The "Shit I just bought" thread
- Thread starter Brahma
- Start date
-
Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
- 25,443
- 33,203
Anyone remember the HP calculators with a printer on the side that printed on thermal paper and had a deal you pushed thin cards about 1/2" wide and a few inches long and they were programmed and the calculator would read the program and then run it. I used to use one a long time ago and had a guy program some industry programs onto it. Worked great but I haven't seen one in 25+ years.
Similar to this but it sat on a base that provided power and housed the printer deal.
Similar to this but it sat on a base that provided power and housed the printer deal.
Void
BAU BAU
- 9,804
- 11,717
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
- 38,270
- 15,092
I use the calculator app on my Mac to convert from decimal to binary or hex and that's it. Literally the worst calculator user.
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
- 25,443
- 33,203
I use a calculator all the time. Much easier to use a feet and inch calculator than use excel when you need to check 500 dimensions in a row quickly. It will also do bevels, slopes, chords, and length of a radius given a degree and such. I see people using them all the time in my industry, more so than figureing it on a computer. So much more handy checking a drawing for someone to use a calculator to enter 15 dimensions in a row to end up where you want than enter it into a spreadsheet.
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
- 38,270
- 15,092
When someone broke into my car a couple years ago they stole all my school books, book bag, ipod, and TI-83. I was the most mad about the TI-83 because I had it for around 15 years at that point and bought it with birthday money when I was like 12. I had to take my wife's TI-83 from then on and it had sparkly stickers all over it.
I don't know how it is for mech/civil engineers in the US, I assume you still learn in british measurements? Everything in electrical is metric (obviously), so it always felt weird going back to british for physical measurements to me.
I don't think it's because of the guys at your shop, I think it's because stupid people can't handle it even though metric is a fuck ton easier to convert back and forth.
I don't know how it is for mech/civil engineers in the US, I assume you still learn in british measurements? Everything in electrical is metric (obviously), so it always felt weird going back to british for physical measurements to me.
I don't think it's because of the guys at your shop, I think it's because stupid people can't handle it even though metric is a fuck ton easier to convert back and forth.
We by far use English, but use decimal feet a lot. English itself doesnt bother me. The worst thing is pulling and manipulating ft-inch and fraction measurements in excel etc. Verified a whole compressor station layout one time and it was a breeze pulling cad coordinates and putting them in excel, the slowest part was taking some good ole boy fuckers ft and inch measurements from a hand typed table and converting them to organized numbers so I could see if they zeroed out with the actual coordinates in the world.
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
- 5,472
- 272
The vast majority of the assignments etc in my first year of engineering were metric. But the statics and dynamics professor was a real cunt, and he'd throw imperial measurement test questions at you just to be even more of an asshole than usual.Noodleface_sl said:
Someone stole my TI-83 in middle school. The dick had the nerve to file down the area where I had my name written and then denied he stole it. I had to eventually bring in the serial number from the packaging (which magically matched to the calculator's) to get it back. Somehow the guy didn't get suspended or expelled or anything despite lying to the principals face and forcing me to prove it was mine.
- 26,226
- 39,930
The auto industry was all sorts of fucked up in the late 80s to early 90s when I got in it. They were still using english for 1/2 their shit, but trying to convert to metric. Fastners were a bitch for a long time. But now its all pretty much metric and its so much easier than english. Only thing still left is sheetmetal which is still usually english, but we still use metric for design but even that is now changing as we have like .8mm or 1.2mm thick sheetmetal.
Any car mechanic should know that now its all pretty much metric and probably replaced their dads 1970s english socket head/wrench set with metric.
Any car mechanic should know that now its all pretty much metric and probably replaced their dads 1970s english socket head/wrench set with metric.
Lanx
<Prior Amod>
- 65,213
- 147,026
Izo
Tranny Chaser
- 19,435
- 23,499
BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
- 14,670
- 2,527
In my engineering days everything the mechanical guys did was in inches and decimals of that. My brother is an electrician and always complains about standard units but the real problem with it is 1) feet and inches and 2) fractions. If we just switched to using just feet or just inches and used decimals instead of fractions life would be so much easier. No reason bolts could be made in .1", .2", .3" etc. instead of 1/16", 1/8", 3/16", 1/4" etc. and this is the way most mechanical engineers do it but the trades have never picked that up.
My tool boxes are all set up so the standard wrenches are easy to get at and the metric ones are in a pile at the bottom but I'm actually thinking about reversing that because even farm machinery has mostly metric shit on it if it was made in the last 15 years or so. Unfortunately we have machinery that spans from the 50's to the 0's and 10's so we have everything and it's a real pain in the ass to have a good selection of wrenches and sockets in both standard and metric in the same toolbox.
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
- 5,472
- 272
Unfortunately there's a lot of standards out there, especially in the mechanical industry (plumbing, gas, hot water heating etc) and really in construction in general that we are basically going to be stuck with shit like IPT and CTS for ever. We'll never get rid of that shit, because even new products will have to be compatible with old ones. Even in Canada, I fucking despise mechanical drawings in metric, because all of our actual materials are all based on imperial/english standards.