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

  • Amazon Laminator Wiring

    Amazon Laminator Wiring

    Someone with a jammed Amazon laminator inadvertently dislodged the switch wiring, so I took a few more pictures to help. Note: I see absolutely no reason to assume any two laminators will have the same wire colors, but the overall functions should be the same.

    The top set of three switch terminals control the overall power to the laminator:

    Amazon Laminator - switch wiring
    Amazon Laminator – switch wiring

    The center terminal comes from the unmarked (no ridges) wire in the line cord. The two outer terminals are connected together with a short jumper from the terminal nearest the motor, with a longer black wire to the wire nut binding other black wires.

    The bottom set of terminals select the temperature:

    Amazon Laminator - switch bottom contacts
    Amazon Laminator – switch bottom contacts

    The white wire on the center terminal goes to the wire nut holding the other white wires and a black wire (!) going to the middle of the three thermostats on the extrusion. The black and blue wires on the outer switch terminals go to the thermostats on the aluminum extrusion to the heater.

    Verily, it is written: There’s nothing like a good new problem to take one’s mind off all one’s old problems.

  • TWSBI Eco Fountain Pen

    TWSBI Eco Fountain Pen

    A present arrived:

    TWSBI Eco pen - Iroshizuko ink
    TWSBI Eco pen – Iroshizuko ink
    Writing Samples 1-4
    Writing Samples 1-4
    Writing Samples 5-6
    Writing Samples 5-6

    Man, my handwriting printing is terrible.

  • Christmas Bonus

    Christmas Bonus

    An email arrived yesterday:

    Subject: [redacted] review blog invitation about bluetooth programmer

    Message: Hi dear,

    Thanks for taking time to read this email.

    I am Colleen from [redacted] brand, we sell two way radio on Amazon. I learned that you have wrote two way radio review blog before and I think your blog was written well.

    Now we have a product named bluetooth programmer that need to be reviewed. […] We would like to invite you to write a review blog about it.

    Your can earn $2 from each product sold! We promise it. Just put the link we provided you in your blog and the Amazon backstage will count the data. And we will pay you $2 for per product sold by your link through PayPal on the 30th of every month. (Please provide your PayPal account)

    If you are willing to help us write a blog, please tell us if you have a radio and your address we will send you the product for free to review.

    You can view more detailed information through this link:

    [redacted]

    Perhaps this “review” caught their eye:

    Baofeng UV-5RE radio - overview
    Baofeng UV-5RE radio – overview

    Or maybe it was my opinion of the Baofeng intermod problem?

    Most likely, it’s just the result of an ordinary web search.

    You might think everybody would know about Amazon’s crackdown on out-of-band review kickback scams, but either word hasn’t gotten around or the rewards still exceed the penalties. I think the latter applies, particularly when the offender (or its parent company) can spin up another randomly named Amazon seller with no loss of continuity.

    “Earning” two bucks on a few purchases during the course of a year won’t move my Quality of Life needle, so I reported them to Amazon and that might be that.

    For future reference, the chat with Amazon’s Customer Support rep produced a deep-ish link to their otherwise un-discoverable “Report Something Suspicious” page; the randomly named nodeld is a nice touch.

    Speaking of randomly named sellers, it’s highly likely any Brand Name you remember from the Good Old Days has been disconnected from the tool / hardware / service you remember. Perusing a snapshot of the who-owns-who tool landscape as of a few years ago may be edifying: I didn’t know Fluke and Tektronix now have the same corporate parent.

    Enjoy unwrapping your presents and playing with your toys …

  • The Machine Stops

    As foretold by E. M. Forster in 1909, we have two exhibits of the machine grinding to a halt.

    Amazon sent one of their prescription savings cards, followed a few days later by a note:

    We recently mailed you a physical copy of your Amazon Prime Rx savings card, and are writing to inform you that the BIN listed on your Prime Rx card printed incorrectly. The correct BIN is 019363.

    So I wrote the corrected number on my card, not that I will ever use it:

    Amazon RX - BIN error
    Amazon RX – BIN error

    Although the BIN (whatever that stands for) is a numeric value, it’s not treated as a number by whoever reads it. I’d lay money down that the source code’s formatting string changed from %6d to %06d or the equivalent in whatever fancy language they use nowadays.

    The Social Security Administration sent me an email telling me to check a corrected version of a statement they sent a few months ago. Unfortunately, attempting to do so while writing this post produces a heads-up notice:

    We apologize for any inconvenience accessing my Social Security. We are aware of some technical difficulties and are working on them at this time. We appreciate your patience as we work to solve the problems as quickly as possible.

    Attempting to sign on seems to proceed normally, until this technical difficulty popped up:

    We’re Sorry…
    There has been an unexpected system error.

    Your login session has been terminated. For security reasons, please close all of your internet browser windows.

    The first statement put my nearest Social Security office 130 miles away in Wilkes Barre, PA. The corrected statement put it back where it belongs, in the hot urban core of Poughkeepsie.

    Perhaps an off-by one error in the database lookup?

    As far as I can tell, the world now depends on software nobody can understand or control.

  • Humana Unsubscribe FAIL

    Quite some years ago, I had a health insurance plan with Humana, although I gave it up because the premiums seemed entirely disproportional to the benefits. They have continued to bombard me with emails telling me how wonderful they are, with an obligatory sentence at the bottom:

    If you do not want us to contact you by email, you can unsubscribe from our online Humana community.

    I do not know anything about this “community” of which they speak, other than that they seem to think I want to be part of it.

    Clicking on the “unsubscribe” link takes me to a page at their randomly named email service, whereupon I check the “don’t send me anything” box and click the “Submit” button:

    Humana Unsubscribe failure
    Humana Unsubscribe failure

    Did you see the green text near the middle, where my email address should be? Apparently somebody misconfigured the email script to not include the actual address; the %25 gibberish seems to be encoded percent signs, so it may be one of those too-many / too-few / wrong-kind of character escapes.

    Just a typo that could happen to anyone. Right?

    Having once been a customer, I still have an account, but there is no way to control / shut off those messages. Not being a current customer, however, I cannot use their chat interface, which would likely not be productive. I am unwilling to wait on hold for an hour, because I know my call is not valuable to them, and their customer service rep wouldn’t be competent to solve the problem anyhow.

    Fortunately, I can set up a filter to route their emails directly to trash.

  • Walker Leg Shortening

    Walker Leg Shortening

    While looking for something else, Mary came across a walker in the attic and mentioned that, if she ever had to use it, the shortest position of the adjustable legs would put the hand grips too high for comfort. Maybe they

    Well, I can fix that:

    Walker shortening - hole indexing
    Walker shortening – hole indexing

    The holes are an inch apart, so I clamped the V blocks parallel to the X axis on the drill press, zeroed the X axis knob, slid the leg to get the drill bit into the last hole, clamp in place, crank the table an inch, then use a step drill to start the hole:

    Walker shortening - hole drilling
    Walker shortening – hole drilling

    The holes are just slightly larger than the 1/4 inch step on the drill, so the twist drill cuts them to size.

    A tubing cutter sliced an inch off all four legs and all four frame tubes:

    Walker shortening - latch relocation
    Walker shortening – latch relocation

    The white plastic fitting in the frame tube prevents the legs from rattling, but I had to drill another hole to move the latch button, too.

    With a bit of luck, we’ll never need the thing.

  • Incandescent Bulb Lifetime: Also Better Than Average

    Incandescent Bulb Lifetime: Also Better Than Average

    This bulb spent the last seven-plus years of its life lighting the front bathroom:

    Dead incandescent bulb - 7 years
    Dead incandescent bulb – 7 years

    The green corrosion around the tip seems strange, given that we don’t use the tub or shower in that bathroom, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the cause of the failure.

    My stock of incandescent bulbs will eventually run out; I must figure out how to light the deaders in an attractive manner.