Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Spotted high on the wall of the local USPS office:
Windows Runtime Error – VLC – monitor
A closer look:
Windows Runtime Error – VLC
Huh.
The USPS uses VLC. Who knew?
I darken their doorway so infrequently I have no idea what’s normally displayed up there. Surely it shows advertisements for USPS products, which begs the question: why VLC?
Although different rules apply to the Park staff, so they can drive back & forth across a crowded Walkway with impunity, it’d be courteous if they didn’t block the bike rack with their vehicles. After we parked our bikes in the rack, the woman riding the third bike couldn’t get out and two other riders simply leaned their bikes against the Welcome Center.
Privilege is one thing, flaunting it seems entirely unnecessary.
I’ve yet to understand why the staff must drive over the Walkway at any time, not just park on the pedestrian plaza, as there’s a perfectly serviceable bridge designed specifically for motor vehicles barely half a mile to the south. Heck, on a clear day, you can even see it from the Walkway. [grin]
Our bikes get us from one end to the other in under ten minutes, about as fast as the Park staff can drive, so using a car doesn’t provide any speed advantage. I can carry a week’s worth of groceries in my bike trailer and rarely see the staff carrying anything bigger in the car, so a “we must haul stuff” excuse seems self-serving.
Every “unintended acceleration” mass-casualty incident involves a vehicle, a bunch of pedestrians, and a driver who never thought it could happen. Proactively eliminating vehicle traffic from the Walkway seems much easier than explaining why you didn’t.
Parking vehicles in appropriate places doesn’t require any explanation.
Thanks …
Email to Walkway Over the Hudson
I should have sent it to the sprawling NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, but I hoped the Walkway staff could forward it to the right person. Haven’t heard anything back; I should have saved the electrons.
Why you shouldn’t use antistatic foam for long-term storage:
Anti-static foam – decades of corrosion
The lump emerged from Mad Phil’s parts stash, now residing under a bench at Squidwrench. The 952 date code on the HEP802 JFET suggests he tucked it in around 1980; you’re looking at nigh onto four decades of corrosion.
So the middle station refilled 3025 = 10460 – 7435 bottles, roughly eight bottles a day, every day, for a year. Seems like a lot of refilling, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, I didn’t take pictures of the other watering hole last year, but here’s what it looks like now:
Overview:
Gym water bottle refill station A – overview
Left:
Gym water bottle refill station A – left
Center:
Gym water bottle refill station A – center
Right:
Now, it’s entirely possible I have the two stations reversed, in which case I have numbers for all three displays:
Left = 242 = 4758 – 4516
Center = 633 = 8068 – 7435
Right = 800 = 9689 – 8889
Does a bottle or two a day, every day, for a year, seem more reasonable? Hard to say, so, with a bit of luck, we’ll have more data next year.
There’s a good reason this was the last pneumatic tee fitting on the rack:
Malformed pneumatic fitting
The center fitting should be a male 1/4 inch NPT connection, but it’s completely un-machined. Alas, I no longer have a 1/4 NPT die in my tool chest, so it’s not an easy fix.
The two female connections are fine, so it must have been one of those rare QC escapes.
Lowe’s marked it down to $0.47 on clearance and I still couldn’t justify buying the thing.
The ANENG AN8008 / AN8009 multimeters have 3.6×10 mm ceramic fuses on their inputs:
AN8009 10 A current shunt – top view
Based on past experience, at some point over the next year or five, I’ll forget to plug the hot probe back in the voltage hole before measuring a power supply:
AN8008 multimeter jacks
Whereupon the fuse will blow.
So, for about five bucks, a bag of 10 A and 0.5 A axial lead fast-blow glass fuses just arrived from halfway around the planet:
3.6×10 mm axial fuses
They have the right body size and, in this application, fine points concerning current ratings and cartridge composition don’t make much difference. If I actually need one, I’ll snip off the leads, jam it in the holder, and move on.