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Author Topic: What have you bought lately?  (Read 222172 times)

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Offline Queen Victoria

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7635 on: April 04, 2017, 07:45:52 PM »
One of those "as seen on TV" pasta cookers.  You put the pasta in it, add boiling water, wait 3 minutes and hopefully edible pasta.  I'm hoping The PR will be able to use it since she can't lift pots/pans with boiling water in them.
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Offline Lestat

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7636 on: April 05, 2017, 09:41:02 AM »
Three compressed gas tanks (argon)
A new regulator (already have one, but it has suffered quite a lot of misery and pain during its service to me. I've put it through rather a lot, to say the least) for the tanks, keeping the old one still, but using it for when one or the other is going to be on the receiving end of brutality, the kind of treatment that makes the metal scream inside. Which isn't exactly infrequent (its hooked up providing pressure to a chlorine generator right now for instance using Ar to dilute the Cl2 and push it through a column packed with iodine, after which, the result, iodine monochloride with some traces of iodine trichloride, is aggressive and corrosive enough to make chlorine look like a little fluffy bunny rabbit in comparison. Not friendly stuff, the rest of the equipment, such as the ground glass joints have had to be wrapped in teflon because using dow-corning high-vacuum grease didn't go too well. Stuff turns to something resembling cement on exposure to the vapor from the ICl and ICl3. ICl being the main offender since its a volatile liquid, whereas the trichloride is a solid, although volatile all the same, the argon tanks own internal pressure is the only thing preventing that unwholesome witch's brew from backing up the gas line and probably resulting in the regulator on the argon bottle crumbling away to dust. That, and a clamp on the line (I pressurize it very slightly, before starting the flow of chlorine gas, when the Cl2 begins to flow properly then the pressure of argon is increased, a clamp put over the tubing to prevent chlorine, and worse things besides, backing up into the regulator and argon tank, using flexible tubing that will withstand some flow of argon whilst in the midst of turning the clamp and inflate like a balloon, then quickly turning off the valve)

Bought three tins of travel sweets (more for the tins, than for the candy as it happens. I wanted the tins because they will fit perfectly in my molten metal bath for heating things and leave just enough space for things like a pair of long-nosed pliers to move the tin, attach electrodes to the sweet can (with the candies poured out first of course), whilst heating it in a bath of molten lead. Needed replacement sweet tins after corroding the crap out of the ones I had.

Several bags of fried, sweetened dried banana chips.

A few bags of 'chewits', a quarter bottle of dark rum and a kilo of potassium hydroxide (caustic potash, KOH, its the potassium 'version' of lye. A damn sight more corrosive though. Whilst the nickel-based guitar fretwire I often use as disposable electrodes will withstand quite a lot of abuse being used to electrolyse molten, fused caustic soda, even for as long as 12 hours give or take, all night long basically, dipped in a bath of molten caustic soda at a few hundred degrees 'C, a mixture of caustic soda and caustic potash, after just an hour or so, maybe two at the most, when I pulled the electrode out of the melt, which was only at around two hundred degrees 'C, the caustic potash-based melt had ripped it to shreds, eroding the end into a needle-sharp pointy spike.....NOT something I fancy the prospect of ever getting on my skin, I do plan to test it against a piece of cheap meat just to see what kind of damage it can do to flesh, something revolting, like pork, I've a pretty confident feeling that molten potassium hydroxide would chew straight through the likes of a pork chop and out the other side, especially after seeing what it did to that nickel alloy, which is normally very resistant to even some pretty harsh treatment)

[and where electrodes are concerned, 'harsh treatment' constitutes the kind of thing mother electrodes tell their children will happen to them if they misbehave to scare the living shit out of them around these parts, and leave them unable to sleep at night, or wake up screaming in the middle of the night thinking they just heard a switch clicking 'on'. Its the conductive materials equivalent to Auschwitz, only not quite so friendly, warm and fuzzy. Warm, yes, but one out of three is as good as it gets :P]

QV-have her try getting a colander with a handle, or a sieve, and just put the pan in the sink or next to it, then fill it with the boiling water. That way she could suspend the pasta in the boiling water, lift out just the pasta, flick away the last bits of water then munch away when its done. About 10 minutes usually does it, at least with the bulkier kinds of pasta. I hate those tiny little bow-tie shaped things so I wouldn't know how long those take to cook; probably pretty quickly though.

And when she's done serving up her chow, then it only takes one hand to ditch the boiling water, or whatever is left of it, straight into the sink without having to carry it anywhere. Use of a plastic chopping board underneath, or wooden one at least would be helpful, plastic being better due to plastics generally having poorer heat conduction capacities, thus trapping in the heat for longer and better cooking the pasta without having to fr. ex. boil extra water in the kettle.
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Offline renaeden

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7637 on: April 06, 2017, 04:34:30 AM »
I bought a Nintendo Zelda game for Kayleigh. Guess what she's doing now? She is going to pay me back.
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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7638 on: April 07, 2017, 10:45:46 AM »
A garbage disposal to replace the broken one at my sons house
"Eat it up.  Wear it out.  Make it do or do without." 

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Offline renaeden

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7639 on: April 07, 2017, 10:38:01 PM »
A garbage disposal to replace the broken one at my sons house
We don't have those in Australia (I don't think) so I am curious as to why one is needed in your son's house. And was it expensive?
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Offline odeon

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7640 on: April 08, 2017, 02:03:00 AM »
Bought a new mobile to replace the one that was stolen. A Google Pixel.
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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7641 on: April 08, 2017, 10:01:51 AM »
A garbage disposal to replace the broken one at my sons house
We don't have those in Australia (I don't think) so I am curious as to why one is needed in your son's house. And was it expensive?

The house they bought had one on one side of the double sink in the kitchen but it was broken and had gotten to the point the water would not even drain through it. They also recently got a dishwasher and wanted to hook it up and the it hooked up to the disposal.  I figured it was easier to just get a cheep $100 one and replace it than screw around with new fittings.   
"Eat it up.  Wear it out.  Make it do or do without." 

'People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.'
George Bernard Shaw

Offline Lestat

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7642 on: April 11, 2017, 03:13:20 PM »
Bought a large graphite crucible, several smaller, lidded carbon crucibles, two lidded iron crucibles which I intend to plate with a layer of nickel to make them chemically much more corrosion resistant, or perhaps with either chromium or nickel-chrome alloy plating (nichrome), and also treated myself, really rather splashed out and bought a lidded, decent sized crucible in solid nickel, although that was expensive, at more than £30, closer to £40 IIRC. Bought a decent sized supply of 3mm dia. carbon rods, a couple of meters of it if I remember right, just waiting for it to arrive, that is for use in making electrodes, that I'll drill holes in and tap screw threads in the middle of each electrode if there are small enough taps available for the lathe. If not, I'll just either use the lathe to put an external screw thread on with a die-head, and cut some carbon internally threaded nuts, to be used in oppositely tightened pairs, meeting in the middle at a hole drilled horizontally through the side of the electrodes, so that a piece of copper wire can be threaded through, and a nut fastened on from either side and tightened in the opposite directions to each other, thus locking the wires in place, so that the wires leading to power supplies never have to go near the sorts of solutions and melts that I would subject them to, because they are frequently corrosive in the extreme, to the extent that the anodes need plating with resistant metals, or if using carbon rods, which have excellent electrical conductivity, then the parts in contact with the electrolytes can be considered disposable. Hence the need to keep them away from the wires, because the electrolytes would treat the power supply connections the same way. Like the last crocodile clips that were attached. They dissolved into slush in the electrolyte melt being used and ended up crumbling away to nothingness. They were stainless steel clips, and they survived most of a night.

The iron crucibles were dirt cheap though, so if I can give them a successfully applied, decent quality plating that will resist the brutally corrosive extremely caustic alkaline melts that I've been zapping of late once I get the power supply sorted out I can if one fails just buy more, two cost me less than the price of a burger and a coke at macdonalds, and I already have nickel salts, as well as fine nickel powder
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Offline Lestat

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7643 on: April 15, 2017, 06:41:09 AM »
Some liquorice sticks, 5 liters of ethylene glycol antifreeze, unmixed, so I'm not paying for water I'd only distill out anyway.

3 bottles of methylated spirits, brought same to the counter only to be told go get another one, since there was an offer on, 4 for 3. I was running really short on alcohols.
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Offline renaeden

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7644 on: April 15, 2017, 06:46:57 AM »
Royal Canin dry cat food (expensive but the cats love it and don't throw it up), some dark chocolate covered ginger for my stepdad for Easter and two Jesters pies for Kayleigh.
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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7645 on: April 15, 2017, 09:40:33 AM »
27.5 gallons gasoline at $2.289 a gallon
"Eat it up.  Wear it out.  Make it do or do without." 

'People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.'
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Offline "couldbecousin"

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7646 on: April 15, 2017, 09:53:59 AM »
  More fatty food than I actually need or even want.  :sumo:
"I'm finding a lot of things funny lately, but I don't think they are."
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Offline Icequeen

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7647 on: April 15, 2017, 12:50:09 PM »
These:



....and these.


Offline DirtDawg

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7648 on: April 15, 2017, 12:58:32 PM »
27.5 gallons gasoline at $2.289 a gallon

Gasoline has gone up a bit here as well.

Kind of suxxors to have to pay that much!!
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Offline Queen Victoria

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Re: What have you bought lately?
« Reply #7649 on: April 15, 2017, 01:54:57 PM »
Gas is about $2.14 at the local station.  Went up 15 cents overnight.
A good monarch is a treasure. A good politician is an oxymoron.

My brain is both uninhibited and uninhabited.

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