666.66 ohms, got it

Quietly, secretly cursed meter

Okay, let’s try that again

Meter that is, I swear, not cursed. No really. Not cursed at all. Might be cursed at some other point in time, but not now.

I could try to explain what was going on with the curse, but I’ll leave it at this: it just… completely afflicted the resistance measurements and made me think a whole roll of SMT resistors were somehow open circuit right off the reel. Then another equally cursed resistor in the office suggested the same thing. Yeah, the only explanation for this level of synchronized brokenness is an ancient horrible curse.

I need a sign for the workshop door that says “It has been [slot to hang up a number tile] days since last unspeakable horrors beyond human comprehension”. I will not elaborate here as to why, but it’s now a matter of public record if you know where to look. FNORD!

oh gee thanks, SPAMSHINE.

Thank you Microsoft. Thank you for the tiny HEART ATTACK this morning.

After installing Windows updates to about two dozen load-bearing systems at work, they each came right back up and restarted all their services properly, no big deal there. What I didn’t realize was that even though they were all back up, on the network, and I could VNC or RDP back in and verify this….. not a one of them was responding to plain jane ol’ ICMP pings being sent to them by a monitoring service our IT department set up for us a couple years ago………

Home Depot store, sign edited to say The HHHHHHH
hhhhhhhhhhhh

… Until all at once they all started doing so again, about 45 minutes after boot, and my email inbox blew up with a ton of “[Cursed-Ass-Chyron-Box-4] is now reachable”, a couple minutes before the morning show started. I didn’t immediately notice that these messages were not paired with a “[Your-Mother-Sucks-Supers-In-Hell-2] has stopped responding” messages prior, so I thought everything started just popping and rebooting like cursed popcorn. Could you blame me though? I’ve had this happen from Windows updates in the past.

Ah

With Windows updates, “updates were installed” can actually mean “updates were staged and are ready to stab you in the ass while you’re in the cold”.

This is why I really like using Linux, less stress and EXPLOSIONS.

On a side note, here is a Linux powered device that has exploded. Yes, it’s more Euroturd hardware. This is one of the EK-AMP/6 power amplifier cards which blasted capacitor guts. I have several more that seem to have been damaged by the EK-UCM/6 module which serves as the transmitter’s exciter having walked right out of band and caused the amp to go unstable and blow up. Glorious.

ka-POMP!

And now, as is usual… more… nonsense

This thermostat has the most bizarrely cluttered screen.

Booba / Kiki Effect

(If you’re not familiar with what it’s referring to— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect   )

Also, this is what happened immediately after I got a Fluke RF generator that I’ve wanted for years, because I’m incredibly mature

Finally I wish to point out that I agree with literally everything going on here:

who out there having their disney VHS’s graded

yOu’rE AlL 👨 RuDe 🖕🙅 ♂ i’m 😁👆 👁đŸ˜ģ jUsT đŸģ 🍅💭 TrYiNg 😔 đŸ˜ŧđŸ˜ŧ tO đŸ’Ļ SeLl đŸ’ĩđŸ’ĩ đŸ’ĩ💲 sOmE đŸ‘†đŸ’¯ 👆 DiSnEy tApEs. On 🍌 🔛➡ a 🏃 💅 gOoD 👌👀 🐸 DaY â„ĸ đŸ˜Ģ YoU 😨🍆 👉👆 CaN đŸ’Ļ GeT 🔟đŸ’Ļ A đŸŋ DoLlAr ❎🆗 🔜 a đŸ˜¯đŸ…ŋ pIeCe. 🍗 🍗🍗 I 👀 SoLd đŸŒĢ tHeM ❤ On 🔛 eBaY FoR 🍆 40 bUcKs 💸💸 💸 a 👏👌 pIeCe. 🍗 🍗🍗 CaN đŸ”Ģ AnYbOdY 👧đŸ‘Ļ TeLl 📞 🛑😩 mE ❤ 😂 WhAt ⁉😂 tHeSe 👈🚱 🈷☠ aRe 👴 🏾đŸšĨ wOrTh. đŸ’ĩ💸 💰đŸ’ĩ BlAcK 🏴â—ŧ DiAmOnD 💎 DiSnEy vHs fOr đŸ˜ļ🔜 sAlE $10 🔟 đŸ’¯ EaCh. 👏👏 👏 I 😎🙅 KnOw 💕🤔 😲🤔 nOtHiNg đŸšĢ🙅 🙅 aBoUt 🤖 vHs bUt i 😡👏 👴 gOt đŸ”Ē tO 🌒 👉 Go 🔙 🙏♂ iNtO 😩 A GrOuP 🅱🅱 đŸ‘Ĩ AnD đŸģ 👏 CoMmEnT 🔰 🔰đŸ’Ŧ WhEn 😂 đŸ’Ļ i đŸģ👁 👅👨 dOn’t 😡 kNoW 💭😱 NoThInG đŸ’Ļ đŸ”ĢđŸ”Ģ AbOuT 🤔🤷 đŸ’Ļ💭 It. đŸ¤”đŸ’¯ We 👴😍 🤝đŸ‘ĩ kEeP 👌👌 🙊🏃 HeArInG ThIs âŦ‡đŸ–– nOnSeNsE 😡 EvErYdAy. 👨📆 DiSnEy vHs iS 😂đŸ’Ļ GaRbAgE 🚮🗑 ThRoW đŸĨŠđŸ˜ˇ đŸĨŠđŸ˜ˇ ThEm 👌 🛂😃 aWaY 😭đŸ˜Ŧ 🙅 Or 💁 👉 dOnAtE ThEm 🙊 đŸ˜ŖđŸŧ nObOdY 🤐 WaNtS ☝💩 ☝ ThEm pLaIn đŸĻ aNd ➕ sImPlE. âšĒ♂

shitposting loudly

Time to open up the Crayola box again

Heck the rules. Post colorful nonsense.

I’m really pleased with this edit of the KOVR / KMAX STL stick.
Bench top at work

The print up there is by Amara Goldwalker and has a kitty looking out on a neat neon cityscape in it. I have another print of one of her paintings that’ll probably go near my bench at home which has some neon jellyfish action going on in it. I may or may not have gotten her up to this by sending along photos of the jellies doing their thing at the San Francisco aquarium…

Mighty need.

This is probably in Akihabara but would be 100% right at home in any maker/hacker space!!

The following cat is absolute bebby:

Welcome to the Vaporwave Suites

If you look carefully at the texture you can entirely see what I got the colors from. Extra hint: it is…. everywhere throughout this site. :3

I’m gonna have to elaborate more on how utterly cool this old Leader oscilloscope is in a post that’ll require a little more brain foam than I have available right now
very useful feature of the NanoVNA

That’s Fry’s Electronics right before it imploded completely. Even in that sad state it still had more useful products in store than anything in Florida.

Finally… I just randomly scored two Ergotron keyboard/monitor arms. These were $600 new and are just fine aside from some dust and a couple missing screws, washers, and nuts lost when they were removed from service. Guess I now have a solution to the computer taking up too much space on the home workbench!

Bloobity

One of these days I’ll fully fix the web server issues with this site. Today is not that day but I do like the result of changing the LEDs in these kitty eared headphones to near-UV colored ones (similar to NTE’s “Super Purple” color). Well I fixed ssl so uh meow

Miao?

Yes, anarchist catgirl presenting nonbinary seems like a good description for me.

Bizarre 20 bay FM antenna, I don’t know what they were thinking but it makes for a good meme

So it turns out in addition to bricking themselves, these exciters can also crap out their backup battery. Not sure if I’d call it an improvement over the system in the old Apex M2X as now it’s an unserviceable custom $300 battery pack!?

Anyway let me stop being vexed by stupid transmitters and point out this thing I discovered:

Pink and red eyeshadow do appear to be my absolute jam.

Harmonic Electra X making me mad in several ways nyaa

On the hunt again

Last week we had a horribly long engineering staff meeting that basically pointed out to me that we’re all destined to be burned out like our damn transmission line in the coming months. I’m quite done with this. We were promised there’d be big improvements and then saw them yanked away and replaced with the promise of enjoying what will eventually degrade into “Just In Time Scheduling“. Yeah, how about no.

Spunk Trumpet

That being said, I’m gonna be exploring other career opportunities with companies that don’t treat their mission critical staff like rodents.

Old UPN network lighting gobo

I had such high hopes for this company. It was great…. three mergers, four reductions in force, and one massive consolidation of HR and talent acquisition later. Now it’s just a slow burn of crushing cheapness and presumably, tax writeoffs of everything that doesn’t just get asset stripped.

Anyone interested in having a rather silly but talented engineer come work for them? I have 20 years experience in the field, including TV, FM and AM radio. I’d post a full resume here but I don’t exactly want everyone’s bots to come knocking yet. Also, I shitpost a lot. Maybe I need to write up a public resume in the form of a shitpost. That’d fool all the bots and give me the ability to sneak in cat pictures.

Meanwhile, here’s a sleepy kitty.

UwU I tell you hwat.