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

Revlon Tweezers: Bad Spot Welds
Mary bought a pair of Revlon tweezers a while ago, picking a Name Brand to avoid hassles with bottom-dollar crap:

Revlon tweezers – bad spot welds

Well, that didn’t work.

I contend that the only difference between Name Brands and the bottom-dollar crap I tend to buy is a bit of QC and a lot of price. I’ll agree that’s not strictly true, but it does fit a goodly chunk of the observed data.

Anyhow.

I milled a recess into the corner of some scrap plastic to locate the handle end, then arranged a step block to capture the business end:

Revlon tweezers – drilling setup

That setup ensures the holes go into the corresponding spots on both pieces, because I couldn’t figure out how to clamp them together and drill them both at once. I drilled the other piece with its good side up to align the holes; doing it bad side up would offset the holes if they’re not exactly along the center line.

A closer look:

Revlon tweezers – drilling fixture

Talk about a precarious grip on the workpiece!

I filed the welds flat before drilling, so the pieces lay flat and didn’t distract the drill.

Then:
- Center-drill
- Drill 2-56 clearance
- Scuff up mating surfaces with coarse sandpaper
- Apply epoxy
- Insert screws
- Add Loctite
- Tighten nuts to a snug fit
- Align jaws
- Tighten nuts
- Fine-tune jaw alignment
- Apply mild clamping force to hold jaws together
- Wait overnight
- Saw screws and file flush
- Done!
The clamping step:

Revlon tweezers – epoxy curing

Those nicely aligned and ground-to-fit jaws were the reason Mary bought this thing in the first place.

The screw heads look OK, in a techie sort of way:

Revlon tweezers – fixed – front

The backside won’t win any awards:

Revlon tweezers – fixed – rear

But it won’t come apart ever again!

There’s surely a Revlon warranty covering manufacturing defects, printed on the long-discarded packaging, that requires mailing the parts with the original receipt back to some random address at our own expense.

Ptui!
2014-08-28
Another Bike Ride, With Gratuitous Smog

Large Pickup – Small Brain

He could claim to be accelerating after a stop signal and that’s just how those big Chevy “clean diesel” engines work, even with DEF and DPF in full effect.

In point of fact, this was deliberate:

Large Pickup – Small Brain – Penumbra

I wish no ill on any man, but, should the Fates decree that a big pickup must be found wrapped around a tree, I have a recommendation.

We were northbound on 9W, returning home after an end-of-summer party.

2014-08-20
Bathroom Sink Drain Pop-Up: The Rot Continues

Once again, the black bathroom sink drain stopper stopped popping up. Having had this happen once before, I knew what I would find:

Corroded bathroom sink drain lever

The lever arm to the left of the ball should be about twice that long, minus the jagged end.

I slid the ball rightward to expose more rod, introduced both ends to Mr. Bench Grinder to round them off, scuffed up the short end with sandpaper to improve its griptivity, then slobbered on enough JB KwikWeld to cover the entire length of rod that will live inside the drain:

Epoxy-coated bathroom sink drain lever

The first failure took 9 years, this one took 4…

Memo to Self: Next time, replace the rod with something that doesn’t corrode.

2014-08-12
Left Turn on Red

Coming out of Adams, we’re ready to make a left turn onto Rt 44:

Left turn on red – 2014-07-24

He was one car back in the left-turn storage lane when his light went yellow-to-red, crossed the stop line on the red, and was one car length over the stop line and accelerating when our light changed to green.

We’re ready to start rolling on green, but we’ve learned to wait a few heartbeats for just such occasions; what counts as a fender-bender for you would be a fatality for us.

Y’know how motorists get very, very angry at cyclists? I’ve always wondered why they don’t get that angry when motorists do those same stupid things, at higher speeds with much more energy.

We ride as though we’re thin cars, which is how it’s supposed to be done, and generally don’t get too much hassle.

One thing that is annoying, though: short-stroke yellow cycles that last maybe two seconds. We can cross the stop line on green, accelerating firmly through the intersection, and still get caught in the middle as the signal changes to green-to-yellow-to-red behind us and red-to-green for opposing traffic. No, we didn’t run the yellow, but that’s what it looks like.

2014-08-09
Eco-Friendly Firewood?

These seem to be ordinary birch logs, cut into short chunks, sporting a top crosscut loaded with fire starter:

Light-n-Go Bonfire Log – stacked

The front of the label makes them seem wonderfully eco-friendly, but the fine print on the back shows that they’re from the Old World:

Light-n-Go Bonfire Log – origin label

There’s surely a universe where shipping heat-treated firewood from Estonia to Poughkeepsie makes perfect sense. I just didn’t realize I was living in it.

2014-06-14
Subaru Forester: Speed Demon!

I finally figured out why the Forester feels so slow:

Subaru Forester – speedometer

Here in the Northeast US, the maximum legal speed anywhere is 65 mph, less than half-scale, and typical around-town speeds hit 40 mph, barely 1/4 of full scale.

For all practical purposes, that needle barely moves during our usual trips.

I like analog gauges to represent smoothly varying quantities that you must read at a glance, but a big digital display would actually be more useful than that thing.

A 150 mph speedometer scale makes no sense in what’s basically a shrunken all-wheel-drive SUV, even with minimal off-road capabilities. Yes, perhaps the Forester could hit 150 mph, but why not have the scale top out around, say, 100 mph? Above that, you shouldn’t be paying much attention to the speedo, anyway.

The Sienna’s speedo went to 110 and, to the best of my knowledge, that needle never passed 85 mph, tops. However, ordinary (and legal) driving speeds filled the lower half of the scale, with the highest useful speeds in the next quadrant beyond vertical.

Yes, I know why the speedos sport such absurd numbers. I don’t have to like it.

There’s a servo motor (or some such) driving the needle; calibration has been a simple matter of software for a long, long time.

For whatever it’s worth, the Forester and the Sienna have both tachometers and automatic transmissions, a combination that converts shifting into a spectator sport. The Forester’s continuously variable transmission moves the tach needle in smooth glides, rather than abrupt jumps.

2014-06-11
Firefox Accounts: Total FAIL
So I’m in the process of installing Xubuntu 14.04LTS on a box and get to the point where I’m ready to install various daemons and utilities, then tweak their settings, so it’s time to have the new Firefox inhale all my settings from the Firefox on my 13.10 desktop, which will let me find all my blog posts with that information. This used to be a simple matter of going into the new Firefox’s Preferences, getting a one-time pairing code, typing it into the other desktop, and away it went, synchronizing the two installations.

But, no.

While I wasn’t watching, Firefox crept up to Version 29 and, at some point, Mozilla introduced Firefox Accounts. Why would they do that? Here’s a hint:

Firefox Accounts is a consumer account system which provides access to services run by Mozilla, such as Firefox Marketplace and the next version of Firefox Sync.

Firefox Marketplace? Say no more: money changes everything!

Oh, and the “next version of Firefox Sync” is totally incompatible with the “old version” used by all existing Firefox installations.

But it gets worse (emphasis mine):
What if I don’t want to update to the new Sync?
- While the old version of Sync will continue to work, the latest version of Firefox doesn’t support adding new devices to the old version of Sync. This means that you won’t be able to sync with a new device.
- Mozilla will continue to host the old version of Sync for a limited time to allow for migration to Firefox Accounts.
In order to sync the 14.10 Firefox, I must upgrade the 13.10 Firefox, but after I do that, none of the other boxes will be able to sync with either of them. I haven’t checked whether Firefox Version 29 is offered for the 10.04LTS installation that’s running on the LinuxCNC boxes.

My 13.10 desktop has endured many, many, many automatic Firefox upgrades during their recent version incrementing mania and, for whatever reason, it doesn’t offer “New Sync” as an option, despite being at the same Version 29 as the 14.04 installation. This is likely a problem with some Firefox extension or another, but I disabled them to no avail.

When all else fails, you always create a new profile by starting the Firefox Profile Manager:

firefox -profilemanager

That works as expected; the new and completely bare profile let me create a new Firefox Account, which entails the usual to-ing and fro-ing with emailed one-time authorizations and suchlike. OK, now I can use the shiny new Firefox Marketplace, should I so desire. Be still, my heart!

So, we progress.

But my original intent was to get all the setup data into the 14.04 Firefox, so (on the 13.10 Firefox) I followed the directions about transferring the old settings into the new profile, which involves tediously hand-copying a bunch of files from one cryptic directory to another. This is a brutally user-hostile operation that only geeks should endure; there is absolutely no automation to be found.

Having a new profile, albeit without any of the old extensions, I attempt to sync my settings, only to discover that the new Firefox Sync will not synchronize my stored passwords, which was pretty much the whole point of this exercise.

Turns out that’s deliberate:

Firefox Sync will not synchronize your passwords if a master password is set. If you would like to continue synchronizing your passwords, try removing your master password before synchronizing.

Now, why would I have a master password? Because, long ago, the good folks at Mozilla highly recommended it (emphasis mine):

It takes only fifteen seconds for a prying user sitting at your computer to see the list of all the passwords you have told Firefox or Thunderbird to save. The list is shown plain as day. It can include webmail and forum passwords or email server passwords. Using a Master Password is highly recommended, to prevent such prying users from seeing the list. By setting a Master Password, anyone using your profile will be prompted to enter the master password when access to your stored passwords is needed.

So, the new Firefox Sync requires a Firefox Account that doesn’t do anything I need done and, in order to sync my 13.10 settings into the 14.04 box, I must have a new Firefox Account and make both Firefox installations less secure.

I think it’s possible to remove the master password, sync the stored passwords, then restore the master password. When you remove the password, you get a confirmation message:

You have deleted your Master Password. Your stored web and email passwords, form data, and private keys will not be protected.

Firefox allegedly uses the Gnome keyring to get a master password protecting the whole Firefox session, but displaying all the stored passwords is just a few clicks away after that; needless to say, Firefox on 13.10 doesn’t use the keyring. Given that Chromium on Xubuntu 13.10 does not use the Gnome keyring, it’s entirely unprotected. Maybe the 14.04 box will use the keyring for both browsers?

What the hell do those people smoke? I want some of that, right here, right now!

Verily, money changes everything…
2014-05-20