Cup of Coffee

September 18, 2019: None More Black

43 Comments

Those eggheads at MIT accidentally created a material out of CNTs and aluminum that absorbs more than 99.995% of incoming light. I would really like to get my hands on some of that stuff to mess around with.

43 thoughts on “September 18, 2019: None More Black”

    2. Album covers.

      More seriously, it will help in areas where you need to eliminate stray light, such as in telescopes. Conceivably it could help when you need to collect as much solar energy as possible, such as a solar oven.

    3. I heard someone covered a car in Vantablack recently. I'd like to see that. Besides that, I dunno, play with it? Make a cloak out of it so I can disappear at will? That's how it works, right?

  3. TEAM HITS
    ---------------
    1. Astros - 1454
    2. TWINS - 1451
    3. Red Sox - 1440

    TEAM HR
    -------------
    1. TWINS 289
    2. Yankees 287

    TEAM SLG
    --------------
    1. Astros - .49497
    2. TWINS - .49496
    3. Yankees - .493

    TEAM HBP
    --------------
    1. Athletics 84
    2. TWINS 79
    3. Rays 70

    1. those team HBP numbers got me interested. It looks like the Rays set the "juiced ball era" record for team HBP last year with 101 (only team over 100 in last ten years). I couldn't figure out how to get team HBP records out of b-r without having to examine yearly batting summaries, which is tedious.

      sean signal?

      1. The all-time record is 160 by the 1898 Orioles when they were in the NL. The modern record is 103 by the 2008 Indians. The 1997 Astros were the only team to reach triple digits (they were beaned exactly 100 times) in the 20th Century.

        1. A team with Biggio hitting that mark is not surprising.

          Though it is a bit that it only happened once in the whole 20th Century.

          1. Biggio+Bagwell+Bell (the only 3 on the team in double digits) that season had 62 HBP between them.

            The league average this season is 61/team.

  4. Here are the Division Clinching Prediction results. Let me know if you want to add a tie breaker if you share a date with someone else. I'll use the comments throughout the next week. to update.

    Philo -- 9/22/2019 -- W/W
    ZoomX -- 9/22/2019 -- W/L
    Meat -- 9/22/2019

    Freealonzo -- 9/23/2019

    Sean -- 9/24/2019
    Punman -- 9/24/2019
    Hungry Joe -- 9/24/2019 -- W/W
    Brian S -- 9/24/2019

    Runner -- 9/25/2019
    Zee German -- 9/25/2019 -- W/W
    Algonad -- 9/25/2019
    Nibs -- 9/25/2019 -- W/W

    Jeff A -- 9/26/2019
    Corn -- 9/26/2019 -- W/L
    Beau -- 9/26/2019 -- W/W

    Carter Hayes -- 9/27/2019 -- W/L

  5. So at the game on Monday while I was carrying my burger and fries back to my seat my dad said I bumped shoulders with Garrison Keillor.

  6. Yesterday I did a front brake job on Younger Daughter's car and I replaced the dead window regulator and motor on the driver's door. I replaced pads and rotors and will be doing a caliper rebuild before the snow flies, the rubber boots around the pistons are getting old and a little brittle. To buy some time I blew the pistons most of the way out of the cylinders and sprayed the rubber with some silicone lube that should extend the life a bit until I can do the rebuild. The bugger with this job came from the passenger side caliper which had rusty, frozen slide pins. I had to use a torch and bunch of penetrating oil, along with some serious elbow grease, to get the old pins out. The window regulator was the real pain, though. Replacement procedure calls for lowering the window to access fasteners through the speaker hole in the door. But the motor was dead and there was no manual way to move it, so I had to get at the window fasteners from the top. The fasteners are a sort of grommet with rubber and metal washers on both sides that have a threaded stud on them (the stud also holds the two grommet halves together). The studs attach to the regulator assembly. But the nuts on those studs have Locktite on them and so the whole grommet assembly just spins when you turn the nut. I had to get my needle nose vice-grips to lock down on the washers while turning the wrench. Due to space limitations, I could only move the nut about 1/3 of a turn at a time, so it took forever to get the glass out. Once that was done, though, the job went along pretty smoothly. But I'm telling you, today my hands feel like raw hamburger.

    2. This is why I really, really like my vehicles that have hand cranks for the windows! Those motors are a pain to get to, and there's so many sharp, stamped edges inside that tiny space.

      I changed out the passenger side front half-shaft and wheel bearing on the girlfriend's Jeep Commander a while ago, after it started howling going down the road. I would not recommend changing the half-shaft for anyone that wants to get anything else done for the next couple of days, there's a terrible design with a fork on the strut and a frozen bolt and finding a new suspension bushing is... well, let's just say that Jeep doesn't sell them, but there's a bushing for another vehicle that works. That took some research.

      Everything came out OK once I was done cussing, so a few days later she drove it down to Logan, IA (about 150 miles), and it started making a ton of noise that changed with the wheel speed, so I figured it was the other wheel bearing (I know, I know- always change both sides, dang it!). I drove down after work and replaced the drivers' side wheel bearing (ever done a semi-major repair in an odd location? Had the Jeep up on a jack next to the pumps at an out-of-service gas station, right along the main highway through town ), and it didn't help even a little tiny bit. After I dug in deeper, found the CV joint on the front driveshaft was bad.

      There was no way for me to get the driveshaft that night, so we dropped it off at a Jeep dealership in Missouri Valley and asked them to replace it and check if anything else needed repaired. Got a call the next day that there was nothing wrong with it, everything worked like it should except the dust shield on the brake was rubbing, and they'd fixed that. I felt pretty stupid (I bent up the dust shield when I replaced the wheel bearing), but figured as long as it's fixed, great! Dealership charged us $100 dollars for the "repair" and the car wash. They did do a nice job of cleaning the floor mats.

      It wasn't fixed.

      The noise was better initially, but it got worse the longer she drove it. We did manage to get it back to South Dakota, and then I ordered the driveshaft. $160 on Amazon, and it took about 30 minutes to replace it. The Mopar driveshaft the dealer could have installed was about $600 dollars, and who knows what they would have charged for labor. Even though I was pretty frustrated that they were so lazy that they couldn't fix the problem after I found it and told them exactly what it was, their ineptitude sure saved us a decent amount of money.

      1. I was going to do the rear brakes on YD's car, too, but a funny thing happened on the way to the shade tree. I bought pads for the rear disc brakes because the 2004 Forester's only came with disc brakes. Except the ones from the first month or so of the production year, which got the leftover rear drum brakes from the 2003 models. I had a similar issue with the wife's 1988 Toyota pickup, last month of the production year and they ran out, so it had rear brakes from the 1989 model year.

      1. heh, yeah, i just finished that one. i don't know if they ever ended up hanging out somewhere and announcing the location. i was likely busy anyway, but that would sure be an awesome crew to just hang out with for a bit.

  9. The Internet is Dying

    So a couple years ago the wife installed a device on the washing machine where if you push the button, a box of Tide Pods showed up on the front porch a couple days later. Good for us. Good for Tide.

    Getting lowish, I pushed the button last week. Nothing on the porch. Then she reveals that they sent an email that as of end of August, no more auto pod delivery. Bad for us. Bad for Tide. I could easily brand swap to the save-the-earth version at Whole Foods.

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