TR Forums

just brew it! wrote:

At least they didn't need to worry about 'splody bits killing someone or asphyxiation hazards, since the accelerator itself was buried underground, and nobody was allowed in the access tunnels while the accelerator was operating (for obvious reasons).

I read a paper that questioned whether there was any chance that the bison herd on the Fermilab property might block a quench pipe, either by having damaged it or physically standing in front of it at exactly the wrong time, and if so what the potential damages could be. The range went from nothing, to overpressure in the pipe, all the way to airborne, flash-frozen buffalo as a hazardous projectile.

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

At least they didn't need to worry about 'splody bits killing someone or asphyxiation hazards, since the accelerator itself was buried underground, and nobody was allowed in the access tunnels while the accelerator was operating (for obvious reasons).

I read a paper that questioned whether there was any chance that the bison herd on the Fermilab property might block a quench pipe, either by having damaged it or physically standing in front of it at exactly the wrong time, and if so what the potential damages could be. The range went from nothing, to overpressure in the pipe, all the way to airborne, flash-frozen buffalo as a hazardous projectile.

During the time I worked there the bison were not allowed in the accelerator ring AFAIK; they were kept in a large fenced pasture elsewhere on the site. I've heard that there was a plan to keep them inside the ring early on, but this was based on the (incorrect) belief that they would be contained within the ring because they would refuse to climb the berm covering the beamline. I also believe the vents were far enough above ground level that it would not have been an issue regardless.

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

The range went from nothing, to overpressure in the pipe, all the way to airborne, flash-frozen buffalo as a hazardous projectile.

That's just Amazon's grocery delivery service by droneship, delivering you some fresh, flash-frozen bison burgers.

Yep, for his next trick Bezos is going to use his own personal drone swarm to reinvent the cow catcher.

just brew it! wrote:

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

At least they didn't need to worry about 'splody bits killing someone or asphyxiation hazards, since the accelerator itself was buried underground, and nobody was allowed in the access tunnels while the accelerator was operating (for obvious reasons).

I read a paper that questioned whether there was any chance that the bison herd on the Fermilab property might block a quench pipe, either by having damaged it or physically standing in front of it at exactly the wrong time, and if so what the potential damages could be. The range went from nothing, to overpressure in the pipe, all the way to airborne, flash-frozen buffalo as a hazardous projectile.

During the time I worked there the bison were not allowed in the accelerator ring AFAIK; they were kept in a large fenced pasture elsewhere on the site. I've heard that there was a plan to keep them inside the ring early on, but this was based on the (incorrect) belief that they would be contained within the ring because they would refuse to climb the berm covering the beamline. I also believe the vents were far enough above ground level that it would not have been an issue regardless.

The paper was definitely meant to be humorous. I wish I could remember where I found it and who authored it, but it read like Asimov in one of his mischievous letters-to-the-editor.

Redocbew wrote:

If you want to spend your day cleaning up drool and dealing with cranky, pissed off people who've had enough, then they've got a job for you.

I've got no complaints about the pair who actually managed my session. When I finally had to quit they both observed that they rarely see the doctors who order these images actually stuff themselves in the tube to see what it's like. They were both surprised I'd held on as long as I did.

It's been years since I had an MRI, but yeah, I've never had a problem with the techs either. Plus, if you're nice to them they can usually give you an unofficial nod as to how the images turned out. They can't really tell you anything directly without a doctor looking at it first, but they usually have just as good an idea what they're looking at as anyone else.

I had one done relatively recently (couple of years ago). I had a sudden attack of Bell's palsy, and they did an MRI to rule out the possibility that I'd had a stroke. That was a scary day.

I hope to share the adventure this year to check the progress of my neuron plaque.

Several of you guys have been around longer, but happy 15th TR-iversary to me.

Message which was just forwarded to everyone by our office manager:

Dear Tenants,

Please be advised there is a planned protest to be at [street address redacted] on Wednesday February 21st between Noon and 1:00 pm. The exact location is not known but is expected to be on [redacted] Street. Building Management is working with the Chicago Police Department to ensure the protest is peaceful and without incident. We recommend communication be provided to your teams, visitors, and employees in your company so that they may plan their trips/day accordingly. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to call or reach out to building management.

No idea what this protest is supposed to be about.

Time to become that roving street reporter, JBI!!

just brew it! wrote:

Message which was just forwarded to everyone by our office manager:

Dear Tenants,

Please be advised there is a planned protest to be at [street address redacted] on Wednesday February 21st between Noon and 1:00 pm. The exact location is not known but is expected to be on [redacted] Street. Building Management is working with the Chicago Police Department to ensure the protest is peaceful and without incident. We recommend communication be provided to your teams, visitors, and employees in your company so that they may plan their trips/day accordingly. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to call or reach out to building management.

No idea what this protest is supposed to be about.

I think today was planned protest (country-wide) regarding the tragedy in Florida last week.

I was supposed to be driving to SW Missouri today for a user group tomorrow, but I was around a half hour from home when I got a call that it was canceled since there's supposed to be freezing rain/ice falling in the area tonight again. At least I wasn't there already.

Lucky me, I have the storm on my trailer and I'm bringing it there right now.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Several of you guys have been around longer, but happy 15th TR-iversary to me.

Congrats!

I'd be nearly on my 16th, but I did not join the forums until 2006 if I recall. I could look it up... but I'm too old and lazy.

IIRC (and that's a crap shoot for memories of that vintage) this is not the first TR forum system, as TR predates the epoch date of these fora (26 DEC 2001). The Wayback Machine's (thank you, Sherman) first scrape is from 1 MAR 2000 and the original URL (tech-report.com) shows as registered on 9 SEP 1999. I'm not sure when the official separation date from Ars was and it's no longer part of the origin story on the "About Us" page.

I remember how happy Scott was to get rid of the dash.

Random guy: Hey man, your site is just techreport.com, right?
Scott: Err....

wait, TR used to be part of Ars?

paulWTAMU wrote:

wait, TR used to be part of Ars?

Damage and Dr. Evil (Andy Brown, no longer an active part of TR) wrote for Ars before jumping ship for their own shingle. Here's the crazy part: Ars came about circa 1997/1998 [/MAJOR handwave] from a bunch of techies at the Divinity School of one of the major Boston universities (can't remember which one and both sites have scrubbed it). After a year or two at Ars (long before they went corporate), Scott & Andy struck out on their own.

There's a few of us who have been along since the start and, unless Scott wants to write a history, we should before bit rot sets in.

Here's the "About Us" from the first Wayback Machine scrape:

http://web.archive.org/web/200003061007 ... 80/about.x

krazyredboy wrote:

I'd be nearly on my 16th, but I did not join the forums until 2006 if I recall. I could look it up... but I'm too old and lazy.

I read the site for a long time, followed them here from Ars, but didn't join the forums until that date.

Off that topic for a moment, corporate HR sent a warning to everyone reminding us to not "misuse" corporate property. These lines tell the tale:

At least one employee was using a company server to trade cryptocurrency. Not only is this a misuse of company time, it is a misuse of company property.

and then later on

Failure to adhere to these policies may result in immediate dismissal without warning.

I'd hate to be that dimwit...

Yeah... wow. Mining from your company supplied laptop is one thing(and still a bad idea). Hijacking a server is a completely different level of stupid.

Redocbew wrote:

Hijacking a server is a completely different level of stupid.

Lots of servers got borged for F@H or SETI@Home 20+ years ago.

I remember. Probably still not something I would have done myself, but at least back then botnets weren't a thing, and power consumption wasn't such an issue. I imagine there was still some kind of active monitoring going on, but with the objective of most malware being to destroy the machine instead of covertly taking control of it in some way I can see how there might have been less pressure against something like that.

It just make me wonder what that dude was thinking. Install an application on a system which almost certainly has some kind of resource monitoring when you know it's going to use all the resources it can, and then hope that nobody notices?

Redocbew wrote:

I remember. Probably still not something I would have done myself, but at least back then botnets weren't a thing, and power consumption wasn't such an issue. I imagine there was still some kind of active monitoring going on, but with the objective of most malware being to destroy the machine instead of covertly taking control of it in some way I can see how there might have been less pressure against something like that.

It just make me wonder what that dude was thinking. Install an application on a system which almost certainly has some kind of resource monitoring when you know it's going to use all the resources it can, and then hope that nobody notices?

Two things I can think of: first, non-IT people are often willfully ignorant of the details of whatever computer system they're using. They don't understand it, they don't want to understand it, and they want to be able to yell at someone else when they're displeased with it.

Second: otherwise intelligent people have no impulse control whatsoever about installing unapproved software, torrenting moves, browsing porn on "their" work computer. As a corollary, they will also get indignant about "spying" and "Big Brother" when they're caught doing it.

ITPTSD should be in the DSM, I swear.

Captain Ned wrote:

Redocbew wrote:

Hijacking a server is a completely different level of stupid.

Lots of servers got borged for F@H or SETI@Home 20+ years ago.

More recently than that, even. Back when I was folding on my personal systems I know people here were installing it on work machines where they were the IT admin. I think they got approval first, but I know it happened.

We just had someone busted for browsing child porn on a work device. Never underestimate stupid.

derfunk wrote:

More recently than that, even. Back when I was folding on my personal systems I know people here were installing it on work machines where they were the IT admin. I think they got approval first, but I know it happened.

Back in the folding days, I remember a story about a guy who convinced his employer to let him run it on the all the work machines.

It runs in the background! Priority levels! Your CPU is mostly idle, and when you do need it F@H won't get in your way! Etc...

YOU WON'T NOTICE! PROMISE!

Which is of course essentially true for computation. It's not so true for memory.

At some point, probably not long after the guy got permission and did all the installs, Pande Lab put out a work unit that had dramatically higher required working set than what this guy had ever seen before.

You *DO* notice swapping.

Problems, embarrassment, uninstalls.

notfred wrote:

We just had someone busted for browsing child porn on a work device. Never underestimate stupid.

I never personally encountered that, thankfully. But I did know one guy who was given a choice to retire or be fired for cause after he was caught browsing porn for the third time. His defense, verbatim, was: "I have to do it here! If I do it at home and my wife catches me, she'll divorce me!"

I used to know a guy like that too. I'll never forgot that one day he outlined how the genitals of some animals were very similar to human females. Some people are a little bit broken.