Young people these generation are dumb stupid idiot morons

[gary350]

What do YOU call this thing? Everyone these days has a different name for it. Some people call this a converter because is converts 120vac to a different voltage. Some people call it an inverter because it inverts 120vac to a different voltage. Some people call it an adapter because is adapts 120v to a different voltage. Old fossils like me knows there is a transformer inside the plastic case so we call it a transformer. Some of these actually say, Adapter transformer on the outside.

I have a box of about 40 of this in my garage and I was looking for it. Grandson comes up & asks what I am doing? I hold 1 of these things out in my hand to show him what I have because I have no clue what his generation calls it. I tell him I have a box with about 40 of these in the garage I am looking for it do you know where it is??? His answer was, WHY do you want it? I said, that is not the answer to my question. Do you remember the question? Do you know where the box is I know you looked through it once looking for a specific voltage. Again he said, why do you want it? I said, what the hell difference does it make why I want it. If I was looking for a tooth brush would you ask me why I want it? If I was looking for a pencil would you ask why i want it? If I was looking for a bar of soap would you ask why I want it? I told him to answer the question. He said, I just want to know why you want it. I said, that has nothing to do with the answer, what if you go into a store looking for an item and you can not find it so you ask a worker where to find it and they say, WHY DO YOU WANT IT?


I had the same problem at the hardware store looking for a 1/4"-28 x 1/2" long dog point set screw. The guy at the hardware store wants to know what it fits. I tell him it fits a linkage arm on a machine at work. He said, we don't sell parts for industrial machines. I took him to the bolt area and found the part myself and showed it to him.


I had the same problem at Auto parts store looking for a woodruff key. The guy had no clue what a woodruff key is so I said, half moon key and he know what that is but did not have my size so I drive another 4 miles to the hardware store. Guy at hardware store was confused so I showed him the bad part and he had one. Then I told the guy I need a spray can of friction so we went to the spray can part of the store but he could not find it. LOL.

 

[Reloadron]

Old fossils like me knows there is a transformer inside the plastic case so we call it a transformer.

Actually most of the newer versions actually have a little SMPS in them and have a line voltage input anywhere from 100 to 240 VAC 50/60 Hz. A good indicator is the weight. Now as to the naming conventions? I can pick five out of a bucket and find five different names on the labels. Shopping retail? This only works well if you know what you want and where to find it on a store shelf as I agree most employees, note I said most and not all, are useless even when you have the correct naming convention for what you want. This is what drove me to Amazon.

Ron

 

[OBW0549]

What I want to know is, did you ever find the box with the 40 thingamajigs in it?

 

[tronitech]

What I want to know is, did you ever find the box with the 40 thingamajigs in it?

They are with the long stands and sky hooks aren't they?

 

[Mickster]

I'd call it a mains adapter, or the more recently termed "wall-wart".
However, I'm stumped as to why you are seemingly referring to your grandson as a "dumb stupid idiot moron" because he had the temerity to ask WHY you wanted it.
Perhaps, he may have assumed that you wanted to charge your phone or something, and he had one which he thought would do the job with him.
We regularly ask why a person asking for help on this forum is looking for a particular item.
Maybe he was simply interested in what Grandpa was doing and wanted to get involved, but now is much more inclined to help Grandma out in the garden or kitchen...

 

[tcmtech]

Wall wart, Power adapter, charger adapter, plug in power supply. Any one of those works fine with the company I keep.

 

[Beau Schwabe]

"copper wire harvesting resource" ... that's what I used to call the old wall-warts <smirk>

On a side note, I just turned 49 recently and have acquired two of my grandpa's Snap-On tool cabinets (1.5 ft x 2.5 ft x 3.5 ft)
I am having a really fun and humbling experience going through all of his tools. From a guy who served in WW2 and was a life long mechanic at Cadillac and at a time where you had to make many of your own tools... You couldn't just order something on-line and a local hardware store was anything but local. There are so many treasures here to learn from. Don't take anything for granted.

 

[JonSea]

I would call very few of them transformers. You are technically correct, even with switchers, but to call it a transformer implies an AC output.

 

[gophert]

What do YOU call this thing? Everyone these days has a different name for it. Some people call this a converter because is converts 120vac to a different voltage. Some people call it an inverter because it inverts 120vac to a different voltage. Some people call it an adapter because is adapts 120v to a different voltage. Old fossils like me knows there is a transformer inside the plastic case so we call it a transformer. Some of these actually say, Adapter transformer on the outside.

I have a box of about 40 of this in my garage and I was looking for it. Grandson comes up & asks what I am doing? I hold 1 of these things out in my hand to show him what I have because I have no clue what his generation calls it. I tell him I have a box with about 40 of these in the garage I am looking for it do you know where it is??? His answer was, WHY do you want it? I said, that is not the answer to my question. Do you remember the question? Do you know where the box is I know you looked through it once looking for a specific voltage. Again he said, why do you want it? I said, what the hell difference does it make why I want it. If I was looking for a tooth brush would you ask me why I want it? If I was looking for a pencil would you ask why i want it? If I was looking for a bar of soap would you ask why I want it? I told him to answer the question. He said, I just want to know why you want it. I said, that has nothing to do with the answer, what if you go into a store looking for an item and you can not find it so you ask a worker where to find it and they say, WHY DO YOU WANT IT?


I had the same problem at the hardware store looking for a 1/4"-28 x 1/2" long dog point set screw. The guy at the hardware store wants to know what it fits. I tell him it fits a linkage arm on a machine at work. He said, we don't sell parts for industrial machines. I took him to the bolt area and found the part myself and showed it to him.


I had the same problem at Auto parts store looking for a woodruff key. The guy had no clue what a woodruff key is so I said, half moon key and he know what that is but did not have my size so I drive another 4 miles to the hardware store. Guy at hardware store was confused so I showed him the bad part and he had one. Then I told the guy I need a spray can of friction so we went to the spray can part of the store but he could not find it. LOL.

Your stupid grandson was asking why you needed one so he could hand you one from his backpack with the right voltage, current limits, connector and safety rating.

I hope your grandson logs in next week to see that some of us don't think he was the stupid half of that conversation.

Also, as an engineer or pragmatic person, I hope you realize that your time would have been much better spent to just come out and answer his question - it is a lot easier and faster than trying to NOT answer his questions AND posting this rediculous Rant to tell us why you didn't answer his question (and still not telling us why you needed the device.

Wait, ....
I understand the reason for your secret now. Did you buy something that arrived in an unmarked brown package -and the seller didn't include an adapter?

Or, maybe if you told your grandson you were looking for a nice heavy one so you could use it to to crack walnuts, he may have offered another solution.

 

[dknguyen]

Wall wart. Or ac adapter. Everyone knows what an ac adapter is. If you asked me to bring you a transformer, I would not bring you one of those.

 

[Ian Rogers]

I think kids call them "chargers" as everything they own is cellular now..

 

[granddad]

I blame the schools, we had a 11 year old visit the allotment site , a grandad said "Crows are noisy today " lad said "whats a crow "

 

[gophert]

Wall wart. Or ac adapter. Everyone knows what an ac adapter is. If you asked me to bring you a transformer, I would not bring you one of those.

Transformer

 

[AnalogKid]

Sorry, gramps - I'm with junior. "Why" isn't a question, it is ***the*** question. "Why" opens the door to solutions you didn't think of because you were too focused on your own view of the problem.

Also, for geezers like me, "inverter" is a term for a converter with an AC output voltage that is larger than the DC input voltage, such as a 12 Vdc input / 120 Vac output automotive inverter. This is because that relationship is the inverse of a standard AC-to-DC converter.

Also, some converters today do not have transformers; the isolation is all capacitive.

ak

 

[tcmtech]

Your stupid grandson was asking why you needed one so he could hand you one from his backpack with the right voltage, current limits, connector and safety rating.

I hope your grandson logs in next week to see that some of us don't think he was the stupid half of that conversation.

Also, as an engineer or pragmatic person, I hope you realize that your time would have been much better spent to just come out and answer his question - it is a lot easier and faster than trying to not answer his questions. Wait, ....
I understand the reason for your secret now. Did you buy something that arrived in an unmarked brown package -and the seller didn't include an adapter?

Rather how I see things too. If you cant be bothered to explain yourself when asked (words aren't that difficult to use) I cant be bothered to find the best way to help you.

Personally, I love watching people work themselves into the ground and or a frustrated meltdown because they cant bring themselves to ask a question or state what they want to do and why.

As someone who owns both a backhoe tractor and a Forklift I love watching stubborn people dig holes and carry heavy things by hand simply because they cant bring themselves to ask the right question or give me a simple answer as to what they were wanting to do!

 

[tcmtech]

40 of this in my garage and I was looking for it. Grandson comes up & asks what I am doing? I hold 1 of these things out in my hand to show him what I have because I have no clue what his generation calls it. I tell him I have a box with about 40 of these in the garage I am looking for it do you know where it is??? His answer was, WHY do you want it? I said, that is not the answer to my question. Do you remember the question? Do you know where the box is I know you looked through it once looking for a specific voltage. Again he said, why do you want it? I said, what the hell difference does it make why I want it. If I was looking for a tooth brush would you ask me why I want it? If I was looking for a pencil would you ask why i want it? If I was looking for a bar of soap would you ask why I want it? I told him to answer the question. He said, I just want to know why you want it. I said, that has nothing to do with the answer, what if you go into a store looking for an item and you can not find it so you ask a worker where to find it and they say, WHY DO YOU WANT IT?

Unfortunately, as one of the many here who have in the past tried to help you with your quest to build a induction heater, only to be totally ignored on our well meaning and often far more in depth understandings of the subject until we just gave up, I have to say I found your whole rant rather hypocritical, amongst other things, to say the least.

The art of learning, and cooperation, is very much a two way street and those on both sides have to work together using common established rules and understandings to go forward. If a common ground cannot be found, because one side can not bring themselves to answer the others questions or follow the advice given, then guess who's side is at fault for their not going forward?

Sure, you can say your grandson didn't answer your question but in the larger picture he had nothing to lose by not doing so either and even if he had you had a at best 50/50 chance of it doing you any good at all. You, on the other hand, had potentially everything to gain and nothing to lose by answering his.

Say you were my neighbor and I saw you going out into your pasture with a shovel in hand and I asked you if you were digging something up and you simply replied with, 'Why do you care?' rather than saying, ' Yes, I have to bury a horse.'

Well, guess what? Because you wouldn't answer my question you just got the fun of spending a very long miserable day or two next to a large dead rotting animal doing back breaking labor opposed to having gotten free access to me and my machine that could have done that job in 15 - 20 minutes.

 

[DerStrom8]

To be honest I'm shocked that you would call your own grandson a "dumb stupid idiot moron". He certainly didn't do anything wrong that would deserve that sort of insult, especially from his own grandfather.

To answer your question, I either call it a "wall wart" or an "AC-DC adapter".

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

I had the same problem at Auto parts store looking for a woodruff key. The guy had no clue what a woodruff key is so I said, half moon key and he know what that is but did not have my size so I drive another 4 miles to the hardware store. Guy at hardware store was confused so I showed him the bad part and he had one. Then I told the guy I need a spray can of friction so we went to the spray can part of the store but he could not find it. LOL.

There are actually three types of Woodruff keys: http://www.stanho.com/Woodruff-Keys.html

I do hope you know the difference between a Phillips, Pozi-dive, Reed and Prince and a whole bunch of other cross point style drivers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives

I grew up where AC-Adapter was the common thing. Same problem with a DB-9 connector. They really don't exist. They are really a DE-9.

They exist here: **broken link removed**

but won't exist when you search for DB9 connector on www.newark.com

Recently, I learned that the eyeglass industry measures screws from the top of the head no matter what type of head. I can also get you a 3/4 copper elbow that's identical to a 1/2" copper elbow. It depends on where you buy it. 14" copper tubing can either have 1/4" ID or OD depending on where you buy it or how you ask for it. Is a 2x4 2" x 4"? In the world of thermocouples red is always negative.
Each world is different. O-rings are not bought by ID and OD except in the hardware store.

The line I remember is "If it's not "over there" we don't have it".

As for your can of friction, you asked for it by the wrong name: It's "anti-slip spray" It's http://www.rustoleum.com/product-ca...ray-paint/as2100-system-anti-slip-spray-paint

It's the wall-wart problem re-visited.

 

[AnalogKid]

The art of learning,

“Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.”

George Iles

ak

 

[tcmtech]

“Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.”

But whoever gains tenure can do whatever they want and never be held accountable.