'Xtreme' Equipment That You Have Borrowed? 216
djupedal asks: "What's the most extreme type of equipment you've used from the lab/office/university, etc. for your own projects, etc.? Have you ever taken a piece of unknown lint into work just to check it out under the nuclear microscope? Ever used the UV curing oven on the production line to make custom wheels for an R/C car? Ever used the 100,000 ton press in the lab to meld a dime into a nickel just to have a present for your gf/bf on Valentine's Day?"
"Ever drop by the house on the way home from work and use your company's nuclear density gauge to check for hardpan in the backyard?
Was that you I saw driving a 50 ton crane into the sub-division just to have a platform to install a 3 meter dish on the roof of the garage?
Ever hog a T-3 so you could loop-logon on to your own box....after networking thru a minimum of 25 repeaters near the equator...just to see how much delay there is when going around the planet?
To get you started -- we used to work the night shift at a ski area - and when we found spare time, we would fire up a few of the $200,000.00 Kässbohrer PistenBully's and run off into the trees and play hide & seek in the dark, when it was snowing heavy and your tracks would be covered quickly. All lights out and nothing but iPods online, we would play tag until we either got lost, stuck, bored or the sun came up.
What's your best example of trivial use of some very expensive gear that wasn't yours?"
Slashdot needs (Score:1, Insightful)
Slashdot needs a general/open forum area for things like this and a lot of other garbage "news" posts.
The amount of noise here has increased dramatically over the last 12 or so months.
bittorrents of Star Wars Revelations (Score:3, Insightful)
hogged 1/2 a T3 for 12 hours or so.
Re:Desk (Score:5, Insightful)
Ermm.. When you combine a Slashdotter, a woman that a Slashdotter could attract, and 'rejected photos' into a post... Ugh, I can't finish this sentence.
Re:Cryo - for real. (Score:3, Insightful)
Craig Morton claims he will pound a nail into a board with a banana. He will undertake this folly tomorrow in front of an unforgiving audience: kids.
There is, of course, a secret that will prevent Morton from playing the fool. He will pretreat the banana with a component of air that has been compressed and expanded until it becomes liquid nitrogen. At minus-320 degrees, liquid nitrogen will star in several trick demonstrations all day tomorrow as part of COSI's "Strange Matters" exhibit.
More at: http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
Cryogenics and the application of industrial gases is pretty interesting stuff.