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.

Tag: Rants

And kvetching, too

Stick Blender Bearing Failure

The business end of a cheap stick blender we bought a year ago to replace the previous stick blender (*):

Fresko stick blender

This one failed just slightly beyond the duration of its one-year warranty, apparently with one of the shaft bearings seized to the extent of making the blade un-turnable even by (carefully protected) finger force.

With nothing to lose (and a new blender inbound), it stood in the Basement Shop in that orientation for a week while I dripped penetrating oil around the shaft and wiggled the blade slightly back-and-forth. The bearing eventually broke free and the blade turned reluctantly.

Still having nothing to lose, I gave the shaft a few shots with a drift punch, moving it a few millimeters in each direction. This apparently disturbed the seized bearing just enough to let it turn less reluctantly, with more penetrating oil improving the situation.

Mixing a jar of water went well, even on high speed, but I doubt the bearing is in good health. We decided a blender with penetrating oil tucked up inside should be disqualified for food processing.

When it first locked up, I bought a significantly more expensive stick blender, knowing full well more money does not imply better design / better materials / more QC. This one is now designated as a Cold Backup blender for garden & shop use.

(*) For the record, my 3D printed shaft adapter failed while converting garden tomatoes into thick & zesty pizza sauce. I’m unsurprised PETG-CF wasn’t up to the task.

2026-02-13
ResMed ClimateLine Heated Hose: DOA

Mary plugged a new ClimateLine heated hose into her Resmed Airsense 11 CPAP machine, spent the night feeling a bit chilly, and got an error message in the morning that boiled down to “Bad Hose”.

Unsurprisingly, the new hose looks just like the previous ones and the old picture remains relevant:

ResMed ClimateLine heated hose ends

The new hose has the same 12 kΩ resistance between the two outer contacts: the thermistor is fine.

The two inner contacts are an open circuit, not the expected 10 Ω: the heater element or (more likely) a connector joint failed. We don’t know if it was DOA or failed during the first use, but it does not respond to the usual wiggling and poking.

Her experience with Lincare’s Customer Disservice has been so terrible she refuses to start a warranty claim. She’ll continue using the old hose until it’s time for the next replacement and we’ll hope for the best.

As I understand the arrangement, she must get all the consumables (masks, hoses, filters, tanks) from Lincare for five years from the date of the original prescription. After that, she can order supplies from elsewhere, although that seller must have a new prescription.

Basically, Lincare gets five years of guaranteed business and, like the phone company of old, they don’t care about you because they don’t have to.

So: they win.

2026-01-29
Ice Flow

Spotted at the local library:

Roof drain ice

Putting the downspout inside the building probably made architectural sense, but I’d much rather have that pipe on the outside of the wall where a leak won’t be so expensive.

It hasn’t leaked yet, but in a few months I won’t be surprised to learn my tax dollars were hard at work fixing the ensuing water damage.

Taken at maximum zoom through a grubby windshield, so the picture quality isn’t up to contemporary standards.

2026-01-28
Inline Switch FAIL

One of the inline switches I installed to replace the failed switches for the LED lights got unpleasantly warm enough to prompt an investigation:

Inline lamp switch – heat damage

Yeah, that is not a nominal outcome, particularly in light of the claimed “10 A 250 V” rating.

The overheated plastic pulled back enough to expose the terminal inside:

Inline lamp switch – visible terminal

There was a reason I’d wrapped those switches with known-good 3M electrical tape before deploying them.

That crimp connector took some heat and its screw looks even more unhappy:

Inline lamp switch – internal damage

It turned out the screw was an itsy too short to compress both the connector and the bent-metal conductor tab against the terminal block:

Inline lamp switch – misfit screw terminal

A 6 mm brass screw with a brass washer did a better job of compressing all parties into one conductive lump.

Although the switch now runs with the case at normal basement temperature, an allegedly UL listed replacement is on its way; it costs about five times more than that switch. If it behaves as it should, I’ll preemptively replace two other switches.

2026-01-12
LED Failures Out On The Road

Perhaps there’s something to redundancy after all:

Truck – failing LED brake lights

The four light fixtures serve as both tail lights and brake lights. This was at an intersection, we were both stopped for the traffic signal, and all those LEDs should have been glowing brightly.

AFAICT, each light fixture has 20 LEDs with a third to a half either dead or dying.

I wonder if those are replacement fixtures, installed on the promise they’d last forever, when the original incandescent bulbs burned out …

2025-11-21
No Kings
I discovered this commentary, in several variations in different contexts, after attending the Poughkeepsie No Kings protest last weekend:

You are allowed to say, at any point, “I can’t support this”.

Even if you did.

Even if you were unsure.

You can say, at any point, “This has gone too far.”

And, while the best time to say that was earlier, the second best time is now.

That is relevant, because the Executive branch of the United States government has internalized two facts:
- There are no rules
- There are no consequences
The President and the Executive branch now act with the knowledge that the separation of powers, the checks and balances, and the restrictions written into the US Constitution no longer apply.

Justifications based on Constitutional hairsplitting are irrelevant. The Founding Fathers did not intend the Executive branch to operate as it does now.

Justifications based on “But what about …?” are irrelevant. The scale of current malfeasance dwarfs all precedent; there are no valid comparisons.

Justifications based on “But Congress is dysfunctional!” are irrelevant. It takes only one to dysfunction and the parties have been swapping irresponsibility for decades.

I commend to your attention the Army Talk Orientation Fact Sheet 64 from March 1945. It is straight-up US WWII propaganda with a rosy view of the Soviet Union, but you should fact-check all items in the section “Can We Spot It?” on page 4 against current events.

Should you think your particular identity, institution, tradition, behavior, property, possessions, protection, legality, or beliefs will remain untouched because you’re in a particular group, you are incorrect.

I changed my voter registration to “No Party” several decades ago, when it became evident the Republican Party had lost interest in whatever small-government / low-deficit / personal-responsibility principles it may have once had; thinking it had those principles was likely a misunderstanding on my part.

I cannot support many planks of the Democratic Party’s platform, either, but they remain based in rule-of-law and have some appreciation of what functions a government should perform.

I still vote in every election and intend to continue doing so.

WordPress likes images and this seems appropriate:

No Kings Logo
2025-10-28
Fitbit VO2Max Estimation

My Fitbit Charge 5 exercise tracker estimates my VO2Max as somewhere between 51 and 55. That seems absurd for a guy of my age, where “Excellent” is a bit under 40. I am most certainly not a highly trained athlete at the top of my form, so I wondered what the real value might be.

Fitbit calculates VO2Max from the ratio of my maximum to resting pulse rates, probably according to the Uth formula using a coefficient applicable to a much younger man.

It also computes my maximum heart rate from my age as 220 – 72 = 148, much lower than the values I routinely see while biking around the area. Reviewing a few months of data suggests an actual value around 170, although I did see 185 on one occasion.

Forcing a maximum heart rate of 170 changed the VO2Max estimate to 50-54, which still seemed absurdly high. At least that change made the Fitbit’s “heart rate zones” a little more reasonable, as ordinary bike rides no longer have me in the Peak zone nearly as often.

The Rockport walking test calculates VO2Max from a timed walk over a one mile “track” course, so I laid out a half-mile out-and-back route on Zack’s Way, which is a quarter mile from home.

Maintaining a brisk pace covered the mile in 15:49 and left me with a 110 pulse; it’s obvious I’m not a trained athete. Feeding those numbers and a few other vital details into the Rockport formula gives me a much more realistic VO2Max of 28.5, putting me somewhere between the 50th and 75th percentile.

Which is good, but not extraordinary.

Bottom line: don’t believe the hype.

An obligatory picture and link for enhanced SEO:

FitBit Charge 5 stand – installed

2025-10-01