I confess that I’ve lost 11.6 lbs since @T3hPwnisher slapped me around with common sense. Today I’m officially only overweight instead of obese.
15 Likes
I’ve come to realize that the best part about the rest day is the mental break from the gym
2 Likes
I confess I’m as into the weeds about fantasy baseball as the Darden forum is into the weeds about HIT and…carbs?
I confess I spend a gazillion more hours obsessing about baseball statistics than I do about exercise or diet.
1 Like
The engineering side of Construction is so interesting to me. It’s just that I never would have thought there would be calculations taken for certain things. For example, moisture percentage of lumber or concrete air percentage. I do wonder how engineers calculate live loads, wind loads, and seismic loads for structures. Now I see why they do so much math, glad I went with management lmfao.
3 Likes
Im fascinated by these things too. I got a glimpse of some of those formulas once upon a time and ducked into welding and fabrication instead. I’m a total chump on the engineering and architectural side of stuff.
When I’m building, repairing, or reinforcing something my rule of thumb is “when in doubt, make it thicker. Then weld the shit out of it.”.
6 Likes
I’ve been seeing some of things you welded on that “Things you made” thread. 
I should be asking you a billion questions about welding. I know nothing of the types of welds and what they look like. Now that I think about it, I learned about welding symbols for different types of welds on construction plans during the fall. Not very helpful when you have absolutely no idea of what these welds look like in real life.
There are little quick reference cards for weld symbols that would definitely help when you run into them on a blueprint or technical drawing. And honestly, I barely recognize them myself.
And truth be told, thats just a small part of it. Very important, and occasionally difficult, but really just one piece. Those frames & stuff take like a couple hundered hours of work, but weld out only takes a couple hours at most, and actual arc-on time is like minutes.
Anyways, if you run into anything that gives you pause, feel free to ask away. You can tag me in our logs & stuff. I have way too much time on my hands lately, and would be glad to help.
3 Likes
I confess that I REALLY REALLY hate how I look in photos.
My eyes always look unfocused and my smile is weird.
These are already established equations, often done with extremely powerful software (CATIA is most common), but you are correct that they have a shitload of math involved.
Don’t even get started on aerodynamics, thermodynamics, and harmonic resonance stuff lol.
3 Likes
I have never heard of that.
1 Like
Cant tell if this gif is going to work or not, but this one collapsed because of wind gusts happening at just the right frequency (frequency as in timing/sound waves) to make the bridge meet it’s harmonic resonance… so the resulting vibration on the bridge caused a greater and greater vibration until it tore itself apart.
Yes, this is 100% real video btw
EDIT: i was pursuing an engineering AS and did a case study on this event. Interesting stuff for me; boring for most
3 Likes
There is a theory that we are so used to seeing our reversed image due to mirrors that, when we see our actual head on image, we find it disturbing
5 Likes
I learned about the exact bridge in physics yesterday!!! In fact you typed out almost everything that was taught in class yesterday. My professor also used an example of a ‘ghost swing’ to explain to explain frequency as well.
1 Like
Live loads is “easiest” - take a bridge for example. Projected traffic flows will be known 99% of the time - the apply the 12t axle load (standard or the UK) and its done. So - a bridge deck that is expected to take 1000 cars/h at peak times, but at any one time could have 50 or so on the deck. The issue becomes when you add in heavy breaking. So what they do is assume ALL the worst cases at the same time.
The whole bridge deck is full of cars trailing too closely and they ALL break at the same time.
Wind is “simpler” in the short term but also harder in the long term. Simple as they take the cross sectional area and then apply the 100/y storm wind speed. Assuming that the aerodynamics are as bad as they can be. 0 thought given to “mitigation of air resistance”. IE - the shape or material.
However the plasticising effect of constantly being loaded and unloaded is harder to predict. How many times a day will the wind push hard on the structure? Do you assume there are 40 gust a day or 400? This depends so much on geography.
Seismic - no idea. Never dealt with this.
I will say this. Most of the engineering maths is done by a programme these days. The engineers are tasked with building the model. IE getting the size, direction and frequency of the force correct. I’ve built over head power line, TV broadcast antenna, docks and ports, flood defences and pretty much everything in between. Its not “that” complicated. And most of the time - when the designers are unsure - “just add 20% to the thickness of the steel”.
4 Likes
My favorites. Dominated by the beauty of partial differential equations. If you want to see some really crazy stuff look up aerodynamic flutter failures.
3 Likes
FUCK why does the Microsoft tech support team know more about how dropbox functions whan the fucking drop box tech support team???
Forgot to make a condession:
I’m bought a new, exact same HDD as an external hard drive that was doing the click of death shit and I’m going to attempt to fix it myself to get my data back. Each drive cost me over 100USD.
Yes, I’m that stupid. I can’t even use a measuring tape properly and I’m going to attempt this because I watched too much YouTube.
2 Likes
I buy my desktop computer from a company targeted for the gaming crowd, even though I do ZERO gaming. I confess I pay a premium price, because the tech support is phenomenal!
I can call and ask about literally anything computer related, having nothing to do with the company’s computer. e.g. you could call them and they would help you fix your issue for you; if they’re not familiar with it, they would read over the stuff/instructions, and because they’re geeks, they would translate and help you
2 Likes
Fuck, a microsoft tech support dude frrom NIGERIA called me on my mobile because he could easily tell how little I knew about some shit and even offered to email me with non-related shit he would gather during his free time which he didn’t need to do and didn’t benefit him financially.
Yesterday, if I were the tech guy helping me in the live chat, I would have started becoming really sarcastic within 5min lol. 10 minutes in I’d enquire if I know how to tie my own shoelaces.
I may just switch to their browser because of this lol.
Was he a Prince??? 
1 Like
Imo, you can’t put a price on the mental anguish saved, when you have access to helpful technical support that talks in a language you can actually understand.
1 Like