| General > General Technical Chat |
| Have I got some kind interdimensional gate in my lab? |
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| I wanted a rude username:
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time. One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the ballpoints he’d bought over the past few years. There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centers of ballpoint loss throughout the Galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little theory which quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoints would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpointoid life-style, responding to highly ballpoint-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint equivalent of the good life. And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make fools of themselves in public. When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying. There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious sixty thousand Altairian dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod Beeblebrox’s highly profitable secondhand ballpoint business. —Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy |
| madires:
Hmm. So we should look for an online shop for secondhand tweezers? |
| digsys:
I'd long for something that easy !! A few weeks ago, I suddenly let out a huge sneeze, and blew a few 100 - 0603s, TSSOP transistors etc etc all over the carpeted room !! I was sorting them for a production run. I now have a very expensive carpet - wonder if I should sell it, mentioning the component list? |
| Brumby:
I took steps to address this issue... I mounted two LED strips from a TV backlight under my desk, with a switch close at hand. It lights up the under desk area better than my desk lighting. When anything hits the floor, I hit the switch and things immediately become more visible. Well, that was the theory. In practice, it's only reduced my lost item count by a small percentage. It doesn't help much for items that roll or bounce long distances. --- Quote from: digsys on January 13, 2020, 10:57:47 am ---I'd long for something that easy !! A few weeks ago, I suddenly let out a huge sneeze, and blew a few 100 - 0603s, TSSOP transistors etc etc all over the carpeted room !! I was sorting them for a production run. I now have a very expensive carpet - wonder if I should sell it, mentioning the component list? --- End quote --- Ah, yes.... SMD sand. I have a bit of that going on as well - but not 100 transistors in one go! |
| Circlotron:
--- Quote from: rsjsouza on January 12, 2020, 11:59:40 pm ---It is the same with Bic pens and umbrellas --- End quote --- We lived in our first house for 3-1/2 years and during that time we progressively bought 6 boxes of 100 ball point pens. When we packed up and shifted, completely emptied the house, we found 4 pens. 596 of them had slipped into a parallel universe. |
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