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How To Annoy Those Helping You Out

donkey

Feb 26, 2011
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so I am the lowest level of electronic Jedi (or sith) on here. but I review posts from time to time to learn things. one thing I find more annoying than anything is when people post a long winded explanation of an item, going into details about the weather, the brand of multimeter they used, the fact they have just won lotto and what ever else they can think off, but when you try to help by asking a simple question like "what is it supposed to do?" they either never respond or ignore the comment.
I was wondering if there was a way to change the forum setup a little, make it so users cannot respond to a post unless they answer the question lol... this would save a lot of effort on some very easy topics
 

davenn

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Sep 5, 2009
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but when you try to help by asking a simple question like "what is it supposed to do?" they either never respond or ignore the comment.
I was wondering if there was a way to change the forum setup a little, make it so users cannot respond to a post unless they answer the question lol... this would save a lot of effort on some very easy topics

yup
annoying huh, but I don't think there is a cure unless EVERYONE gets into the practice of NOT RESPONDING till the Q is answered

but that isn't my pet peeve, this is .....
I am heartily sick of the growing trend all over the net where people cannot put spaces after punctuation marks
I mean, really, WTF ... They can put spaces between words but not after periods ( full stop), commas, ?, etc ??

What is so special about a , or . that it doesn't require a space after it, instead of just running straight into the next word ????
It's so much more difficult to read without the spaces


Dave
 

(*steve*)

¡sǝpodᴉʇuɐ ǝɥʇ ɹɐǝɥd
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Jan 21, 2010
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It's a fine morning today, although we're expecting rain later this week. Actually it's getting more and more overcast. My 5 digit multimeters (Tektronix, and Agilent) don't help me forecast today's weather though.

I have walked 79000 steps in the last 4 days -- even I was surprised!

Has anyone been to a Dick Smith store recently? No electronics (at a component level) but up to 70% off their prices as the liquidators get rid of stock. We might hear some stories like this from the recent Radio Shack implosion.

I wish I had better luck with lotto though.

What was the question?
 

cjdelphi

Oct 26, 2011
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Is it possible to limit the max post to say 100 words lol

After going to the supermarket and stopping by at jaycar to go through all their kits i decided to ebay them instead but before i could i got side tracked with a guy dressed like a clown who just walked into the shop, the clown reminded me of the relationship i was in so i went back to the car... there was no wifi signal so i had to use my data plan but i only had a few meg of data left and did not want to spend 10 bucks on 1gb of data so i went back into jaycar and bought what i needed there, but it cost over 10 bucks so it would have been cheaper to buy the 10 bucks worth of data and use ebay...

On the way home i saw a white pigeon flying across the street, anyway i bought the replacement components sat down but realized i was thirsty so i went to the fridge, on the way back from the fridge my cat meowed so i gave him some food and he sat on my lap, but i could not work with him on my lap so i had to push him off, but he was ok with that he had just been fed

I start to repair this damaged circuit but i noticed a pile of resistors so i got my multimeter out and measured them all and put them back into the right draws of values...

I went back sat down but i had an itch on my leg, i scratched the itch it felt better, i used the multimeter to measure the rest of the components... everything looked good so i opened up the bag and pulled out some diodes i bought from jaycar, maybe i should have bought the bigger sized diodes instead, but the clown distracted my thinking... he had a white face and bright red lipstick!

The kettle my wife put on just clicked and i did not want it getting cold so i got up to let her know, then i returned to the bench and started measuring the voltage drops across the diodes but the diodes had been damaged from heat removing them

So my question is which way round do these diodes go as there's no markings for polarity :p

lol sorry :D
 

hevans1944

Hop - AC8NS
Jun 21, 2012
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Is it possible to limit the max post to say 100 words lol
<snip>... then i returned to the bench and started measuring the voltage drops across the diodes but the diodes had been damaged from heat removing them

So my question is which way round do these diodes go as there's no markings for polarity :p
<snip>
Since the diodes were damaged from heat removing them, you should carefully dip them in a fast-drying red colored varnish and deposit them in the trash. That way, if they should ever find their way back onto your work bench, you can immediately dispose of them again, saving hours of frustration trying to determine the polarity of a shorted or burned open diode. Or maybe go find that clown again and ask to borrow their lipstick...

Which reminds me of a story... I have been watching the first twelve seasons of NCIS on Netflix (I have currently finished watching all twelve seasons twice, maybe three times... or was it four times? One of the nice things about getting older is I mostly forget TV shows and movies I've seen before, so they are like "new" to me again. My wife doesn't have this problem. In fact, she has the uncanny ability of "remembering" things she hasn't even seen yet, like a newly released movie that hasn't appeared in local theaters or on television yet. I don't usually mind this unless she shares her plot spoilers with me.), but I finally got bored and wanted to see how Gibbs survived getting shot. So I ordered up season thirteen on Amazon Prime. I have now watched up to episode six of season thirteen now, but found out on the Internet that NCIS has been renewed for at least three more seasons. So that gives me plenty more time to practice telling stories in the manner of Dr. Mallard, although unlike the writers for NCIS there is zero to no chance of getting paid for them.

So, having been prompted to answer a pithy question vis a vis diode polarity, I dug back into my vast reservoir of extra long term memory and pulled out a galena-based point-contact diode, which I used in the previous century to construct a crystal radio set. The diode consisted of a small metal cup into which was soldered (using low-temperature solder) a small piece of galena crystal (lead sulfide), a common mineral associated with the mining of lead ore. A thin stiff wire, called a "cat's whisker" no doubt due to its resemblance in size to the whiskers on a cat, experimentally probed the surface of the galena to find a sensitive spot for rectification. From this mechanical arrangement the symbol for the diode rectifier was born: the galena crystal was the cathode and the thin wire making a point contact became the anode. It is happy circumstance that the triangular head pointing at a straight line also represents the direction of conventional current flow from positive to negative, anode to cathode.

Not that this mattered a fig to a kid trying to find the "sweet spot" and tune in a local AM broadcast radio station. It was many years later that I discovered this type of diode was actually a Schottky diode, and only just recently discovered what part was the anode and what part was the cathode. This Wikipedia article will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about it.

220px-CatWhisker.jpg


The above image (copied from the Wikipedia article) is pretty much identical (as I recall it) to the cat's whisker detector I used for my first crystal radio. Years later I was able to acquire some real commercial crystal diodes, type 1N34 germanium. No fuss required to get these to work in a crystal set. And years after that, while serving in the Air Force, I discovered that gigahertz diodes in ceramic packages were made with point-contact diodes. We used them in our Ku-band radar as mixer diodes. You could tell they were point-contact because there was a tiny screw in the end, cemented in place so it couldn't move, that if you tried to "adjust" the screw prevented the diode from ever working again. Here's a picture of the internals:
1941_1_4.jpg

By now it should be obvious that close inspection of opaque plastic or glass-encapsulated diodes or stud-mounted power diodes will reveal almost no clue as to which end is the anode and which other end is the cathode. Applying voltage through a current limiting resistor and noting which polarity results in conduction is the only certain way that I know of to determine diode polarity... if the diode isn't defective. And if the diode is defective, a pair of vice-grips can make sure you never accidentally try to use it again. Some spiffy multi-meters have a diode test function that actually measures the forward voltage across a diode by applying a small current to the diode. This is mighty useful for distinguishing between silicon and germanium diodes.

As for a 100 word limit... well, if you have read this far, clearly you aren't serious about that.:D

Hop
 

dorke

Jun 20, 2015
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As they say in my places(translated): "To clear the chaff from the straw"
There is great merit in that, but folks do like to walk around in circles,
for so many reasons.

I guess that is human nature,
probably dating back to the story tellers around the fires in caves.:)

What has changed?not much basically, still story telling but...
Now days we weave those stories around the WEB;)
 
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hevans1944

Hop - AC8NS
Jun 21, 2012
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LOL - i hope (at least think) you never took my question seriously
Well, it IS in the Off Topic Members Lounge... I doubt any of us took @donkey's original post too seriously, although I do share his general sentiments. Why can't "they" tell us what "they" want to DO instead of offering up half-baked solutions and expecting us to fix it?
 

cjdelphi

Oct 26, 2011
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I guess, inexperience plays a big role, if you know what you want but nothing about it....

Yes Mr Mechanic, it makes a clunk noise when i go round the corner, but i suppose it's to the point, and that is the point
 

KJ6EAD

Aug 13, 2011
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I guess that is human nature, probably dating back to the story tellers around the fires in caves.:)

What has changed? Not much basically, still story telling but...
Now days we weave those stories around the WEB;)
True enough. It's still a camp fire but now everyone can sit close enough to hear the elders speak.
 

shrtrnd

Jan 15, 2010
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They don't teach spelling,or punctuation in schools anymore.
They just teach you how to input the abbreviated slang for words into your mobile device.
I have no problem here,because *steve* just deletes my posts when I annoy him.
I think the Moderators listened to your idea,donkey.
Unfortunately,they have too many people like me to deal with on this site,you know,semi-to-no literary/social skills.
I,for example confer more eloquently with electrons than people.
Think of all the poor,lost souls,who would wander the Ethernet is ignorance,if not for the kind consideration we all experience here.
I like davenn's idea of not responding to further requests until the reply question is responded to.But I fear some of us are also
lacking in simple etiquette,and we've been dumbed-down enough to tolerate that from others these days.Still trying to figure-out
his peeve about punctuation issues though.Don't you'd think we could all save data-usage time on our devices if we all just ran all of
our words together to save money?Isn't this modern technology at work?
 

hevans1944

Hop - AC8NS
Jun 21, 2012
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The thing I hate most is folks who post me a PM for a question best addressed in the forum. There are a few here whom I will engage in a PM conversation, but only after seeing and replying to their posts in the forum. You know who you are.
 

donkey

Feb 26, 2011
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ok tags bug me too. I look at posts, don't tag me... there is a reason I didn't follow the post, no I have to go and figure out how to unfollow the damn thing.
oh and as for PMing, I have done that once or twice. got a few people that helped out on google chat from that, one is no longer with us and the other lives about 2hours away and he and I work on some 3d printing items from time to time... when money allows lol
 
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