The "I'm Such a Fecking Div" Thread

[Mrs Pingu]

Hmm, interesting

[ian]

If you took my approach and used gin to dilute the tonic to homoeopathic proportions you'd notice the abv. No one wants to risk a quinine overdose.

In other news, I spy a big box labelled 'Silent Pool' in the hallway.

[Basil]

Divery, but I got away with it.
Today I was priming (70% emulsion  - 30% water) the plasterboards in our refurbished side entrance hall way. 
Phone in breast pocket of overalls, which I'd neglected to fasten.  Bent down to reload the paint roller and out slid the phone.
Made a fantastic save by kicking it aside at the last moment just before disaster.

[Jurek]

Talent.

[Canardly]

Spatterdash specialist. 

[Basil]

Talent.

Thank you 

[Cudzoziemiec]

Divery, but I got away with it.
Today I was priming (70% emulsion  - 30% water) the plasterboards in our refurbished side entrance hall way. 
Phone in breast pocket of overalls, which I'd neglected to fasten.  Bent down to reload the paint roller and out slid the phone.
Made a fantastic save by kicking it aside at the last moment just before disaster.

Best laugh of the day!

[T42]

Solid phone, good footwork. My old Motorola bounced off the ground a few times before Google decided it was out of date

[Kim]

For a second I though you mean you'd kicked the paint wossname aside, which would earn full div points.

[Mr Larrington]

Just because your single pannier contains naught but six bread rolls, a bag of sugar and a multi-pack of Fizzy Pop does not mean you can ride flat-out like hell maximum attack back from the shops, because it is hot out there.

(Collapses in steaming puddle)

[citoyen]

Just because your single pannier contains naught but six bread rolls, a bag of sugar and a multi-pack of Fizzy Pop does not mean you can ride flat-out like hell maximum attack back from the shops, because it is hot out there.

(Collapses in steaming puddle)

At least you had plenty of carbs on hand to replenish your energy.

[Mr Larrington]

That large round thing on the front of my shiny new shorts surely signifies a press-stud fastener at the waist, no?

(Pulls vigorously)

Oh.  No, it is not.  It is a hook and loop contraption.  Or rather a hook and no loop contraption.  Time to break out the needle and thread

[T42]

Got bearing grease onto one of my woodwork benches. 

[robgul]

Spent quite a few minutes hunting for the magic link in the chain of a bike I have in for service . . .  there MUST be one, I thought.   

Then remembered the bike was one I built about 4 years ago, customer insisting on using a Shimano chain with a pressed-in link ( I hate them!) as it came as part of a special offer groupset from Madison.   Bike has only done about 1,000 miles and loads of life left so it'll get cleaned in situ.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Not me, but MrsC

She had a kiln-full of pottery to fire. We get much cheaper electricity overnight, so she usually stays up (napping on sofa) to supervise kiln, and alter the power settings through the firing.

So, about midnight, she turns the kiln on - power on low, turn on the timer, set the kiln-sitter (cutout that works on wax cones). Goes to sleep on sofa.

About 3 am, wanders out to pottery, turns up the power.

About 6 am, wanders out to pottery, turns up the power . . . thinks, hang on, why is the kiln only warm?

She'd turn the timer dial the wrong way so it only stayed on for an hour or so.

Divvery will cost her another night on the sofa.

[Diver300]

Not me, but MrsC

She had a kiln-full of pottery to fire. We get much cheaper electricity overnight, so she usually stays up (napping on sofa) to supervise kiln, and alter the power settings through the firing.

So, about midnight, she turns the kiln on - power on low, turn on the timer, set the kiln-sitter (cutout that works on wax cones). Goes to sleep on sofa.

About 3 am, wanders out to pottery, turns up the power.

About 6 am, wanders out to pottery, turns up the power . . . thinks, hang on, why is the kiln only warm?

She'd turn the timer dial the wrong way so it only stayed on for an hour or so.

Divvery will cost her another night on the sofa.

I would have thought that programmable temperature controllers are now cheap enough to make for a good night's sleep.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185781621048 or you could have two or three very cheap ones and some time to change between them

[hatler]

Thought I'd get myself a spare wheel rim for the boat trailer and two new tyres. One of the existing tyres was looking pretty dodgy (probably the one facing south where the trailer was usually parked) so rather than face being stranded on some motorway somewhere I thought I'd invest in a spare, using the better of the two existing tyres.

Ordered the bits having brought one of the trailer wheels home and ever so carefully thrice measured the PCD.

Rim and tyres arrive. Tyres are good, the rim's PCD is 115mm, I need 4".

Gah !   How did I get that so wrong ?   The best I can hope to claim is that I clicked the wrong button on the website.

Bloody hell.

An £18 rim and I've had to spend 2 x £6 on postage to get it sorted out.

Pillock.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Not me, but MrsC

She had a kiln-full of pottery to fire. We get much cheaper electricity overnight, so she usually stays up (napping on sofa) to supervise kiln, and alter the power settings through the firing.

So, about midnight, she turns the kiln on - power on low, turn on the timer, set the kiln-sitter (cutout that works on wax cones). Goes to sleep on sofa.

About 3 am, wanders out to pottery, turns up the power.

About 6 am, wanders out to pottery, turns up the power . . . thinks, hang on, why is the kiln only warm?

She'd turn the timer dial the wrong way so it only stayed on for an hour or so.

Divvery will cost her another night on the sofa.

I would have thought that programmable temperature controllers are now cheap enough to make for a good night's sleep.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185781621048 or you could have two or three very cheap ones and some time to change between them

They are a bit non-trivial to wire into a kiln that wasn't built for them.

Incompatible wiring harness, plus you need to add a temperature probe (which means cutting a hole in the kiln).

The kiln saga got a bit worse - she tried again on Fri. 3am, turned power up to full, a bit of a bang and everything went off.

I was woken at 7 and informed. Things went bang when she turned the middle element up, that element is the only one using the original power switch, so I thought 'old switch blown'.

Tested it and checked - no fault. No issue with turning on full power.

The only thing I could find was that the connector was a bit close to the bent end of the element, so possibly it arced. That would trigger the circuit breakers. So, gingerly adjusted that (everything is in very fragile ceramic insulators).

Refired on Sat. Waiting for kiln to cool to see if it worked . . .

[Diver300]

Not me, but MrsC

She had a kiln-full of pottery to fire. We get much cheaper electricity overnight, so she usually stays up (napping on sofa) to supervise kiln, and alter the power settings through the firing.

So, about midnight, she turns the kiln on - power on low, turn on the timer, set the kiln-sitter (cutout that works on wax cones). Goes to sleep on sofa.

About 3 am, wanders out to pottery, turns up the power.

About 6 am, wanders out to pottery, turns up the power . . . thinks, hang on, why is the kiln only warm?

She'd turn the timer dial the wrong way so it only stayed on for an hour or so.

Divvery will cost her another night on the sofa.

I would have thought that programmable temperature controllers are now cheap enough to make for a good night's sleep.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185781621048 or you could have two or three very cheap ones and some time to change between them

They are a bit non-trivial to wire into a kiln that wasn't built for them.

Incompatible wiring harness, plus you need to add a temperature probe (which means cutting a hole in the kiln).

The kiln saga got a bit worse - she tried again on Fri. 3am, turned power up to full, a bit of a bang and everything went off.

I was woken at 7 and informed. Things went bang when she turned the middle element up, that element is the only one using the original power switch, so I thought 'old switch blown'.

Tested it and checked - no fault. No issue with turning on full power.

The only thing I could find was that the connector was a bit close to the bent end of the element, so possibly it arced. That would trigger the circuit breakers. So, gingerly adjusted that (everything is in very fragile ceramic insulators).

Refired on Sat. Waiting for kiln to cool to see if it worked . . .

How is the temperature measured at the moment?

[MattH]

Kilns are horrible things. MrsH has one for glass work, that lived in the garage. I spent ages trying to sort out a thermocouple error. It intermittently complained that the thermocouple was reversed.

Eventually, it turned out that if it was below freezing, the controllers's programming couldn't cope with the initial negative temperature (as in, it was putting heat in, but the temperature absolute value in Celsius is decreasing as it approaches zero from the negative side). So after a few minutes it would decide there was a fault and shut down. The short term solution was to go back outside after a few minutes to see if it had errored, and restart it. In that case, the heater had put enough heat into it that it was now above zero so didn't error again.
The slightly better solution was to find space for the kiln in the house so waste heat went into raising our dining room temperature rather than losing it in the garage.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Not me, but MrsC

She had a kiln-full of pottery to fire. We get much cheaper electricity overnight, so she usually stays up (napping on sofa) to supervise kiln, and alter the power settings through the firing.

So, about midnight, she turns the kiln on - power on low, turn on the timer, set the kiln-sitter (cutout that works on wax cones). Goes to sleep on sofa.

About 3 am, wanders out to pottery, turns up the power.

About 6 am, wanders out to pottery, turns up the power . . . thinks, hang on, why is the kiln only warm?

She'd turn the timer dial the wrong way so it only stayed on for an hour or so.

Divvery will cost her another night on the sofa.

I would have thought that programmable temperature controllers are now cheap enough to make for a good night's sleep.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185781621048 or you could have two or three very cheap ones and some time to change between them

They are a bit non-trivial to wire into a kiln that wasn't built for them.

Incompatible wiring harness, plus you need to add a temperature probe (which means cutting a hole in the kiln).

The kiln saga got a bit worse - she tried again on Fri. 3am, turned power up to full, a bit of a bang and everything went off.

I was woken at 7 and informed. Things went bang when she turned the middle element up, that element is the only one using the original power switch, so I thought 'old switch blown'.

Tested it and checked - no fault. No issue with turning on full power.

The only thing I could find was that the connector was a bit close to the bent end of the element, so possibly it arced. That would trigger the circuit breakers. So, gingerly adjusted that (everything is in very fragile ceramic insulators).

Refired on Sat. Waiting for kiln to cool to see if it worked . . .

How is the temperature measured at the moment?

On the older system, you don't measure temperature, you measure 'heat work' (basically the amount of heat energy put into the kiln).

This is done by using some special wax cones that droop at specified heat-work amounts. A little rod has one end resting on a cone, when the cone 'droops', a physical cut-off actuates and cuts the power to the elements.

So, in a way, it is fool-proof. The painful bit is that temperatures need altering throughout the firing process; you start low, take it up to a setting and hold, then up again etc. There are peepholes so you can check the cone state (a rack holds a set of them, picked for different firing points).

The modern controllers are programmable for temperature settings, so they take the kiln up to a temp, hold it, up etc (and a controlled cooldown process).  They rely on the potter knowing exactly the heat work they want for specific glaze effects (the same glazes will have different colours and finishes depending on how long they were held at specific temperatures).

[Diver300]

Kilns are horrible things. MrsH has one for glass work, that lived in the garage. I spent ages trying to sort out a thermocouple error. It intermittently complained that the thermocouple was reversed.

Eventually, it turned out that if it was below freezing, the controllers's programming couldn't cope with the initial negative temperature (as in, it was putting heat in, but the temperature absolute value in Celsius is decreasing as it approaches zero from the negative side). So after a few minutes it would decide there was a fault and shut down. The short term solution was to go back outside after a few minutes to see if it had errored, and restart it. In that case, the heater had put enough heat into it that it was now above zero so didn't error again.
The slightly better solution was to find space for the kiln in the house so waste heat went into raising our dining room temperature rather than losing it in the garage.

That is some truly terrible programming.

[MattH]

Indeed. That's a Sentry Xpress controller. Probably doesn't matter in the majority of installations, but I did find some online discussions about this so it wasn't only me having the issue.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Kilns are horrible things. MrsH has one for glass work, that lived in the garage. I spent ages trying to sort out a thermocouple error. It intermittently complained that the thermocouple was reversed.

Eventually, it turned out that if it was below freezing, the controllers's programming couldn't cope with the initial negative temperature (as in, it was putting heat in, but the temperature absolute value in Celsius is decreasing as it approaches zero from the negative side). So after a few minutes it would decide there was a fault and shut down. The short term solution was to go back outside after a few minutes to see if it had errored, and restart it. In that case, the heater had put enough heat into it that it was now above zero so didn't error again.
The slightly better solution was to find space for the kiln in the house so waste heat went into raising our dining room temperature rather than losing it in the garage.

That is some truly terrible programming.

They should have configured it to work in Kelvin.

[rower40]

Kilns are horrible things. MrsH has one for glass work, that lived in the garage. I spent ages trying to sort out a thermocouple error. It intermittently complained that the thermocouple was reversed.

Eventually, it turned out that if it was below freezing, the controllers's programming couldn't cope with the initial negative temperature (as in, it was putting heat in, but the temperature absolute value in Celsius is decreasing as it approaches zero from the negative side). So after a few minutes it would decide there was a fault and shut down. The short term solution was to go back outside after a few minutes to see if it had errored, and restart it. In that case, the heater had put enough heat into it that it was now above zero so didn't error again.
The slightly better solution was to find space for the kiln in the house so waste heat went into raising our dining room temperature rather than losing it in the garage.

That is some truly terrible programming.

Is there demand for a "Programming that makes you cringe" thread?