Three components must be present in order for a fire to occur: oxygen (or an oxidizing agent), heat and fuel. This is often represented by the "fire triangle" or "combustion triangle." The fire tetrahedron represents the addition of a component, the chemical chain reaction, to the three already present in the fire triangle. After the fire ignites, an exothermic chain reaction keeps the fire going until something is introduced into the fire that blocks it. Water is one of the most common choices of fire suppressants. But in some cases, water will not suppress the fire, and may even make it worse. Flame retardant chemicals were developed to block the other elements that were part of the "fire triangle." Flame retardant chemicals may block the oxygen (foams), hydrated flame retardant chemicals release water (aluminum trihydrate and magnesium hydroxide) and halogenated flame retardant chemicals (bromine and chlorine) remove free radicals and create a barrier of inert gas that suppresses the chemical reaction creating the fire.
Most items will release flammable gases when they burn, which are a catalyst for the fire. The fire is aided with the oxygen in the air. Some materials, like wood, do not produce gases when they burn. Instead, they produce a "char" as the result of smoldering, and often times can extinguish themselves. Natural charring has been adopted in some flame retardants, allowing them to create a char on the product that is burning. Much like the wood that stops burning from the char, these materials will self-extinguish when the char forms and smothers the fire.
Fuel is one of the basic requirements of the "fire triangle" described above. Some examples of fuel include a piece of furniture, a computer, a wood framed house or a Christmas tree. Fire retarding a fuel item will make it more resistant to fire. This is accomplished by either coating the item with a chemical that will reduce or prevent the effects of the fire or adding the fire retardant to the item, making it less prone to fire. The mechanisms of the process of burning will not be explained in detail in this report. However, they are available through internet searches and reports by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The following table lists the fire retarding characteristics of the chemicals that will be discussed in this report. In some cases, the flame retardant chemicals are used independently. In other applications, these chemicals must work together to produce their "synergistic" outcome.
There have been some recent breakthroughs in coatings and other flame retardant chemicals. However, their application and success have yet to be measured.
The above is an excerpt from the report Flame Retardant Chemicals: Technologies and Global Markets. Looking for more information about flame retardants? Visit the FLAME 30 conference website.
So today, a new little toy arrived. Well...arrived is a strong word. In reality, I had a pre-order on the Microsoft Store, and then my local Best Buy got some in stock, so I cancelled my order and went and picked one up.
Below, you can see the Surface hooked up and driving my main 27" Dell monitor, with a keyboard/mouse. Also, you can see I need to clean my desk. Anyhow:
I was able to install and play Starcraft II with modest but functional settings. Gameplay was reasonably smooth
I was able to get Ubuntu running in VMWare Player in under an hour, including downloading the player, an Ubuntu image, and all the packages I usually use. This is now a functioning development machine.
The horizontal swipe to move between active applications and the desktop is incredibly intuitive. I found myself doing this almost immediately. It seems to "just work" when it comes to app order, too. Hard to explain, but I was easily able
Win 8 "Modern" apps work really well on a touch screen. They also pause/degrade really well. I was watching Netflix and got an IM, tapped the notification, immediately taken over to the app, then a quick swipe and I'm back in Netflix, which resumes as though nothing happened. It doesn't even re-buffer.
Turns out the magnetic storage for the pen is the same as the power connection. I find this annoying since I set down the pen and then forget where I put it if it's sitting at my desk
Speaking of - the power connector could use some work. I have to look at what I'm doing - it's not deep enough to brute-force in like most laptop connections, and it's not soft enough to click in under the magnet's force like a Macbook
The trackpad on the TypeCover is OK, but not satisfying. I'll admit to being spoiled by Apple here, they really do buy the best Synaptics gear. The trackpad on Cat's Dell is similarly nice and tactile. I think the biggest problem I have here is that the right mouse button area is tiny.
The pen tricks me - there's something about how I want to use it sometimes that doesn't work. There's a button on the side that clicks and draws a circle on the screen, but doesn't seem to "do" anything. It just draws a circle. The control panel is of no help here.
Google turning off EAS hit Windows 8 pretty hard. Right now there's no way for me to use the built-in calendar, contacts, or mail apps successfully. My hope is that MS will implement CardDAV and CalDAV soon enough, or Google will release a native Win8 app for Gmail/GCal. I can only see this as a choice Google made that hurt its customers as an attempt to harm Microsoft. For me, it just means I use the web versions of these apps (which is less convenient, but not destructive).
It's taken me about an hour to get used to not pulling up the start menu for stuff like settings. While I know I can, there's a new right-side menu. I don't expect this change to take long to cement permanently
There are a few quirks around libraries not hosted on the computer. Things like my linux fileserver can be accessed in the desktop mode (by, say, Windows Media Player) but not by the XBOX Music app in Modern.
Overall, Modern seems to be a very Apple way of doing things - if you're not on their system end-to-end, you don't get to play.
Skype is tied to your login permanently, however keeping two accounts active is reasonably functional (work and home). I'm annoyed I can't sign out of my personal skype and sign in to my work skype from the same account, but it's not that big a deal since we're moving away from Skype at work and the multi-chat program I found (IM+) works well enough.
Recently, my husband took up a hobby – go karting. Given the fact that we bought a house last year, we wanted to set a budget for this new hobby. To keep track of where we were in the annual budget, we decided to save all receipts for purchases associated with the karting sport. To keep the receipts organized, my husband uses the junior size poly expanding file.
Anything, from the actual purchase of the kart to buying racing fuel to the time transponder rental on race days, has a receipt and a place for that receipt in the junior expanding file. He decided to separate receipts by month, using the included preprinted tab labels inserts. This way, when the year is over, he can see when the majority of the budget was spent and and plan accordingly for next year.
Plus, he uses the last pocket (which went unused) to hold coupons for a local hardware/tool store. This store carries everything from saws to shop lights to bike racks for your vehicle and everything in between. Since he finds something new that he needs for the race track on a weekly basis, he is frequently there and saving money.
He stores the file in our home office, where his binder of karting rules, regulations and maintenance records is.
When he wants to run to store, he can conveniently take the file with him. Happily, it fits nicely in his glove box, since he doesn’t carry anything with him, other than a wallet, keys and iPhone (i.e. no purse for him, although it could fit in one of those too).
An aside – I talked a lot about my husband in this post. If you have visited the C-Line Facebook page, you can probably figure out who he is. While you’re there, like us!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 at 7:19 am	and is filed under Organization, Storage and Organization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
A trend in Roseville Sacramento office furniture that I have seen over past few years is to create comfortable seating areas for people to meet and share ideas. Creating a cafe lounge feel in your office environment is key to startups and well established businesses that need fresh ideas to keep their businesses going strong!
Tip: Try moving 5-6 lounge pieces, some small tables, plants, and a white board to write ideas all into an open area or an unused corner of your office.
I sell a line of lounge chairs called BIX that had large walls built into them...the only hiccup with making these places with to much privacy is adding to company romances! Good or bad, you're creating a fun place to work even with the added maturity leave!