Stone Soup

Hey, what's the story with the new Shelby 500Hp electric supercar planing to be released forth quarter 2009. Press release says

"The drive train under development will feature a revolutionary power source allowing for extended time between charging intervals with the possibility of several years between charging."

http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-fastest-production-car-to-go-electric--with-several-years-between-charging/10070/

Coming from anyone else I would call BS, but Shelby??

Seriously, anyone have any ideas, or were the Shelby marketing people high when they wrote the press and investor releases! Even "Mr Fusion" needs to be regularly refiled.

My vote is for EEstor, they have finally produced a product and it exceeds all its previous claims.

What do others think!

________________________________________________________

I hijack this thread in the name of her royal Majesty

And to think EEStor is a hop, skip and a jump down the road from my place (they're about 20 miles from here).

What do you think I'd see if I peeked in their windows?

Apparently the story is about an underdeveloped and low on cash power source according to my reading of this:

""The drive train under development will feature a revolutionary power source allowing for extended time between charging intervals with the possibility of several years between charging.""

What if instead they over developed the drive train?, Maybe then it could use a less expensive non revolutionary power source. then it wouldn't need to charge. And why doesn't the train use cash instead of charging intervals? How much cash to get to years between charging? How much are intervals these days?

Did kris write this?

milo "i rode a train once"

Apparently the story is about an underdeveloped and low on cash power source according to my reading of this:

Nope, the articles that I pulled this quote out of are sincere. They are apparently designing and building a power system for the new 500Hp Shelby electric supercar with some incredible energy storage claims, several years before recharging potentially possible. Comes straight off their website and also out of the Shelby investment literature press release (07/12/2008).

My vote is for EEstor, they have finally produced a product and it exceeds all its previous claims.

Are you saying this tongue-in-cheek? Even in his Dec 5 conference call, Ian Clifford had nothing encouraging to say about the EEstor that he hasn't said many times before (only the dates keep getting pushed back). Even wildly optimistic TheEEstory.com has nothing new to report. If Kleiner-Perkins believed that the EESU was really viable, they'd pour more money in, rather than letting EEstor drift along, missing target after target.

Are you saying this tongue-in-cheek?

Yes, but with an optimistic streak also.

The wait for a EEstor product continues.

Hello Blink:

Just to say well done on your first '100' GA's!

Take care and have a wonderful holiday!...........

"Flames"

I guess Obama's off limits after reading this thread:

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/30345/Ice-in-July-Global-Warming-Climate-Change-Ships-stuck-in-Ice-in-July

But it's still OK to flame and make fun of Bush though.

It's generally inhumane to poke fun at lame ducks, but in Georgy's case I think we can make an exception...

Nah, not him either. I enjoy arguing with you folks about how much sand to put in concrete, but as soon as we start arguing about politics, we'll all be mad.

For the off-topic game, maybe we could argue about something none of know anything about - romance?

Now, this may not be true of all Engineers, but in the case of Software Engineers ...

Q: What does a Software Engineer use for birth control?

A: His personality.

--

The shortest chapter in my forthcoming book, Idiot's Guide to Dating for Software Engineers:

Chapter 15: Birth Control Guidelines

Take no chances. Just be yourself.

Chapter 16: ...

How many of you out there have brewed your own beer?

I can honestly say that some of the best beer i have ever tasted was made in my own kitchen/closet. If you have not attempted to brew it yourself, and love to drink beer, i highly suggest making a few batches of home-brew. It's remarkably easy, and once the initial equipment investment, relatively cheap.

The only problem.... what to do with 5 gallons of tasty brew? Bottle or keg..?

"... what to do with 5 gallons of tasty brew?"

You share it. Be right over!

Good one, Bricktop!

Well, thats answers that! Its a hybrid, keg+bottle=kottle or kettle? (growler)

I can't stand filling all those small 12 oz bottles either. I use either 24oz or (like you do) fill up growlers (1 gallon jars).

I tried to make wine once...

needless to say, Much of it is still in bottles. And will most likely remain there indefinitely.

Leave it a couple years and you can sell it as vinagar

What is it about engineers and beer? In my college days, engineers had a special affinity for beer.

Now that I am older (and I hope a little wiser) I still enjoy beer (though not to drunkenness) and like trying different dark beers, although I can only afford to buy dark beer occasionally.

Maybe making my own would be a fun and tasty hobby!

I'd like to try home brewing...and/or wine making...I just haven't had the time or the cash to tool up (I'm in the middle of renovating my house. I'm installing metal roofing at this point in time). What does it cost to tool up for brewing?

I'm a home brewer as well (beer and cider). I usually make about 4 gallons at a time. I don't mind so much filling and priming my 12oz. bottles. I have a nice capper, so it isn't too big of a chore. I save and use flip-top bottles also. I would like to get a nice kegging setup one of these days. I think that home brew really does taste better, and I think the biggest reason is that it is unpasturized. Heat pasturization makes the beer bitter.

I haven't tried brewing my own beer YET, but I have made hundreds of gallons of Wine, of all sorts, including Cabernet, Merlot, Chardonnay, Pear, Apple, Salsa (YEP! Salsa-Jalapeno, onion, tomatoe) & I absolutely love every minute of it. Heck, most of the time, they taste as good as store-bought wine anyway. Plus I get to make a mess & have my kitchen turn into a wine factory for a couple of months. Excellent!

Salsa wine? How does it taste?

Salsa wine? How does it taste?

Salsa wine actually tastes surprisingly good! Especially when you drink it while eating some PepperJack cheese. Really an interesting & tasty combination.

Sounds fascinating for sure. Is it hot?

It does have a bit of spice to it, but really its just the flavor of the components. Though, I guess, I never really tried to make it as spicy as my Salsa. I probably would have been stuck drinking it alone, Maybe that will be my next batch. I am not sure how the oils from the peppers behave. Do they get filtered out? Not Sure.

I'm wondering if the oils from the peppers will survive fermentation. I guess you could just let the wine settle rather than filter it.

Yes. The really good stuff burns twice.

You may wish to be fitted with a Teflon^® grommet beforehand as a precautionary measure.

Hello YoshP:

Our whole Family used to make both wine and beer. It kinda made the house smell with the gas coming from fermentation. As you say you make wine from just about anything. Made 'Egg Nog' once and had to put whole eggs in! I had never done it before so just went 'by the recipe. It was not bad at all.

Bear, well it almost always got drunk while it was still cloudy! You just can't beat home made beer. Use different yeasts, and ingredients to get different flavours. Again, you can use fruit in beer making A friend made his own and it had that kind of nutty flavour which is real flavour!

Take care and have a wonderful holiday...............

I might be a bit dense on this one, but i can't seem to make any sense of your statement... topic this topic that, on topic, off topic...

topic topic topic.... It's all good conversation, even if it's topicless

"Is this post off topic because I'm not talking about one of the suggested topics?"

No. Your post is on-topic because you suggest it possibly being "off topic." Now, this really puts me in a quandry because I can't mark your post 'Off Topic' and deduct five points from a really good, albeit on-topic post. So I'll just have to give you a GA to show my disapproval. Obviously Mark needs to add an Invert-Sense-of-GA button for these rare occasions.

But you make a good point. If it's any comfort at all, think of those examples as ice-breakers at a party. Or turning the ignition key in a car. Food for thought. Tangents on a circle. Stream-of-consciousness............

Where was I?

Ah! Speaking of suggestions, should contradictions, oxymorons and non-sequitors be added to the list? And lists? What about lists?

I'll second that GA on the fact that it made my head spin.

Well...the voting mechanism wouldn't let me vote for both GA and off topic! Anyway...Nothing like a good case of ADD...

What were we talking about?

So after hearing raves from people on CR4 and on other like boards I finally picked up a copy of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." I was browsing the philosophy section in the very large bookstore at the KLCC mall in Kuala Lumpur and when I saw it I thought I need to read that.

While I can't say I completely agree with Rand's philosophy of "objectivism" I must say for a engineer it is certainly attractive. It is also nice that it is presented in a novel, and a fairly entertaining one at that.

So if you are up to 1000 pages of reading, give it a shot. I am only about a third of the way through, but so far it is is an entertaining story of how engineers save the world every day.

My wife highly recommends the book and it is on my list of Good Books to Read.

If you like to read biographies, try The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock.

Other nonfiction:

Dark Sun, by Richard Rhodes

Picturing the Bomb: Photographs from the Secret World of the Manhattan Project, by Rachel Fermi and Esther Samra

Quantum Reality, by James Gleick

And just for fun:

Anguished English, by Richard Lederer

Bashing microsoft is fun but am still using XP

but no vista for me i will probably change to linux

Ya, agree, I'm using XP, and from what I've heard, I'm afraid to buy a new 'puter with blister.

After Christmas, I'm buying a new Apple, one with a honking huge monitor. Is there much of a learning curve to go from a pc to an Apple?

It's different, but not terribly so. At my home we have ten computers running XP, 2K, Mac OS-X, Kubuntu Linux, Red Hat Linux and BlueCat Linux (for real-time stuff). It gets pretty interesting.

The most difficult part of going to an Apple is the system architecture. I went back to an Apple this summer after about 15 years exclusively on Windows based machines and it has been challenging at times just trying to do basic things. However, definitely worth it. No more system crashes or viruses etc...

Hello Bricky,

If you did get one with 'blister' you could stick a plaster on it when it broke!

Some years ago, I had a friend that carved beautiful things out of soapstone. I went out in the woods with him once to find natural deposits of the rock. It was somewhere in Western Massachusetts, but I can't remember where. Does anyone know where to find soapstone in the wild?

Soapstone quarries in mass

• Andover, Massachusetts
• Cummington, Massachusetts
• Granville, Massachusetts
• Groton, Massachusetts
• Shutesbury, Massachusetts
• Sutton, Massachusetts
• Windsor, Massachusetts From http://newenglandtowns.org/soapstone

Thankyou!

I was about to respond to Milo's post, which generally related to Mac vs PC, and realized this would be a better place for my response. Many times I have decided to get a Mac for my next machine, but have not yet really committed to the transition, owing to profound cheapness, difficulty in finding a couple applications I used occasionally but value, etc.

However, having said that, I am astounded to hear that EEstor actually has something going on. Could this really be true?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HttF5HVYtlQ

milo

I bought a Mac, I will never buy another......

Steve S, why?

Try to look at CR4, in Macs native browser, doesn't work, had to add a new browser.

Bought a Sony camcorder, software not compatible with Mac.

Bought a required graphics software package for my son for school, software not compatible with Mac.

Went to buy a web cam, not one of them on the self at Walmart was compatible with Mac.

Every time I buy something I need to read the fine print to see if it is compatible with Mac... (my eyes are getting too old for that).

Now I fully realize that I can do pc simulation and partitions on Mac, but why the hell buy a Mac if I have to run a windows partition?

I just went a bought a cheap windows lap top and I just use the Mac for surfing the internet, and running Itunes and garage band... saved the hassle.

Ah boy, well that totally sinks my boat. I have a Sony digital camcorder, and I've always had problems editing and burning to DVD with this pc. One day it works, the next day, I do exactly the same thing, and it fails. Very time consuming. I've been lead to believe that Mac's were great for video's, (no first hand experience).

Maybe now, I'll use that money to go someplace very warm in January.

Texas!

We'll have the pumpkin-nog ready and waiting!

OK, Texas it is then, (I was thinking more along the lines of Hawaii), but if you can hook me up with a local hottie...

Hey, ya gotta help out a brother here....

No prob. Carla and Missy'll meet you at the airport...

Where are you, Bricky? Did you fall outta yer chair?

We lost power for the last 3 days, 11 hours. I was alright for a while, then my generator failed. I had 6 big trees down, one on my roof, another across my driveway, so I was stuck here. Anyway, I burnt wood for a while, but I had to leave. My daughter came and rescued me, and I stayed with her for a while. Got power back a few hours ago. My son and I pulled the tree off the roof, fortunately, no major damage. We cleared the driveway. I just can't believe the damage around here. It went down to 13F last night, but got very much warmer today. The radio says there are still many thousands of people, especially to the north, that still do not have power. I will keep you updated.

Ouch! Glad to see you survived.

Oklahoma has its share of ice storms. I could tell you a story or two.

Tulsa got hit really bad a year ago. A couple of weeks later, I got to see some of the damage first hand. It looked like a herd of giants had come through and snapped limbs off of trees. I work at home, and it knocked out power to the main office. They couldn't refer calls to me because they couldn't answer their phones and of course their answering machine message couldn't give callers my number either. Otherwise, it didn't affect me that much. Strange thing is I am about 18 miles from downtown Tulsa. Another town about 3 - 4 miles away got hit bad too.

Right now got about an 1/8 to 1/4 inch of sleet on my porch and on the street out front. It's no big problem, as long as I'm careful, and I am.

Yeah, That was quite a storm. Pretty but devastating. I just missed the carnage as I am at the foot of the hills and a few feet below the ice line. Several friends I know are where hit pretty hard. Hope you get all back in shape before the next weather event that is expected tonight and tomorrow.

Bob

Wal-mart.....

Theres your problem.

Mac's native browser Sucks. Download Firefox and you'll be off and running...

I did download firefox and it is fine, but why did I have to do that? I would have been fine with IE on a windows machine....

Well, yes and no. IE and Firefox serve the same purpose, but IE is a veritable Hacker's Paradise. Look at its track record in terms of security flaws and you'll see why you couldn't pay me enough to run IE on my machines.

Trivia Time

What is this?

Bonus points for where.

It's a part to an alian spacecraft thats been converted into a skateboard bowl.

Ireland

built found in the 1950's

Watch that fence! The last guy to try it turned into Michael Jackson.

A giant catcher's mitt from Gulliver's Travels?

A giant beanie from same? (sans propeller)

A memorial to The Unknown Yarmulke?

Half of Dolly Parton's bra?

I dunno. What is it?

Where? That's easy: Lilliput.

twenty minutes until sunset.

its a Mondrian shadow chronograph.

milo

Come now, Milo. You know darned well those only work at night.

It's....it's....it's...it's on a hillside!

It's a shrine to the ancient god Semiglobulus. Or his twin, Hemisphericus.

Damn! It is on a hillside! (Someone tell Bricky)

It's funny how those ancient gods and heroes seem to have little-known twins. Take the Greek Hero Herculés, for example. His twin's name is ...

... Testiclés.

Well now we know why your avatar is shrieking.

milo

You think she's shrieking, huh? Well, you shoulda seen that chick when I opened the door!

Itis part off Home defense off course to project "the joke that won the war" at the attacking German planes. Just stand in front of it and go. ......blalala gesput.

Hello Bricky,

I guess..................during the second world war, we in the UK had fake lake, airports and whole fake Towns, just to confuse the jerries. The lakes were only a few inched deep and lit by lights to make the reflections seem real. And the airports were blow up plastic and rubber. I think this could be one of the pretend lights which were covered in silver foil?

Have a great holiday.....................

Does anyone keep any invertebrates? I just bought an emperor scorpion for my classroom. I was thinking of capturing a tarantula in the spring.

DAG, you like scorpions? Well, if it's scorpions you want, scorpions we got. And tarantulas. And coral snakes, black widows, brown recluses, asps, you name it. Always makes for a great picnic.

At least you don't have them like this!

Yeah we have a few of those around this part of Texas. I used to get one out of the tub every morning! One Sunday morning I crunched one with the iron. It was inside my wife's shirt that was hanging in the claoset....I didn't realize that there was a scorpion in there until I heard and felt the crunch under the iron!

Hello europium:

This is the truth...............a friend had duck with only one leg. Got it caught in some fishing line and had to cut off. Looked really odd. But I think he remembered the 'VET' each time I went in the garden, it would alway chase and catch me!

Take care..................

I think that somewhere in the world there are five other ducks with the same problem. And and one chicken with eight legs.

Hello europium:

Thanks for the post.

What is Gorilla Glue?

Take care and have a great holiday..................

Gorilla glue is all over the states. It's one of the best glues for working in wood. If an older piece is worn and loose the glue swells and fills up the spaces. Aint never lost a piece I repaired with this stuff.

Hello europium:

I heard Kentucky fried etc, has bred a chicken with eight legs!

There is no news on what they taste like compared to the two legged variety, because they haven't been able to catch any yet.

Take care etc........

This is probably the first ON topic/Off topic post in this damn forum. When you make stone soup, do you season yours with flowers and grass with a little bark and twig, or do you like the hearty broth with just stones?

Personally I like a well seasoned stone soup with at least granite, basalt and some shale thrown in for texture.

Out here in tumbleweed country it is customary to use some cotton burr and mesquite thorns for seasoning. Unfortunately, granite is usually out of season and we have to make it out of sandstone. It's not quite as filling as granite, but you can throw in some Portland cement to thicken it up a bit.

Portland cement? For some real Haute Cuisine throw in a pinch of Balcones Limestone.

Mmmmm....Balcones Limestone....Straight from the quarry north of Austin?

North Austin and Round Rock.

Hello charsley99:

with this thread sort of asking us to do things back to front, it could mean you could get a GA for the most off topic post!

Take care and happy holidy.................

Yeah, a GA is probably the way to go, as every post that is off-topic in this thread must necessarily be on-topic. And so for a truly good off-topic post a GA for an on-off-topic post is most appropriate.

On the other hand, marking a post off-topic verifies that it, too, conforms to the spirit of this thread, because if it's off-topic it must be off-on-topic. Better yet, the post's author can garner five points right out the gate, to be added to by others who deem the post appropriately off-topic. It's a Win-Win situation, no bones about it!

Hello europium:

You certainly know how to confuse a bloke!

We need a category of Good Off Topic Answer! That would come in handy on other posts as well.

I been sayin'!!