Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Happy New Year! I had a good time out in Colorado for Christmas and California for new years. Besides the usual seeing family and friends, I think the highlight of the trip was when Liza complained about it being cold in Eric's basement, and Eric picks a meat thermometer up off his shelf and then announces that it's 72 degrees in the room. He scoffed at me when I told him you can't use a meat thermometer for air temperature.

Now I'm not a physicist and I'm having a hard time finding a webpage explaining these things. But it seems like a meat thermometer is designed to pick up the temperature from its contact with meat or sauces, and the meat to metal temperature difference will conduct heat much more quickly than an air to metal temperature difference. So a meat thermometer may measure air temperature but only if the temperature changes extremely, extremely slowly. This is how it should work in my mind anyway. Dave and Eric both also scoffed years ago (and accused me of making things up) when I tried to explain that a birddoesn't get electrocuted when it flies from a power line to the ground because it doesn't have much capacitance. Joe gets no respect.

I have some light green milk in my refrigerator that I'm not sure how to dispose of. I forgot to throw it out before leaving on vacation, and now I have new milk, but I have to remind myself not to pick up the green carton every time I reach in fridge. If I was feeling resentful toward my building I could pop the milk jug's cap and drop the whole thing down the trash chute, but this building has been good to me so far. Then I was thinking maybe freeze the stuff in the carton before dropping it down the chute, but I don't want it to explode in my freezer. Now I'm thinking I might put a deflated plastic bag over the top with a rubberband to seal it, and then pop the cap a little and freeze the whole thing. I'll probably do that unless a better idea comes to me.

And my facebook account might have been hacked. One of my coworkers commented about the irony of my joining a group for some website about pirated movies, which I definitely did not join, unless I've been facebooking drunk and don't remember it. So I unjoined myself from there. And am checking through my credit card and bank account records. Nothing else out of the ordinary so far though.

(from a review of Green Street Hooligans 2: Stand Your Ground)
I should have realised from the absurdly elongated title that I was on to a loser. It's like settling down to watch Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun In The Hood and expecting it to be anything other than pure s****.

3 comments:

Rachel said...

STOP THINKING ABOUT STUFF! ;)

That being said

1. I think that the meat thermometer would work in the air if its been sitting in room temperature for long enough it could calibrate to RT. Also i'm pretty sure meat thermometers dont tend to go low enough to measure RT, I baked brie this past weekend and used a meat thermometer to check the center temperature and the thermometer started at like 90 deg. (i guess i didn't check the units, if it were kelvin that would be super cold! I guess i assumed it was Celsius)

2. I think power lines are coated in plastic which is why birds don't get electrocuted when they sit on it

3. Just throw out the milk in the chute. The building cleans that stuff like once a year, or if you are really concerned just walk down to the loading dock and place it in the trash receptacle.

That is all :) Welcome back and lets hang out soon.

joe said...

1. Maybe it was a special beer thermometer. But I still think it wouldn't work.

2. That might help if physics didn't stop them from getting electrocuted in the first place :)

3. I've walked the basement and haven't seen any dumpsters or trash collections. I'm moving full speed ahead with the freezing idea.

We should hang out soon. I'll talk to kate to see when we'll both be free and get back to you.

Eric said...

"I still think it wouldn't work" = classic Joe reasoning.