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'Xtreme' Equipment That You Have Borrowed?
djupedal asks: "What's the most extreme type of equipment you've used from the lab/office/university, etc. for your own projects, etc.? Have you ever taken a piece of unknown lint into work just to check it out under the nuclear microscope? Ever used the UV curing oven on the production line to make custom wheels for an R/C car? Ever used the 100,000 ton press in the lab to meld a dime into a nickel just to have a present for your gf/bf on Valentine's Day?"
"Ever drop by the house on the way home from work and use your company's nuclear density gauge to check for hardpan in the backyard?
Was that you I saw driving a 50 ton crane into the sub-division just to have a platform to install a 3 meter dish on the roof of the garage?
Ever hog a T-3 so you could loop-logon on to your own box....after networking thru a minimum of 25 repeaters near the equator...just to see how much delay there is when going around the planet?
To get you started -- we used to work the night shift at a ski area - and when we found spare time, we would fire up a few of the $200,000.00 Kässbohrer PistenBully's and run off into the trees and play hide & seek in the dark, when it was snowing heavy and your tracks would be covered quickly. All lights out and nothing but iPods online, we would play tag until we either got lost, stuck, bored or the sun came up.
What's your best example of trivial use of some very expensive gear that wasn't yours?"
Was that you I saw driving a 50 ton crane into the sub-division just to have a platform to install a 3 meter dish on the roof of the garage?
Ever hog a T-3 so you could loop-logon on to your own box....after networking thru a minimum of 25 repeaters near the equator...just to see how much delay there is when going around the planet?
To get you started -- we used to work the night shift at a ski area - and when we found spare time, we would fire up a few of the $200,000.00 Kässbohrer PistenBully's and run off into the trees and play hide & seek in the dark, when it was snowing heavy and your tracks would be covered quickly. All lights out and nothing but iPods online, we would play tag until we either got lost, stuck, bored or the sun came up.
What's your best example of trivial use of some very expensive gear that wasn't yours?"
I can't go into specifics ... but I once used the vacuum chamber of a sophisticated scientific instrument to freeze-dry a bouquet of flowers. Inside the clean room. A big ice-jam happened in the inlet to the vacuum pump. I also used the milling machine and lathe to make a smoking pipe.
Back when it used to seem like a lot (~1997?), we used to "steal" all the processing time on 4 Sun E10Ks and 7 frames of IBM SP/2 nodes and do SETI and Distributed.Net work on them when they idle between real projects.
What about cool home science gear that doesn't belong in a home? A guy at my office has 2 and a half electron microscopes in his garage he uses to peek at anything and everything that interests him around the house. I believe between the 2.5 microscopes worth of parts, one is actually running at the moment.
11*43+456^2
"I borg (install SETI@home) on very box I can lay my hands on, and I guess the total value of all those machines is weel into the hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Careful! There was a story here a few years back about a guy who installed SETI on a network. He was then billed for all the run-time SETI used. The owners of the network used math a lot like yours to arrive at an outrageous number.
My advice? Watch your ass. I was nearly fired from a job once simply because I sent a text message over the network.
"Derp de derp."
While building the subwoofer for my car, I found that I wasn't getting the desired output of the driver I had installed. I brought it into the lab at work to measure the output. Using the data I was able to find and use a driver that was better tuned to the box I had built.
More than 20 years ago, a $MAJOR_CLASS1_RAILROAD celebrated it's 100th birthday. To celebrate, they borrowed one of their old steam trains from $MAJOR_SCIENCE_MUSEUM.
They had to ferry the train about 200 miles each time. Luckily, they sold tickets for those ferry trips, so we could enjoy riding the train.
At that time, my grandfather died; he lived in $RAILROAD_TOWN about 1/4 of the way between the museum and the rail office. He was a civil engineer, and one of his pet peeve was about railroaders calling themselves "engineers" because they ran the engines...
The day of his funeral, there was a steam trip scheduled. I was on the inbound trip a few days earlier, and I went to see the museum director (whom I have known for years before), and I told him that when they'll get back home, at $RAILROAD _TOWN, there would be my grandfather's funeral.
"We'll take care of it", the director said.
So, when the funeral procession went out of the church, there was the steam train, with crew at attention, saluting my grandfather... Later, at the cemetery, everyone was suspecting that I had a hand in that...
My roommate at college is an architecture student at UNC Charlotte. He recently used the college of architecture's 50 watt laser cutter to make a valentines gift for a friend of his. 50 watts doesn't sound like much, but it is. A 100 watt light bulb puts out only 2 watts of light.
My dad used to work at a nuclear pharmacy. There was a very cold freezer there, somewhere aroun -200 F. One time he stored some ice cream in there before he brought it home. They were as hard as bricks.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Using the 700lbs LOA(low observable antena) use for ground following radar on the B1-B to cook hot dogs while it was hooked up to an anochoic chamber.
Moral of the story,800+ watts = burnt hot dog in under 1 sec.
I SHALL RAIN DOWN MISSILES-IN-A-BUN ON YOUR PITIFUL CITY'S!
When in college in the Late 1970's, we brought some liquid nitrogen from the main science lab back to the dorm. After pouring (IIRC) 150 proof vodka into ice cube trays, we used the LN to create "vod-cubes". These, when added to a class of Collins Mixer, made for an interesting drink - the longer we waited the stronger it got! Also used some of it to freeze popcorn and Fig Newtons(TM)... It sure was neat to see a Fig Newton *shatter*!
On the way we would get a buzz on and take the things off-roading in the desert hills on base. Wonderful US Army 5-ton ten-wheel-drive tracter trailer rigs.
First gear on a good incline and these beasts would just dig straight down.
The conceit was we had to warm them up to get the oil flowing
Peace,
PFC Burton (ret)
bamph