Official BS and shenanigans & Good Morning America Thread

Better stock up on Bud Light Lime

 

We have a large calibration lab in Houston. Nice lab. Like us here in Denver they have a Chevy HD2500 diesel and fully equipped environmentally controlled walk in trailer that we take to wind energy farms across the country. They can do torque, pressure, mike's, calipers, process calibrators, multimeters, temp controllers and such. Just before I left work my boss comes up and says, "Guess what happened at the Houston lab last night?" Me, "I don't know, what?" Boss, "Someone cut off the catalytic converters off the truck.........and.........stole everything out of the trailer. $200K worth of equipment and there is a big onsite job starting Friday!" I'm like, "Damn" . They took several hours to get everything out. On camera but no plate #. Leo's are checking cameras in the area. I would like to have been a fly on the wall listening in on the call the lab manager had to make to corporate. Fun times....
@Jim LE 1301

 

I couldn't hold it

 

Bump. Those A holes didn't even know what they were stealing. Can't take high end $$$ test equipment to a pawn shop. Can't sell on Ebay. Serial numbers reported. Insured but will still be a loss.

 

OUCH!

Punks like that never know what they are stealing. Neither will the pawn shops.

 

If a local pawn shop accepts something as expensive as this without some sort of ID and a quick call to the Leo's.............at $75K new....with all the options we use??? Pawn shop out of business asap. I guarantee the company I work for would shut them down.....

 

Problem is, most asshats will think that’s just some retro 1980’s stereo gear based on the old-school knobs and buttons. The thing looks like an Apple IIe

that, and they only care to unload it for enough to score their next hit.

 

"Looks like an Apple IIe"??......"Old school knobs??? LOL...... besides the fact Apple products suck? That "thing" can calibrate 6.5 digit multimeters...https://us.flukecal.com/products/el...al-calibrators/5522a-multi-product-calibrator

Nobody on the planet makes better calibrators than Fluke. Nobody. Every decent cal lab in the WORLD has these...........

 

I’m not disputing the real power or value of those to the trained eye. From a visual perspective, most quality lab equipment took its design straight out of the 1979 IBM design manual. A meth head sees something completely different - that $80k machine looks like their next rock and that’s it. And if they can’t get someone to buy it whole, they’ll bust it open and try to hock some parts that “look expensive”.

 

That's the beauty of high tech like this....nothing to hock. Hock the now worthless internal foreign looking parts to who? "most quality lab equipment took its design straight out of the 1979 IBM design manual?" Seriously? IBM made computers not test equipment. I live and breath test equipment. No offense but do you actually know what quality lab equipment is?

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CKrhfwQBq7-/?igshid=1usdi4oecdezw

 

Morning tundra clan

 

Morning Jim @Jim LE 1301

 

Morning Bryan @Prostar 190

 

Morning Casey @RainMan_PNW

 

I'm still trying to get my grandson asleep.............

 

Hope it goes well. my mornings are most people's nights.

 

None taken. It’s been a LONG time since I had to personally use any sort of electronic test/calibration gear. More recently, it was bolt torque/tension verification, concrete cylinder breaks, etc. (I am in construction). I work with $60-80k survey equipment and $100k LIDAR scanners every week - manage a fleet of them for my company.

What I’m getting at is that you’re intimately attached to this stuff - you know both it’s “cost” and it’s true “value.” Just like I can look at a pale green or yellow robotic total station or scanner and know both how crazy intricate the guts in that thing are to enable the accuracy it can get and know what it costs to buy one and how useless it would be to anyone that didn’t know how to use it...

But step back and look at it from a lay-person’s (or tweaker’s) perspective and they’ve got no idea what that thing is or how intricate or expensive or sensitive it is. If I tried to explain it to my wife, her eyes would glaze over in 30 seconds.

There’s no touch screens, backlit buttons, fancy-shaped small plug-in connectors, wireless charging, etc. It’s stoutly built cases with analog-looking connectors and old-school buttons and knobs to the untrained eye. They probably went into the yard for the cats, and decided to hit the trailer for shits. And when they found a pile of electronics inside they probably thought they hit the mother lode of retro gear. Like the movies when the thugs unload an electronics store of tube TV’s and VCR’s...

What that stuff is worth and the fact the shit-bags don’t know that and can’t do anything with it is what is likely the most aggravating about it. Well, that and the fact that the job coming up is gonna make you guys have to scramble to cover it. We’ve had some expensive gear walk off projects in the 11th hour. It sucks.

 

We were able to box up enough from our lab here and ship overnight for them to use. Had to cost a small fortune. I use a Keysight E4440A PNA analyzer, among other pieces of test equipment, that fortunately never leaves the lab. That would be a $170K (new cost at the time as configured) loss just for one piece of test equipment that would look like a stereo to a tweaker come to think of it. I hate shit bag thiefs.

 

You and me both...

 

Good Wednesday morning Tundra's!!!
Good morning Bryan.
Good morning Jim.

Everyone have a good and safe day today!!!

 

Good morning Bill!
How much snow did you get up your way?

 

Good morning Bill!

 

Good morning Mike! @Leo's first

 

Good morning Lucas! @Larmand

 

Good morning Travis! @easleycrawler

 

Good morning Chris! @ColoradoTJ

 

Good morning Pat! @Grumpy Uncle