[time-nuts] Determining Time-Nut infection severity.

Richard H McCorkle mccorkle at ptialaska.net
Sun Oct 24 20:44:06 UTC 2010


Time-Nuts,

New members to the Time-Nuts list may wonder if the Time-Nut disease
has infected them just by joining the list. A clear indication that
someone has been infected with the Time-Nut disease is they own a
reference that provides accurate time to better than 1us and
frequency to better than 1e-9. This is a mild form of the disease,
but as the infection progresses multiple standards appear, each
having greater accuracy than the last. Analysis of the number of
standards owned and their relative accuracy during this stage will
give an indication of the severity of the infection. This stage of
the disease can continue for many years, slowly draining the persons
time and money at an ever increasing rate, as the infected party
attempts to improve the time and frequency accuracy of their
standards and be able to prove with greater certainty accuracy they
have achieved.
  In the later stages of the disease the patient will have at least
three standards with a frequency accuracy of 1e-12 and a time
accuracy of 1ns and be performing 3-corner hat analysis on them.
They will also be examining at least one other standard that exceeds
these accuracy levels. They will own specialized test equipment
such as a Dual Mixer Time Difference Multiplier for testing other
devices against their existing standards. Severe forms of the malady
will cause the patient to strive for less than 1ps time accuracy and
less than 1e-15 frequency accuracy even though they have no real use
for standards with this level of accuracy. They will begin justifying
increasingly large expenditures for even better standards and test
equipment just to be able to test what they already have with no
other purpose in mind. The disease will continue to progress until
ultimately all of the patients personal time and money are
exhausted or they die. Unfortunately there is no known cure for
the Time-Nut disease, although it can be managed by applying a
strictly controlled budget to the patient’s purchases during the
early stages of the disease.

Richard

P.S. This was written for enjoyment and should not be taken
seriously as an indication of a true medical condition.




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