-- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at
None of that is funny. Practical jokers and pranksters are jerks.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Whatsa matta, that rib hurting and making you cranky ?:-) ...Jim Thompson
-- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at
No, I've always thought that practical jokers are jerks.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Are you getting older mentally than I am in physical age ?>:-}
Lighten up and learn how to laugh!
Or maybe you can't cope with subordinates taking you down a notch or two? I always considered the gags my troops pulled on me "acts of love".
My favorite... they gave me a Christmas gift, a sock with a purse closure :-D ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Sounds like you are entering your second childhood.
Go let the air out of your neighbor's tires. They'll get a laugh out of that. Practical joke are, after all, just a type of vandalism.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
I'm sorry that you have lost your sense of humor :-(
Happens with mental old-age. ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
"Williams took [an aluminum carbide egg] into work and announced that he had an unbreakable egg. Most members of the engineering lab immediately stopped work, trying to break the egg."
An early instance of nerd sniping.
Matt Roberds
Humor? Where?
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing laser drivers and controllers jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
A lot of that stuff would have been a lot less funny if somebody got hurt. Being in the way of that chunk of aluminum carbide that hit the car a hundred feet away would have been most unfunny. (Not that that was Williams's fault.) Same with burning the building down by screwing with the outlets.
Widlar's sheep was a good gag, and the carbide egg was amusing. So was the clock crystal, assuming that's really what happened, which I doubt.
You can't just go buy a crystal that's 23 Hz off from 32.768 kHz, so I kind of doubt that's how the prank really went. Gaining or losing a minute a day requires a frequency deviation of 32768*60/86400 or 23 Hz (700 ppm). That's a long way to pull a crystal, even a tuning fork. A TI app note (
Major surgery in the form of an RC oscillator seems more likely, but wouldn't make such a good story.
The electric clock story doesn't hold water either. Stealing 0.1% of the mains cycles isn't going to make much difference to a synchronous motor, unless the motor has a chance to lose lock each time. You could easily make the clock lose time by using a triac to turn the mains off for a second or so once per hour, or for a minute or two each night, which is quite plausible.
OTOH making it gain time would require a rectifier and inverter, which would have been hard to fit into a junction box in 1980 or whenever that was. And it could have been medium exciting if the janitor happened to plug the vacuum cleaner into that outlet. (Junction boxes were metal back then, so it probably wouldn't have caused a fire, but still.)
So one gathers that at least some of these are meta-pranks, i.e. the joke is on the listener and not the boss.
The Big Mac with DACs in it, and all the variations on "F off, competitor" are the sort of things one of our local Aspies might do, but don't strike me as funny to a normal sense of humour. The can of sea moss is a bit of a borderline case.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
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