This sort of thing happens with Free Software, too, but I prefer Microsoft’s phrasing…
Let’s see… that’s various forms of “update” used as nouns, proper nouns, adjectives, and a gerund…
Category: Oddities
Who’d’a thunk it?
-
Cooper’s Hawk at the Door!
We almost stepped directly into this scene:
Hawk at the Door – first sight A closer look at the carnage, seen diagonally through a pane of 1955-era glass:
Coopers Hawk – on door mat The Cooper’s Hawk remained frozen in place while I got a better view from outside:
Coopers Hawk – with prey It then flew away with the gibbage in its claws, leaving us a doormat covered with feathers.
We’re not sure if the meal was a mockingbird or a Downy Woodpecker, but we’re apparently short one bird…
-
Sawhorse: Cap Bracket Repair
While extricating the sawhorses from the garage, one of the bright yellow cap strips fell off. Whether by coincidence or not, it was the same one I’d previously repaired after sawing completely through the poor thing, but this time the failure came from what’s called inherent vice in the molded bracket-and-pin feature that holds the cap in place:
Fractured sawhorse top pin I filed a flat on the top of the bracket, drilled a 4-40 clearance hole, and then held everything in place while drilling a 4-40 tapping hole into the sawhorse. There was just enough plastic to make all that work, at least for the not very strenuous conditions it should experience around here:
Fractured sawhorse top pin – with screw While trying to reassemble the cap, I discovered why the bracket broke. The yellow cap has a bulkhead with an opening for the pin, plus a solid bulkhead that butts against the hinge along the top of the sawhorse. The bulkheads lie too close together: you simply cannot get the opening over the pin on this end with the cap parallel to the top of the sawhorse, which you must do in order to get the pin in the corresponding hole on that end.
Evidently they had the same problem at the factory and “solved” it by melting the bulkhead with a hot blade:
Sawhorse top cover – factory bodge That didn’t really help me, but I carved off a few more slices to weaken the solid bulkhead enough to bend it around the hinge. I think the strain involved in the original assembly, plus what happened when I had to take it apart to fix the sawed-off end, weakened the bracket enough to snap off at some point over the winter.
-
Creeping Toward Metrication
Spotted this in a Lowe’s sale circular:
Granite Countertop – mixed units The thickness comes from the manufacturer and the area from the installer, so it all makes perfect sense…
Besides, 3 cm sounds much fancier than 1-3/16 inch, doesn’t it?
-
Leaked Spam Template
A wannabe spammer inadvertently sent me a nice comment-spam template:
{{You must|You need to|You have to|You should} {take advantage of|make the most of|benefit from|take full advantage of} {all the|all of the|each of the|every one of the} software advancements that {happen to be|are actually|are|are generally} {a successful|an effective|an excellent|a prosperous} {Internet marketer|Online marketer|Internet entrepreneur|Affiliate marketer}. {If your|In case your|Should your|When your} work {begins to|starts to|actually starts to} suffer, {the competition|your competition|competition|your competitors} could {leave you|make you|create} {in the|within the|inside the|from the} dust. Show {that you are|that you will be|that you are currently|you are} always {on the|around the|in the|about the} {cutting edge|innovative|leading edge|really advanced}, {and they will|and they can} {learn to|learn how to|figure out how to|discover how to} trust {you and your|both you and your|you and the|your} products.
Multiplying the number of choices together gives a tidy 4.8×109 different comments, each one heartbreakingly close to making sense.
It’s now in my spam collection, along with some other nuggets snatched from the Internet’s outfall pipe…
-
Sanitizing A PC: Another Item For The Checklist
Just got another off-lease Dell, fired it up for the first time, and the BIOS presented this splash screen:
Optiplex 780 BIOS A06 Splash Updating the BIOS from A06 to A13 restored the default Dell logo, but I really miss having a Genuine Lockheed Martin PC.
The Windows 7 Professional installed on the disk started up in “first time” mode, so they did scrub the drive. It does have RAID enabled, though, which may confuse the Linux installation I have yet to do.
I wish I could put my logo on the BIOS splash screen…
-
Traffic Signals: Green LED Failures
Traffic Signal – dead green LEDs – 2012 In our (admittedly limited) travels around New York State during the last half decade or so, I’ve seen many (as in, dozens of) traffic signals with this failure:
Apparently the topmost LED string burns out first, leaving the other two (?) strings intact. The earliest picture I have dates back to 2008, so this is a problem of long standing that’s probably wiped out any projected maintenance cost reduction for the entire purchase. The most recent failure I spotted, a few weeks after taking this picture, has a flickering upper string that means it’s not long for this world.
Somewhere up around Albany, I recently saw a green signal with only that string lit up and the other two (?) strings dead, but that’s the sole exception to the pattern.
Of late, NYS DOT has been installing a different green lamp with the LEDs in each string scattered over the entire surface and no diffuser. That means a failed string, of which I’ve already seen several examples in the area, darkens a few spots without being particularly obvious; a less common failure has a few flickering “pixels” that will eventually go dark. While that’s a net win, I wonder why only green lamps have this problem: we very rarely see red or amber lamps with any failed LEDs.
One red LED lamp down the road did fail spectacularly: the whole thing flashed, slowly and somewhat irregularly. Not a flicker, but a flash: long off and short on.
It’s hard to get pictures of failed traffic signals…
While I suppose I should report them, previous attempts to do so have only led to requests for the ID number of the traffic control box, which generally can’t be seen from the traffic lane. I am not stopping at an intersection, getting out, finding the box (perhaps crossing the intersection to get there), finding the ID number, and taking a picture for later reference; you know what happens to people who take pictures of infrastructure. You’d think the signals could phone home on their own, but they’re likely not connected.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 