Procrastination

Last year I spent some time repairing a neighbor’s
radio-controlled dog zapper collar
I call these things the robo-dog-controllers.
(I have two!).

Anyway, the batteries in one of my DVMs [Digital Volt Meters] 
(in college they were called VTDVM [Vacuum Tube Digital Voltmeters – sometimes I still slip and say VTDVM instead of DVM and people look at me funny).
So, I made a note to get replacement batteries,
and later set these replacements by the front door
to bring on my next trip out to the workshop.
Well, anyway,
today,
The main goal is cleaning out the barn ...
something I have been procrastinating about ...
Which led to moving some items to the loft ...
Which led to, “the light bulb is out”.
Which led to another light bulb
and then suspicions about the breaker,
to a look inside the breaker box,
to the question, “How in the hell did these guys wire this place”,
to grabbing the little DVM,
which led to,

“Oh yeah, those batteries by the door!”

which led to:

Today I stopped procrastinating!???

The plot thickens ...
It wasn’t the batteries ...
It was one of those early “DVM-on-a-chip” super-mini DVMs.
Yep, and, while it lasted is was probably ten-times more accurate than an old Simpson Meter.
And, yep, when it comes to the barn,
you can throw away all those cheap electronics,
and get your hands on a 30 - 40 year old analog Simpson Meter.

Of course, if you want to measure the momentum spread of a low intensity coasting beam in a storage ring by measuring the frequency spread of the beam's random Schottky noise just above the 0.5 nV per root Hertz thermal noise, I'd recommend the $40,000 Hewlett Packard Spectrum Analyzer.

I love playing with those things!