Entropy

Relax in southern comfort on the east bank of the Mississippi. You're just around the corner from Beale Street and Sun Records. Watch the ducks, throw back a few and tell us what's on your mind.
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

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Latest entropy installment, I finally put a new 9V battery in my vacuum cleaner dirt detector... the old battery was so old one of the battery terminals fell off. A red and green LED tells me when the vacuum is sucking up dirt, pretty cute back when it was new. Now I know that it is picking up dirt whenever I turn it on... :lol:

Since I needed a relatively fresh but not brand new 9V battery I decided to replace the 9V battery in my smoke detector and use the old one in my vacuum. This smoke detector is close to 30 YO and even with the new battery in it, it beeped like the voltage was low, but it wasn't.

Today a few days later I took it down from the wall and it turns out one of the battery terminals was bent and not making a good contact. Unclear why it still beeped, but after bending it back and snapping the 9v in place securely it looks like it works.

I feel like after 30 years I need to blow some smoke into it to test the smoke detector. These are so cheap I think I will buy a new one just on principle. It was probably $2 new 30 years ago.

JR

[edit] I replaced the smoke detector because they are so cheap. I tested the old one in my laundry room when I roasted coffee and it still works [/edit]

[edit 2 today while cutting dowels for my drum tuner support, the smoka alarm went off again, so still works after several decades ;/edit

[edit 3] the new smoke alarm is a bunch more sensitive. Today when I turned on the heat for the fist time since last season I smelled what was probably dust in the heater burning. No visible smoke and the smell went away pretty quickly, but the new smoke alarm in the hallway went off almost immediately. Impressive, since the old alarm required stronger visible smoke to sound in my laundry room [/edit]
Last edited by JR. on Mon Oct 19, 2015 10:37 am, edited 3 times in total.
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

Entropy

While a slightly different mechanism there is a form of entropy in nature where left to it's own devices, the weeds will take over the asylum.

I have been living in the same house for 30 years and have been seriously lax at maintaining my landscaping. Down here in MS we have weed-trees that grow 12 months a year so in the winter when nice plants stop growing these weed-trees take over. :o
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The ornamental bush on the left is called a Nastrium(?) or something like that... That short bush in the middle is also the same thing. I rescued it from under a dense weed cover. Today I fired up my chainsaw and finished weeding, by cutting off the weed stump that was 2" diameter at the base. I removed a similar stump from inside the nastrium on the left.

Next weekend I will attack what I suspect are two more nastrium, buried under that over grown pile of weeds to the right. Interesting what 30 years of negligence can foster. Down here if you don't mow it, you have a forest after a few years.

JR
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Re: Entropy

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OK here is another picture after I finished weeding.

Note the 3" diameter tree stump...

Looks like only two were Hydralgia (?) and the other two were see below,,, don't know a name for these.. not very pretty but they do flower a little in the spring.

most of them were crowded out by weeds but they seem hardy so i'll see what comes up in the spring.
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All that green grown near the bottom is weeds that I cut back less than a month ago.

The weeds like to grow in MS.

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Re: Entropy

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For some old school entropy, i just had to rewire my computer keyboard USB cable. Second time it got squirrelly... computer stops recognizing the keyboard.

I ordered a new one but didn't want to go a week without my WWW buddies.

Fingers crossed so far so good... only needs to work until the replacement arrives.

JR
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Re: Entropy

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It's been a while since I fixed something, or posted about it...

One of my beta test outlet checkers stopped working out in the field and I couldn't find an obvious fault (soldering pretty poor), so fired up my scope, for first time in a month or two... I was getting some unexpected readings so I scoped the ground clip and measured same 60VAC on it...

Broken wire inside the ground clip... wire was that nasty black oxidized cheap Chinese wire.

It's always something... OK now back to work...

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Re: Entropy

Post by mediatechnology »

My electric leaf blower started smoking...
So I had to go buy a new one Friday.

The week before that it was replacing the 4 year-old kitchen faucet.
After seeing how much the flex jumpers between the stops and faucet had decayed (very brittle) it made me want to go out and replace every flex line more than a year old in the house.
I've got two toilet's and one more lavatory's lines to replace.

Waiting for "the next big thing."

Oh I think one of those bushes you saved back in August may be a Nandina.
Can't really see that well but it looks like Nandina which is bamboo like.
We have Nandina farm. :lol:
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Re: Entropy

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mediatechnology wrote:My electric leaf blower started smoking...
So I had to go buy a new one Friday.
yesterday I raked up 7 bundles of pine straw from my side yard, and carried it across the street to my neighbors house so his wife could spread it around the bushes. A win -win... I get it out of my yard, and she gets to protect her shrubs.

nothing broke or smoked.

The week before that it was replacing the 4 year-old kitchen faucet.
After seeing how much the flex jumpers between the stops and faucet had decayed (very brittle) it made me want to go out and replace every flex line more than a year old in the house.
I've got two toilet's and one more lavatory's lines to replace.
Be strict about water leaks, chronic moisture feeds mold. I had a leaky toilet for years and I'm still paying the price for that inattention.
Waiting for "the next big thing."

Oh I think one of those bushes you saved back in August may be a Nandina.
Can't really see that well but it looks like Nandina which is bamboo like.
We have Nandina farm. :lol:
Indeed that looks like what a couple of them are... They are pretty hardy as long as I trim back the weed trees that sprout up under them and steal their sun light.

Right now my apple tree is getting sun light stolen by a large elm (weed) on the property next door... I could probably cut it down, I don't even know who owns the property but the tree is too big to cut casually. I need to borrow one of those bucket trucks the power company uses to trim just the several branches stealing my apple tree's light.

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Re: Entropy

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Another unscheduled repair...

Today a cheap outlet strip stopped working... I took it apart and found the neutral wire was unattached, just sitting near the hole it was supposed to be soldered in, but worse than that a single strand of wire from that neutral lead was sticking straight out toward the line (hot) bus bar... less than 1/8th inch from a dead short circuit, and the neutral lead was loose so could have moved that much...

Looks like the manufacturing used some kind of swage-welding attachment technique probably with a spot of solder between the wire and copper bus bar. Looks like they scrimped a little too much on the solder, The line cord leads were hand soldered with plenty of excess solder, so a poorly managed Chinese production line.

Caveat emptor...

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Re: Entropy

Post by emrr »

This week I learned a recording client reissued a project on vinyl with 'remastering', 15 years after the original release. They apparently did this vinyl mastering from an original CD, since no one in the original production chain was contacted about the project. None of us were hard to find, hi-rez masters and original mastering files are all still here and accessible.....

: (
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

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emrr wrote:This week I learned a recording client reissued a project on vinyl with 'remastering', 15 years after the original release. They apparently did this vinyl mastering from an original CD, since no one in the original production chain was contacted about the project. None of us were hard to find, hi-rez masters and original mastering files are all still here and accessible.....

: (
The vinyl re-issue is about making money. Mastering from a CD does ruin the mythology.

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