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[Bookworm]

Percussive Maintenance. I've heard about that.

I do it every day...

That's stage three. Stage one is cajoling. Stage two is excessive volume and threats. Stage three is Percussive Maintenance.

[GlytchMeister]

Even if it doesn’t work, it makes you feel better, allowing you to calm down - which helps with problem-solving.

[AnotherFairportfan]

One of my instructors at Great Lakes Electronics Tech school told us what may have been a sea story* about an automatic transmitter at a Navy Communications Station. There was an "X" in fingernail polish on its front panel.

Periodically, it would go down, and they'd go to the spare.

The first thing that the ET who was stuck with it this time would try was to take the rubber mallet hanging on a hook nearby and give it a whasty nack right in the middle of that "X".

Usually, it would come back on line, load up to the antenna, and work fine.

If it didn't, the ET would cuss and start opening it up[, anticipating a long afternoon ahead.

================

* For those unaware of the differences between a fairy tale and a sea story, one begins "Once upon a time..." and the other begins "Now, this is no shit..."

[Dave]

One of my instructors at Great Lakes Electronics Tech school told us what may have been a sea story* about an automatic transmitter at a Navy Communications Station. There was an "X" in fingernail polish on its front panel.

...

The first thing that the ET who was stuck with it this time would try was to take the rubber mallet hanging on a hook nearby and give it a whasty nack right in the middle of that "X".

...

* For those unaware of the differences between a fairy tale and a sea story, one begins "Once upon a time..." and the other begins "Now, this is no shit..."

I'm betting that it is indeed a sea story, of a slightly different type.

The transmitter was actually just fine. The whole thing was set up as a way of hazing new technicians. They were told that the transmitter was down and that they needed to whack it with a mallet.

When they did, a switch behind the panel would operate, powering on a solenoid, releasing a hinged ceiling tile, and dumping several hundred ping-pong balls onto the head of the startled technician.

(Extra points for anyone who can correctly identify the officer in charge of the station at the time.)

[Warrl]

(Extra points for anyone who can correctly identify the officer in charge of the station at the time.)

Some guy named Dave, obviously.

[Bookworm]

One of my instructors at Great Lakes Electronics Tech school told us what may have been a sea story* about an automatic transmitter at a Navy Communications Station. There was an "X" in fingernail polish on its front panel.

...

The first thing that the ET who was stuck with it this time would try was to take the rubber mallet hanging on a hook nearby and give it a whasty nack right in the middle of that "X".

...

* For those unaware of the differences between a fairy tale and a sea story, one begins "Once upon a time..." and the other begins "Now, this is no shit..."

I'm betting that it is indeed a sea story, of a slightly different type.

The transmitter was actually just fine. The whole thing was set up as a way of hazing new technicians. They were told that the transmitter was down and that they needed to whack it with a mallet.

When they did, a switch behind the panel would operate, powering on a solenoid, releasing a hinged ceiling tile, and dumping several hundred ping-pong balls onto the head of the startled technician.

(Extra points for anyone who can correctly identify the officer in charge of the station at the time.)

Admiral Daniel V. Gallery?

[AnotherFairportfan]

(Extra points for anyone who can correctly identify the officer in charge of the station at the time.)

Admiral Daniel V. Gallery?

Nah - Admiral Dan was an airedale; he'd never have been in command of a commsta.

[AnotherFairportfan]

I'm betting that it is indeed a sea story, of a slightly different type.

The transmitter was actually just fine. The whole thing was set up as a way of hazing new technicians. They were told that the transmitter was down and that they needed to whack it with a mallet.

When they did, a switch behind the panel would operate, powering on a solenoid, releasing a hinged ceiling tile, and dumping several hundred ping-pong balls onto the head of the startled technician.

(Extra points for anyone who can correctly identify the officer in charge of the station at the time.)

H Alan Smith, in his wonderful book, The Compleat Practical Joker, describes a strength-testing machine at a Hollywood studio in the 1940s or so.

It was a studio that made a lot of B Westerns and the like, and tended to have various macho types wandering around the lot.

Basically, you stood on a platform, grabbed a pair of handles and pulled as hard as you could; a dial conveniently located in front of you told you how strong you were.Smith quotes someone who tried it {approximately, from memory from probably forty years ago}:

So i grabbed the handles and pulled. A siren went off, the dial sprayed water in my face and i got a shock from the handles that felt like it was going to tear my hands off.

Meanwhile, a blank .45 cartridge went off inside the platform, and a plank swung up and gave me a helluva belt in the seat of my pants.

[Catawampus]

It may come as a bit of a surprise to some folks due to the character I write in the fanfic, but I truly only know enough about computers to break them in interesting ways and to do a better job at bullshitting about knowing about them than the average joe

Yeah, I'm very good at using computers and their programs (often in ways not quite intended by the designers), to the point where I always seem to end up being the go-to IT guy at any place where I work. But my grasp of computer programming is limited to the knowledge that it is something that exists, and my vocabulary for the innards of the typical computer consist of such terms as "little rectangular thing with spiky bits", "weird boxy thing with wires", and "whatever the heck that is". It's a good thing that you don't have to know how something works in order to be able to make use of it.

"Oh, nothing so momentous,...

No, I was doing this other momentous thing instead..."

I grew up in Silicon Valley and parts north,

Sometimes I feel exactly like Forest Gump, history & momentous events swirling all around me.

Most events that later are considered so pivotal and important were at the time just a whole bunch of ordinary people going about their business.

The other was figuring out that I could find prime numbers with a hidden message buried inside, and use these as part of a cyber security and encryption system.

Quotations from the Necronomicon?

[Dave]

The other was figuring out that I could find prime numbers with a hidden message buried inside, and use these as part of a cyber security and encryption system.

Quotations from the Necronomicon?

If you like.

I no longer have the software I originally developed for use back at TiVo, but just for grins I spent some time last weekend watching "The Dirty Dozen" on Netflix with one eye, and writing some code with the other. It turns out that there's a very spiffy big-number math library on Linux, which already has prime-number-finding capability, so making a new version of my hidden-message-in-a-prime-number "from scratch" took only an hour or so.

I'll generate a few numbers with something suitably eldrich-horror embedded within.

[Bookworm]

(Extra points for anyone who can correctly identify the officer in charge of the station at the time.)

Admiral Daniel V. Gallery?

Nah - Admiral Dan was an airedale; he'd never have been in command of a commsta.

Sounded like the same sense of humour. (Why wouldn't he have been in command of a comm station? Too small?)

[Catawampus]

Question for the DC Comics geeks, regarding the Justice League movie:

At the very end of the movie, Superman and the Flash are getting ready to run a race from what is presumably the Midwest to the West Coast. All well and good as far as being something that they can do in their spare time, since they're both super-fast and can probably cover the distance in a few minutes at most.

But what about energy? Sure, Superman is established as having some incredible reserve of strength and energy; Superman might not make much sense from a physics standpoint, but it's established in-universe so him being able to make a thousand-mile sprint makes sense in context.

The Flash, though, didn't appear to be all that strong or powerful. He's just fast. If he runs a thousand times faster than a normal man, he'd just pass out from exhaustion a thousand times sooner.

So does he have some sort of incredible energy-storage power, or something like that? He'd need to have some power that lets him shove against very strong air resistance, for example, so maybe that would have something to do with it? The movie never gave any details on that sort of thing, and I've not read the comics or watched any of the non-movie stuff.

[Dave]

Quotations from the Necronomicon?

Well, since the Necronomicon turns out to be of uncertain reliability, I thought I might use something better-attested... something from Lovecraft.

Sort of.

Here's a big prime number (or an "almost certainly prime" number - it passes 50 iterations of the Miller-Rabin test, which means there's somewhat less than one chance in a billion that it's not prime):

21098892413720789534912736684497732997752497645686224071473865276071878568821403783013454557830202719588972824577156113640812244263675583026615168022516565859234022650481912183028455509135604453453166511376307637748786863684898632383637915972149045337182775732097792331549647580207785916488027935404763950277

Or, to make it a bit easier to read,

21,098,892,413,720,789,534,912,736,684,497,732,997,752,497,645,686,224,071,473,865,276,071,878,568,821,403,783,013,454,557,830,202,719,588,972,824,577,156,113,640,812,244,263,675,583,026,615,168,022,516,565,859,234,022,650,481,912,183,028,455,509,135,604,453,453,166,511,376,307,637,748,786,863,684,898,632,383,637,915,972,149,045,337,182,775,732,097,792,331,549,647,580,207,785,916,488,027,935,404,763,950,277

Represented as a big integer in Intel format (hexadecimal notation, least significant byte first) it's:

C5 AC BC 39 4B 75 D2 58 2F 2D 90 82 C3 F3 47 76 C8 BD 0B 68 E1 C0 B9 00 49 61 21 20 49 61 21 20 43 61 74 61 77 61 6D 70 75 73 20 66 68 74 61 67 6E 21 20 50 68 27 6E 67 6C 75 69 20 6D 67 6C 77 27 6E 66 61 68 20 43 61 74 61 77 61 6D 70 75 73 20 52 27 6C 79 65 68 20 77 67 61 68 27 6E 61 67 6C 20 66 68 74 61 67 6E 21 00 B4 2A 69 00 53 FD A2 D0 A8 72 E6 46 9A 35 63 4E 20 38 DE BA 0B 1E

and viewed in a hex editor, it looks like:

result.png (48.1 KiB) Viewed 7384 times

Pleasant dreams!

[Atomic]

Admiral Daniel V. Gallery?

Nah - Admiral Dan was an airedale; he'd never have been in command of a commsta.

Sounded like the same sense of humour. (Why wouldn't he have been in command of a comm station? Too small?)

Ahem - Captain Kangaroo!

[Dave]

Ahem - Captain Kangaroo!

Give the contestant a cigar!

(I would have accepted either "Bob Keeshan" or "Ken Garu" as well.)

[Catawampus]

and viewed in a hex editor, it looks like:


result.png



Pleasant dreams!

*becomes eldritch, rugose, and cyclopean*

Yay!

[TazManiac]

The Flash is supposed to be able to tap into something known as 'the Speed Force', but what little I know of it comes from the recent TV shows, not the more definitive DC comics.

(I miss opening a Hex Editor on a whim as the need arose...) <--- monochrome monitor days.

[Dave]

*becomes eldritch, rugose, and cyclopean*

Steve Martin's grandmother would certainly approve!

[GlytchMeister]

The Flash is supposed to be able to tap into something known as 'the Speed Force', but what little I know of it comes from the recent TV shows, not the more definitive DC comics.

Yeah I am not an expert but depending on the comic/story/retelling, the Flash uses a kind of force not fully native to our own, which usually gets rid of the friction problem and sometimes gets rid of the insane energy requirements.

However, in the movie, Flash mentions needing tons of food because of his power - so in a long distance race, he’ll have to either stop to eat or be running with a glucose mainline.

The movie... left much to be desired in many departments, logic not least among them.

[Dave]

The movie... left much to be desired in many departments, logic not least among them.

"Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad." (Spock)