Yum

[da]

Tonight was: biking through four sets of orange "do not cross" fencing, detouring around a not-quite bridge, spending a few moments admiring the gargantuan crane which brought the replacement bridge (all in one piece), running into uniquecrash5 and K. on their evening constitutional, then meeting my sweetie at bats22's for dinner.

And a very fine dinner it was: unagi, kabocha (a japanese pumpkin I've never had before), omlette, miso soup, rice, broccoli, and pickled peppers and mushroom. Yum. We kvetched over sake (yes, actually, we did), and bats22 gave me an excellent idea about... well, I can't say, it'll ruin a surprise. Anyway.

He also loaned us the coolest toy: a Kill-a-Watt energy meter, for measuring the energy-use of various things around the house. I'm testing my server right now. This is so cool; both d. and I have always wanted one, but for some reason I thought they were suuper-expensive. Apparently they're $30 at Amazon.

Hm. Yeah. Good times.

Comments

[psychedelicbike.livejournal.com]

Heh. I got an email today with this question in it:

A Backhoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas. The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 ½ inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a criss-cross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing.

Solve: When the shovel arm hits the overpass, how fast do you have to be going to slice the bridge in half? (Assume no effect for headwind and no braking by the driver...)

Extra Credit: Solve for the time and distance required for the entire rig to come to a complete stop after hitting the overpass at the speed calculated above. Yes, you can neglect friction...

Answer: Who cares, the trucking company just bought themselves a bridge.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

That is a fun, fun set of pictures.

I imagine it made a really loud bang. Or, set of bangs, if the more complicated explanation in the comments is what happened. Cool.