Very Coarse Crystolon / Siox Stones Guzzling Up Oil?

[Normand Leblanc]

Oh, a programmer - I should have immediately recognized that bassed on your previous posting. Nothing wrong with programming but it does tend to reward the guess and check methodology because its so simple to make a program change and then run it. You can tend to think this method works everywhere. Its a very poor practice to follow in civil engineering for example because you need to design that bridge very carefully before you build it. In programming you come up with a concept for a subroutine, hack out some code, run it, find out it doesn't work, take a guess on how to fix it, tweak the code, etc, etc, etc. I have done plenty of programming in all different languages C, FORTRAN, basic, pascal, visual C, Visual basic, even assembly language back in the day so I know how that all works. Bigger companies are much more strict on proper code design - they don't tolerate that sort of programming from their professional coders. They expect well designed and implemented code right from the get go. Plus, if you do the coding, you know how its intended to work. Try and troubleshoot someone else's code and you will quickly see that it can be a huge nightmare if its not designed and documented properly -- of course you already know all that.

I remember programming in Fortran with punch cards. What a pain it was back then.

Normand

[Luke Dupont]

Oh, a programmer - I should have immediately recognized that bassed on your previous posting. Nothing wrong with programming but it does tend to reward the guess and check methodology because its so simple to make a program change and then run it. You can tend to think this method works everywhere. Its a very poor practice to follow in civil engineering for example because you need to design that bridge very carefully before you build it. In programming you come up with a concept for a subroutine, hack out some code, run it, find out it doesn't work, take a guess on how to fix it, tweak the code, etc, etc, etc. I have done plenty of programming in all different languages C, FORTRAN, basic, pascal, visual C, Visual basic, even assembly language back in the day so I know how that all works. Bigger companies are much more strict on proper code design - they don't tolerate that sort of programming from their professional coders. They expect well designed and implemented code right from the get go. Plus, if you do the coding, you know how its intended to work. Try and troubleshoot someone else's code and you will quickly see that it can be a huge nightmare if its not designed and documented properly -- of course you already know all that.

Haha. That's a really good observation in regards to the nature of programming versus engineering, and how it might develop different preferences for problem solving. I might challenge the assertion that it's sloppy, or indicative of sloppy code / design, though. Problems and bugs will come up no matter how well planned you are, and lateral thinking and dealing with code and tools that you're unfamiliar with will always be necessary.

This is part of the reason that I throw this stuff out there and appear to argue points. It's not so much that I think that I am right and want to prove that, but rather that I enjoy getting thought provoking responses and different perspectives that open my mind to new information or considerations, or help me to be aware of how my own experience might bias my approach to things

[Stewie Simpson]

Patrick; I have contacted Norton direct, and requested further advice on restoring the oil fill within their stones. I may or may not get a response back, but its worth a try.

regards Stewie;

Awesome! I'm curious to hear what they have to say also.

Luke; I find that comment of yours extremely puzzling. The following is what you said of me in post #18

Logic trumps any specs or manufacturer advice that you can find.

Stewie;

[Luke Dupont]

Luke; I find that comment of yours extremely puzzling. The following is what you said of me in post #18

Stewie;

As I said, I always remain open to new information.

That doesn't mean I am obligated to draw the same conclusions as someone who assigns a different value or interpretation to that information. It just means that I file it away in my memory as one more factor to consider.

I remain skeptical of how information may be interpreted and am careful as to how of how I evaluate its meaning or relevance, but I certainly don't dismiss it entirely. That would be willful ignorance as opposed to healthy skepticism.

[Pat Barry]

I remember programming in Fortran with punch cards. What a pain it was back then.

Normand

I also remember those days from CompSci 101. Thank goodness we graduated to paper tape for CompSci 102! Back in the punch card days things were tough. We used to slip a bad card into our buddys stack just to see what would happen.

[Patrick Chase]

I also remember those days from CompSci 101. Thank goodness we graduated to paper tape for CompSci 102! Back in the punch card days things were tough. We used to slip a bad card into our buddys stack just to see what would happen.

Your campus computer centers didn't have auto-sorting machines?

(At 45 I'm too young to have experienced punchcards, but I've worked with plenty of people who did)

[Pat Barry]

Your campus computer centers didn't have auto-sorting machines?

(At 45 I'm too young to have experienced punchcards, but I've worked with plenty of people who did)

I don't recall card sorters although they certainly could have been used. I recall all the program statements were numbered and I think the compiler would simply stop and we would get an error printout if the statements weren't in order. Then you would start by going through the deck one by one to find the problem. I recall there was the capability to have a 'trace' run on a program to help with debug also but it was rather tedious. Now, this was long ago and my memory is a bit fuzzy. If there was an extraneous card in the deck of even 100 cards it can be a bit difficult to find. Best chance is there punch cards looked different than the one dummy card placed in the deck. Maybe you put a line of code like "57 GOTO 10" in the deck in the appropriate place. The victims program might loop endlessly and then the computer printout what give a run-time error for time violation or something.

[Patrick Chase]

I waited a bit to reply as I was trying to figure out how to make my point without being long-winded...

As you say, the "great idea" was the contribution of Einstein and the maths (themselves a non-trivial aspect, but still not the "great idea") we can give full marks to Hilbert. Without Einstein's "great idea," there wouldn't have been those field equations for Hilbert to help create. I don't see any conflict with my point.

I don't think that you can really elevate the idea above its formalization, at least in this case. Without the field equations General Relativity would not make falsifiable predictions, and as such it would reside in the realm of religion rather than science. Einstein had come up with the concept several years earlier, but he was unable to publish it until Hilbert helped him turn it into an honest-to-goodness theory rather than just an intuition derived from Einstein's many famous "thought problems".

Einstein was always the first to admit that GR was worthless without the math.

[Stewie Simpson]

Patrick; I received an email update from Saint-Gobain Abrasives

Hi Stewart,
Thanks for your enquiry, I am passing it on to our bonded expert Rao who will be able to give you sound advice.

Kind regards,
David Grech
State Manager
Saint-Gobain Abrasives
0407179282

[Patrick Chase]

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I don't recall card sorters although they certainly could have been used. I recall all the program statements were numbered and I think the compiler would simply stop and we would get an error printout if the statements weren't in order. Then you would start by going through the deck one by one to find the problem

Ah yes, line numbers. Something I won't miss (along with 'goto' statements, though those are still in use and occasionally surface in hilarious contexts).

By convention it was common to encode card numbers (as opposed to statement numbers) in the unused columns, and there were sorting machines available that would re-sort a scrambled stack based on those. I got the impression those were expensive and effectively reserved for "serious programmers", at least at first.

My Mom worked as a programmer at Bell Labs back when there were no CS degrees and they had determined that musicians were good at it, so I've heard a lot of lore over the years.

[steven c newman]

Have found a soaking tub, and have a few older stones that oil disappears into. Quaker State will be used....10 W 40 I think, as the mower doesn't need it now...

Will let them soak awhile, and then give them a try....stay tuned..
IMAG0001.jpg
At least the oven ( and me) won't be messed up this way. Bubbles are a-rising from the stones. These are NOT my "good" stones. Not quite as messy as water stones getting a bath....

[steven c newman]

Been over an hour, maybe I should stagger outside and check on them? Let some "Solar" heat work on them right now.....

[steven c newman]

Had to flip them over, level of the oil had gone down quite a bit.......I'll give it awhile out in the sunshine....check on them after a while..again.

[Patrick Chase]

At least the oven ( and me) won't be messed up this way. Bubbles are a-rising from the stones. These are NOT my "good" stones. Not quite as messy as water stones getting a bath....

Could you buy your wife a spa day and offer to "clean the oven" while she's gone? Or is that so far out of character that it would arouse suspicion?

Of course the downside is that you'd have to actually, you know, clean the oven.

[steven c newman]

Won't have to, now. The three stones are still soaking up oil......they were very dried out. I get them out of the "bath" in a bit, and towel them off. Then,....we'll see how they turned out.

One never knows. until one tries. Gets me up out of the chair, at any rate. I do have a couple other "dried out" stones.....maybe sometime I'll try the goop in the oven......might make the Pumpkin Bread smell a bit...funny, though