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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jul 22, 2019 15:56:54 GMT
We had a plastic version in our lab office.....
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Post by Kimby on Jul 25, 2019 12:59:18 GMT
My parents had two large stamp-wetters for fragile and handle with care stickers they attached to shipping cartons for the scientific glassware they created in the basement glass shop. One was white ceramic, the other was a brass-colored metal.
Thanks for the memories. I’d forgotten about them. Wonder where they ended up when the shop was dismantled...
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jul 25, 2019 18:03:00 GMT
Coo....talking of scientific glassware ....when my bosses in the lab were having a clear out I managed to persuade them to let me have a massive conical flask that they were going to throw out. It had only every been used for making Bromelin solution, a reagent that we would dispense into 1ml tubes and freeze. Technology moved on and we used ready made enzyme reagents so the glassware was obsolete. My boss took a lot of persuading....but I bribed him with chocolate and he let me smuggle it out.... It looks fabulous with long stemmed flowers in it
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 25, 2019 18:29:53 GMT
When I was in university, I broke into the attic of one of the old science buildings (actually the door wasn't locked). It was a forgotten storage space full of laboratory glassware and all sorts of other things to which I and my friends helped ourselves. I had a slightly decomposed human brain in a big jar in my dorm room that year. I think the people I knew turned about all of the glassware into hash pipes.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 31, 2019 16:17:00 GMT
That's nifty, Cheery, and such an appropriate touch for your house!
Yick on the brain, Kerouac! I can just imagine the fancy pipes and bongs.
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Post by Kimby on Aug 2, 2019 16:44:01 GMT
My Dad once used a large round bottom flask as a goldfish bowl. The magnification effect made our little fishy look like a full-sized koi!
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 2, 2019 19:18:45 GMT
Ha ha! Did anyone criticize you for keeping "that great big fish" in that little bitty bowl?
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Post by Kimby on Aug 2, 2019 19:47:09 GMT
It was for an Asian themed party. Fishy went back to his 150 gallon aquarium the next day.
And the itty bitty flask was at least 16” in diameter!
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 19, 2019 5:13:04 GMT
I remember using hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sheets of airmail writing paper in earlier years, not to mention aerogrammes. I bet most people never used any at all because it was reserved for families and friends who lived across oceans. It is hard to imagine that there was a time when everything you had to say was required to weigh a maximum of 5 grammes -- a thin fragile envelope and at the very most two small sheets of airmail paper. A third sheet would double the postage, and nobody wanted to waste money. Entire lives were condensed onto those sheets of paper. I was lucky enough to see my grandparents every four years, but airmail paper was the only link at all of many other people for 20 or 30 years, parents and grandparents that one would never see again, deaths and births announced with a one or two week time delay, illnesses that would not even be discussed so as not to worry anyone. All of this was just one generation ago, but I bet the concept cannot even be grasped by millenials.
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Post by whatagain on Aug 19, 2019 11:59:57 GMT
We used a lot of these papers too. We had good friends living in Canada and were writing a lot. One of the 2 girls became my sister in law.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 30, 2019 11:43:38 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 30, 2019 15:59:01 GMT
How things have changed indeed! How long ago was that, Kerouac?
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 30, 2019 17:05:59 GMT
That was September 1980.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 30, 2019 20:13:52 GMT
*bitter sobs*
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 30, 2019 20:33:42 GMT
This was in a DC-8 with only about 120 seats. Alitalia operated only a weekly flight on that route, and there was a crew change in Mogadishu, meaning that each crew had to stay in Somalia for a week. Try to imagine that.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 30, 2019 22:08:41 GMT
Eek. Hope they brought something to read.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 31, 2019 2:58:40 GMT
Mogadishu was not yet the death trap that it has become.
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 30, 2019 15:59:30 GMT
I am soaking dried salt cod at the moment for the requisite 24 hours and changing the water every few hours. I enjoy this sort of task, just like when one used to have to soak dried beans overnight before cooking them. All of these constraints seem to have gone out the window, just like all of the excuses the people have found to no longer peel their potatoes (I guess they like eating pesticides.), assuming they even bother to buy real potatoes at the store or market. And of course there is no longer even a speck of dirt on them. God forbid that we be forced to remember that they were dug out of the ground.
I kind of like some of these old fashioned constraints, which I assume is proof that I am very old.
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Post by mossie on Sept 30, 2019 19:32:25 GMT
I can remember planting , growing and harvesting the damn things. The best bit was waiting to dig up the first new spuds each year, they tasted so much better than the things we get today. Also proof that I am well past my sell by date.
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Post by patricklondon on Oct 20, 2019 6:22:05 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 12, 2019 15:47:52 GMT
I remember when mechanical pencils were a big deal for some reason - those things into which you would insert a rod of graphite and advance the rod as needed when you wore it down. The rod being very fragile, it was much easier to break than a wooden pencil.
I almost never use a pencil these days. Not being much of a handyman, I don't need to make temporary marks for drilling and nailing very often, and I really cannot imagine anybody wanting to write actual words with a pencil anymore (in the developed world).
Maybe I am completely wrong. Ikea still provides little pencils for taking notes.
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Post by mossie on Nov 12, 2019 16:02:22 GMT
Pencils are essential for crosswords, one can erase mistakes as one recognises them.
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 12, 2019 16:28:04 GMT
I was about to mention crossword puzzles, but I almost never do them these days and was never good at them. I have endless patience for a lot of things but not for working a crossword puzzle... or a sudoku.
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Post by whatagain on Nov 12, 2019 16:31:44 GMT
I recently got the bill written with a pencil in a restaurant. Strangely enough it proved difficult to have correct receipt. I hardly write anymore. Even now during meetings I take notes under excel then correct it and send them by mail. The advantage being I open an excel sheet for each meeting so one file gives the complete history.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 12, 2019 17:46:48 GMT
Getting the receipt in pencil is indeed odd, Whatagain! Pencils always indicate a lack of commitment to what is being written, as Mossie points out about crosswords. Re: crosswords ~ I've always liked doing them, but they are a surefire way to put me to sleep.
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Post by questa on Nov 13, 2019 1:39:29 GMT
When you vote in elections in Oz, you go into the little booth with your 2 voting slips (Upper and Lower Houses). Waiting there, on the bench in front of you is a pencil, tied with a piece of brown string to the bench. Just a plain wooden pencil... not painted or bearing any logos. Here you fumble around with your voting slips, knock the pencil off the bench, it falls and hangs there swinging...Ah! so that is what the string is for...not to deter pencil thieves but prevent voters having to bend down in the small booth to retrieve the pencil.
Taking up the pencil you start to number the names on the voting slip. The pencil has a smooth point and feels good in your hand. Together you mark the ballot paper with the smooth graphite asserting your wishes for your country. You finish marking and leave, placing your ballots in the sealed box, thinking how lucky your country is to have clean elections. As you pass the empty booths you see all the wooden pencils on their strings and recognise them for what they are...swords of democracy.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 13, 2019 3:19:10 GMT
That's lovely, Questa!
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 24, 2019 15:48:02 GMT
I remember when drinks like cola or beer started changing from steel cans to aluminium ones. The new tins seemed so incredibly flimsy and light at first. One was almost afraid to tear them (which people soon proved was quite possible).
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Post by Kimby on Dec 24, 2019 15:53:10 GMT
I remember the old pull tabs that separated from the cans. I’m still finding these tabs on the pebble beach at our lake cottage, and now and then an old steel can with aluminum top with the old style pull tab washes up on shore. Decades after they stopped using them.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 24, 2019 16:18:50 GMT
Yes, I think we already mentioned those old pull tabs (which we nevertheless found brilliant instead of using a church key) but they are always worthy of a new mention. We have probably even mentioned on the pet peeve thread those instances when the new pull tabs malfunction and you are in trouble if you don't have a church key at hand (if anybody doesn't know the term, it is the American name for those triangular tin punchers). I’m still finding these tabs in the pebble beach at our lake cottage Continuing on that theme, I was watching a documentary today about the Mediterranean (the place with the most underwater plastic waste in the world), where they were diving and showing things that they found. Some plastic food wrappers dating from 2004 or 2008 were lying on the bottom of the sea in perfect condition. There is probably quite a bit of older plastic down there dating from before the time that the "sell by" dates were prominently printed.
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