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Something similar happened to one of my cousins on a bicycle. He was doing 45 mph and went off the road. The bike ended up wrapped around a lamp post and he walked away. I guess the fact that this guy survived shows that Darwin's Law doesn't always work. :mrgrn:

Exactly. I'm 5'9" and my weight the last ten years has fluctuated between 170 and 190. I don't look fat outside of a bit of flab around me stomach(which goes away when I'm around 170 or thereabouts). Most people my height would look like fat slobs at 180. For the same volume muscle weighs...

Better yet, lower the power requirements enough, and/or use the case for passive cooling of the processor and hard drives, and you get rid of the fans entirely. The point of having no fans is that you have a sealed case(no dust) and only noise from the drives. This can only help from a...

Short term, no. Long term, maybe but not likely. Brushless fans use mosfets to power the various motor windings in sequence. When the motor is spinning the back EMF increases the resistance of the windings, limiting current to a safe value. If the fan stops spinning the winding resistance is...

Merc, you're exactly right that our relationship with our pets is special because we don't understand literally what they are saying to us, yet they somehow get the message across. Suzy had her own repertoire of sounds, as did Tiger. Over time I knew when they were hungry, happy, sad, wanted...

My brother put up Suzy's picture. This was taken a few months ago:

Unfortunately, threads like this are getting to be a regular thing for me. :( Our cat Suzette passed away at 5:45 PM this past Thursday(July 24). She was a beautiful Persian with a sweet disposition, and she enjoyed the same type of special relationship with my mother that I did with Tiger...

One of the problems with migration to a smaller transistor size is increased leakage current, meaning that even if the clock speed is zero the chip will still have a substantial power dissipation. Besides that, the other reason behind the large power dissipation is obvious-the 3.60 GHz clock...

I remember when my family moved to where I am today 25 years ago. We didn't have half the crap we have now, and it was not something I would care to repeat. I also remember having to move stuff to my dorm room when I slept away at college. Doing this every semester quickly got tiring. After...

They've completely slipped my mind for some reason. I usually think of Maxtor, WD, Seagate, Fujitsu, and Samsung when I think of hard drives. I guess ever since IBM's reliability fiasco they've been off my radar.

The problem is getting the heads to switch from one disk to another for starters. The higher the areal density(and or the rotational speed) the longer this takes. Compounding this is the problem that head racks for multiple disks are just harder(i.e. more expensive) to build as areal density...

This statement is basically telling me that the HDD industry sees ~1Tbit per in² as the limit of magnetic recording. There is no mention of what technology, if any, might be suited for densities beyond that. (note:1Tbit/in² ~ 1.5 TB/platter using 3.5" platters). Another noteworthy item is...

IRAQ AL QUEDA The connection is as clear as can be. :mrgrn:

This should read as "The time came not too long before I was officially laid off that I was asked to document everything." I certainly didn't volunteer to do that on my own. :wink:

Kind of funny you mentioned that because the last place I worked had a penchant for asking us to do things like that. Their justification of it was "What happens if you die tomorrow and nobody knows how to do your job?". My short and sweet answer was hire somebody with a good education and...

You certainly have a point about "getting away from it all". The thing is you choose the time and place when you're going to do it. Being suddenly thrust in that situation would undoubtably be less pleasant. Camping was never my cup of tea, although this is more due to the lack of proper...

Interestingly, if power outages here were as regular as those experienced by Mercutio they probably would bother me less, and I would be more likely to have a large collection of UPSs to deal with them. Rather, what we have is generally an interruption of a few seconds perhaps every month or...

A stray tree limb knocked down a power line on my block. We were without power for about 4 hours. This got me thinking how dependent upon electricity we as a people are. The sad fact was that for the whole time I literally couldn't do anything other than watch them working on the power lines...

Good story so far Mercutio. I admire anyone who can write fiction like that. I've been told I can write but I haven't written anything non-technical in years. Problem with writing fiction for me is just getting started and then shutting out the world until it's finished. I have a...

Watch TV. It works almost every time for me.

Exactly the point, Doug. I believe in winning arguments based of facts. I also think there are times when if others present convincing evidence or facts you weren't aware of you need to be flexible enough to modify your beliefs. Sadly, I see this facet of online discussion deteriorating in...

I completely missed this thread since I haven't looked in the feedback section for a long time so I hope my thoughts aren't too untimely(I know PW and honold are both gone). I'm a regular visitor to both sites for different reasons. I don't feel obligated to post on either unless I feel I have...

Isn't this beating a dead horse? You can not like how something is run but still take advantage of it and enjoy it. Heck, I can't stand how New York City is run for the most part but I still love it and enjoy it. What's the big deal if there are three mods anyway? You have to be really over...

Looks like those were taken during one of her quieter moments. She's a tiny little thing. Do you know how old she is?

Maybe have an emergency button which if pushed takes you to the nearest hospital.

I think Howell was saying that in jest but in any case consider what existed prior to the Interstate highway system. We had a huge interconnected network of railroads and local trolley lines that could get you to within a few blocks of where you wanted to go except for remote rural areas. Had...

You guys are missing the point. With automation there wouldn't be emergency situations that need to be reacted to(at least on limited access roads without pedestrians and cyclists). As for reacting to, say, a child running into the street to get a ball any automated system can do so far faster...

:o Yet another good reason for driverless cars. :o

I got into the habit of brushing my teeth a few times a day after I spent over $7,000 on dental work. As for cleanings, the last one was in 1994(I think). Hopefully I'll have good news when I go for my next check up.

Nope. The CPU runs the instructions in the BIOS. My systems won't even post without RAM either. I'm guessing you just fried the CPU and everything else should be OK. I thought newer CPUs had built-in thermal protection such as clock throttling once the die temperature exceeded a certain...

Sounds intruiguing. Might be something I would want to use for thermoelectric modules as well if the price is right. On the flip side if the two mating surfaces are well machined to a flatness of +-0.001" even standard thermal paste will give an thermal impedance of about 0.05°C/W per in² of...

I hate the things with a passion. When I go out I specifically don't want to be bothered with phone calls. I'm thinking most people don't really need them either given most of the idiotic conversations I hear. My favorite is people who grocery shop on a cell phone. Haven't these people heard...

They are if you have enough of them. I lit up the inside of my 1 cubic foot thermoelectric freezer with ten white LEDs consuming 0.9W. The light level inside approximates a fairly well lit room. You could certainly read a book placed inside it if you wanted to. Some numbers for efficiency of...

82% transmission efficiency-not as bad as I thought. This works out to a net efficiency of 65.6 lm/W if you're starting off with an 80 lm/W cool white tube. The efficiency of my GE Chroma 50s are 56 lm/W although I can get full spectrum T-12 tubes with efficiencies of 90 lm/W for only $9 from...

CF bulbs are killed just as quickly by frequent starting as the linear tubes are which is why you don't see them used inside refreigerators, for example. It's inherent in the technology. Each time the tube starts some of the emitting material is blown off the cathodes. This same material is...

Indeed. What I thought was most interesting here was the graph that shows just how much red incandescents have in their spectrum. To me they always distorted colors but I didn't realize how badly until I saw that graph. I guess fluoro tubes with large gaps in their spectrum do the same...

It's interesting that something like this is made. The main drawback I see with it is that it cuts out some of the light(and therefore reduces efficiency), and that the filters + cheap cool white bulbs cost more than I'm paying for full-spectrum tubes. I was trying to find out exactly how much...

I downloaded and listened to one of the movies after I made that post so I think you're right about how it works(sorry, I guess I've watched too much Star Trek). I would imagine being water soluble it might be possible to remove it fairly easily, but it is evidently too time consuming to try to...

If I had to guess I would say they found some way of putting a bar code on the water molecules. Under a scanning electron microscope(the kind that enables you to see atoms) this bar code would be clearly visible. Other than that I don't see how you would be able to distinguish water molecules...

Sorry about that. :mrgrn: :oops:

From the bidder's standpoint I notice auctions ending during "primetime(7 PM -12AM)" seem to fetch more. Ditto for anything ending on weekends(preferably also during "primetime"). Conversely, I've been able to pick up some real bargains when the auction ends at something like 4AM on a...

My dental history is, well, similar. :( I didn't go to the dentist for something like ten years and I like eating sweets. One day I realized my home-made attempts to alleviate pain, including my lame attempts at fillings, weren't cutting it any more. This was when I was 29. One year and...

Strangely enough I came upon that very same article when I was learning all about fluorescents a few months back. I've found the whole subject quite a bit, well, illuminating. ;) I really like your ideas for LED lighting. They might very well be feasible in 5 years as LEDs decrease in cost...

I'm not quite sure how everyone else here is interpreting that cloud, but to me it's most definitely not as NASA described(a superhero flying through a cloud, arm up, with a saved person in tow below). I'm thinking more along the lines of a vulgar gesture particularly common especially among...

I think the $30 figure comes from what the employee actually costs the employer. A friend of mine who owns a business and has no health insurance for his employees said that right off you add about 50% to the actual hourly salary for matching Social Security, unemployment insurance, disability...

:o :o :o Anybody remember Jaws? I never went to the beach again after I saw that movie. Since I was a kid when I saw it I was even afraid in the bathtub for a few months afterwards. Assuming this picture isn't Photoshopped that guy is nuts to be anywhere near the water.

I'm surprised that it only supports 4GB of RAM. Seems like that might limit it down the road.

Especially for crap like a Britney Spears CD. :( While I find prices for DVDs slightly more justified than those of CDs it would be better if they cost the same as VHS movies. The :evil: RIAA :evil: uses piracy to justify all sorts of Nazi-like schemes such as DRM that they wish to impose...

Home Depot of all places had electronic ballasts for 40 watt T-12 tubes(I had almost given up looking). A little pricey at $21.97 each but still inexpensive enough to try. I just purchased and installed two today in the shoplights in my workroom. I'll keep the old magnetic ballasts which...

Exactly. M$ complains about piracy but keeps prices at a high enough level to make risking selling pirated software worthwhile. If M$ Office were, say, $25 for a home user you just wouldn't get people selling pirated copies on the streets for $10 to $15. Ditto for the recording and movie...