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?

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

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.

2025-07-28
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

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.

2025-07-16
Optimum Internet: Wall o’ Words

So. Many. Tiny. Words.:

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.

2025-07-11
Hood Heavy Cream Seal: Whoopsie

I was certain this was badly spoiled cream:

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

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

A closer look at the exterior surface of the seal:

Hood Heavy Cream seal – exterior detail

And the interior surface:

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

Getting a better angle helped:

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 …

2025-07-07
Spraying Along the Egg Line

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

Egg carton data spray

They made a fine breakfast …

2025-07-03
Garden Hose Valve Wrench: Decommissioning

Mary found the wrench I made five years ago in the bottom of her tool bucket:

Hose Valve Knob – five years later

Having moved away from the garden with all the valves that wrench turned, it can now go into the 3D Printed Sample Box for use in the unlikely event I ever give another talk on the subject.

I’d design it differently these days, what with BOSL2 in my sails, but it got the job done.

Some things last long enough!

2025-06-16
Bizarre Spam

Thanks to Google Translate:

Mrs Sgt Candy Payne spam

It’s not clear why a Sergeant in the US Army would translate her request for help into Simplified Chinese so I can better understand it, but that’s the world we live in.

This deposit would move my Quality-of-Life needle, but certainly not in a good direction:

Mrs Sgt Candy Payne spam – detail

Today I Learned: there are humanitarian doctors connected with the Red Army in Morocco.

The cost of sending this junk must be low enough to fuel the spam machine from a minuscule response rate.

A pox on their collective backside!

2025-06-11