Weed and music

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There are lots of generalizations that have some statistical basis.

Businessmen = lack of humor is one.

The brains * beauty = constant theory is another. Translation.....how many strikingly beautiful female engineers do you know? Hang out at a college, the good looking girls are in business, marketing, law, medical, or music school, not engineering or sciences.

As with any statistics, there ARE outliers.

It has been said that technical people, especially engineers, are "different" and often have a warped, or nonexistent sense of humor. I worked in a building that employed about 1000 engineers of various disciplines at its peak. There seems to be 3 types of engineers, regardless of discipline. Normal people, slightly different people, and flipping weirdos, but this is the observation of an engineer (me). I don't consider myself totally normal, but I'm not too different, or weird either??????


I know that the stuff I often find funny, evokes one of 3 responses in my fellow engineers.......

I find it funny, and amusing, to blow stuff up. Many here have seen my melted tubes, and fried components. My next lab will have video capability, so more will come, but not everyone finds this amusing.

Several of us used to sell stuff at the Miami Hamfest. We sold in a group so we could watch each other's stuff to help avoid theft. One of my friends who was an electronic technician, a ham radio operator, video game freak, and very successful business owner, had a sense of humor similar to mine, so we decided to stir up some interest on a rainy, lousy sales morning.

He produced the "chip tester" which became the board tester and hard drive tester over the course of the morning. It was simply a line cord with a pair of alligator clips on the end......everything that was "tested" turned out to be bad.

Plugging a hard drive or other piece of low voltage electronics into 120 volts in front of a crowd will evoke one of three responses.....Wow, that was cool, do it again.....or, Why would you put 120 volts on a 5 volt chip, you will kill it.......or, you guys are NOT SAFE, I'm getting the fire marshal.

I was sitting in a boring meeting at work about 6 years ago when the ADHD took over my brain. Even though this was a technical meeting about a project that I was responsible for, the morons had taken over and were arguing about some mundane details that didn't matter, so I took out my smart phone and started watching Youtube videos. After a few minutes, I could not contain my laughter, which interrupted the puppet master, who demanded to know what was so funny. I then instructed him to type in this URL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhj...outube.com/watch?v=RhjHAPw1q-M&has_verified=1

The room was again divided into 3 similar groups. Cool, why, and unsafe/stupid. Guess which ones are my friends. It also seems that the other two groups also seemed to hang together, but each of the 3 groups have little in common, and few common friends. Coincidence?

Now, just a casual observance, since this was in the "post drug screening, PC days, but most of the "possible drug users" tend to be in the first group. Coincidence? We also tended toward modified (fast) cars, gun ownwership, and conservative politics. Our idea of fun was go kart or automobile racing, laser tag, mountain biking, an NFL game, or shooting up some old TV sets with a handgun.

Female engineers, tended to be in the second group, while female managers, sales, and business people tended toward the third group.
 
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Tubelab said:
I find it funny, and amusing, to blow stuff up. Many here have seen my melted tubes, and fried components. My next lab will have video capability, so more will come, but not everyone finds this amusing.

Blowing stuff up is an essential right of passage in the electronics world!

There was this site, I forget the name, it was dedicated to high energy experiments, people would build boxes full of hefty high voltage electrolytics charged from the mains via a step up transformer and HV rectifier, there would be some kind of high current contactor that when closed would connect the bank of capacitors in all their 1/2cv^2 glory to the "victim", this was some innocent component or PCB which inevitably would be vaporized.

I had a low voltage but very high current transformer back when I was still at high school, it was great for melting things, and powering carbon arc lights, using carbon rods acquired from school. Microwave oven transformers and oil burner ignition transformers can be fun too.


Your ghost seems to be doing a good job of carrying things on.
 
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Yes, very much. It's 22hours driving from our house...well worth it for a nice easy getaway. Driving allows me to have all the things I want with me when enjoying myself without having to make shady deals in unknown places....out of the question with he kids in tow.
 
it was dedicated to high energy experiments,

There were some sites devoted to can crushers, coin shrinkers and rail guns that convinced me to build my own small scale zapper. It was actually a work related project to simulate lightning strikes that were resulting in high failure rates on a golf course irrigation and lighting system controller that Motorola made for the Toro company. It was a specialized SCADA system.

I could not find any off the shelf equipment to do the job, so I cannibalized 3 scrap defibrillators to make my own "death machine". A standard defib goes from 0 to 400 joules of energy. This is supplied by a 10 uF 7500 volt oil filled capacitor, a vacuum relay, and an air core inductor in series for pulse shaping. We used 3 capacitors in parallel, eliminated the inductor, which caused all 3 vacuum relays to fail rather quickly, so we attached the copper disk from a Chevy starter relay to a door lock solenoid and two huge copper rods to make a blow proof, but rather loud relay.

We found, and fixed the pesky lightning issue, and then proceeded to blow up all sorts of stuff......until the people in the next building called the cops because they heard gunshots......Plastic enclosed line "safety caps" being made unsafe!

One of the defib caps can be seen here, just to the left of the glowing 833A.

833 SE | Tubelab
 
Believe me, well adverse with Substance's, experimented Heavily in College, A bit too Heavy I would say..Lot's of High Grade Bud, Good amount of Stimulant's Glass/Coke etc, MDMA but that's more like Stimulant/Hallucinogen. And Actual Psychedelic's LSD/Psilocybin/DMT/2CI etc...I have had some quite amazing experience's.

A lot of that stuff, it's like you don't stop thinking about Subconsciously. Even after discontinued use. It really does feel like my mind has opened up/Expanded with numerous different Perception's/Perspective's with all things. It is really difficult to Break it down,try to actually explain it. I still See/Hear all kinds of things haha, Being I'm only 26 still young really try to wrap my mind around a lot of it...What I would say is also quite a bit more noticeable is the imbalance/Randomness of Personality/Emotional State's of being in itself. But intriguing by fact of Being Still Aware/recognizing of all these Psychological Distortion's and still continually adjusting.
 
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One of the defib caps can be seen here, just to the left of the glowing 833A.

833 SE | Tubelab

Awesome capacitor, I always wanted to see inside a diffibrilator, the cap is bigger than I suspected, though I'm guessing this one is from an old model. The modern ones are compact and lightweight for easy portability.

There is a Lithuanian eBay seller called kwtubes, as you'd expect he sells tubes, but also some cool capacitors, big sturdy, ex military high voltage, he had a 20KV one a while back but between the cost of the cap and the postage it was over $100, but I reckon it could have been fun. I have to watch though as my youngest daughter is only 6 and is quite fascinated with my electronic stuff.

I haven't blown anything up for awhile, at least not deliberately! All this talk is giving me an itch though.
 
Did you like Key West? I have very good memories of some time spent there.

Yes, very much. It's 22hours driving from our house...well worth it for a nice easy getaway. Driving allows me to have all the things I want with me when enjoying myself without having to make shady deals in unknown places....out of the question with he kids in tow.

I have great memories of Key West as well. A few friends and I drove down there from (near) Toronto one reading week in University. We had a blast, and that drive through the keys and the 7 mile bridge will be with me until I die. Oh, and that 18-year-old (?) brunette named "Wednesday". What a night on the beach!

The only thing that really bugs me about Key West, is that any time I talk about how much I enjoyed it, the gay jokes start. To this day, I don't understand why people associate Key West with gay people. I didn't notice a preponderance of homosexuals there. But then again, I wasn't looking for them.
 
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Just got back from a couple weeks away.
Nice sunset shot! Did you buy any T-shirts? 😉 It's a fun place to hang out, for sure. 22 hours is quite a drive tho...

Saturday I was at another of the "Southernmost Point" in the U.S. which is about an hour drive from my house. Not many people there, mostly cows and horses, lava and water.

This is the 3rd Southernmost point I've visited.
 

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A lot of that stuff, it's like you don't stop thinking about Subconsciously. Even after discontinued use. It really does feel like my mind has opened up/Expanded with numerous different Perception's/Perspective's with all things. It is really difficult to Break it down,try to actually explain it. I still See/Hear all kinds of things haha, Being I'm only 26 still young really try to wrap my mind around a lot of it...What I would say is also quite a bit more noticeable is the imbalance/Randomness of Personality/Emotional State's of being in itself. But intriguing by fact of Being Still Aware/recognizing of all these Psychological Distortion's and still continually adjusting.

I agree it's a very difficult thing to try and explain, particularly to anyone who hasn't experienced it themselves. These drug experiences definitely open doorways. I think of it a bit like a circuit analogy, that these alternate states of consciousness open new pathways in the brain, some that I suspect are not opened much or even never by people who have never experienced this type of thing. These allow different cognitive processes to occur ( the brain is like an analog computer, the most complex and amazing one ever conceived, perhaps, unless you believe there are beings in the universe with even higher intelligences than us, but that's another mad conversation in itself. ) these newly opened brain pathways allow us to think about and perceive things in an entirely new way and once this facility has been created, we are never quite the same again, whether this is a good or a bad thing depends very much on your point of view ( ...as Ben Kenobie in Star Wars said, "Many of the truths we cling to, depend very much on our point of view")

For anyone who doubt's my ability to assume the mindset of a stoned person without smoking anything, read the last paragraph again, I wrote it sober as a judge!
 
Was Ben Kenobie smoking some space dope?
I view truths to be fundamental. Interpretations of those are not.

This thread has veered towards stereotypes. I believe that there is always some amount of truth behind a stereotype. That is how they originate. Unfortunately, the interpretation too often replaces the truth, so we're left to deal with irrational concepts of ethnic and religious groups, gays in Key West, or how smokers think.
 
Was Ben Kenobie smoking some space dope?
I view truths to be fundamental. Interpretations of those are not.

This thread has veered towards stereotypes. I believe that there is always some amount of truth behind a stereotype. That is how they originate. Unfortunately, the interpretation too often replaces the truth, so we're left to deal with irrational concepts of ethnic and religious groups, gays in Key West, or how smokers think.

Stereotypes are I suppose like a simple model in electronics, like A bjt varies its resistance between C&E in response to the input at the base. You can go so far with this, it even has practical uses. Because all the facets that define the human personality are so varied and interdependent simplifications are derived to allow simple day to day social intercourse to take place without the need for lengthy explanations and / or definitions.

I'm just thinking to myself can you even begin to imagine a mathematical model of the human psyche! Not just that, but the machine that would need to be built in order to run this model.

I view truths to be fundamental. Interpretations of those are not.
This implies that there is an ultimate perception of reality that is true.
Arguably perception is the only reality, at least as far as human beings are concerned.
Take for example the color red, with the exception of color blind individuals we all agree that a red thing is a red thing, however how do we really know that what you are seeing, the subjective experience of seeing, is the same as my subjective experience of seeing what I see, for example my red might look like your yellow, but because I've been told since infant school that it is called red then that's what I take it to be.

I'm not trying to defend stereotypes because they can be very badly miss used, I say mis-used as as I stated above approximations are convenient for simplifying communication. But when we forget that they are approximations and take them as absolute truth, that's when trouble starts, particularly within the realms of topics were not allowed to discuss here. If you are in any doubt as to what I'm referring to look at the top of the page, " The Lounge a place to talk about anything but p******* & r*******."

Was Ben Kenobie smoking some space dope?

Dont know, but i reckon Yoda used to eat hallucinogenic swamp mushrooms unique to Daygoba.

Gordon.
 
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Take for example the color red, with the exception of color blind individuals we all agree that a red thing is a red thing, however how do we really know that what you are seeing, the subjective experience of seeing, is the same as my subjective experience of seeing what I see, for example my red might look like your yellow, but because I've been told since infant school that it is called red then that's what I take it to be.

How old are you? Is this the first time you've ever thought about this?

1. There's no possible way of knowing, so what's the point in speculating?

2. It doesn't make an iota of difference as long as we all know which traffic light means stop.
 
Does anyone believe this? I sure don't.

Absolutely. The Danube in Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert's day was so polluted with human effluent that more than 10% of the population died every year of water borne illnesses. To this day you can go into a restaurant in Vienna and find people drinking beer at 6 AM. Ever listen to Bach's "Coffee" Cantata? Tobacco and caffeine were drugs of choice back in the day, because everyone lived on wine/beer. This is true. In Europe, the tradition was to drink alcohol rather than water. Water was considered to carry plague, for that matter, and people avoided bathing, which is why Eau de Cologne was developed to cover the stench.
 
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