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

  • Medicare Advantage Mail Merge: FAIL

    Medicare Advantage Mail Merge: FAIL

    A postcard arrived last week telling me to call a special number for special deals on Medicare Advantage plans. Being that type of guy, I managed to read the microscopic Fine Print and found this amusing blooper amid the disclaimers weasel wording:

    Medicare Advantage mail spam
    Medicare Advantage mail spam

    Inserting insurance carrier names should have happened before printing the card, so [CarrierA] and [CarrierB] are either placeholders or mail-merge variables.

    Also, you’re seeing the contrast-blown and magnified version of the postcard. The original Fine Print had faint orange ink on light green cardstock: colors having different hues with the same saturation and value to minimize legibility. In general, folks eligible for Medicare Advantage plans have trouble reading Fine Print, so the choice was not accidental.

    Not a compelling value proposition, as they say.

  • 7 mm Tactile Switch Pinout

    7 mm Tactile Switch Pinout

    As is usually the case, the assortment of tiny switches arrived with no pinout documentation. The 6 mm square SMD switches were easy, but the 7 mm through-hole switches posed a puzzle.

    With the switch standing to make the return spring visible as shown, the pinout looks like this:

    7mm Tactile Switch pinout
    7mm Tactile Switch pinout

    TIL, somewhat to my surprise, both the latching and momentary 7 mm switches have DPDT contacts!

    Now I know how to wire the next thing …

  • If Only I Were A Hotel

    Every few days this month, a Korean company has sent identical spam email messages to a series of plausible, albeit unused, addresses at softsolder dot com:

    As a forward-thinking hotel, we know you prioritize cleanliness and guest satisfaction.
    That’s why we’re excited to introduce Harington, an advanced sterilization device designed to provide
    99.99% bacteria and germ elimination for toilets, ensuring the highest standards of hygiene for your guests.

    Wikipedia reminds us Sir John Harington gets credit for inventing the flush toilet, thus explaining the device’s name. Surprisingly, a casual search with the obvious keywords suggests a different origin story much closer to the (nominal) company sending the spam.

    Another sentence definitely gained something in translation:

    A short but happy time spent on the toilet with a trustworthy friend who protects my secret and precious place from bacterial infection!

    The emails have an unsubscribe link, but experience shows clicking only encourages the senders.

    I wonder how much they spent to buy whatever list says my domain is a hotel …

  • An AI That Writes Just Like Me

    An AI That Writes Just Like Me

    This is getting to be a regular occurrence:

    Site stats - 2025-04-13 scraper
    Site stats – 2025-04-13 scraper

    Typically, every day two or three hundred visitors read three or four hundred posts, about 1.4 posts/viewer. Nearly 4000 views from the same number of visitors is unusual. The whole blog has just over 5200 posts; perhaps they don’t want really old content.

    A look at the timing suggests what happened:

    Site stats - 2025-04-13 detail
    Site stats – 2025-04-13 detail

    My guess: WordPress throttles aggressive scraping, so the program backed off for a couple of hours before finishing the job.

    Long ago, a magazine editor told me I have the strongest writing voice he had ever encountered, so when an AI uses my blog as its training set the results should be obvious.

    Let me know where else you meet me …

  • Road Construction: Right Turn Only

    Road Construction: Right Turn Only

    The previous layout of Rt 376 had two lanes approaching the Raymond Avenue intersection from the south (from the right in this rotated & ruthlessly contrast-blown Google Maps screenshot):

    Rt 376 at Raymond - prior two-lane striping
    Rt 376 at Raymond – prior two-lane striping

    The right lane is marked Only ↱ for the Raymond intersection, starting just past the Vassar Security Office entrance in the top middle of the screenshot.

    Given this preliminary striping with faded Only ↱ markings, one might assume a similar lane layout is in effect for the new traffic circle at the intersection:

    Vassar Security Office Lane - A
    Vassar Security Office Lane – A

    The lighting poles may seem snugly placed, but not too much out of the ordinary:

    Some drivers seem concerned at this point:

    Vassar Security Office Lane - C
    Vassar Security Office Lane – C

    With any luck, they can swerve back into what is the only lane going all the way to the circle, because the right lane is dedicated to Vassar Security Office traffic:

    Vassar Security Office Lane - D
    Vassar Security Office Lane – D

    If you happen to be walking southbound, toward the traffic, in the middle of the shoulder beyond the turn lane, you will look that driver directly in the eye, as happened to me while walking back from Mary’s garden.

    As I mentioned last week, my money says that first lamp post, the one with the barrel guarding it, won’t survive the year.

    Given the utter lack of pedestrian facilities (f.k.a. “sidewalks”) south of the circle, I can only hope the road furniture will absorb all the damage / fatalities.

  • Road Construction: New Lamp Bases

    Road Construction: New Lamp Bases

    Seen in the equipment marshalling yard for the new traffic circle at the intersection of Raymond Avenue and Rt 376 / Hooker Avenue:

    Street Lamp Base - excavated
    Street Lamp Base – excavated

    The backstory:

    Apparently they excavated around the smashed bases and sawed off the conduits:

    Street Lamp Base - sawed conduit
    Street Lamp Base – sawed conduit

    Then they yoinked the concrete cylinders, installed new bases, re-connected the conduits, cast more concrete, and installed the posts:

    Street Lamp Base - Rombout House Ln - detail
    Street Lamp Base – Rombout House Ln – detail

    I think the two “Signal” box covers flush with the surface on either side of Rombout House Lane lie just beyond the edges of what will eventually be the repaved road at the intersection.

    Street Lamp Base - Rombout House Ln - overview
    Street Lamp Base – Rombout House Ln – overview

    Given how much damage the base at that intersection encountered, my visualization of the Cosmic All says that pole will not survive the year unless they install a few well-spaced bollards.

    There’s another pole on the other side of the road I expect will have a full-on collision, too.

  • Price Scanner FAIL: Plausible Deniability

    Price Scanner FAIL: Plausible Deniability

    I always suspect there’s a reason behind a missing price label on a shelf, so I waved a half-gallon of milk under a nearby price scanner:

    Shop-Rite Scanner FAIL
    Shop-Rite Scanner FAIL

    If you’re thinking that white rectangle doesn’t look like a price, you’re right:

    Shop-Rite Scanner FAIL - Warning pop-up
    Shop-Rite Scanner FAIL – Warning pop-up

    A 10 digit Phone number?

    I’m don’t know what a “PPC number” is, although the UPC on the milk carton seems perfectly normal:

    Shop-Rite Scanner FAIL - offending bar code
    Shop-Rite Scanner FAIL – offending bar code

    Admittedly, the number starts with a zero and has 12 digits, so it’s definitely not what the price scanner wants. On the other paw, why is a price scanner not looking for a UPC?

    The placard below the display is amusing:

    Shop-Rite Scanner FAIL - DCNY Requiring Scanner Accuracy
    Shop-Rite Scanner FAIL – DCNY Requiring Scanner Accuracy

    Gray’s variant of Hanlon’s Razor: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”

    No, I neither asked why the scanners didn’t work nor made a phone call, as I’m old enough to know better.