up.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

We were required to use pencil and paper, yes, until ninth grade (about age 15) when the slide rule was introduced in science classes. In math class, they made us look the logarithms up in a table, add or subtract them on paper, and then get the results back from the table. Not a very practical way of doing math. But the slide rule is so fast it's amazing. The thing is, you have to have a pretty good idea of what the result should be, or you can make serious mistakes.