Standard Mischief

Archive for January, 2010

The forecast was for a “dusting” to one inch

But what we got was an honest 5 inches of the lightest, fluffiest snow I’ve seen in a decade.

Weather forecasters: well at least they’re pretty good at telling me when the precipitation will start, give or take six hours or so, but I wish they would remind me by ending the forecast with “…no more than an inch this time around, but what the heck do we know?”

2010-01-30 22:09 by Standard Mischief, Filed under:deranged rants     2 Comments

Ready to carpet bomb your congress-critters with faxes?

Say, maybe tomorrow morning? I’ll bet they’ll still be shell shocked over the Brown victory.

You don’t want to call or email, that’s too easy. And you don’t want to mail anything, It’ll never get through the anti-anthrax screening on time. Faxes are best.

I haven’t settled on my exact wording, but I will be saying something about how disappointed I am about the backroom wheeling and dealing that’s not on c-span as promised. Oh and I won’t be mentioning the election results in Massachusetts, but I will capitalize on the timing. I’ll suggest scuttling the whole thing because we’ve strayed too far from the ideal bill. I’ll remind them that mid-terms are right around the corner and that I’m not interested in a bill that spends a lot of money we still don’t have and fails to do almost anything to control costs, like allowing overseas prescription drugs.

2010-01-19 23:00 by Standard Mischief, Filed under:deranged rants, not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any d     No Comments

errors in the questions pool for the General Amateur Radio Licence exam

As you might guess, I’m studying for the exam now. It’s a boring exercise in memorization and regurgitation, something I was never much good at. I do have a solid grasp of electronics theory and radio propagation, so all I have to do is memorize a bunch of crap about where RTTY is in the band plan and what ending a message in SK means.

Just for the heck of it I thought I’d point out a few errors I’ve found in the pool.

G4D08. Which of the following connectors would be a good choice for a serial data port?
A. PL-259
B. Type N
C. Type SMA
D. DB-9

They say the right answer is a DB-9, but there really isn’t a connector called that (at least in common use). Your useless bit of trivia for the day is that the “B” stands for the size of the connector, and a nine pin D-shaped connector is actually called a DE-9 connector.

G6B02. What are the two major ratings that must not be exceeded for silicon-diode rectifiers?
Select Answer
A Peak load impedance; peak voltage
B Capacitive reactance; avalanche voltage
C Average power; average voltage
D Peak inverse voltage; average forward current

While the average forward current part is correct, you can go over the peek inverse voltage as long as the current rating of the diode is not exceeded. I’m being persnickety here because usually if you do exceed that reverse voltage, the “avalanche effect” virtually assures the current level will spike. See the w’pedia article for Avalanche diode where this effect is utilized.

I’ve searched around and found a list or two of questions that have been withdrawn because of errors already. Neither of these two questions are on those lists.

2010-01-17 23:00 by Standard Mischief, Filed under:deranged rants     No Comments
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