Take a look at this Florida "two for one" parking job. According to liberal theory, you are not supposed to even notice the ethnicity of the driver, so I won't say nothin'. But if you do notice, you are supposed to be less angry so that the driver will like you. Something along those lines, or else you may be "biased". Purportedly, if you are not biased, you will get a better parking space. Hell, I don't know.
It took long enough, but I finally found out what “biasing” a transistor consists of. In keeping with blog rules, I’ll describe it in layman’s terms. A transistor, when receiving an analog signal within the transistor’s operational range, can control a larger current than that analog signal. However, that larger current is only able to go so low or so high, respectively called “saturation” and “cutoff”. We’ve all heard “cutoff” when we turn the amp too loud for the speakers.Biasing is the process of calculating exactly how much the input signal can sway without hitting either extreme. This is accomplished by means of a voltage divider. Once again, until I started looking for something else, none of the literature and tutorials describe how massively important these voltage divider circuits are. They are treated like curiosities when, in fact, they are a vital element of most amplifiers and robotic sensor circuits. Learn your voltage dividers.
Cancel today, it’s cold out there. We’re not up to our necks but I figure anybody who lives in or near New York necessarily has to be good at shoveling it. Did I say that right? Probably. I’ve got a quiet week planned after a hectic summer that was more than fantastic if you ask me. No response from Colorado where it is only 7 degrees cooler today. The plan for 2013 is similar to this year, out of town for the torrid summer, for by then the batbike should be in nearly prime condition.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is slow reading. Without a background in the lingo I have to figure out the conversations from context. I’m at the part where Eliza has run away with her son and Tom has been sold down the river. Stowe knows her subject but she knows dick about farming. Despite that, the plot is admirably credible so far.
I believe I am ready to etch my first PCB, printed circuit board. By amalgamating all the contradictory instructions out there, I’m poised to make some potentially expensive mistakes. Some say use ultraviolet light, some say use red light, some say sunlight is fine. No way will the process be up to club standards. There is a lot more to making these circuits right than commonly known. Consider the planning alone and the use of CAD software is a chore in itself. It was designed by engineers for engineers who will always tell you it is easy but can’t offer any useful advice when it isn’t.
Seriously, I worked with engineers for 15 years during my cubicle years. CAD made it transparent how each engineer developed his own way of cranking out the blueprints without really knowing what he was doing. This dumped the work on the line people and yes, I do know lots of old men who have been doing it wrong their entire lives. They are as arrogant as they are ignorant.
I truly hope the ones there when I left the company are still there. They’d be paying off their mortgages right about now. That would be sweet justice. Most of them didn’t believe me when I told them a 30 year mortgage on a $400,000 house would cost them a million bucks. They said that was just impossible, and besides, they would be getting a raise every year.
ADDENDUM
In fact, let me run the numbers. A 400K mortgage at an average of 8% over the past 30 years. That’s 360 months, let’s see, I won’t APR it, so that’s dot 6-7ths of a percent per compounding period. It’s worse than I thought. The interest totals $656,620.00 so that plus the $400K means $1,056.620.99 total payment. And that must be paid with after-tax dollars. For a house that is about to become worth about $175,000.
I’m aware that mortgages don’t happen in isolation and most people in a $400K house have traded up. But sooner or later the binge is over and it ain’t the crop graduating from school these days who are going to fix anything about this economy or this world. Tax revenues are so shrunken some states are legalizing marijuana. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Here is a marine control panel with fuses and rocker switches. One of my earliest smart moves was to always design with test points. The batbike will eventually get a complete new electrical system and it I fancy something like this mounted under the hood. At $40 this one is cheaper than I could make it myself. I looked through the back of the package and this stuff is very rugged. Instead of switches, I’m partial to warning lights or alarms. This panel is 1940 technology.Nightfall and I watched “District 9”. It’s an alien movie based loosely on Palestinian camps and, well, the Mariel boatlift. The aliens are the dregs of their world and quickly form a slum. Subliminal messages and Transformers galore.
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