Gout flare up. Fuck today and fuck the next few days as I pop indomethacin and hobble around.
4 Likes
Garbage bag poncho for the PC? Might make the drips louder though.
Nice schematic. Have a better night.
5 Likes
Looks like there’s no thermal fuse (bad!), nor other protection devices.
A post mortem examination could reveal what went wrong. Water may leave traces, the electrical discharge will leave some, and its location could help with determining the cause of the problem.
It shouldn’t fail if it was powered off though. Checking the switch may also be beneficial.
Pictures, please?
3 Likes
Oh great.
The charger returned to me today. It started tripping breakers.
Powered it up through a current limiter, it started okay. The output voltage was however about 500 volts, a bit less than the PFC rail. When I tried to discharge it, I made the mistake of using a 12 volt lightbulb I used before, when the thing was set to 14 volts output for diagnostic purposes. Spark, bang, and the filament of a big-ass lamp was gone. Oh well. Better luck next time.
Hope I won’t kill myself with it today. Grumble…
I wonder what failed this time…
3 Likes
She’s rejected the kidney diet (and even tuna!) but she’ll eat the Hill’s urgent care. Adding water to that to help increase her fluid intake. Considering adding salt free clam juice (or such) to her water to get her to drink more. She’s doing reasonably well thus far.
10 Likes
Not used this before, but need a catharsis, need something - you don’t need to read it as much as I need to write it and throw it screaming into the void… so here goes.
FYI: My –v flag gets stuck on sometimes… it can’t be helped…
Today
started with a really important consultation with a medical specialist it’s taken years to get hooked up with to review the results of a test I recently took. If I’m a candidate for this new surgery, it will be life changing, a day/night difference – and it’s really F!n dark right now. It turns out I am a candidate 
… but I can’t proceed with the surgery 
. Instead, I have to repeat the extremely painful test. Because insurance. Never mind that in this expert’s experience, a repeat has never produced a different result, but the results have to be repeated – because insurance.
So I now have to go an extra 6-8 weeks in excruciating pain then take a test that’s the functional equivalent, as far as pain levels go, of being punched in the face by Mike Tyson non-stop for a week. The best part is all this pain is just mildly dampened by the ridiculous amounts of Oxy I have to take to keep the pain from hospitalizing me. Oxy is a special hell in and of itself, don’t get me started. All because of insurance. Awesome sauce. Then:
My “bank” was my next stop. I made a deposit on my way home to bump my balance up a bit because I thought I’d treat myself to something uncommon to take the edge off my Dr visit - yet when I checked the balance after I got home, it’s significantly lower than what I’d just put in. WUT!? I check the history and it now shows me as overdrawn yesterday, and going back several weeks. WUT WUT?!?! I actually have a screen shot showing I wasn’t overdrawn yesterday! – WTF. This account won’t allow any transaction to even go through if the balance isn’t available (it’s cash only, no credit) and I’ve now been overdrawn for the better part of two months? Yet with no penalties and all charges & purchases going through just fine? That is not possible – WTF!?
A little investigation shows that a $2.99 purchase on Feb 1 is now showing as if it was a $4,000 purchase, but only in the “balance” field. The purchase is still $2.99 but the amount withdrawn is ~$4,000.00 WTF?! If that money had really been withdrawn then, I couldn’t have used this account to purchase a single thing for the past seven weeks – yet my activity continued unabated.
When I called the “bank” I’m routed to a call center in India and, bless this persons heart, but they just aren’t understanding the underlying concept I’m trying to explain and/or (I think probably mostly ‘and’) they just can’t/won’t operate “off script” - but I just can’t communicate the salient points and as much as I strain, I can’t understand them well enough - so I don’t want to be a dick and argue with them - it’s not this persons fault after all.
I now have to wait two weeks while they send me what they have in their system as a physical copy before I can dispute any charges with the next tier operator. This has to be done because I’m “paperless”… I was going to buy myself a “consolation prize” that I’ve had my eye on (reminds me of my recently departed Father & Sister because we saw this movie while we were living in Paris - something I could look at while writhing in agony to help take my mind to a better place) – a bit of a limited run treat if you will – that I’d usually never get myself because it’s too expensive and will now be completely sold out by the time I get this cleared up… No soup for me!
Then, the pièce de résistance (not really, if you don’t have your health, well, nothing else matters), the cherry on top of my day of woe if you will, lands as I’m going to bed…
Someone I haven’t heard from in donkey’s years SMS’s me right out of the blue. Says they think about me all the time, they love me and miss me - yadda-yadda-yadda. This person knows full well that, despite the years – heck, the lifetimes – I still burn 
for them… but I also happen to know (by an amazing stroke of ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter’ coincidence) lo and behold, I’m in “rebound territory” for them since apparently they just had their heart broken. This has happened before with them, more than once, well beyond “shame on me”. So I know I’ll get F!d over if I even think of entertaining it - so yea, by all means, thanks for reminding me just how lonely & broken my life is. This was the perfect day for it. Lovely.
So yea, fuck today –people are shite, money is shite, and the pain is indescribable, incomprehensible shite - all on top of the usual shite… I feel like I’ve showered in hate.
Note: This was technically yesterday, but I was so shitfaced when I finished this that I opted not to post it – I have a rule that I don’t operate heavy machinery when I’m loaded, and the Intertubes constitutes heavy machinery AFAIC.
25 Likes
…aaaand, drumroll please, it is the output IGBT. Gate-emitter shorted. No wonder there was no signal to the gate; the short drew the DC-DC isolation converter voltage too low, and the driver chip went to undervoltage lockout.
So now it is another round of logistics. Meanwhile, let’s study the available literature on IGBT failure modes, and try to find out what happened and why. I have a suspicion that eMotorWerks did not design in a snubber circuitry (well, that’s not the suspicion, that’s provable from the schematics and the board), and that the inductive kickback from the buck converter coil did the IGBT in.
[marche funebre]
Oh well. Life of an engineer, life full of fun.
At least this kind is the type that I can do something with. The best measuring equipment money can buy won’t get you any results on a post-mortem analysis of a failed relationship…
And as a consolation prize I have a big-ass IGBT to cut open and examine…
Been there. Was my only non-unrequited love. Still hurts, almost a decade ago.
Lots of sympathies on the other stuff, too…
8 Likes
So I’m at work writing code and I’m just in the zone. It’s 3 o’clock and I haven’t eaten lunch yet and I’m starving but I don’t care because, damnit, I’M GETTING SHIT DONE.
Then some chucklefuck decides now is a good time to bother me with some stupid questions and worse yet spend several minutes asking me different versions of the same question (sorry, pal - I still don’t know the answer).
Now it’s all crashed down. I’m no longer in the zone and I’m pissed off at this dude for distracting me.
Sigh. May as well eat lunch now - not like I’m going to get anything else done today.
14 Likes
My cat likes the Royal Canin E and T wet foods and the F for dry. She wasn’t big on the other flavors.
Glad to hear your cat is doing ok.
5 Likes
…and my Bluetooth LE beacon, aka Adafruit Bluefriend LE, arrived. And I found my phone does not support Bluetooth Low Energy!
AAAARRRRRGH!!!
12 Likes
…and a replacement, slightly misbehaving slightly unreliable cracked-screen Samsung Galaxy Express I got as a gift some time ago, doesn’t support Bluetooth LE as well, or at least not well enough! The Adafruit Bluefruit app claims it is not compatible. GROAN!!!
Edit: maybe it’s because of the old android there… there’s 4.1 and Bluetooth LE needs at least 4.3… so this will be done later as some more urgent things are on the table for tonight…
4 Likes
So, the replacement car we were looking at buying from a family acquaintance (gas-station/garage/used-car sales) went up $500 to $3000, and the amount I can take out for a loan went down from $25K to $11.8K. Of which $8.5K is being used to pay off a previous loan that prevented that loan from being taken out. Since a car is a requirement for us to get to work, this has to happen. I was really hoping for more float to pay off some outstanding bills that have been lying around outstanding (I’m seriously in the “oh, you’re a collection agent? Please call again” mode.)
FUCK IT.
imma go buy $300 of lotto tickets now
19 Likes
I felt fine this morning at the office. I started hacking uncontrollably at noon. I told a co-worker at 3:00 PM “I don’t feel right…”, to which he replied " it’s just allergies". At 3:30 in front of the founders and all the engineers I projectile vommed. Six times.
I was just driven home by a co-worker. I felt like I was having a seizure the screaming was so violent.
25 Likes
I thought that was your job.
Reads on…oh.
15 Likes
It will live in infamy, I guarantee it. Oh, and I had Indian spicy vindaloo for lunch.
13 Likes
Have you um… thought about a nice quick jaunt down to the ER yet? Because projectile vomiting 6 times is uh, usually a good sign that you should be more ergentish then just going to your standard GP.
8 Likes
This has happened to me twice before, just years ago. Some kind of really fast moving stomach bug. I have promised many people that I have their numbers on speed dial, and even I can remember 911.
10 Likes
Tripped on the stairs today, I have no Idea how it happened, I had both hands busy carrying lunch up to my room and just as I’m reaching the top of the stairs for no good reason I’m going down, I hit the next to last step with my knee. I can’t remember pain that bad. After a few minutes I was able to get up and pick my burrito’s off of the floor.
At least the dog got a nice treat.
21 Likes
Incoming!
7 Likes
Not clear on one point - who was screaming: you or the co-worker?
Because if you were projectile vomiting in my car*, I might scream like that too.
* not that I have one at the moment.
8 Likes
