They seem to be referring to an auto-wedgie, not the dreaded atomic wedgie.
The weird part? This was in the ladies’ section. We were picking up socks for our own young lady…
Category: Oddities
Who’d’a thunk it?
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Wedgie-Free Undies
Wedgie-free undies -
Chipmunk on High Alert
The chipmunks are busy cleaning up all the maple seeds from the driveway, but, being chipmunks, they like to stay near a safe spot.
The absolute best spot to watch for danger seems to be the 4-inch PVC pipe I attached to the garage downspouts: you can see out, but when a threat appears you can run up the downspout!
[Update: the Cooper’s Hawk just swooped on a red squirrel, missed, and landed on the patio railing as the rodent vanished up the pipe.]
Chipmunk peering from drainpipe -
Do You Feel Lucky Today?
Drugs by Nostrum Just got a new shipment of dope from our usual mail-order med supplier. The new dope comes in a livid red capsule, a disconcerting change from the previous green.
So, being an educated and somewhat wary consumer, I check the label to see what’s new. It seems my supplier is dealing from a new manufacturer!
Hitherto, I’d only encountered the word nostrum in phrases preceded by words like quack. The dictionary definition, at least for some values of dictionary, seems to back that up:
Noun
Nevertheless, Nostrum Pharmaceuticals appears to be a legit concern.
There’s a reason why big companies spend all that money to come up with names that are equally meaningless in all known languages…
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How Not To Say Thank You
Just got a nice thank-you email from the mumble organization after filling out a survey form…
Thank you for taking the mumble Survey survey. Your input is very valuable to us in designing our program.
<Delete or replace with a closing such as “Sincerely,”>
<Delete or replace with an image of a signature>
<Delete or replace with a text representation of a signature (e.g. “John Smith”), the title corresponding to signature (e.g. “President”), and the site name>OK, I appreciate their intent, but … it’s still a bit off-putting.
Hint: always include yourself on the email list, perhaps as a BCC, when you’re setting up a new bulk response. Sometimes what you see on the proofreading screen isn’t what goes out over the wire.
And I’m pretty sure that the “Survey survey” was put out by their Department of Redundancy Department…
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Unit Pricing Obfuscation
The idea behind unit pricing was to simplify comparisons between packages with different quantities: each package would have a price-per-unit value.
Here are the two shelf labels for two sizes of the lah-dee-dah fluoridating remineralizing mouthwash that our young lady must use for the next few years. The unit price is in the orange block, with some fine print underneath giving the unit. Click for a bigger image; you’ll probably need it.
Unit Pricing Obfuscation Need a bit more help? Here’s the one on the left:
Price Per Pound And the one on the right:
Price Per Quart For those of you in the rest of the world with volumes in liters and weights (uh, masses) in kilograms:
- 1 pint = 0.5 quart = 1 pound of water
What’s most interesting is that this only occurs when the package with the larger quantity has a higher per-unit price, as with these bottles.
This is a perfect example of something that’s technically legal, but definitely not in keeping with the spirit of the law.
Another interesting situation: if a shelf pricing sticker is missing for one of several similar items, you can be absolutely certain that package is more expensive. A missing shelf price sticker is technically illegal, but I doubt anybody ever gets prosecuted… it’s a simple mistake that could happen to anyone, right?
Because nothing in a Walmart store is left to happenstance, this is obviously planned and approved at the highest levels.
It happens elsewhere, too, but we just happened to be in Walmart this morning. Check it out where you shop…
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Opening a Quartz Crystal Can: Effects Thereof
A comment on yesterday’s post about quartz crystal measurements prompted me to destroy a crystal in the name of science…
The question is, what effect does exposing a crystal to the air have on its performance? I would have sworn it would never work right again, because it’s normally running in an inert atmosphere and maybe a partial vacuum. One measurement being worth a kilo-opinion, here’s what happened.
I picked random crystal from the bottom of the crystal box, based on it having a solder seal that I could dismantle without deploying an abrasive cutoff wheel or writing some G-Code to slice the can off with a slitting saw. The crystal was labeled HCI-1800 18.000 MHz and probably older than most of the folks who will eventually read this… younger than some of us, though.
The overall response, measured in the same fixture as shown yesterday (click the pix for more detail):
HCI-1800 18 MHz – Baseline Overview The center frequency is 18.0050 MHz (at this rather broad span) and it has some ugly spurs out there to the right.
A closeup of the series-resonant peak:
HCI-1800 18 MHz – Baseline BW The bandwidth is 1.50 kHz at 17.99950 MHz at this span.
Naked HCI-1800 18.0 MHz Crystal Then I applied a soldering iron around the seal and yanked the case off. I think that didn’t involve whacking the crystal with the case en passant, but I can’t be sure. In any event, it looks undamaged and seems to operate properly.
A pair of spring clips attach to the electrodes and hold the quartz disk in position. They’re just the cutest little things and quite unlike the other holders I’ve seen. I think the solder blobs fasten the spring ends together and don’t bond to the electrodes, but what do I know?
HCI-1800 Crystal Overview The quartz disk has a few small chips near the edge:
HCI-1800 Crystal Edge Chips I think those are Inherent Vice… simply because:
- They’re not in a position where I could have whacked the disk and
- I doubt I could whack it that delicately
Anyhow, with the can off, here’s what the series resonant peak looks like:
HCI-1800 18 MHz – Opened BW The resonant frequency is now 17.99968, 180 Hz higher, which may be due to instability in the HP8591 spectrum analyzer’s not-stabilized-for-ten-hours ovenized oscillator. The bandwidth is 1.55 kHz, 50 Hz wider, although I think that’s one resolution quantum of difference.
Here are the two bandwidth traces overlaid.
HCI-1800 18 MHz – Overlaid BW The peak has been centered in both, so you can’t tell they’re slightly different. The interesting point is the difference in the slope to the low-frequency side of the peak, which is slightly higher for the open-case condition. Seeing as how the missing case completely changes the usual stray capacitance situation, I’m not surprised.
Anyhow, I admit to being surprised: there’s not that much difference after opening the case. I’ll put the naked crystal in a small container in a nominally safe place for a while, then retest it to see what’s happening.
Memo to Self: A “safe place” is nowhere near the Electronics Workbench!
Here are some other naked crystals:
Naked Crystals Notice the tarnished (presumably) silver electrodes on the crystal in the lower left. That one’s been sitting on my monitor and in other hazardous locations for a few years. I can’t find these anywhere right now, but if they turn up I’ll test them, too.
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The Decline of Literacy: Just Copy The Label
Spotted these signs on the outside wall of a local Big Box home repair store. It’s not as if I’ve never misspelled anything, but this required consistent effort by two of the three folks who wrote up the signs.
Brinkmann Grill 
Brinkann Grill 
Brinkman Grill Which one is correct?
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 