Sun Happy Meal Card???
So we all know that Sun is a cool company with a great sense of humor, but they really outdid themselves when they named this combination SCSI / Ethernet card Happy Meal!
It’s a pretty old card, and honestly I had forgotten that I had installed it in my test system until I setup REL 3 on it last week. For some reason, the Red Hat installer wanted to remove the device before adding it back in. Luckily I had my camera with me when I saw the hardware detection message pop up.
Don’t Swear Into Helium
Everyone likes Richard Pyle, and we all wish we had is uber sweet CIS Lunar rebreather, but I have to say this video of him down below 100M swearing like a sailer in that Donald Duck voice that you get with a larynx full of helium is pretty darn funny!
The cool thing about rebreathers is that you can talk into them, and people can understand you. Sure, if sounds like you have a mouth full of rubber (which you do), but you can still be understood. I’m guessing that these guys found a pretty serious thermocline, and the water got a great deal colder than they anticipated.
Pyle is clearly disturbed by this unfortunate turn of events, and spends quite a lot of time swearing and complaining about the cold water. I guess we can’t really blame him for not piling on the thermal protection though. He was, after all off Christmas Island in the Central Pacific Ocean. It’s only five degrease north of the equator, so the water should, in theory, be pretty warm.
Oh well, it’s an amusing video none-the-less.
Gas Blending Disaster
I will never suggest that a person refrain from messing around with something because it is dangerous. I have always held the belief that given proper respect for the lives of those around them, people should be left free to do their best, or worse as the case may be.
That being said, this article about a diver who, while filling scuba tanks, more or less burned his house down with an oxygen fire really shows us why it is important to be careful when handling high pressure oxygen.
I guess this guy was blending NITROX and the line caught fire. He wasn’t able to get the tank shut down before the whole place went up in flames. From what the article tells us, he was blending the gas himself because he didn’t hold a cert for it, and couldn’t buy it at dive shops. I guess he’d also been known to boost steel tanks up to 4500 psi with pure oxygen.
There are a lot of people out there holding this as an example of why nobody should be blending their own gas. I think this mindset is ridiculous! I frequently blend my own NITROX and TRIMIX, but I’m constantly mindful about the presence of hydrocarbons and adiabatic heating. I can’t say I would boost pure oxygen to 4500 psi, but there is absolutely no reason that divers can’t safely handle high pressure oxygen and blend their own gasses.
