Saturday, 19 November 2011
Today, Owen and I went to the U of M campus for their Math and Science Family Fun Fair. We went along with one of Owen’s classmates and that classmate’s dad. The four of us had an enjoyable time.
The Math portion of the fair was a bit slight – there was only one table dedicated to strictly math topics, including one woman who would ‘magically’ guess your birthday if you told her which cards had your number on it. Owen wasn’t very impressed. Another guy demonstrated the use of secret codes. Owen wasn’t impressed at all.
The other demonstrations were far more intriguing, however. There was a demonstration of gravity’s effect on orbiting bodies, color spectra, persistence of vision, optical illusions, chemistry (where the boys had the opportunity to mix two chemicals to produce ‘artwork’ made of foam), and ROBOTICS!
Owen loved the robots; he drove them around the floor and, for some reason, thought that the best thing you could tell a robot to do was to hit daddy in the shins.
We also attended a program on physics. The hosts blew themselves across the stage using a fire extinguisher. They also collapsed a steel drum using temperature differences, and did the ol’ pull a tablecloth out from under a table setting trick.
Owen and his buddy also got to try their hand at one student’s Gridlock Game. In fact, I think Owen would still be playing it right now if I hadn’t convinced him that the student gave me a card with the web address on it and we could go home and play it anytime so let’s go look at other stuff.
Go play the Gridlock Game HERE. It is fun.
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Besides farting around with a frustrating new garage door opener, and buying plywood to nail up in the garage, I’d have to say the highlight of my home-improvement day was replacing an electrical outlet.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, the outlet was not broken or cracked in any way, and the electricity was properly connected to it…it’s just that, there was this one weird shaped outlet. Instead of two typical ‘surprised’ looking outlets:
Above: Two typical ‘surprised’ looking outlets.
Yeah, instead of that, this particular outlet had one surprised face, and one ‘angry’ face. Here’s a picture of it:
What’s with that? Has anyone ever seen this before? I haven’t. Not even in Europe, where they do everything weird.
Please let me know if you’ve
A) ever seen this type of outlet before
and
B) what type of appliance gets plugged into it.
Anyway, I replaced it with the ho-hum typical model today. So now the value of our home just went up by 0.00001%. Yay for us.
it looks like a uk outlet to me.
maybe he had a 220 air compressor in the garage.
Ah, the UK! I should have known! That’s where they do everything weird even by European standards.
I should have said this explicitly: the outlet was in our living room, not the garage, so I doubt it was used for a 220 air compressor (unless the previous home owner had inflatable furniture).
Dude…completely unrelated to your post: I just read your last million posts, and you’re hilarious. If you like me (that is, if you willingly put yourself in my company), then we should chat more at work. I probably don’t meet any IQ prerequisites you’ve likely established, but I’m good shit. I’m gonna link to you right now on my blog.
From what I’ve found poking around the internet, the angry face receptacle is the NEMA 6-15 standard and is supposed to be used for 250V 15A service. Were the same wires connected to both outlet types? If not, I’d check the voltage.
http://www.fam-oud.nl/~plugsocket/MultiSockets.html
http://www.twacomm.com/catalog/model_5031-I.htm?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector#NEMA_6
http://www.nema.org/stds/wd6.cfm#download
Rachel-
Hey, thanks for the link, and my condolences on your wasted evening of reading my posts. Yes, let’s talk soon.
David-
Funny story: you included so many links in your comment that it automatically went into the spam filter, and I had to approve it before it appeared online here. Anyway, thanks for the info. I already checked it over. I will check the voltage.
Good post.