The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Category: Home Ec

Things around the home & hearth

Opossum in the Attic!

Quite some years ago, before I stapled a wad of steel wool in the hole gnawed in the corner of the garage door, the scrabble of little feet in the attic meant it was time to re-bait the mouse traps. Then, one night, we heard the scrabble of big feet in the attic…

This is the point where the horror film audience starts chanting “Don’t open the door! Don’t open the door!“, but, to our credit, we did not don our skimpiest underwear before venturing into the attic. We didn’t encounter any zombies, either, but we did find this chap:

Opossum in attic

This is about as far north as opossums get; their ears suffer frostbite over the winters and get all raggedy, hence the pink teddy bear aspect. These are not, however, cute and cuddly critters.

The house has a full hip roof with a four-foot soffit over the patio, which must be the best place for a ‘possum to hang out:

Opossum in attic soffit

Some quick searches with the usual keywords suggested leaving the lights on and playing loud music, so we deployed several shoplights and a radio turned up all the way. It took two or three days, but eventually Mary spotted the critter on its way out of the garage… and now we don’t leave the garage door open any longer than needed.

FWIW, the path from the garage to the attic requires climbing those shelves, scaling three feet of vertical plasterboard wall, then crawling through a (now securely closed) vent hatch.

2011-08-20
Upholstered Mouse Nest

After rearranging the pressure washer pipes, I hauled the grill out on the driveway and opened the lid. My Shop Assistant denied putting that ball of fuzz in there:

Wool ball in propane grill

Gingerly prying it open revealed a mouse-sized pocket in the middle:

Wool ball interior

And a bit of investigation uncovered the source of the batting. Evidently, the corner seam of the ancient lawn couch thing (which came with the house and has been unused for over a decade) sitting on the patio had burst, leaving just enough room for an industrious mouse:

Source of the wool ball

They’d been camping inside the cushion at least over the winter and evidently used the far corner as their latrine. We bagged the whole cushion and added it to the van full of trash headed for the town’s bulk collection, which fortunately occurred that weekend.

Now, to haul the frame to the metal recycler and take advantage of the current commodity price bubble…

2011-08-17
Monthly Aphorism: On Preventing Problems
- You get one chance to throw the snake over the side
The Great Greene grew up in the Midwest, with the type of summer job one might expect of a teen in an area surrounded by grain fields. One summer he found himself standing knee-deep in the wheat pouring into a cart beside a combine harvester, tasked with shoveling grain into the corners to level the load.

In addition to combines, the fields were full of rattlesnakes.

A rattlesnake adopts a characteristic pose when it senses a predator: body coiled, head and tail up, rattle vibrating vigorously. The smaller critters that dine on rattlesnakes (evidently, young rattlesnakes are tasty little pushovers) have figured out, over the course of their long shared evolutionary history, that such a display means this isn’t an immature rattlesnake and they should move along, move along. Raptors pay no attention, having invented the whole death-from-above thing long before we figured out powered flight.

Combines, having not evolved alongside rattlesnakes and being entirely unaware of the threat display, also pay no attention and simply sweep the entire snake into the threshing machinery, where the snake’s characteristic writhing-ball-of-fury reponse to an attack only serves to give the machinery a better grip. The rattlesnake emerges from the combine’s front end as a snakeskin belt surrounded by gibbage.

The combine’s sorters and sieves and transports that separate grain from straw don’t work well on rattlesnake remains, to the extent that much of the snake emerges from the conveyor belt as a damp blob dropped atop the pile of grain in the cart.

In addition to leveling the grain, the Great Greene was responsible for tossing debris over the side. He observed that the machinery downstream of the combine couldn’t do much more than sort out the larger chunks (it’s not like you can wash grain), so if he missed a snake the smaller bits were certain to wind up in your breakfast cereal bowl.

He said he got most of them…
2011-07-31
Dockers Sock Sizing

We picked up two packs of Dockers socks a while ago and after running them through the washer, I found this interesting situation:

Dockers sock size variation

The gray sock in the middle shows that I should buy socks somewhat more often, but the socks on either side came from two packs with identical labels. Well, identical except for one tiny detail (clicky for more dots):

Dockers sock labels – front

I don’t know which sock came from which pack, but I admit to a suspicion. They’re stretchy and both “sizes” fit about the same, so maybe it doesn’t matter.

[Update: It does matter. Those small socks became really snug after a few months.]

Oh, in case you were wondering, the pre-printed package reads “3 Pair $12” under that “3 Pair” sticker, with the price obliterated by hand with a marker. The current price is $14, conveyed by another sticker on the back atop the pre-printed price on the UPC barcode sticker. I don’t know if the store raised the price just in time for the sale, but I admit to a suspicion about that, too.

2011-07-26
Harbor Freight Multi-Use Transfer Pump: What’s It Good For, Again?

The front of the label giveth (clicky for more dots):

Harbor Freight Pump

The bottom line says “Ideal for changing oil and siphoning gas”, which is what you’d expect.

However, the back of the label taketh away:

Harbor Freight Pump – Warning

If it manages to empty three small engine tanks and doesn’t immediately dissolve in gasoline, I’ll call it a win.

Sheesh and similar remarks.

2011-07-25
Cellular Slug

Perhaps taking a cue from the Cellular Toad, a slug took up residence in one of Mary’s transplant trays:

Cellular slug

Unlike the toad, this one didn’t live to tell the tale…

2011-07-24
MGE Ellipse 1200 Battery Arrangement

The SLA batteries in the MGE Ellipse 1200 UPS finally gave out. This picture shows how they’re arranged inside the box:

MGE Ellipse 1200 UPS – battery arrangement

They’re 12 V 5 Ah batteries that are about 12 mm thinner than the garden variety 7 Ah batteries you can get everywhere; they’re not the same size as the generic 5 Ah batteries you might think would work. Of course, there’s not enough room inside the stylin’ case for the larger ones, either. I’m thinking of using fatter batteries anyway and putting a belly band around the gap. Maybe an external battery box with a chunky cable burrowing through a hole in the UPS case?

For what it’s worth, APC absorbed MGE a while ago (so the MGE website redirects to APC), got Borged by Schneider, then spat out MGE’s consumer grade UPS units to Eaton. You won’t find any of that documented anywhere, but here’s the response from APC after I didn’t find this UPS on their list:

I do apologize; when APC was acquired by Schneider Electric, the single phase UPS line that MGE once offered was sold to Eaton. Eaton now provides support for the MGE single-phase products. We do not sell batteries for these models. You will actually need to contact Eaton for further assistance regarding the MGE Ellipse units. You may click on the link below to go to Eaton’s website:

http://powerquality.eaton.com/Default.asp

The Eaton website does have a battery replacement for this one, but sporting the dreaded “Contact us for price” notation. Given that I got the UPS cheap-after-rebate, I’m thinking maybe this isn’t worth the effort.

2011-07-22