The title is too long.
"Imagine what would have happened if I'd not decided to practise on your Ultrabook before starting on the Director's?"
The PFY is learning... does he fancy a game of Go?
There's a bit of a scramble on. Bastard Junket Watch, a website entirely devoted to plausible-sounding technical events, has sent up the email equivalent of an emergency flare. An event company which knows very little about IT (and cares even less) is hosting a five-day "Service Delivery for Technical Professionals" course in …
"Damn ROHS lead-free solder" Full-stop.
Terrible stuff when compared to 63/37. Pain in the rear to work with, and in reality, no net gain for the environment. Yea, lead is bad, so keep it out of gasoline, don't worry about electronics. But now here we are.
Fluxing and soldering isn't even the worst part about RoHS. The worst part is trying to maintain bills of material and approved manufacturers lists as parts gain and lose letters to mean RoHS compliant (or at least "lead-free").
BTW: The poor PFY may have found that a bigger tip iron would have helped, even in soldering the new parts on. Draw the excess to the end of the row, use a bit of braid to remove excess solder to clean up the shorts.
> Yea, lead is bad, so keep it out of gasoline, don't worry about electronics
It's one of those EU-special take with one hand, give with the other type things: lead-free solder will result in less harmful lead going to landfill, so they decide to force the adoption of compact fluorescent bulbs in order to increase the amount of harmful mercury going to the landfill instead.
"Yes, it wasn't "game in one". Still, he should realize that even if he wins the right to go on the junket, it will not end as well as he might have hoped or imagined. That much is predictable."
Yes, the last time he "won" he had a rather memorable adventure with the Heathrow security bods as I recall.
I haven't seen for a long time any new RAM which can be desoldered with an iron. It's basically all BGA now... perhaps the author meant 'the DRAM'? But if that's actually a DIMM on the mainboard like an interposer, that was permanently attached in some weird way that I've never even heard of (not a TSOP IC with actual legs visible for iron work), carry on. And even then, hot air FTW.
a) all hobby-sold solder I've _ever_ seen is still very much leaded (unless you take pains to explicitly order lead-free)
b) what is this nonsense about _removing_ solder to desolder a chip? You _add_ solder until it's a continuous molten blob that releases all pins at once on one side - then the other (to be honest though - not feeling like lifting pads and burning a hole through the PCB all the way to China? Just use Chipquik...).
Given that they're talking to the Director without a go-between, you can safely assume they are in that Nirvana where HR is desperately trying to find someone mad enough to take those two on, and stupid enough to fail playing tag-team with them.
Or they've found one with enough intelligence and sense of self-preservation to know when not to interfere.
Boss falls into fermentation vat, remains is distilled and turned into Whiskey ("The spirit of Boss", which, when consumed, lowers the IQ and general competence of the drinker enough to set off a top-secret plan for combating a Zombie invasion.
After hundreds of extra-legal shootings and incinerations of bodies, The Truth is discovered.
To cover up the scandal, the entire story is incorporated into a popular TV-series about government conspiracies so that no-one will believe it - BOFH gets to write the screenplay and is handsomely rewarded, PFY gets a supporting role as the villain pushing Boss into the vat ...
Personally I would have invited the director to join the trip as a bribe to bend the rules and allow the PFY to come along... the bastardry being that I would engineer a situation on day one involving a sedative, the director, three tubs of lard, a goat, a Filipino ladyboy and a smoked salmon... thus providing ample ammunition for future "negotiations"!
That said, the brown paper bag is one of my favourite tricks - although I prefer the air-bags that tend to be used to protect stuff in transit these days as with the paper bag you have to avoid rustling the paper!
Chip Quik has a bismuth alloy solder with a low melting point that you use, in conjunction with the supplied flux, to melt the solder holding down SMD chips so you can wick it up without scorching the board or lifting traces.
Comes in handy when an older (up through the first of the Series 3 models) TiVo needs a replacement motherboard but needs to keep the original TiVo Service Number which is contained on the Atmel crypto chip.
Woah, it's like a bit of euphoria, been so long.
I need, and I mean need my BOFH fix.
Junket's are important, and the battles are too.
But I miss the Dr. Bastard Lab episodes, the Cattleprod and lime, and carpet roll ups.
Those are just classics.
I don't drink beer, but this root beer is for all of you!!
A bit of 'serious' research done by some drinkers here in Singapore.
We did send it in to Lester for an April 1st posting on El Reg but it never made it.....
Cork Adhesion Observed Limit - International Libation Adjusted
or
Cork Adhesion as a Factor of Remaining Spirit Volume
or
Why you have multiple nearly-empty bottles of Scotch
http://alongfellowcreative.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/cork-adhesion-observed-limit.html
Enjoy
Mine is of course the one with the rare bottle of 'Scottish Water' in the pocket.