Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Three envelopes arrived in the same mailing, all bearing the same return address across the back:
PublishersPayment – Three Return Addresses
By now, I know what’s inside the envelopes and simply toss them in the recycling, but getting three at once seemed worth investigating. Inside, they’re not quite identical:
PublishersPayment – Three Renewal Scams
So SBS, PDS, and PBC are all snuggly in White City, Oregon, with LBS somewhere just offstage…
Apparently enough people miss the warning on the back to justify the expense of the junk mailings.
It’s nice work for someone with absolutely no ethics whatsoever. At least they’re not phoning us, so maybe they’re not complete asshats…
For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume you wanted to report a defective traffic signal near Poughkeepsie, NY. You know, from previous experience, that it’s on a New York State Road, so you should contact the New York State Department of Transportation; you also know that you’re in DOT Region 8 and that you’re in the Poughkeepsie Residency, so you can find the right DOT branch.
In this day and age, you might think the NYSDOT website would have a conspicuous link to a form that would let you report a problem. But, no.
Failing that, you might think the website would have a link to the number you should call. But, no.
Failing that, you might think that the search box would turn up useful results when fed the obvious keywords. But, no.
Failing that, you might think calling various likely numbers in the Region 8 offices would produce the proper number. I won’t list the half-dozen numbers I’ve uncovered using that method, as none of them actually go to the right place.
It is common for such numbers within NYSDOT to ring forever, regardless of the time of day or day of week. I am told that one number isn’t actually within DOT any more, so some poor schlub gets all their repair calls; it’s probably worse than having Rachael call you every day or two.
My favorite dead end: an answering machine message telling you it’s not monitored and calls will not be returned, then giving an incomprehensible number-to-call and the usual “Leave your name and number after the beep” message, then beeping.
To make a very long story very short, the Galactic Number that you call to report traffic signal problems on NYS DOT roads is:
914-742-6100
It’s not toll-free (not a big deal in this day and age, but, still) and, of course, you’ll get a contractor, so be polite & patient. Your call should generate a work order that will, in due time, dispatch a crew to repair the offending signal.
It will be exceedingly helpful if you can report the number on the side of the signal control box, for which Google Streetview may reveal what you can’t see from any legal or safe position:
Signal Control Box ID by Google Streetview
If you want to report a pothole, on the other hand, they’ve got a hotline for that:
During my monthly data logging, I replace any weak CR2032 cells in the Hobo data loggers and, being that type of guy, I write the current date and the elapsed time since the last replacement on the top of the cells. This month I had to replace two cells:
Energizer CR2023 – early failures
Huh.
It seems the previous Energizer CR2023 cells in those loggers lasted for more than the usual year, but these cells from the same lot with the same date code failed in two weeks (my last monthly science was unusually late, because distraction). The YA date code (printed on the other side of the cell) isn’t helpful (that Q&A list shows the problem), but they’re supposed to have an eight year shelf life. As nearly as I can tell, these are getting on toward five years on my shelf, so maybe they spent a bit more time on somebody else’s shelf than the seller claimed.
The fancy OXO can opener doesn’t work well on #10 cans, so we bought a not-bottom-dollar can opener with comfy handles to replace the one that convinced us to get the OXO. After maybe a year, tops, it gradually stopped working well, too, which prompted a trip to the Basement Shop Workbench.
The symptoms:
The handle wouldn’t move the cutter during maybe 1/4 of its revolution
It pushed the handles apart during another quarter turn
Look carefully and you’ll see the teeth sticking out slightly more on the right side of the drive wheel:
Can opener – drive gear misalignment
When those protruding teeth line up with the gear behind the cutter wheel, the handles open and the drive wheel loses its grip. When the low side lines up with the cutter gear, the gears very nearly disengage.
Taking it apart shows that both “gears” (which is using the term loosely) have been pretty well chewed up:
Can opener – gears and cutters
Destroying those gears should require a lot more strength than either of us can deploy on a regular basis, which suggests they used mighty soft steel. It’s not obvious, but the drive gear hole is just slightly larger than the screw thread OD; it doesn’t ride on an unthreaded part of the screw shaft.
I’m not in the mood for gear cutting right now, so I filed down the wrecked teeth and buttoned them up with some attention to centering the gear. The can opener works, but sheesh this is getting tedious…
The Token Windows box (which runs the few programs that don’t get along with Linux) doesn’t get a lot of attention, but a recent update changed their stylin’ graphic CPU meter to something a bit less, mmm, smooth:
Our Larval Engineer reported that her camera, which is my old Casio pocket camera, has begun fading away, so we’re getting her a shiny new camera of her very own. Being a doting father, I picked up a pair of Wasabi NB-6L batteries (and a charger, it not costing much more for the package) so she’s never without electrons, and did the usual rundown test on all three batteries:
Canon NB-6L – 2014 OEM vs Wasabi
Fairly obviously, the Wasabi batteries aren’t first tier products, but they’re definitely better than that bottom-dollar crap from eBay.
For some unknown reason, one of the very rare updates to the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS infrastructure (for LinuxCNC 2.5.3 on my Foxconn D510 box, driving the Sherline mill) stopped supporting the system board’s built-in NIC: networking stopped working. The only symptom was that the NIC didn’t respond and all the usual tricks were unproductive.
After some fruitless searching, I took the easy way out:
NIC added to Foxconn D510 PC
That’s the backside of an ancient NIC using the classic Tulip driver. It used to have a full-size bracket, which I chopped off, bent, and filed to suit, much as with that one in the D525.
Fired it up, the kernel automagically picked the proper driver, and networking Just Worked again.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 