Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!news.itd.umich.edu!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.hackers From: nOJUnk+GetRidOfTheStuffBetweenThePlusses+@umich.edu (Dan Horn) Subject: Bugs (was: Question) Organization: why bother? References: <3525036b.47128146@news.usit.net> X-Newsreader: News Xpress 2.01 Approved: newbie@aol.com X-Noarchive: yes Lines: 25 Message-ID: Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 21:02:20 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: outlier.psych.lsa.umich.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 16:02:20 EST In article <3525036b.47128146@news.usit.net>, Mr.Foster_Freeze@Cryogen.com wrote: > >ObHack >To kill wasps in the house use Dow Bathroom Cleaner to make um stop >flying & bring um down to the floor where ya can step on 'um. A great bug hack, (not my own) was in one of Kurt Vonnegut's books (God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater?). To kill flies, you take a glass filled with soapy water. Then wait for them to land on the ceiling. When they do so, hold the glass two inches below the fly, when it decides to take off again, it usually drops a couple of inches before it can start flying. Unfortunately for the poor fella (lady?), just as take-off seems to be happening, he/she touches the soap bubbles. The bubbles act like the La Brea tar pits, and suck the fly to Davey Jones' locker at the bottom of the cup. ---- my e mail address really is "nojunk" and it is "at" umich.edu Random, meaningless e-mail address: postmaster@mindspring.com ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!ptdnetP!newsgate.ptd.net!boris.eden.com!matrix.eden.com!not-for-mail From: hanuman@matrix.eden.com (Reboots J. Rommeys) Newsgroups: alt.hackers Subject: Re: Bugs (was: Question) Date: 7 Apr 1998 01:21:34 GMT Organization: AMICI Online Lines: 47 Approved: Yo Yo Ma Ma Message-ID: <6gbv2u$qfp$1@boris.eden.com> References: <3525036b.47128146@news.usit.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 199.171.21.12 X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0] Dan Horn (nOJUnk+GetRidOfTheStuffBetweenThePlusses+@umich.edu) wrote: > A great bug hack, (not my own) was in one of Kurt Vonnegut's books (God > Bless You, Mr. Rosewater?). > > To kill flies, you take a glass filled with soapy water. Then wait for > them to land on the ceiling. When they do so, hold the glass two inches > below the fly, when it decides to take off again, it usually drops a couple > of inches before it can start flying. Unfortunately for the poor fella > (lady?), just as take-off seems to be happening, he/she touches the soap > bubbles. The bubbles act like the La Brea tar pits, and suck the fly to > Davey Jones' locker at the bottom of the cup. You can decrease your wait dramatically by turning off the lights. Flies don't like to fly in the dark, and will land immediately. ObGCHack1: I once had the job of fixing a dead button on the membrane keypad of a HP 5890 Gas Chromatograph. (Replacing the whole keypad was not an inexpensive option.) My first plan of action was to drill a hole in the faceplate and mount a mini pushbutton with wire leads attached to the keypad PCB. Only problems were, A: it would've been ugly and non-ergonomic; B: there was no convenient location for a pushbutton hole, since the faceplate was backed by a pair of densely-populated PCBs; and, C: I didn't have a little button with a threaded shaft. The solution? I used my Dremel tool to route out a square hole in the PCB directly BEHIND the original button, taking care not to pierce the rubber pad in front, and mounted a tiny microswitch inside the hole. The keypad now functions as originally designed, and only I am aware of the modification that has taken place. Muahahaha. ObGCHack2: This same Gas Chromatograph had a heater coil that received power through a pair of screws set in ceramic posts. One of the posts was already cracked in half; the second shattered when I overtightened the screw. Nothing was handy that could serve as a threaded, insulat- ing, heat-proof standoff; fortunately, I found a bit of brass tubing with an I.D. just larger than the diameter of the posts. I cut two pieces short enough that they wouldn't short the coil to its mounting plate, and viola! Snug jackets that held each set of ceramic pieces together as one. --reboots@random This message brought to you by MCA Linux. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-fw.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.232.20.2!malgudi.oar.net!hyperion.wright.edu!news.wright.edu!pedwards From: pedwards@cs.wright.edu (Phil Edwards) Newsgroups: alt.hackers Subject: Re: Bugs (was: Question) Date: 7 Apr 1998 20:03:19 GMT Organization: $home Lines: 66 Approved: By 4 out of 5 dentists Message-ID: <6ge0q7$h28$1@mercury.wright.edu> References: <3525036b.47128146@news.usit.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: gamma.cs.wright.edu X-Why-No-Archive: well, do /you/ think it's worth the diskspace? X-PGP-ID: 0x3A2E42E9 Dan Horn wrote: + In article <3525036b.47128146@news.usit.net>, Mr.Foster_Freeze@Cryogen.com wrote: + + + + > + >ObHack + >To kill wasps in the house use Dow Bathroom Cleaner to make um stop + >flying & bring um down to the floor where ya can step on 'um. + + A great bug hack, (not my own) was in one of Kurt Vonnegut's books (God Bless + You, Mr. Rosewater?). + + To kill flies, you take a glass filled with soapy water. Then wait for them + to land on the ceiling. When they do so, hold the glass two inches below the + fly, when it decides to take off again, it usually drops a couple of inches + before it can start flying. [snip] The way a fly drops off a ceiling is pretty strange. The front "legs" release first, and so the fly kinda swings down and back; then the other legs let go. (Imagine a gymnist swinging upside on the uneven parallel bars. Or don't.) End result is that the now-right-side-up fly is down an inch or two, and facing in the opposite direction of where s/he was facing when on the ceiling. And moving in that direction, of course. So, when you go to swat the fly with Ye Olde Standarde Flyswattere, aim for about two inches behind the fly's spot on the ceiling. S/He'll see it coming, try to takeoff in the only way s/he knows, and fly directly into the "killing zone" of the flyswatter. ObHackInProgress: The admintool GUI for Solaris that adds users is mostly functional, but behaves differently from the various command-line progs used to do the same thing. It's a lot easier to use the GUI (for once), but it fails to perform a couple of things (like copying over all of the correct startup files into a new account, etc). I also got tired of having to look through a bunch of files before running admintool to determine in which range of UID/GIDs the new user should be placed (an organizational thing), what's the first unused UID in that range, etc. Also, most of our users read mail on a different machine, so I have to remember to add a sendmail alias. None of this is /difficult/, but it's deterministic and repetititititive. So I'm writing a Java program to ask for all this crap, then sort through the various files for me, determine the numbers, call useradd(1) and passwd(1), rebuild the aliases database, etc. I originally started doing it in a Bourne script, then realized that my replacement probably wouldn't use a character-based program (a frightening number of people honestly believe that if it isn't graphical, it's useless and shouldn't even be considered). The hack is going to be getting Java to work with the shell scripts. I'd also considered writing it in Tcl/Tk, because I already know Java and don't know Tcl/Tk yet. But I feel the need to get this done quickly. :-) Luck++; /dev/phil => If you post a followup, PLEASE don't email a copy to me. I read news often enough that replying to things twice is annoying. But thanks.