When someone hands you a postage-stamp sized surface-mount microchip that was recently removed from a faulty circuit board with a heat gun, what is the appropriate action to be taken?
A) Carefully place it in an electrostatic bag so that it will not get zapped by static electricity.
B) Swing around the giant magnifying glass on an arm so that you can check the part number and batch number.
C) Lick it and stick it to your forehead like some sort of post-Y2K cyberpunk bindi.
Obviously, the correct answer is C. This was especially effective because it was a BGA chip (the kind without pins, but a grid of solder balls on the bottom) instead of a flat pack (with pins around the outside edge), so you can stick it without even licking it. Option A is incorrect because the chip was placed on the circuit board incorrectly and got fried because of misconnected power pins — there is no reason to bag it. Option B will get you half-credit because, while being essentially un-funny, makes use of a pretty good prop. Full points for option C.
The new Rammstein album is pretty darn good and the video for “Amerika” does a good (and humorous) job at pointing out the nasty bits of American culture that creep into the rest of the world. The only thing about Rammstein is that it is all in German, except for the occasional English phrase like “Mickey Mouse,” “Olive Garden,” or “Santa Claus.”
Sushiland, the conveyer-belt sushi place in Beaverton, was closed for two weeks for some sort of “Extreme Makeover: Restaurant Edition” thinger. It reopened recently and seems to be about the same to me. The waiting benches are now faux-leather and there is a fresh coat of paint on everything. If anything, the staff was quite a bit surly, but I would like to believe that is because they were super-packed this afternoon.
One of the sales guys at work mentioned he had seen us burning the midnight oil recently. Several minutes later, I realized that I really have been burning oil at midnight–either in the form of a lamp for light or as heating oil. Weird.
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