Spotted in a parking lot:
At least they caught it before the end of the row.
Verily, it is written that Computer Science has only two hard problems:
- Cache invalidation
- Naming things
- Off-by-one errors
I hate it when that happens on my projects …
Tag: Rants
And kvetching, too
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There’s No UnDo Key For Paint
Misnumbered parking spaces -
Tide HE Laundry Detergent: Shrinkflation
The most recent Tide HE Laundry Detergent bottles seemed smaller than the one we were about to empty and, indeed, they were:
Tide HE shrinkflation – bottle labels Call it 9% smaller, based on the volume in liters. I suspect the price was also 9% higher, but that would require more digging in the file cabinet than seems justified.
Note that both bottles claim “64 loads”, each with an asterisk (well, a lozenge ◊ symbol) explained on the label:
Tide HE shrinkflation – new load bars That’s the new chart. The old chart was more explanatory:
Tide HE shrinkflation – old load bars Note the “just below Bar 1 on cap” weasel wording. The term “meniscus” enters the chat, although laundry detergent doesn’t have much in the way of surface tension.
One might reasonably assume the bars on the new cap have gotten shorter, so that the volume of detergent used for each load would be smaller.
One would be wrong:
Tide HE shrinkflation – cap capacity marks The blue cap on the right is one we’ve been using for the last few years, because I put black tape at the level of the first bar to match our “Medium” loads. I cannot imagine how much dirt would require filling the cap to Bar 5.
The clear cap on the left is the new cap. I filled the blue tap to the top of Bar 5 with water and poured it into the clear cap, where it comes about 3/4 of the way to the top of the new Bar 5. Evidently, the amount of detergent required to get grubby clothes clean has increased by 33%.
The old cap holds just shy of 4 fluid ounces to the top of Bar 5:
Tide HE shrinkflation – old cap bar 5 capacity The new cap holds 5.5 fluid ounces to the top of its Bar 5:
Tide HE shrinkflation – new cap bar 5 capacity If you have really crusty clothing, you’re now using 36% more detergent per load.
The obvious arithmetic shows the old bottle holds 23 “Bar 5” loads and the new bottle holds 15.
To the limit of my measuring ability, both caps hold 1.3 fluid ounces to the top their respective Bar 1 levels. I cannot vouch for the “just below” level, but I suspect more accurate measurements would show the new caps have slightly lower volume at that level, juuust enough to make the “64 loads” weasel wording come out right.
As with all too many such claims, they lie.
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LED Light Switch: FAIL 2
Another switch for the temporary basement LED light strips failed the same way:
T8 LED power switch – failure 2 As always with such things, I suspect the only reason it has a UL mark on the back is because somebody else hasn’t missed theirs yet.
So I got a three-pack of inline switches with cute little indicator lights and set about replacing all of them:
Inline T8 power switch – internal These switches carry absolutely no regulatory approval markings, although they do claim to carry 10 A at 250 V, which I take with another load of salt.
At least here in the US-of-A, a 240 VAC outlet has two “hot” wires carrying 120 VAC 180° out of phase, which means both conductors must be switched. Despite the voltage rating, only the
Lpath goes through the clicky switch, with theNpath along a strap just below the switch toggle. Using it on a 240 VAC circuit will kill you stone cold dead should you assume whatever it controls is turned off.I secured the
LineandNeutralconductors with crimp connectors, rather than just wrapping the 20 AWG wires around the screw terminals, because the case halves join without perimeter nesting: a bare millimeter of air in the gap between the halves separates the terminals from my fingers. A layer of good electrical tape on each side improved that situation, but not by much.The complete lack of strain relief clamping on the cords prompted me to route the wires around the screw bosses. After a function check, squirts of hot melt glue anchored the two cords somewhat better.
Aaaaand I secured that loose strap on the right with an (identical to the others!) screw from the Tray o’ Random Screws. The other switches had both screws installed, so this one must have been a QC escape.
They suffice for the purpose, but … caveat emptor!
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Terms of Use: Do Not Read
Attempting to use the guest WiFi network requires agreeing to their Terms of Use:
Guest WiFi signon – poor color choice While it may be possible to read that, I pretty much gave up.
While one should never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity, it’s also true that any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
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Optional Phreesia Authorization
Our medical practice has been Borged by Optum, which is, through a number of corporate cutout layers, owned by UnitedHealth Group, so (despite claims to the contrary) our doctors effectively work for a health insurance company. No, they may not be paid by UHG, but following the money in reverse shows the flow of influence.
Apparently this has slightly affected the original practice’s reliance on Phreesia for pre-visit sign-in information collection although, as before, Phreesia still really wants to scatter your precious personal bits to the far corners of the InterWebs:
Phreesia optional authorization – 2024 version The wall o’ text is a bit shorter then the earlier version and cannot be scrolled or printed. It still admits:
There is the potential for my health information … to be subject to redisclosure and to no longer be protected by the HIPAA Privacy Rule.
Yes, I understand that’s the whole point of getting me to agree to release my private bits to Phreesia, so they can make money by selling it to the highest bidder(s).
What’s new is the previous page in the sequence, of which I do not have a screenshot, presumably coming from Optum, emphasizing in bold type that I do not have to authorize Phreesia’s data collection.
I infer this means two things:
- Optum / UHG has had their awareness raised about this nonsense
- Phreesia contractually requires that dark-pattern page
Yes, I understand that I have no privacy and should get over it, but somehow this sort of behavior rankles …
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Sillcock Faucet Alignment Wedge: Getting the Angle Right
A pair of frost-free sillcock faucets arrived to replace the house’s leaky and un-repairable hose bibs. The faucet must be mounted at a 5° angle to let the water drain out when it’s closed:
Everbilt Frost-Free Sillcock faucet – installation One might expect the
Alignment Wedgeincluded with the faucet to have a 5° angle. Because I can both measure and math, it has a 1° angle.Well, I can fix that.
Start by scanning the bottom (widest side) of the wedge and apply GIMP’s
Select by colortool:
Sillcock faucet alignment wedge – GIMP color selection After a little manual cleanup in
Quick Maskmode, apply a 1 mm inset to ensure it snaps around the pipe, convert the selection to a path, export it as an SVG image, and import it into OpenSCAD to cut the angle:// Sillcock faucet alignment wedge // Ed Nisley KE4ZNU - May 2024 MaxThick = 5.0; Tilt = -5.0; PlateOA = [60,40,MaxThick]; // XY = original angle plate size difference() { linear_extrude(height=MaxThick,convexity=5) offset(r=-1.0) import("/mnt/bulkdata/Cameras/2024/Shop Projects/Sillcock Faucets/Sillcock faucet angle washer - outline.svg", center=true); translate([-PlateOA.x/2,-PlateOA.y/2,MaxThick]) rotate([Tilt,0,0]) cube(PlateOA,center=false); }The solid model goes into PrusaSlicer for duplication & slicing:
Sillcock faucet alignment wedge – PrusaSlicer layout And comes off the printer looking just about like you’d expect:
Sillcock faucet alignment wedge – OEM vs printed The far side of both wedges are 5 mm tall, but you can see the difference four more degrees makes in the front.
It’s even more obvious from the edge:
Sillcock faucet alignment wedge – on pipe The wood siding where these will fit is perfectly vertical, so getting the wedge angle right isn’t really optional.
I must drill the existing hole in the sill plate out to 1-1/8 inch to clear the pipe fittings, plus the wood around the screws holding the current bibs to the wall will surely need some buttressing, but all that’s in the nature of fine tuning.
FWIW, this was the first 3D print after the move and I’m happy to say the M2 had no any need of adjustments.
The WordPress AI image generator apparently ignored the post text and produced a stylin’ picture of an arched bathroom faucet over a rimless sink, which I shall leave to your imagination.
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ssh_agent vs. The New Hotness
A recent Manjaro update killed whatever magic held the passwords used for public-key
sshaccess from my desktop box, requiring me to remember the passords and type them correctly.After considerable thrashing around doing what I thought I knew about
ssh_agent(which, yes, was being autostarted to no avail), it seems that thread applies and the fix now requires creating/etc/profile.d/gcr-keyring.shwith this burst of line noise:export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/gcr/ssh
Then tell
systemdabout it:systemctl --user enable gcr-ssh-agent.socket systemctl --user enable gcr-ssh-agent.service
Whereupon, after a reboot presumably causing
systemdto make the right thing perform the right act at the right time, It Just Worked™.I used to have some mild sysadmin mojo, but obviously if you don’t do it all the time, everything you think you know becomes wrong.
The WordPress AI did generate an image based on the above text and the prompt
linux overlapping windows on monitor:
WP AI Image – linux overlapping windows on monitor Which looks a lot like those stock photos filling otherwise empty space in spammy web pages, doesn’t it? In point of fact, the AI Feedback on Post had this to say:
While the AI-generated image may align with the content, consider using original or more contextually relevant visuals to maintain the professional look of the website.
Couldn’t have put it better myself. Thank you, AI image & text generators, for your help.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 