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

  • Blog Summary: 2021

    The overall page view count may be down, but people have been replacing water heater anode rods at an increasing pace:

    Home page / Archives23775
    Water Heater Anode Rod Access Done Right8432
    CNC 3018-Pro: GRBL Configuration5301
    G-Code and M-Code Grand Master List5049
    Why You Need a 6-Point Socket to Remove a Water Heater Anode Rod4300
    American Standard Elite Kitchen Faucet Disassembly2621
    Toyota Sienna: ABS Trouble Codes2531
    Raspberry Pi: Forcing VNC Display Resolution2011
    CNC 3018-ProXL: Y-axis Extension1641
    Subaru Forester Fuse Boxes1276
    Broom Handle Screw Thread: Replacement Plug1239
    Removing a Water Heater Anode Rod1221
    Auto-V.I.N Gauge Scam1029
    Low Budget Bench Power Supply984
    CNC 3018-Pro: DRV8825 Hack for 1:8 Microstep Mode980
    Kensington Expert Mouse Trackball: Scroll Ring Troubles929
    Whirlpool Water Heater “Lifetime” Warranty: The Good and the Bad917
    Digital Tattoo Power Supply: Polarity Doesn’t Matter912
    Bed Bugs: Thermal Kill908
    Review Phreesia Authorization834
    Huion H610Pro (V2) Tablet vs. Ubuntu 18.04821
    Kenmore 158.17032 Handwheel Clutch Disassembly799
    Shimano SPD Pedals: Creaking Resolved788
    2000 Toyota Sienna: Replacing the Bank 1 Sensor 2 Oxygen Sensor753
    Schwab / Symantec VIP Access vs. Yubikey751
    Toyota Sienna: Rear ABS / Speed Sensor Failure729
    HP-48GX Calculator Disassembly: Case Rivets688
    Reversible Belt Buckle: Post Restaking683
    Kensington Expert Mouse Scroll Ring Fix629
    Makerbot-style Endstop Power Adapter for Protoneer Arduino CNC Shield616
    Displaying Variables in Gnuplot614
    Kohl’s Guest WiFi Terms & Conditions: The Short Version613
    Replacing Phil Wood Hub Bearings595
    Magnesium Water Heater Anode Rod: Seven Years Later576
    Adding a Device to LTSpiceIV564
    Philips Sonicare Essence 5000: Battery Replacement550
    Browning Hi-Power Magazine Dimensions545
    MPCNC: Emergency Stop / Feed Hold / Resume Pendant544
    Raspberry Pi Interrupts vs. Rotary Encoder538
    CNC 3018-Pro: Home Switches534
    Resistance Soldering: Transformer510
    Adafruit Touch-screen TFT LCD Rotation489
    Quick-and-easy IR-passing / Visible-blocking Optical Filter476
    Dis-arming a Steelcase Leap Chair471
    Icecast and Ezstream Configuration470
    Why You Shouldn’t Use Heat Pumps in the Northeast US465
    Baofeng UV-5R Squelch Settings460
    Mini-Lathe Tailstock: Alignment449
    Homebrew Magnetizer-Demagnetizer446
    Arduino Serial Optical Isolator444
    Mysterious Noise in Toyota Sienna Minivan: Fixed!444
    Baofeng UV-5: Squelch Pop Suppression434
    bCNC Probe Camera Calibration432
    Demolition Card GTA 5-10-9431
    Multimeter Range Switch Contacts: Whoops!425
    Realigning Tweezer Tips421
    Schwalbe Marathon Plus and Michelin Protek vs. Glass Chip418
    Kenmore Model 158 Speed Control: Carbon Disk Replacement417
    Kenmore Electric Dryer: Power Resistor Replacement416
    Old Kenmore Sewing Machine Foot Control Repair414
    Closing the Dmesg Audit Firehose400
    Blog Page Views

    That adds up to 200 k page views from 122 k visitors, for an average of 1.6 pages / visitor, down slightly from last year. For a variety of reasons, I wrote only 242 posts over the course of the year, so more folks read only the single post matching their search terms.

    To give you an idea of how awful online advertising has become, WordPress shoveled 817 k ads at those readers, slightly more than four ads per view. Given the toxicity of online advertising, I just started paying $50/year for a “personal” plan to get a few more gigabytes of media storage, which also let me turn off the ads. Most of you won’t notice, as you already run ad blockers, but it will calm the results for everybody else.

    Fortunately, losing the $250 / year income from those ads won’t significantly affect my standard of living.

  • Christmas Bonus

    Christmas Bonus

    An email arrived yesterday:

    Subject: [redacted] review blog invitation about bluetooth programmer

    Message: Hi dear,

    Thanks for taking time to read this email.

    I am Colleen from [redacted] brand, we sell two way radio on Amazon. I learned that you have wrote two way radio review blog before and I think your blog was written well.

    Now we have a product named bluetooth programmer that need to be reviewed. […] We would like to invite you to write a review blog about it.

    Your can earn $2 from each product sold! We promise it. Just put the link we provided you in your blog and the Amazon backstage will count the data. And we will pay you $2 for per product sold by your link through PayPal on the 30th of every month. (Please provide your PayPal account)

    If you are willing to help us write a blog, please tell us if you have a radio and your address we will send you the product for free to review.

    You can view more detailed information through this link:

    [redacted]

    Perhaps this “review” caught their eye:

    Baofeng UV-5RE radio - overview
    Baofeng UV-5RE radio – overview

    Or maybe it was my opinion of the Baofeng intermod problem?

    Most likely, it’s just the result of an ordinary web search.

    You might think everybody would know about Amazon’s crackdown on out-of-band review kickback scams, but either word hasn’t gotten around or the rewards still exceed the penalties. I think the latter applies, particularly when the offender (or its parent company) can spin up another randomly named Amazon seller with no loss of continuity.

    “Earning” two bucks on a few purchases during the course of a year won’t move my Quality of Life needle, so I reported them to Amazon and that might be that.

    For future reference, the chat with Amazon’s Customer Support rep produced a deep-ish link to their otherwise un-discoverable “Report Something Suspicious” page; the randomly named nodeld is a nice touch.

    Speaking of randomly named sellers, it’s highly likely any Brand Name you remember from the Good Old Days has been disconnected from the tool / hardware / service you remember. Perusing a snapshot of the who-owns-who tool landscape as of a few years ago may be edifying: I didn’t know Fluke and Tektronix now have the same corporate parent.

    Enjoy unwrapping your presents and playing with your toys …

  • The Machine Stops

    As foretold by E. M. Forster in 1909, we have two exhibits of the machine grinding to a halt.

    Amazon sent one of their prescription savings cards, followed a few days later by a note:

    We recently mailed you a physical copy of your Amazon Prime Rx savings card, and are writing to inform you that the BIN listed on your Prime Rx card printed incorrectly. The correct BIN is 019363.

    So I wrote the corrected number on my card, not that I will ever use it:

    Amazon RX - BIN error
    Amazon RX – BIN error

    Although the BIN (whatever that stands for) is a numeric value, it’s not treated as a number by whoever reads it. I’d lay money down that the source code’s formatting string changed from %6d to %06d or the equivalent in whatever fancy language they use nowadays.

    The Social Security Administration sent me an email telling me to check a corrected version of a statement they sent a few months ago. Unfortunately, attempting to do so while writing this post produces a heads-up notice:

    We apologize for any inconvenience accessing my Social Security. We are aware of some technical difficulties and are working on them at this time. We appreciate your patience as we work to solve the problems as quickly as possible.

    Attempting to sign on seems to proceed normally, until this technical difficulty popped up:

    We’re Sorry…
    There has been an unexpected system error.

    Your login session has been terminated. For security reasons, please close all of your internet browser windows.

    The first statement put my nearest Social Security office 130 miles away in Wilkes Barre, PA. The corrected statement put it back where it belongs, in the hot urban core of Poughkeepsie.

    Perhaps an off-by one error in the database lookup?

    As far as I can tell, the world now depends on software nobody can understand or control.

  • Humana Unsubscribe FAIL

    Quite some years ago, I had a health insurance plan with Humana, although I gave it up because the premiums seemed entirely disproportional to the benefits. They have continued to bombard me with emails telling me how wonderful they are, with an obligatory sentence at the bottom:

    If you do not want us to contact you by email, you can unsubscribe from our online Humana community.

    I do not know anything about this “community” of which they speak, other than that they seem to think I want to be part of it.

    Clicking on the “unsubscribe” link takes me to a page at their randomly named email service, whereupon I check the “don’t send me anything” box and click the “Submit” button:

    Humana Unsubscribe failure
    Humana Unsubscribe failure

    Did you see the green text near the middle, where my email address should be? Apparently somebody misconfigured the email script to not include the actual address; the %25 gibberish seems to be encoded percent signs, so it may be one of those too-many / too-few / wrong-kind of character escapes.

    Just a typo that could happen to anyone. Right?

    Having once been a customer, I still have an account, but there is no way to control / shut off those messages. Not being a current customer, however, I cannot use their chat interface, which would likely not be productive. I am unwilling to wait on hold for an hour, because I know my call is not valuable to them, and their customer service rep wouldn’t be competent to solve the problem anyhow.

    Fortunately, I can set up a filter to route their emails directly to trash.

  • Raymond Avenue Road Furniture Graveyard

    Raymond Avenue Road Furniture Graveyard

    Apparently the traffic calming features along Raymond Avenue sacrifice the road furniture:

    Smashed Raymond Avenue Road Furniture
    Smashed Raymond Avenue Road Furniture

    I hadn’t realized the “standards compliant” road design caused the death of so many street lights, but the dead bollard population is definitely under-represented. In round numbers, every traffic circle (“intersection”) always has at least one smashed bollard in addition to the vestigial stumps of those removed rather than being replaced.

    The upright bollard is a relic of the earliest installations, back before they realized a bollard with an eye-level light glaring into drivers’ eyes weren’t an effective design, particularly along a road lined with dead-black / non-reflective posts.

    Spotted in the Town of Poughkeepsie Highway Department compound.

  • Too Many Deer: Another One Bites the Dust

    Too Many Deer: Another One Bites the Dust

    I passed another dead deer on New Hackensack Rd while hauling groceries home:

    Deer Collision - roadkill - New Hackensack Rd - 2021-09-08
    Deer Collision – roadkill – New Hackensack Rd – 2021-09-08

    The next day I walked past the other side of the collision at the corner gas station’s dead car collection:

    Deer Collision - front end damage
    Deer Collision – front end damage

    A closer look at that nice rounded dent links the two contestants:

    Deer Collision - front end damage - deer hair detail
    Deer Collision – front end damage – deer hair detail

    The impact didn’t blow the airbags, so maybe the car isn’t a total loss, despite extensive front end damage and some scrap metal inside the engine compartment.

    As far as I can tell, Vassar College has been holding a deer cull every January, but taking out a few dozen deer definitely hasn’t eliminated the road hazard. If the folks objecting to the cull set up a fund to help drivers damaged by the objects of their affection, it’d demonstrate their understanding of the problem.

  • Beverage Faucet Replacement

    Beverage Faucet Replacement

    The lesser kitchen faucet began dribbling and required replacement, as there are no user serviceable parts within. One of the 3D printed adapters I built during the previous iteration had disintegrated:

    Beverage faucet base plate adapter disintegration
    Beverage faucet base plate adapter disintegration

    The new faucet came with a somewhat different baseplate and I managed to conjure a firm, sealed mount from the various parts without further construction.

    The nicely curved brass snout is the third in my collection. Surely they’ll come in handy for something!

    While I was in a plumbing state of mind, I again replaced the spout O-rings in the never-sufficiently-to-be-damned American Standard Elite (hah!) faucet, as it was also dribbling.

    This time, I used oxalic acid to remove the assorted scale and crud inside the spout. It seemed to be more effective than the usual white vinegar, although nothing seems to preserve the O-rings.