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: Oddities

Who’d’a thunk it?

  • Wasp Blower

    Wasp Blower

    A colony of Yellowjacket wasps moved into a gap somewhere inside our front door, which we noticed only after they set up a heavy traffic pattern over the front step. The nest is far enough up inside the door frame (or, shudder, the wall) to be immune to rattlecan insecticide spray and the wasps simply tiptoe across sticky-trap sheets laid on their entrance paths.

    Taking a hint from the comments to our long-ago fruit fly adventure, I conjured a Wasp Blower from available materials:

    Wasp Blower - installed
    Wasp Blower – installed

    That’s a hulking 12 V electronics case fan mounted on a cardboard bulkhead inside what’s basically a tunnel, with its power supply plugged into a widowmaker extension cord screwed into the light fixture next to the door.

    The fan blows away from the door, with the general idea of killing wasps leaving the nest. Arriving wasps can walk home around the box, but departing wasps always take flight from the small crack under the door sill, whereupon they’re sucked into the fan, shattered by the blades, and blown out onto the step.

    A Yellowjacket can make headway into a 1 m/s wind, but not for very long, which explains why most of them prefer walking home.

    The carnage looks awful, so it seems to be working …

  • Renovations Gone Awry

    Renovations Gone Awry

    Spotted on the way around one of the myriad strip malls (different from “strip clubs“) sporting a “Recently Renovated” sign out front:

    Renovations - overpainted sign
    Renovations – overpainted sign

    You just know what those signs said, right? Must not be important any more.

    Around the corner, the painters couldn’t get to where they needed to go:

    Renovations - paint underspray
    Renovations – paint underspray

    A Streetview image from seven years back tells the tale:

    Renovations - Street View 2018
    Renovations – Street View 2018

    So the most generous interpretation would be something like overspraying those signs was a mercy killing. I’m impressed they could get that much paint behind the UPS drop box!

    Out front there’s another triumph of hope over experience:

    Renovations - damaged pillar
    Renovations – damaged pillar

    If that pillar looks familiar, here’s what it looked like a little over two years ago:

    Fake Stone Pillar - Impact Damage
    Fake Stone Pillar – Impact Damage

    Even in a recently renovated building, there’s never any money or motivation for repairs.

  • Busted For What I’ll Never Know

    Busted For What I’ll Never Know

    An email from Electronic Arts arrived in an email account I haven’t used in over a decade:

    Welcome to your EA Account!
    Your EA Account serves as an all-access pass to everything EA, from websites and mobile apps to console and PC games.

    Seconds later:

    Your EA Security Code:
    <<< redacted, not that it matters >>>
    If you didn’t request this code, please go to your My Account page and change your password right away. For assistance, please contact EA Help.

    Thanks for helping us maintain your account’s security.

    Not ever having had an EA account nor being in the process of signing up for one, I did nothing.

    After a few more seconds:

    Dear EA Insider,

    Thanks for signing up. We’re looking forward to bringing you the latest news and information on your favorite games.

    All the emails look to be genuinely from Electronics Arts, not scam emails routed through the usual sketchy / compromised servers.

    Four days later:

    Dear Customer,

    We are contacting you regarding your EA account.

    We wish to notify you that we have found your account to be in violation of our User Agreement or our Terms of Sale, and due to the nature of this violation we are left with no option other than to permanently close your account with immediate effect.

    Which looks much more impressive in email HTML:

    EA Account Closing
    EA Account Closing

    Although I did not respond to the Security Code message, the scammer surely used a phone number under his (it’s always a he) control, because “2FA” really means “pick an authentication method that lets you in”.

    Just for the amusement value, I fed that email address into the EA sign-in page, hit the “Forgot my password” button, and got a Security Code just like the scammer didn’t. I suppose I could change the password and discover / change the phone number, but that would put me in full ownership of an account used for nefarious purpose.

    I sometimes wonder what else happens using my identity.

    A good prosecutor could nail me for Third Party Retro-associative Complicity and, if I didn’t already live in Poughkeepsie, send me up the river.

    This likely came from the old Thingiverse compromise, although that address also appears in the recent dump of a thousand dumps.

  • Be Careful Where You Hide

    Be Careful Where You Hide

    We’ve seen several new rabbits munching greenery in the back yard, but this little one may be studying auto repair under our neighbor’s car:

    Rabbit - automotive hiding place
    Rabbit – automotive hiding place

    Unlike mice, even a small rabbit won’t take up residence in the air cleaner.

    The weird granulated look comes from a Pixel 6a camera zoomed all the way tight through two layers of 1960-era window glass at an acute angle. The bad camera you have is always better than the good camera you don’t.

  • Optimum Internet: Wall o’ Words

    Optimum Internet: Wall o’ Words

    So. Many. Tiny. Words.:

    Optimum flyer fine print
    Optimum flyer fine print

    For the record, the typeface in that block of Fine Print is 1 mm tall = 3 point, which I find barely readable without magnification and impossible to follow without a pointer.

    I’ve come to realize being a “valued customer” does not mean what businesses want me to think it means.

  • Hood Heavy Cream Seal: Whoopsie

    Hood Heavy Cream Seal: Whoopsie

    I was certain this was badly spoiled cream:

    Hood Heavy Cream seal - exterior
    Hood Heavy Cream seal – exterior

    The seal was firmly affixed inside the cap, just like all the seals on all the other cartons we’ve ever bought, so this wasn’t a “broken seal”.

    The bottom of the seal looked about the same:

    Hood Heavy Cream seal - interior 1
    Hood Heavy Cream seal – interior 1

    The cream inside the carton looked & smelled fine, so it went into the morning omelette with no ill effect. Yes, I’m aware some bacterial contamination has no particular smell or taste.

    Scraping off the pure-white cream showed the crud had been molded inside the plastic:

    Hood Heavy Cream seal - interior 2
    Hood Heavy Cream seal – interior 2

    A closer look at the exterior surface of the seal:

    Hood Heavy Cream seal - exterior detail
    Hood Heavy Cream seal – exterior detail

    And the interior surface:

    Hood Heavy Cream seal - interior detail
    Hood Heavy Cream seal – interior detail

    Both of those are focused on the top surface; the blurred areas are inside the plastic.

    The date & production codes sprayed onto the carton were somewhat illegible:

    Hood Heavy Cream seal - illegible codes
    Hood Heavy Cream seal – illegible codes

    Getting a better angle helped:

    Hood Heavy Cream seal - date prod codes
    Hood Heavy Cream seal – date prod codes

    I sent in a report, but I’m sure I’ll never know the rest of the story …

  • Spraying Along the Egg Line

    Spraying Along the Egg Line

    This carton went through the date coder with its lid open:

    Egg carton data spray
    Egg carton data spray

    They made a fine breakfast …