Silicon Valley Redneck

Happy Monday!

Yesterday brought a flurry of breakage.

In the morning, as I attempted to eat a jelly bean, I found myself with a dental crown stuck to a bit of jelly bean.  Oops.  I'd thought something in that vicinity had been feeling not-quite-right a couple of days earlier.

Then, in the afternoon, I got up from my desk, stepped out of my office, and heard a SPROING! as something hit me in the eyebrow and my vision went blurry.

And so it came to pass that this morning I called my dentist's office... he's on vacation, and most of the other dentists are out today, too... just got a call back, and they can fit me in tomorrow morning.  Not the most convenient time, but it works.

And, sometime soon, I need to get me to the optometrist.  I'm about 3 years overdue for a prescription update anyway, and the latest frame failure, which caused the left lens to fall on the floor, is not repairable.  Good thing I  had the backup glasses handy.  And, hey, I'd been meaning to get back into contacts....

(And a client had some equipment break in the morning, a bit before the jelly-bean incident, but I wasn't even there at the time.)

Losing sight of the numbering scheme

One of the nice features of the 74*00 line of logic is that, for the most part, the function is consistent across technologies.

But...

I find myself in need of some open-collector drivers to fit in a small space.  The outputs may be subject to significant voltages in the OFF state.

A 7407 fills the bill nicely.  Well, apart from the "small space" aspect.  And, er, the 0 to 70°C rating.

The signature feature of the 7407 is the high-voltage outputs, rated for 30V.  If you only need 15V outputs, there's the 7417.  I don't recall offhand whether there was a 5V-output counterpart, and don't feel like digging out the ancient TI databook just now.

So: what's a modern version of a 7407 (hey, even a 7417 would do), with at least an I-temp rating, and available in a TSSOP?

Well... I find things like 74LV07, and 74AUC07.

Which, well... when I look at the absolute maximum ratings, I see an output voltage rating that's the same as the supply voltage rating.

Not very '07 at all, really.

A bit of further digging reveals that the 74LS07 is still around, has 30V outputs, and is available in a TSSOP... but the 54LS07, which would have met the temperature requirement, is obsolete.

Grrr.

Ah, well.  More digging to do.  If all else fails, use discrete FETs in tiny packages....

Another point of worry

Fabius Maximus notes, as others have, the shift in education statistics, with women now greatly outnumbering men in college.

I noticed something a couple of months ago that might be related to this trend.

I looked around the "young adults" section of a large chain bookstore.

About half the books were the latest vampire-and-werewolf romances from Crepuscular Cloneworks.

Overall, at least 90% of the books were obviously aimed at girls.

There were a few token boy books, and a few more that, at first glance, might have been gender-neutral.  But the rest?  The covers just screamed out "girl stuff."

So, is no one publishing books for boys because boys don't read, or are boys not reading because there aren't many books written for them?  Chicken, or egg?

Gosh, a real miracle drug!

From this gee-whiz article on statins:

The cholesterol-busting drugs also reduce the chances of death from all causes by 12 per cent.

All causes?  Wow!

And yet, I see two ways of parsing that.  Does it mean that, thanks to those daily pills, I'm 12% less likely to die in a car crash, 12% less likely to be killed by a meteorite, and so forth?  Or does it mean that there's a 12% chance that I'm immortal (so long as I keep taking them)?