How to make USB ports more zap resistant?

When you have a half-hour walk home from the pub on a night like that, it doesn't matter that you remembered to take a leak before you left the pub. You *will* need to urgently take a leak while walking through a residential neighbourhood three blocks from the nearest bathroom in a cafe/restaurant/pub.

So you detour into a back alley, unzip, pull it out, and you handle your plumbing *to* keep it from freezing. :-)

Actually, it's not so bad - emptying your bladder involves pumping large volumes of hot liquid through the "plumbing". It is the hands that suffer - if you weren't holding onto the ... ummm ... hot water pipe your hand would freeze.

Hi...

A few of the luckier of us have indoor plumbing nowdays... Whatever will they think of next? :) :)

Seriously, it's no problem... I froze my water line where it enters the house once many many years ago; but 'twas my own fault, and easily cured. Finished the basement, put R40 insulation on the outer walls. Left the water line (where it exits the meter) tight against the concrete wall so it was insulated from any house heat.

One of my neighbors is in the Caribbean as we speak; I go over daily and empty his mail box; go inside and turn on one of the cold water taps, flush the toilet a couple of times, make sure the furnace is still holding the temperature up, and done. No problem.

Come on up and visit :)

Ken

| > Wow, -6 degrees. I feel sorry for you folks; must be | > terrible! Shall we send emergency aid? :) | >

| No no need to panic. The cold spell has ended and it is raining and 6 | degrees out. Luckily the rain is now melting that snow we had. We have | bylaws outlawing snow here. Snow is for the rest of the country. We don't | allow it here. | | > Come and visit Winnipeg. -29 now (mid afternoon; with -34 forecast | > for tonight. And that doesn't include the windchill... with | > it it will drop to the mid -40's : | >

| Only fools and my brother and sister live in Winterpeg. There is a reason it | is called winterpeg.

My Grandparents emigrated from Scotland to Brandon, MB, around 1900. It was so cold there that after a few years they re-emigrated to New Zealand.

They made the right choice.

I lived in a mini-home for awhile, and we needed both heat tape and thick insulation for the water pipe behind the skirting where it left the ground and entered the house. It froze several times on us, and once frozen, was quite troublesome to thaw. Had it been a metal pipe it would've been easier, I suppose.

Tom

Tom

When I was in college *moons* ago (yes, they had colleges back then) we owned a "mobile home" (a.k.a. tornado target) in cold country. Pretty much every year we had the heat-tape burn out underneath the trailer and had to have someone come out and fix it. It generally took an hour or so for the tech to get it all back together (and a pot of money no college student has). The tech carried a spot-welder in the truck and hooked it to each end of the pipe. Instant thaw! Yeah, metal was easier. ;-)

Forgot...I live in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (Atlantic Canada), and it isn't nearly as cold here as it is in Winnipeg.

Tom

The ground seems to be OK (120VAC from ground to hot, 0VAC from ground to neutral), and the ALi card doesn't use a separate controller/protector chip but has the USB chip tied directly to the ports.

Hi Tom...

Metal may well have been easier to thaw; just wave a torch back and forth on it for a while. BIG downside to metal, though. If it ever freezes solid, it's going to burst the pipe, and then you have huge problems to deal with.

Plastic on the other hand has enough give to it that it doesn't burst.

Ken

That's what long underwear is for! :>

Ohh.. did you mean your house plumbing?

------------- Tony Hill hilla 20 yahoo ca

On 14 Jan 2005 22:19:26 -0800, "larry moe 'n curly" put finger to keyboard and composed:

Do both cards use the same NS chip?

Is it possible that you have an open ground at your mains outlet? This would result in a case potential of half the mains voltage.

- Franc Zabkar