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.
Who’d’a thunk it?
The dark spot in the grass, barely visible over on the left, is a dinner-plate-size snapping turtle recently teleported from the middle of Rt 376 just north of Robinson Lane:
The driver of the white van managed to stop both lanes during the rescue and, judging from the lack of gore, handled the snapper without incurring organic damage.
Color me impressed!
This little critter was chugging across the Dutchess Rail Trail near the ponds north of Page Industrial Park, so I stopped to lend a hand:
The plastron looked like a brightly colored jewel:
Perhaps plastrons start out with all the pigment they’ll ever have, then fade from bright orange to yellow-brown as they spread out.
If you’re not paying attention, you’d think “pebble” or “dog turd”. Neither of which you should ride over, of course, but … teleporting a tiny turtle to the drainage ditch on the far side seemed to increase the world’s net happiness.
The pix are tight crops from the AS30V’s 170° FOV images, which means they’re way grittier than you’d expect from a “full HD” image.
As always, we knew this wouldn’t end well for the small lump just in front of the car’s rear wheel (clicky for more, albeit fuzzy, dots):
So I stopped to lend a hand:
A fumbling hand, as it turned out, on the turtle’s slippery shell:
A belly-up turtle in the middle of the road knows the solution to the Halting Problem.
I hoped a secluded spot under a pine tree was closer to its destination:
However, if the turtle is a female in search of an egg-laying site, then she and all her progeny must cross Vassar Road in the other direction to reach the Mighty Wappinger Creek.
We’ll teleport them if we see them, too …
This cheerful assortment came from a friend with an assortment of happy chickens:
The lonely Medium white egg, obviously strictly from commercial, serves as a size and color reference. Most of the others weighed in the Large to Extra-Large range.
Even though none of the chickens had the digital upgrade, the morning omelet tasted just fine!
Spotted at the NSQG World of Quilts show in the WCSU O’Neill Center:
I’m mildly surprised the (apparently recent) wall reupholstering didn’t cover it up. I’m certain many students don’t recognize it.
The FCC says the US is down to 100 k pay phones from a peak of over two million; they don’t tally the number of bare wall mount plates, though.
Anybody capable of fogging a mirror knows how this scam works:
The copious fine print says you can only see the actual fine print by traveling to Arizona:
I’m nowhere near hungry enough to like the odds, even for a $100 Walmart gift card.
An Auto-V.I.N Gauge (their choice of punctuation) must improve the response rate:
Is it any surprise the numbers match?
No. No, it’s not.
The “Gauge” actually contains parts, although fewer than IMO they want you to believe:
It’ll serve to produce measurable current & voltage for an upcoming Squidwrench Electronics Workshop and, because it need not survive the experience, we will take considerable liberties with it.
Although I knew the Sienna showed signs of a leaky head gasket, the exhaust system needed some attention, and a sporty used car recently put it in the shade, this still came as a surprise:
I’m trying to get a crew … together and live the demolition derby dream
By the time I arrived, the dashboard trim had vanished and the air bags were safely out:
Diligent application of a Harbor Freight “Professional Windshield Removal Kit” cut through the side window seals, but the rear window rested on four impossible-to-cut locating studs:
I managed to pry the glass off using a Gasket Scraper and considerable muttering.
With all the exterior trim, lights, and mirrors gone, the Sienna was in fine race trim:
But, being no longer street-legal, it required trailering. For the record, not all huge pickup trucks have bulky guys with pot bellies behind the wheel:
A few hours later, it was in the Short Track Full Size pack at the Upperco Volunteer Fire Company’s Demolition Derby:
The driver required a few laps to shake off years of safe-driving indoctrination:
But eventually the spirit of the thing took over:
We now know the transmission oil cooler sat just ahead of the left front wheel, where it was exposed to damage by a glancing collision:
The Sienna finished the race and made it almost all the way to the trailer before bleeding out through the ATF cooler.
The driver emerged in fine shape, although the door didn’t work nearly as well as it had fifteen minutes earlier:
A race staffer in a Bobcat aimed the carcass in the right general direction and shoved it onto the trailer for the return to base:
You can find shaky low-res camera action documenting the event, because video-or-it-didn’t-happen.
We piled the windows / parts / detritus into the back, a scrapper hauled it away the next morning, and that’s the end of our Sienna’s story.
Toyota sold a lot of Siennas, which means the Hot Topics list over on the right will show a need for Sienna ABS trouble codes long into the future.
In fact, the adjacent motel slot had a disconcerting sight:
I think it was a 2001 model, but …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 