The Sorcerer's Progress (Page 12 of 62)

(In whining voice that imitates your landlord)
"But it has wires everywhere! And blinky lights! And a knight who says, Ni!"

(Glares suspiciously)
"Is this mechanical thingy interfering with anyone's cable TV signal?"

(In my opinion, the state has decided that electronic who-ja-wizzats can lead to fire because some chowder-head managed to shut down the grid while figuring out how to make the perfect toaster. Blame Tesla :-)

A

That sucks big time njc! And welcome to the nanny state - we've had it for a while in Aus already and trust me, it's painful to anyone with an average intellect and some common sense. It's not your landlord's doing though, laws, rules and regs have to cater for the lowest common denominator - the pain invoked on the rest of the population increases exponentially with increasing CSQ (similar to IQ, but instead of intelligence, common sense is measured). Personally, I believe more in tough love - let stupid do stupid and deal with the consequences on a one-on-one basis because there will always be a villiage idiot "smart" enough to outdo any system. But no, guvernmint must DO something!!!!

I wish I had any advice to give other than toughen up and hope you can make a plan.  Normally, I'd suggest a partial lobotomy, but in your case, it won't work at all, you're way too smart.  Maybe ask why K is allowed to have a fish tank? I mean, if they allow THAT!, surely a few LEDs won't be a problem? Their dumbstruck expressions will hopefully make up for some of the pain. *K, just kidding, mate, but you started it!*

Amy also have a few good ideas. My personal solution was to move to the States ... :-)

Another problem.  I thought the lower brightness from the yellow Platinum Dragon was due (via the workings of the LED) to the higher energy of the wavelength.

Well, the flasher on the compact, first-try-at-real-life-packaging board isn't putting out pulses.  It's trying to hold the LED on for the full 7+ milliseconds, which it cannot do because of the high-pass filter which ensures that the LED isn't held on for too long.

And I have no time to fix it now.  I have to put together a variable-voltage power supply driven off little batteries.  It can be done with one or two transistors in a voltage follower, but if you set up the resistances to prevent overload well you limit your voltage range.  I have a design that switches one of the transistors to its complementary polarity and adds two transistors in a current mirror.  It -should- work but it needs to be assembled and tested and the topology makes a decent layout hard.

I haven't finished going through the financial papers.  I'm about two-thirds through, and I'm getting about 20% that I have to keep because it's IRA/401K.  Of my own papers, I've declared so far that I'm going to keep an inch or so of the two and a half feet I've gone through.  I should have taken the electrical and electronics parts to recycling today, but I got a late start.

The cavernous fire-hazard-in-the-farmland used book store that I hope will take a lot of stuff that I'm comfortable parting with is closed on Monday and Tuesday.  I may need to rent a minivan.  I figure I'll have at least 300lbs of stuff to take--all stuff that I don't mind giving away (except on the principle that I shouldn't have to).  But I'll probably face a demand to dump another 200 volumes, including hardcovers.  I've probably got another 600 lbs of stuff to carry out, and I haven't even looked at clothing I have to move to make room in my closets.

Tuesday I have to paint 15 shelves.  They'll get one coat of gloss black spray, top and bottom, and the knots will stay as they are.  (White pine is cheap and strong enough.)  The electrical recyclables have to go to the township.  The stuff the super recommended to get the soap scum off the plastic tub sort of worked.  It will need at least two more passes, and I'll have to use a brush.

Read the last verses of Burns's To a Mouse.

If you're ever in south-central NJ, you should find Book Garden Florists in Cream Ridge on Rte 537.  (It's southwest of Great Adventure, and in the vicinity of Fort Dix/Naval AS Lakehurst/McGuire AFB.)  My rough estimate is over half a million volumes, categorized but uncatalogued, on homemade shelves in a huge space with many narrow aisles.

*gathering fire wood and stakes*

Book Gardens Florist owns their own building, and the proprietors apparently live right next door.  I've been trying to get a link out of GooMaps, but neither the Android app nor the Web versions on the Android will let me copy-to-paste--if they let me see the link at all.

Anyway, take your favorite mapper, give it 868 Monmouth Road, Cream Ridge NJ, switch to arieal/satellite view, and look for the 50x100 foot building.  The front 15 feet are the florist.  The rest is the book room, eight aisles the length of the space, with nooks and cubbyholes.  The number of shelves varies with the predominant book size, but is at least nine and goes to 13 in sections full of paperbacks.  8 aisles times 85 feet, times two, gives 1360 feet.  Times ten shelves gives 13,600 linear feet of shelf.  At fifteen books per foot (and the width depends heavily on the book size) ... oops, only around 200,000.

Okay, I don't have the computations I did to get 500,000.  But 200,000 is still a lot.

By the way, the original model 747 had more than 1,000,000 rivets, and the design documents weighed more than the plane.

By the way, I did put up a rather bland 'chapter' in Book 2, called 'A Missing Copper'.  I'm not sure where this will happen, or whether it will go exactly this way, but it does give some hints about character future.

Sigh. That boy never gives up. All it takes is a lull in the conversation and he says something like that to kick the hornet's nest...

He is busy moving books and throwing out paper because of stupid health inspectors who make rules based on the lowest common denominator. Give him a break, ya weenie.

Oh, for the love of paper. Here is how you get them. Just pour a smudge of gas on you while pumping gas into the car and go home for the FM meeting. Guaranteed to make your day more interesting. (KIDDING!)

Depends. Is the chicken frozen and in a deep fryer?  (Bad Amy.  Bad Amy)

My mother made french fries that way when I was about four, emphasis on "fries." I remember to this day how impressed I was that she knew to throw the lid over the flaming pan. Have used that acquired skill several times in my life.

Dirk