conference room tables

We already have the power, ethernet, and HDMI connectors on the floor, under the existing old table. Ripping up the ceiling wouldn't be popular just now.

We need chairs all around the table, for lots of people.

We have (with great difficulty) just mounted a gigantic 100 lb TV to the wall. It looks and works so much better than a projector.

One concern is that anything on the floor will get crushed by big feet.

One of my engineers is a flamenco dancer. She would enjoy something noisy to stomp on.

Or those who make the gold make the rules.

Well now you're stuck.

That reminds me of Heathrow control tower. I was, maybe, 14 when my brother took me around in the early 70s.

I wonder if you could do that now.

I saw both the entrails and the green-glass + radar displays part. There was a hatch in the ceiling above, but it was forbidden to open that unless the ASMI radar was stationary. It rotated so fast it created significant suction.

I know /your/ picture is a rats' nest, but it doesn't have to be that way :)

you could twist them lightly so they form a column.

one for live & one for neutral? You could put lots of appliance flexes into each one.

NT

When we were kids, we use to take a bus out to the airport in New Orleans. There was an unlabeled door with an intercom button. We'd push the button and ask if we could go into the control tower, and they'd buzz us in and let us wander around. Guys would open up their radar display consoles and show us the stuff inside, rotating deflection coils and such.

One of my university mates went to work for EuroControl, the place that controls pretty much all air traffic in Northern Europe. He gave me a tour during a stop-over in Amsterdam. I got to ride in one of the yellow cars out on the field to the building. The biggest radar operation I ever saw.

I wonder if GPS and satellites will obsolete air traffic control radar. Just another 5G app.

It could, just like it sometimes replaces glide path control (ILS). Until one fine day the GPS fails for some reason and then we are all hosed.

This reminds me of a power outage. A neighbor called. She worked in a TV studio, so was exposed to at least some tech stuff. "George, I can't open the garage door but I've got to get to work!". So I walked over, behind her car, pulled the red handle ... P'TOINK ... rolled up the garage door. "Shazam, how did you do that?'

She pulled her car out. "So how do we lock that now?" ... "Same way we opened it, we'll just snap it back in, like this" ... TOCK ... "Oh!".

Now our Californian politicians and the governor in their abundance of wisdom legislated that all garage door openers must have battery back-up. Say what? Sometimes I wonder if those politicians are in their right mind. We'll all get to pay for such nonsense unless we figure out how to obtain the hardware from out-of-state.

Next we'll see people frantically calling 911 because the backup batteries were dead. Or people using it during outages, not realizing that it'll croak after x openings.

There are, what, four or five countries putting up GPS constellations. A radar is a lot more likely to fail than a couple hundred satellites.

Some people aren't mechanical, which is why they marry engineers.

Luckily, there is a Home Depot in Reno.

Perhaps a better law would be that garage doors can be driven through from the inside - in other words if there is no power you simply drive the vehicle through the door which pops out (or something) to get out of the way in most incidents. Something has to happen with the door lift springs of course...

Won't help those of us who ride motorcycles, but we likely have the strength to pull the latch pin and raise the door manually...

And mandating those battery backed up doors for folks who live in a city seems foolish. I am sure they had lots of public input to that bill (ha!).

John :-#)#

And yet ...

She did marry a civil engineer!

Yes, and the web. Heck, we even have to obtain some of the preventative dog meds from elsewhere because they want an arm and a leg in California.

Even my mountain bike would be no match with our heavy doors.

As usual they did not think it through. Regardless of city or rural, power outages happen. People need to be trained what to do. It's simple.

The conference cables I talked about have a similar thing but with a wood-grain lid and no flange. Even less intrusive than this aluminium thing.

Clifford Heath.

There's no alternative entrance to my garage, just the motorised door. I had to fit a release cord round a pulley and through the bedroom floor above, to a knot under the carpet. I haven't had to use it yet, touch wood, but it's nice to know I can. I even test it occasionally.

Clifford Heath.

The aluminum things are ugly. Maybe just a finished hole, no lid, with the wireway below?

Everything should be wireless.

be trained? Are they not grown ups that can find out themselves?

NT

We have such a screen and besides HDMI it supports (with extra boxes tie-wrapped on its back) also other methods of video transfer like Google Chromecast and Barco Clickshare and it has a built-in Windows 10 PC so it can play Powerpoints and show website content all by itself, or do PC application demo and training using the wireless keyboard and mouse.

All this reduces the number of times someone needs to plug in the HDMI cable in their laptop on the desk.

John Larkin wrote

No it won't. Although airplanes have a transponder that gives their position, those can be defective.

It is fun to play with that though, rtl-sdr and the dump1090 program shows almost all commercial planes in your area, add some code like I did and you see this:

math... only needs a small antenna:

Range depends on antenna altitude, so a high flying plane goes a long way.