Happy Me Thread

[petrw1]

Congrats....Speaking from experience grandchildren will come quicker than you think too.

[paulunderwood]

Originally Posted by wombatman

I'm a father! Little girl born 8/24/15, 8lbs 8oz

Congrats. Perhaps when she grows up she will find the next Mersenne prime

[wombatman]

Originally Posted by paulunderwood

Congrats. Perhaps when she grows up she will find the next Mersenne prime

There's something that would make me a proud papa!

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by paulunderwood

Congrats. Perhaps when she grows up she will find the next Mersenne prime

Whaaaattt? You mean no mersenne primes till that time?
Well... say 3 years is not long to wait... Some children can handle the keyboard at two...
I remember when my daughter was about 18 months old, the best way to get rid of her for a while was to "forget" a keyboard in the middle of the room. At the time I was repairing computers/selling parts, in my parents' apartment in Ro, I had a room there filled with all the stuff, lots of small boxes, few computers were always running, and I was mostly with a keyboard in front of me, so she learned very fast what the keyboard is for, and every time we went there together she was very excited to make a mess of all those boxes, therefore she was not allowed to touch them, or the keyboards. Once she got an electric shock by touching an open monitor, and she learned very fast not to touch things which daddy says not to touch. But the keyboard was always a big attraction. She was waiting until I was leaving the room, run inside, press few keys fast, looking to the door, then run back outside, before I would be back. It took me a while to solve the mystery of strange characters appearing random in my source codes, making them uncompilable My mother had a big library and another room was used for it (full of books all around, some empty space in the middle) and once I put a keyboard there (only the keyboard) just to keep the little enemy out of my room. But I could not imagine the continuation of the story: she could stay for hours, literary for hours, in front of the keyboard, on the floor, back turned to the door (so nobody could see what she is doing, but in fact her body could not hide the keyboard which was as big as she was), typing few random keys, turning to look to the door (to see if I am not coming), typing, looking to the door, typing, looking to the door, typing, looking to the door, typing, looking to the door... I don't know if she was fascinated by the moving key, or by the sound, or by the fact that she was not allowed to touch the keyboard in my room.

[kladner]

Great account from the realms of parenting, LaurV!

[wombatman]

Originally Posted by LaurV

<sage wisdom>

'Cuse me while I write down a few things....

[ewmayer]

Just finished a late-summer home improvement project in form of a scratch-built heavy-duty wooden workbench. Besides the final product being useful, this month-long effort (~2 hrs/day on average, first several of which were mostly pulling nails) gave me a good chance to resharpen my much-atrophied carpentry skills.

This was built mostly from salvage lumber I'd accumulated over the past few years, with this project in mind - the only new wood is in the 5'-long top crossbeams (two 2x4, one 4x4 in the center) and two of the five pieces of 1x12 top planking (the lighter-colored ones in the stack in middle of the frame in pic1 - I took the pic before screwing down the planking in order to show the interior farming). Most of the fasteners are lag screws I'd similarly accumulated over the years - one of the small tech companies in a building where I formerly worked vacated their office space and left a bunch of such fasteners just lying around on the concrete floor for the picking-up - plus 4 long carriage bolts I bought. Pic1 is actually from the back of the bench to better show the rear cross-bracing. (Sorry about the low-res, my cellphone is dated).

The 2 really huge lag screws - each nearly a foot long - which fasten the central 4x4 'spine' to the 4x4 top side pieces - were salvaged from a couple of Christmas trees - my sister and I each bought a tree at a local lot some years ago, these were used to fasten the cut-off trunk to their wooden bases. Total material cost is thus only around $60: $30 for the 3 long new-wood top rails, ~$5 for the carriage bolts and some matching nuts and washers and $25 more for the special tool (2" hole saw and quick-change mandrel) I used to cut the male 'peg' (= tenon) ends of the 4x4 spine piece. (The mating mortise holes I cut with a 1.75" auger bit from a set I already had.) The peg mortises were a lot more effort than the quick-n-dirty solutions of [a] simply using sheet-metal joist hangers or [b] using my circular saw set to a shallow depth and some chisel work to cut some basic notch mortises in the abutting end pieces, but the result was so much nicer and incredibly solid. Pic2 shows a detail of the left-end peg mortise and tenon (on the right side of the from-the rear pic1) prior to assembly, along with the hole saw and auger bit used to cut the tenon and mortise hole, respectively. Pic3 shows the opposite-end joint, where I further experimented with sinking the mortise hole into a 3/4"-deep rectangular notch, from the outer (lag-screw hex-head) side.

The shelving portion is really just a reconfigured wooden patio 'BBQ assistant' dealie on wheels my sis gave me years ago. To do that I chopped the bottom 6" (incl. the wheels) off each of the 4 legs and removed the 20"x25" hardwood top. The latter actually looks like it will make a really handy tray for ferrying food and tableware between the kitchen and patio. I'll probably tray-ify it by drilling a pair of holes 4" apart on each of the shorter sides, symmetrically around the long axis - top half of each hole will be ~0.5", bottom will be ~1". Then loop a foot-long piece of 10mm-dia climbing accessory cord through the top of each hole pair, tie a tight knot in each end, cut off the excess inch or so on the cut-off side of each knot, seal the raw cable end with a hot knife to prevent fraying and pull each knot tight into the wide bottom half of its hole. Voila - pair of rope handles for EZ-carrying of the tray. Will post pic of that once it's done.

[kladner]

Nice piece of work, there, and admirable planning and accumulation of salvage. I would love such a bench if I lived in a place which could accommodate it.

[kladner]

2 GTX 580s @ 900 and 918 MHz. A little over 1010 GHz-d/d. Having a cool spell in Chicago, so I can push them harder. They are also keeping my feet warm.

FX-8350, stock, running as a quad CPU, doing 1 LL, 1 DC, and 2 P-1. According to GPU72, those together are averaging a little over 16 GHz-d/d.

Estimated line power consumption: well over 800w. My Kill-a Watt started to brown around the outlet, but I'd guess from memory that the system is pulling something like 850w. Wish I'd got an i5 the last time I had to rebuild the system.

Of course, more modern GPUs wouldn't hurt on the power front, either.

[kladner]

Now that I just successfully completed the DC assignment, I can say how much I enjoyed the number involved:

34747777

All sorts of Today in Maths kind of games can be played. The simple one which jumped out at me is

'3+4=7, 4= (the number of 7s following)'.

There must be more inventive combinations.

[pepi37]

Hiking season is started :)