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[Grim Portent]

Is Bertie just not a great dog or are you not really an animal person? Seems like you have some real antipathy toward that dog.

I love animals, the sole exception being dogs.

Cats, snakes, hamsters, rats, guinea pigs, birds, lizards and so on I would gladly take care of with no complaints. Hell, I even used to feel more than a bit of fondness towards the roaches I kept as animal food (for my lizard, who was a bitey and flighty asshole, but I loved him.) I'd cheerfully babysit a crocodile provided it was still small enough to care for single handedly, or spend a week caring for a donkey even if it was an asshole.

Dogs, I just cannot stand, never been able to. Was getting better at tolerating them through spending small amounts of time with some geriatric small dogs, but being forced to be around Bertie has actually undone a lot of that slowly built up tolerance because he engages in almost every behaviour that makes me not like dogs.

Regarding the dog particularly: If you are inclined to feed the dog, provide it water, and not hurt it... you're a better dog owner than some people. Eh, taking care of things is emotionally healthy for a person, even if a chore.
Also: Sounds to me like your mother is cheap. Try asking for money to take care of the dog. She'll either change the subject or you might find it more palatable with some financial reward attached.

I would most likely forget to feed or water Bertie fairly often, and would essentially wind up emotionally neglecting him. My usual response to having to be in the same building as him is to shut the door and ignore his existence.

I'm also pretty much entirely unmotivated by money, if I don't like doing something then money isn't going to make it more palatable, but I'll happily do actual work I enjoy for free. Hell, I used to spend money on bus fare and lunch so I could help out at the local pet store for free just because I liked working with the animals and customers.

[Lord Shonus]

A Roman built a small steam engine /as a novelty/ and just didn't put it together that it could have done work. This was, if I recall, in the 1st century.

The Aeopile was utterly useless, save as a demonstration of some of the properties of gases. Not only did it produce no usable torque, it it is quite literally impossible to use it as a basis to design an engine that does. Some very early engines did use a similar motive principle, but via pumping huge amounts of water through as propellant. Calling it a steam engine is almost as much of a stretch as calling a Drinking Bird a robot.

[Grim Portent]

A Roman built a small steam engine /as a novelty/ and just didn't put it together that it could have done work. This was, if I recall, in the 1st century.

The Aeopile was utterly useless, save as a demonstration of some of the properties of gases. Not only did it produce no usable torque, it it is quite literally impossible to use it as a basis to design an engine that does. Some very early engines did use a similar motive principle, but via pumping huge amounts of water through as propellant. Calling it a steam engine is almost as much of a stretch as calling a Drinking Bird a robot.

Wouldn't it be possible to attach an axle to one side where the pipe that carries steam from the kettle is? Provided the axle connects to an object that spins while being held up by a solid object it should be possible to do something with it, even if not much. Certainly couldn't make any sort of moving engine, but I would think a big enough one could open doors or raise a light elevator.

[Lord Shonus]

There's no "pipe that brings steam from the kettle". It's a kettle with two vents that act as jets when boiled. The design barely makes enough torque to spin itself. Adding anything at all (including a pipe from an external boiler) to it will overcome that.  The later designs on the principle only worked (to the extent they worked at all, there is are reason the principle was abandoned) was because the power source was entirely external, and even that was absurdly inefficient.

[bloop_bleep]

It seems to be basically a steam-propelled rocket. I imagine it's inefficient because most of the expansion is happening outside the machine without doing work on the object.

[King Zultan]

Think of the steampunk world we could have lived in if that thing had of worked and been useful.

[delphonso]

Think of the steampunk world we could have lived in if that thing had of worked and been useful.

That's sort of where I'm at. It clearly proved a principle which, if had been taken more seriously could have led to a lot, probably.

[Mech#4]

I vaguely remember reading that some Greek temples had automated doors and some other displays, but I don't know whether they were steam powered. Probably mule powered.

[Il Palazzo]

Probably mule powered.

For all we know the same goes for doors in Star Trek.

[delphonso]

Yeah, but they beamed those mules all over to power every different door. Truly inefficient, should have just had more mules.

(I think the greeks just used pressure plates and leverage to make moving statues)

[McTraveller]

The aeolipile was only inefficient because they didn't have theories for momentum yet.  You could easily get useful work out of it if you just made the exit holes smaller, increasing in the internal pressure and therefore increasing the exit velocity of the jets.  It's literally a reaction turbine, and we use those all over the place.

Sure it's not as efficient as a piston-based steam engine for most purposes, but you can absolutely get work out of it.

[Mech#4]

Here's an article on it, with a number of citations.
https://www.artefacts-berlin.de/portfolio-item/heron-of-alexandira-automated-temple-doors/

[TamerVirus]

You want to heat the seats in your car? Well for some people, that's gonna require a subscription!

YOU WILL OWN NOTHING
AND BE HAPPY

[scriver]

First they came for the farmer's tractors
I said nothing, I was not a farmer

[MrRoboto75]

Trying to learn battletech aerospace rules to have bombers in a battle, it's a mess.  Essentially all airplane/ship stuff was probably an entirely separate game incorporated into the main total warfare rules, for better or worse.  It's also written such that you'd probably need to play a game of only planes before adding them to a ground battle unlike any other unit type.

-The chapters concerning aerospace movement and aerospace combat are in opposite ends of the main book even though you'll invariably need to reference both.

-The aerospace movement chaper is shaped like an Ogre onion.  It gives you the rules for deep space combat first, then how it changes in low earth orbit/high altitude, then the normal air movement.  I only care about the third one.

-Airplanes operate at a larger distance scale than ground; every air hex is an entire standard 17x16 ground play area (we usually play on a 2x2 square of those).  You'll need a separate table/play area for your planes.

-Aerospace fighters take on heat like mechs do, and it's in the heat chapter, this is fine I guess.

-aerospace guns are wierd.  They went and normalized the ranges and damages of all the guns, even though ostensibly they are identical to weapon systems on mechs or tanks, aside from the map scale difference.  Cluster weapons also always land the average number of hits, plus the damage always scatters in groups of five.  This means one of your short range missiles gets cut in half but whatever.  Apparently airplanes of all things is where they drew the line on too much dice rolling...

-aerospace combat chapter has all the rules for shooting and bombing ground targets.  But if they want to shoot back, that's in the general combat chapter.  BUT if you want to read the example of ground shooting back, that's in the aerospace combat chapter.

-the base total warfare book also has rules for airships, which is strange as there's maybe 5 whole blimps in the entire game and half of those shouldn't be on a battlefield.  Anyways, they aren't in the aerospace chapters, those are support vehicles.

Tl;Dr just play a helicopter. [/autistic rant]