TR Forums

https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/ ... -1159/pd-s

That stuff will ruin you on any kind of generic paprika. It's just so damned good. Fortunately there's a Penzeys store not too far from here, so that's where I get a lot of my spices.

Pro tip: don't go there when you're hungry. Your belly will thank you, but your wallet will not.

I googled that Penzeys place and there's a store 10 minutes from my office. I might have to give it a try.

I've found that growing my own herbs has really made cooking certain dishes easier. It helps that many herbs grow like weeds too.

Yeah, Penzeys is great. We've got one about 15 minutes from our house. They stock some harder-to-find stuff like Szechuan peppercorns (for which there really is no valid substitute).

My wife planted herbs in pots out on the patio this year. Having easy access to fresh basil and thyme is great if you like to cook... downside is that when it gets really hot out you need to remember to water them every day or they die.

Air Force Finally Retires 8-Inch Floppies From Missile Launch Control System

Any changes to a system of this age (and with the highest possible stakes) makes me very uneasy. I'd almost rather they kept using the 8-Inch floppies (assuming data integrity would continue to remain intact). These systems should be kept as simple as humanly possible, and with hardware that's been vetted 1000 times over.

Old 8" and 5¼" Shugart floppy drives were built for military duty.

When the Strategic Air Command received the order from SecDef McNamara to install Permissive Action Links (PALs) on the Minuteman fleet to ensure that ICBMs could not be launched without a direct Presidential order, the code on EVERY PAL in every silo was reset to all zeros as soon as the civilian techs left. The entire Minuteman fleet could easily have been launched by silo crews with no external communications. SAC considered this a feature, not a bug.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php ... -00000000/

Captain Ned wrote:

When the Strategic Air Command received the order from SecDef McNamara to install Permissive Action Links (PALs) on the Minuteman fleet to ensure that ICBMs could not be launched without a direct Presidential order, the code on EVERY PAL in every silo was reset to all zeros as soon as the civilian techs left. The entire Minuteman fleet could easily have been launched by silo crews with no external communications. SAC considered this a feature, not a bug.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php ... -00000000/

Nice. We probably don't want to know what happened on the other side during the Soviet years. It's a wonder we're all still here.

The Egg wrote:

Captain Ned wrote:

When the Strategic Air Command received the order from SecDef McNamara to install Permissive Action Links (PALs) on the Minuteman fleet to ensure that ICBMs could not be launched without a direct Presidential order, the code on EVERY PAL in every silo was reset to all zeros as soon as the civilian techs left. The entire Minuteman fleet could easily have been launched by silo crews with no external communications. SAC considered this a feature, not a bug.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php ... -00000000/

Nice. We probably don't want to know what happened on the other side during the Soviet years. It's a wonder we're all still here.

Soviets had their share of mishaps that almost lead to WWIII. Among the most famous examples was this. The acting CO figured that it was a false positive but it didn't help that NATO was conducting wargames in Europe roughly around the same timeframe.

Tonight is the 33rd anniversary of Bill Buckner proving his equivalence to Michael Jackson.

Captain Ned wrote:

Tonight is the 33rd anniversary of Bill Buckner proving his equivalence to Michael Jackson.

Either this is a painfully tortured metaphor for saying Buckner was a "Bad" fielder, or you're calling him a child predator. I'm hoping the former.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Captain Ned wrote:

Tonight is the 33rd anniversary of Bill Buckner proving his equivalence to Michael Jackson.

Either this is a painfully tortured metaphor for saying Buckner was a "Bad" fielder, or you're calling him a child predator. I'm hoping the former.

When it happened, the joke was "What do Bill Buckner and Michael Jackson have in common? They both wear a glove on one hand for no apparent reason."

ohhhhhh. So neither, which is good.

Halloween candy ranking:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/th ... r-ranking/
I would probably have put Twix or Snickers at the top.

Son's 2-week-old HP Omen gaming system just started boot-looping. Symptoms (and HP's built-in diagnostics) all point to bad RAM. HP wants the whole system shipped back (at their expense) for warranty service. While that's not at all surprising, it's still an awfully costly way to replace a stick of RAM!

I'll report back when we see how the warranty return goes.

(And no, I did not recommend the system to him, nor did he pay money for it; he won it at a promotional event.)

just brew it! wrote:

Son's 2-week-old HP Omen gaming system just started boot-looping. Symptoms (and HP's built-in diagnostics) all point to bad RAM. HP wants the whole system shipped back (at their expense) for warranty service. While that's not at all surprising, it's still an awfully costly way to replace a stick of RAM!

I'll report back when we see how the warranty return goes.

(And no, I did not recommend the system to him, nor did he pay money for it; he won it at a promotional event.)

So it's a bad omen?

just brew it! wrote:

(And no, I did not recommend the system to him, nor did he pay money for it; he won it at a promotional event.)

Not judging even if he had. It's getting pretty tricky to build an affordable system these days if you intend to be at least nominally legal on the software side.

ludi wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

(And no, I did not recommend the system to him, nor did he pay money for it; he won it at a promotional event.)

Not judging even if he had. It's getting pretty tricky to build an affordable system these days if you intend to be at least nominally legal on the software side.

If I'd been building or specing something I would've made sure there was at least one available PCIe slot...

It took 25 years, but the Montreal Expos finally avenge the robbery of 1994.

I'm just glad someone who hadn't otherwise won before managed to pull it out.

More hits for Boeing:
https://news.yahoo.com/boeing-facing-fr ... 02622.html

Yeah, sucks to be them right now. What a raging dumpster fire. IMO they will either reinvent themselves or die.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

More hits for Boeing:
https://news.yahoo.com/boeing-facing-fr ... 02622.html

You probably already know (but others might not):

All airplanes with metal skin have cracks, particularly ones with aluminium skin. As I understand it, it's just a matter of monitoring them and deciding when they officially become a concern, which is to say large enough that any stressed skin might suddenly lose its load-bearing capacity and rupture.

In this case, Boeing would appear to have a crack size/area tolerance in a highly stressed area that was reached before the planned 30,000 hours of flight time.

Yup, and overly optimistic metal fatigue predictions will seriously piss off your customers at best, since inspecting the airframe for cracks is expensive; at worst they result in catastrophic failures and loss of life.

Pickle forks are designed to last more than 90,000 landings and takeoffs without cracking.

Cracks were found much earlier than expected in some 737NG aircraft. Boeing responded by telling the FAA that every 737NG that had flown over 30,000 flights should be tested. 38 of the 810 planes tested from that group were grounded for the problem. Now, several additional planes have been found with cracking after fewer than 27,000 flights, indicating that even after the initial scare, Boeing did not provide an adequately-safe evaluation of the problem.

Chris Snook, Qantas head of engineering wrote:

Even when a crack is present, it does not immediately compromise the safety of the aircraft.

Stephen Fankhauser, Swinburne University of Technology wrote:

The parts were designed so the "structure can tolerate some level of damage or degradation". "The inspection period is set to ensure the cracks do not continue to grow to a dangerous length and then significantly compromise the strength of the airframe."

If you had a fleet of 737NG aircraft for which you had paid around $90 million a piece, expecting them to last 30+ years, would you be annoyed if they were failing after less than 15 years of service?


In some ways, the latest screw-up reminds one of the fuselage fatigue cracking that grounded older 737s after the scary Southwest flight 812 incident in 2011 and the Southwest flight 2294 incident in 2009, though neither of those involved fatalities as did the Aloha flight 243 incident in 1988.

Yup. Either Boeing did not build in an adequate safety margin when designing these parts, or whoever manufactured the parts screwed up (and this was not caught in whatever QA stress testing Boeing did). Regardless, Boeing bears ultimate responsibility and they need to make this right.

just brew it! wrote:

Yup. Either Boeing did not build in an adequate safety margin when designing these parts, or whoever manufactured the parts screwed up (and this was not caught in whatever QA stress testing Boeing did). Regardless, Boeing bears ultimate responsibility and they need to make this right.

I doubt that they have the financial capacity to right this wrong at this time. Just a cascade of failures happening for them one after the other. All just so they could save a few dimes and show a bigger profit to their shareholders. And now those shareholders must seriously be considering dumping their shares before the next ship sinking leak is discovered.

I need this. But I don't know where to put it.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Star-Wars-Ar ... noQAvD_BwE

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/09/us/omaha ... index.html

Got a chuckle out of me.

just brew it! wrote:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/09/us/omaha-rock-crash-meme-trnd/index.html

Got a chuckle out of me.

It is from people who don't how to corner and/or have too much vehicle to handle.

Now begins another preemptive sync to laptop in case the PG&E shenanigans cause me to lose power tomorrow.