Duh. Carbon arc is about as safe to look at as an arc-welding arc, or perhaps less so. My father used to tell of one time when he used something like ten pairs of sunglasses to stop the light down to where it was tolerable one time when he had to arcweld without a proper helmet. He learned the hard way that the intensity of an arcwelding arc is still going up when it leaves the visible range, and normal sunglasses are designed for sunlight, ie, a peak somewhere in the yellow - they don't stop nearly enough ultraviolet. He sunburned his eyes rather badly. His description is that it's like living with a handful of sand in each eye. For a week. Since then he's always done the eyes-closed bit when he has to arcweld sans helmet. (Ie, prepare, close eyes, strike arc, weld by feel and sound, break arc, and ONLY THEN open eyes to see how you did!) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

Oh, if there's a real welder, there will surely be helmets (or at least goggles, though you have to be careful with goggles - sometimes they're for oxyacetelyne welding, not sufficient for arc-welding). I'm talking about times like out on the road in rural India when he's managed to convert a spare diesel truck starter motor into a generator and is using it as an emergency arc-welder. (No, that's not a specific example, as far as I know. But it's the sort of thing he might well have done at need - he had a real gift for things mechanical, and he did tend to end up in places like Poland after the war, or rural India, where you can't just pop down to the corner store and pick up an arc-welding helmet.) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

No, none of his names were anything like that. Malcolm Warren Parker. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

Hmm, that date me, had A-team (thought it was ok but in the end AWFUL), MacGyver, Hulk, Night Kright, etc. All from early to mid 80's. Cheers, Wizard

Andrew Strouse wrote: [snip] The guy who came to weld the A/C compressor platform on to the back of my houseboat used a wire-feed MIG welder that was powered by two 12V batteries. Pretty cool little unit. < http://www.weldingmart.com/Qstore/p002031.htm > --jc

On Sun, 22 Feb 2004, Andrew Strouse wrote: Why? Because in the past month I happened to catch snippets of two different episodes and found them to be so mortally cheesy as to wonder how it ever made it into the 3rd, 4th, or even 5th and 6th season, and what I ever saw in them. But that's what happens to any good show. It starts to go downhill after a while. When I was watching it back in the day, I remember MacGyver explaining everything he was doing in a voiceover, which was very educational. In the episodes I saw, he was just doing stupid things like trying to remove fifty year old dynamite from a hundred year old shed and trying now to fall through the floor boards and thus set off the dynamite. Why didn't he do something MacGyver-like, such as finding some nearby plants with the right neurtralizing elements and concoct a substance that he could then spray onto the dynamite using a spray bottle that he manufactured out of a bicycle inner tube? That's what the OLD MacGyver I remember would've done. I forget why they needed to remove the dynamite in the first place. In fact, there really was no reason to remove the dynamite, other than to add a lame cliff-hanger scene to the show. Anyway, it's probably better that I don't try to catch any more episodes of MacGyver. I guess my life now is so much more exciting than it used to be that MacGyver now seems lame in comparison. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

Tim, Just catching up with my email. Was out all last week... At 9:04 PM -0500 2/20/04, Tim Shoppa wrote: Not that I've seen lately. Also the canon is no longer viable; cement in the tube. (Didn't know if you already knew that.) John

it should make a fine Jacobs ladder! ed! ----- Original Message ----- From: "ben franchuk" &lt;bfranchuk(a)jetnet.ab.ca&gt; To: <General Discussion :>; "On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 9:37 PM Subject: Re: Aargh...It never ends..