Hey! Nuclear reactors can’t get married.

Nucleaophobe...

Today, I saw a photograph of a laptop computer inside a Little Caesar's box. And on the side of the box was a message stating "Franchise Opportunities Available."

I'd never really thought too much about the ownership model of Little Caesar's. Logically, it does make sense that they'd be a franchise operation, rather than all stores being corporate-owned.

But for some reason, that idea is hard for me to process. Because it requires accepting the notion that a large number of presumably sane and rational people, with decent credit ratings and access to capital, have thought to themselves "Yes, I would like to own and operate a Little Caesar's. That is definitely a good idea."

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...ca51ce3de4.png
(stolen from the cats thread)

I don't understand this cartoon, but that's not the point.

However it got me thinking, here we use cards/tap-and-go/phone payments extensively and this got a massive boost during covid where some outlets had signs up 'no cash', including for a cup of coffee. Since we are not a tipping culture thankfully, the fact that payment is automatically transferred from the register to the pos machine, that is the all up cost including any taxes, but no discretionary 'tip', and we just wave a phone or a card and go our way.

I know USA has been slow to adopt pos payment, internet banking and so on, that's fine its only convenience and efficiency involved. But the dam will break (has?), and can the pos equipment effectively replicate the tipping environment? The day has come here where many people (me included) simply don't carry cash, so the tips jar, and the busker's hat, etc, are having a lean time. Given the important place of tips in the incomes of so many people in USA, what are the implications of the march of this particular technology?

https://www.todayifoundout.com/index...sible-tip-cow/

In Canada, the cash machine simply prompt "How much tip you want to give?" before allowing tap, so you need to press No in front of the little girl looking at you with big eyes. The even suggest percentages from 15% to 20% !

Hahaha, thanks for that! Never heard that one, great explanation, if the origin story is accurate even better! When I was a bank johnnie back in the dark ages, we used to send the newbies down to the post office to get some 'verbal agreement forms', as we had run out (as you do). The post office used to bank with us, so this day they come in, and the senior bloke says - which one of you bastards sent so-and-so up after those forms? We had someone spend half a day in the stationary store looking for them! We were quite chuffed, scoring a twofer!! I have often wondered if that post office hapless clerk was knowingly goofing off with a ready-made (sort of) excuse, or was suckered too! I have a feeling the post office found a way to get back at us, but if so how is lost in the fog of memory.

Thanks for that, makes sense. Any indications that there is any change in the propensity/amounts tipped? Or is the practice so entrenched that everyone just ponys up? Interesting that the money is going into the proprietor's bank account, (I presume?) and has to be separated out. Amongst other things the taxman has direct sight of what has been a cash transaction, little wriggle room there. Also, we have a problem of businesses ripping off workers, under paying wage rates, not paying super contributions, tax bills etc, this might just be another avenue to divert funds if pressed for cash, or just dishonest.

The Rochester air show is this weekend. As the guys are outside (break time), the USAF Thunderbirds are making low passes around the city to drum up business. These guys are flying 4 in formation, and two others are just circling around seemingly at random. They can obviously see the group of us standing there, as they waggle their wings when they pass overhead. One guy just made a high-speed pass right over our building and hit the throttle as he did so. Very loud, and very cool.

The airport is not too far away, and it's not uncommon to see airliners taking off and landing. We can't see the airport itself, but you can see when they level out of initial climb, make the turn to get on course, and start climbing to altitude. Watching these jets flying around, it is astonishing how much faster they are going, and how much more maneuverable they are.

Just wanted to share that I passed the first AWS exam. 65 questions 90 minutes. Many questions were specifically worded to be word games.

Interesting. I'd like to imagine that the questions are still pretty weird, though of course Amazon has grown and matured into a large company, so... Who knows.


A friend of mine down in Florida, who is a program admin with the county school board, and specifically the dept which deals with students who have learning or behavioral issues. So, as you imagine, she sees a lot of shit.

She now reports that it is happened: they have their first pre-K enrollee whose name is Kovyd.

Why, parents? Why do this to your children?

Many of the questions were good but some were word games rather than knowledge based. They would word the questions to be confusing changing only 1 word in the answer yet the answers sound the same. Another thing i noticed is some of the questions had all answers bel right but "which is the more correct" format. Apparently it will take 5 days for me to get my certificate and get to see my score. At the end of the test it was a just a pass/fail.

The switch to AWS and Azure has slowed a lot now that the introductory discounted pricing is ending.

I think all this brain damage over the years has lead to some pretty heavy retardation.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why this thing is tripping the breaker. The breaker has no ground fault circuit, it simply operates as overcurrent protection.

Any electrical enginerds in here?

3 phase system. 480v primary, 80v secondary (DC). Chugs along pumping out 8000amps around 18-24v and will just trip the breaker, seemly random, out of nowhere. All components test good and most have been changed out. Transformer megs out good. Everything is firing as it should and signals look clean and consistent. Yes we've swapped the breaker. It never trips on the first load of the day, i'm leaving now, if i come back at 7am the first load always runs fine. Maybe temperature dependent?
Red line is the SCR signal. The other 3 colors are pulled right off the CTs, the weird "double hump" you see is just a result of ripple (all SCR rectifiers do this). We chop both sides of the waveform.
Either way, as you can see, it's running nice and smooth everything looks normal and it just shuts off. How can a breaker whos only job is to trip on overcurrent trip when there is no overcurrent! For how fast it's tripping, the 1200a breaker would need to see something like 30 times its rating for like half a second. There's even a really expensive imbalance board in the rectifier and it's not catching a damn thing.


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1263a9d525.jpg

Odd to see current on the ground. Not sure why that is. My guess is just a little current leaking through solution. These are glycol cooled after all.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...0b7539a63a.jpg

DC side looks fine.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...2a0c4b7565.jpg

I've been on and off trying to solve this for almost a month now. I've got something like 400 hours of datalogs.

They are drilling holes in the foundation for rebar to attach the new expansion to the existing building. Said foundation wall is also the outside wall of my office.

Imagine a 6-foot-tall angry hornet beating his wings within spitting distance. My whole desk is vibrating.

Now you know what it's like to be in the 2nd floor IT office at our building.

We replaced four huge datacenter air conditioning units earlier in the year. The new ones are Liebert, and they really do seem to be very well made, however their compressors also strike a chord with the structure of the floor under them.

We had a civil engineer come out and take some measurements, and they're not a risk in terms of "the building is going to collapse," but it makes the office just to the east of them unpleasant to be in when units 1 and 3, but not 2 or 4, are running.

We use Liebert units for filter the exhaust from the precision grinders so they don't coat everything in the shop with coolant residue. We also use super fine Liebert units for filtering the intake air into the precision master cutting machines.

On another note:
Still being a company man, I get an allowance for shirts embroidered with the company logo. We are supposed to wear these in the office. Duly submitted my order, which was supposed to be delivered on Friday, but never showed up. This morning I get an email saying my order was delivered on time, complete with a picture. Picture is of my package, but not my house!

Since the wife (teacher) has off today, she went down the street to that house, and package was still there. Soaking wet from the rain, but intact. Neighbor has been away on vacation. She told the ring camera she was taking the package and brought it home to dry.

I submitted a claim (for 1 cent, can't put in value of zero) informing UPS of the error, stating that "#150 is not the same address as #138, even though they are both on the same street".

I have type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. As a result, I am on medications, and have to have blood tests about twice a year, give or take. My medications were almost out, so I sent a message to my doctor through Mychart. No response. Okay, make an appointment to see the doc (which usually triggers an automatic order for blood tests), and they set one up. I go in for the tests, and nothing has been ordered.

Back to Mychart to request the tests, and also to request an interim script for the meds which are soon to run out. No response, again. I wait two days, and once again go in for the blood draw. Again, no orders. I run out of meds. My blood pressure shoots up to dangerous levels.

Monday, I go to see the doc, and he apologizes for the lack of response. You see, since Chinaflu (where they fired any health care workers who refused the jab), his office staff has had 100% turnover THREE TIMES. None of the messages I sent were forwarded to him as is procedure, because none of the staff knows how to work the system. When they canned the experienced workers, there was no one to train the new hires. Of course, they left the place in disarray, and those hired after them were just as clueless. Since they are simply "office staff", and the economy has picked up, those people left for better jobs, and left the mess to whomever else got hired. The whole system is a mess, and sooner or later someone is going to have serious health issues because of it.

BTW, my B.P. meds were on order, and I have been off them for over a week. This morning, after returning from the blood tests, my pressure was 150/135.

Actual work email which I just sent to my most recent hire and our youngest engineer, who is an absolute madman / hero about tracking down and murdering weird problems into the fucking ground, after he figured out why a certain new circuit wasn't working, because someone (me) had plugged a patch cable into the front of a patchbay on the output side of the house router a couple of years ago, and then forgotten about it. It was a "temporary" patch as we were transitioning from and old thing to a new thing.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...ac14a76f69.png


HR does not know that I talk to my staff this way.


("Normal" is tech-speak for a signal flowing from the top (input) of a patch point to the bottom (output), when no cable is plugged into the front, interrupting it.)

I'm old enough to remember big block cars owned by teenagers.

That said, I got my first ride in my brother's Tesla last week, and *holy shit* is that thing quick. The instant torque pinned me back in the seat, even if we were already at highway speeds.

I'm surprised at the amount of motorhead acquaintance of mine who despise electric cars. I mean, you don't like torque then? The fuck's wrong with you?

But yeah, my wife's Rivian makes me dizzy, even if I'm driving it.

Torque is fine, but the only EVs with a decent charging network are Tesla and they're ugly.

--Ian