Say “Magic Smoke release” again. I dare you. Feeling lucky, punk?!
Dip packaged op amps on this one. Curious.
I caught this one JUST STARTING to smell like hot plastic and having blown the fuse for one side of the bipolar supply…. Luckily the equipment it took audio from seems to be long gone, as is whatever it supplied.
I cannot stop laughing this morning, thank you “TRG Resource Group”!
So for a couple months now I’ve been happily working as a maintenance engineer in a television station. I’m really happy with it, but boy did I put out resumes here and there for a while before I got it – I’ve had a few jobs before that I didn’t like.
Some recruiter found my resume on Dice and was… really… disturbingly eager to get me on board. I have no interest in it, but it was for a contracting job paying supposedly $30 an hour. (Contracting, I guess, meaning you have to do all the shit of providing your own insurance, paying SurpriseButtsecksPercent in income taxes, etc…)
He started hammering on my phone every hour, business hours or not, for the past couple of days. He got my Google Voice number off the resume, so I could have blocked him, I was just being lazy and letting his voicemail messages build up. Finally, today, as I was on my way up to my office where I could log into Google Voice from the desktop and click block, he started hammering it again so I just picked up and hung up. He immediately called back and the results were hilarious!
For the record, here’s the job description he sent me – it sounds like “technically skilled administrative pissboy” to me. If you’re interested, why not send him a resume? I dunno if he’s working on commission, on quota, or what, but he sure is desperate. I’d say go to the group’s website to find it there but their site is a comically outdated thing that comes up with an Earthlink favicon.ico file. Hahahahahahahaha so modern. Wow. Very web2.0. So update. Such Frontpage.
Telecommunications Technician
MINIMUM SKILLS REQUIRED:
Responsible for warehouse and Inventory maintenance activities. Receiving and dispatching of commodities purchases for the Telecommunications section of Information Systems. Additionally, for installing, maintaining and providing specifications used in the design of numerous electronic and computer systems throughout the Aviation Department., such as: Flight Information Displays (FIDS); Baggage Information Displays (BIDS); Dynamic LED Signage; computers and wired/wireless networks, Cable Television System, exterior dynamic roadway signs, VHF/UHF/ 800MHz radios and radio networks; Terminal wide public address system; Clocks; Automatic Vehicle Identification System; Audio-Visual setups and recordings; Employee Lot Emergency Call System; Security Checkpoint Flex Police Response System; Taxi Lot Airport Entrance Control; Pagers (Beepers); Passenger counting & tracking system; Meeting room setups; Intercom Systems; Music for Public Address and Telephone Hold; AM Radio Station; and other smaller telecommunications systems.
MINIMUM EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:
FCC Radio License Preferred
High School Diploma or greater and must also have an Electronic background or vocational certificate in Electronics.
Here’s a story I’ve been meaning to tell for a while.
Once upon a time, there was a wonderful isle of dreams, and a television station built upon it. To carry the sounds to accompany its magically delivered pictures, there was a set of audio distribution amplifiers.
And oh baby what amplifiers they are….
The guys on the right. Ignore the dark power lights, they're soldered in incandescent...
And their, uh, not the best side
The company stuck around until 1985
And now the heart:
Those of you who are like me will also notice, this is six individually transformer isolated outputs and one transformer isolated input.
Fairly simple amp stages.
The dual power supply. One regulator on each end. This is the older design; the newer one has two separate regulator cards.
These lived happily until one day, one regulator card let out a biiiiiig fart.
For comparison, this is what the other end looked like:
Oh how it stank that morning on the wonderful isle of dreams!
The finest nose on the isle located the stench and an engineer set to restoring the precious music of the angels to flow beyond it. Fortunately he found only two channels still in use, each feeding one output… Thus:
Emergency passive near unity gain audio distribution system.
This engineer was haunted from that day by the knowledge that some very mission critical audio still runs through that stack and the amps aren’t getting any younger.
However, they are, at least, better than the modern equivalent.
I'll just take my chances with the old Ramko Research shit boxes, thanks
