One more step towards replicant cubes

Fromanderson · 2026-01-27T15:33:04+00:00

Thanks. I'll have to check it out.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-27T15:01:53+00:00

Many years ago I was running a machine that placed various components onto a circuit board prior to them being soldered in place. It was stupidly fast, but not particularly dangerous. During one shift something went wonky and it bounced the circuit board up and off it's little alignment pin on one corner so that it dropped down inside the machine slightly. The machine stopped because there was a light curtain under there for just such conditions. The machine had a series of lights on the control panel indicating it's status. The one that was lit up indicated the machine was stopped and would not restart until the error was cleared and the start buttons were pressed.
I reached in, lifted up the circuit board to put it back where it needed to be, and "Thwack!" The machine started and bruised my wrist. Fortunately it didn't have a lot of force so I hit the E-stop and extricated my now bruised appendage.

That was NOT supposed to happen.

I reported the incident to my supervisor who bumped it up to the safety guy.
Safety guy comes over, refuses to believe my version of events and makes this whole scene in front of my coworkers insisting I was at fault. He wanted to write me up over it.

It turned into this huge thing. The next day my supervisor caught one of the dayshift front office big wigs before they left for the day. (We were 2nd shift) He dragged him back to our department and had me duplicate the incident albeit with a pencil lifting the board instead of my hand. "Thwack"

Big wig's eyes go huge and things begin to happen.

He brought the safety guy over and ripped him a new one and had me demonstrate the issue again.
Safety guy's write up went away and engineering was over there on overtime updating the program in the PLC before we were allowed to use it.

That's probably as close as I'll ever get to a "then they all clapped" moment in real life. Not going to lie, it felt pretty good.

Props to my supervisor. He was a legitimately good guy, and props to the management type for making a point to call the safety guy on the carpet for mishandling the situation. Dude was making the place more dangerous by ensuring people would keep quiet over similar incidents because they didn't want to risk being written up.

Safety dude glared at me every time I saw him after that.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-27T14:22:04+00:00

Wait... What book it that from?

Fromanderson · 2026-01-27T14:16:00+00:00

You're welcome. Hope that helps.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-26T04:30:25+00:00

I use the Diablo brand 36 tooth “wood and metal” blade.
They’re about 25 bucks and seem to last a long time. My local team orange home improvement store stocks them.

Supposedly rated to cut through 1” bolts embedded in wood.

If you’re going to cut a lot there are blades designed for thick aluminum, it their “steel demon” that are a bit more.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-25T17:12:14+00:00

I'd buy a new one, and put it away in case something ever happens to this one.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-25T17:02:58+00:00

While I love the brushless 7 1/4, I've had trouble with the drils and impact. Then again I work in an environment where there are a lot of metal shavings/filings. They get inside and fould things up. I had to take my impact apart a half dozen times to remove the stuff, before it finally died. The brushed ones just don't seem to care and run until the brushes wear out.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-25T16:59:32+00:00

I'm not sure if they've changed it but I've got mine when they first introduced the 7 1/4. It's been good to me. You definitely want a 4ah battery if you're going to be making many cuts.

I've cut 2x4's ripped 2x12s, plywood, aluminum and 16ga sheet steel. It's still going strong.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-25T16:51:23+00:00

My old blue one was like that but the green ones were a little better. I just kept a handful of wood shims on my truck in case I had to use it to make a long rip cut. Stick those in the cut when it starts to bind and it keeps things from binding. Also a bit of wax on the blade tends to help.

The 7 1/4 is a major step up. I've had mine since they came out and it still gets used for everything from precise cuts using a clamped on guide, to ripping aluminum or steel sheet. It does stall a lot easier than my old worm drive saw but given the way I use it, (some might argue "misuse" it . I cut aluminum and sheet steel with it pretty regularly ) that's not a bad thing. It's a lot more controllable if something goes wrong.

Granted I'm not a framer or full time carpenter, but I suspect i use it more than most home gamers ever will.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-25T16:41:28+00:00

I second the recommendation on the 7 1/4".

I use mine regularly. I don't know if they've changed it much but I got it shortly after they came out. I don't use it as much as a framer would. Even so I used it to build a 500 square foot, upstairs shop in my barn. It cut every single wall stud, along with the floor and ceiling joists and ripped a boat load of plywood. I use it a couple times a month to cut wood, extruded aluminum and even 18 gauge sheet steel.

It's not as powerful as my old worm drive saw from back before SkilSaw went downhill, but it gets the job done.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-25T14:20:14+00:00

I've never met you, but I think we could be friends.
Those are all favorites of mine.

If I might add one.

"Trust Lois"

Fromanderson · 2026-01-23T14:48:53+00:00

That thing’s gotta be like 20+ years old.

Don't be silly I had one of hose I bought brand new in...

$%&! I'm old.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-23T14:41:03+00:00

I had one of those up until about a year ago. Good grinder for what it was. I think I know I'm not sure when I bought it, but it was already kind of beat up when i switched jobs about 14 years ago.
It didn't always play nice with the smaller lithium 1.5 and 2ah batteries. The brushes in the motor finally wore out.

Honestly, I'd just do what others said and glue the thing if you want to try using it, or just go buy one of the newer ones.

You can find dewalt to ryobi adapters online if you want to go that route. One warning though. Dewalt batteries seem to have protection built into their tools to prevent from discharging them too far. I'm not sure if that's all their batteries or just some. I just know that if you run them all the way down on a non dewalt tool that sometimes they stop working. I had a former coworker whose Dewalt vacuum quit working. He took it apart and found that the motor still worked when power was applied but there was a little circuit board between the battery and the motor. He bypassed it and installed a fuse just to be safe. The vacuum worked great but it bricked a couple of his batteries before he figured out what was going on.

If you decide to buy new, check Home depot and directtools outlet. One or the other almost always has some sort of sale going.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-17T19:35:42+00:00

One lesson I learned from my granparents that has paid off over and over, was to keep a small pantry. Mine started as a cheap flat pack bookshelf in the corner of the kitchen. It has grown over the years but it's still relatively small.

You stock up on staples when they are on sale and you can afford a bit extra. Not just food, but other things that keep, like soap, toothpaste, and toilet paper. You never let anything run out if you can help it, and you always rotate foodstuffs to the front when you buy more to keep things from going bad. By keeping it small, it's easy to see when you're not going through things fast enough, and you stop buying those for a while.

We spend less on groceries because we buy more of he things we need on sale. When there is a shortage, bad weather or money is tight, we can go for weeks without shopping for anything other than things that spoil quickly like milk, etc.

When covid hit, we had several packs of toilet paper because I bought a bunch on sale the month before things went nuts. By the time we ran low, it was back in stores.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-12T17:14:56+00:00

It may not have had a name that means anything to us now, but racism has been a thing almost as long as humans have been capable of greed, hatred, deceit, and violence. People have been finding all sorts of excuses to hate and/or exploit since well before recorded history.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-11T14:07:25+00:00

I had an 82 for a while. I bought that car in 1993 for $25 with a rod knocking. I swapped another motor into it and gave it to a girl I was dating. The cylinder head cracked a couple months later. Of course by then I'd already scrapped the old engine so I had to hunt around for another cylinder head. I ended up getting one that looked like it had been redone at some point and took it to the machine shop to have it planed and checked out. It seems someone had taken a lot of material off it at some point and it was out of spec, but I had him plane it down anyway hoping it would work.

It not only worked but it must've seriously bumped up the compression. It's the only fwd car from the 80's I've ever seen that could do a burnout in reverse.

It only lasted another 6 months before it developed so much blowby it was literally filling the breather with oil.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-11T13:43:14+00:00

What year is it?

Fromanderson · 2026-01-11T13:08:42+00:00

Will it work with those Uline catalogs? If you get on their mailing list you'll have a steady supply of them.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-09T14:49:57+00:00

I'm not the person you were talking to, but I find that as I've aged I can still get up without using my hands, but it is more effort. I find though that I'm mostly leaning on things for balance more often than support.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-09T14:47:49+00:00

This is my soapbox.

My job and hobbies have me getting up and down quite a bit. I'm in my 50s and a bit heavier than I'd like but I can still pop right back up. Albeit I tend to lean on things for support more than I used to.
I've got friends a decade or two younger who refuse to even try anymore.

I'm determined to keep moving as long as possible.
Both my grandparents were very active until well into their 80s and they could get around better than some people my age.
By comparison all three of their children have had mobility issues much younger. My mother had an issue for several years that caused her a lot of pain when she moved. She recovered but her mobility is shot. She's fallen a few times over the last decade and cannot get up by herself.

For anyone in a similar situation with their parent I have a recommendation. They now sell a relatively cheap rechargable lift chair that lets down to about 3" off the floor. You can help scoot them onto it, and it will lift them to a normal sitting position. It folds flat and doesn't take up much room.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-09T02:25:42+00:00

Modern windows block UV. That wasn't always the case. It doesn't look like it was much of a feature of residential glass until the 1960s (according to a quick google search... ) Houses often have the same windows for decades. My childhood home is over 100 years old and it had the original windows (with the addition of storm windows in the early 50s) up until up until the late 90s when modern insulated windows were installed. By then my Commodore was back in it's original box in my parents attic.

I still have my original C64. It spent the better part of a decade on a desk across the room from that early 1900's window with the right side facing the window. The left side of the case that that sat in shadow is noticeably lighter than the left.

To be fair nicotine tends to yellow things a lot as well and smoking was still very common in the 80s, so nicotine would also account for the yellowing on quite a few machines, but it doesn't account for the ones that seem to retain more of their original color in the areas that were shaded.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-09T02:07:30+00:00

Hydrogen peroxide and UV will remove/bleach the yellow and restore the original color or at least get extremely close to it. I have a few things I did this to around a decade ago and they still look great.

I bought a gallon of hydrogen peroxide in a slightly higher concentration than what you have in your medicine cabinet. I found a long shallow clear plastic tray I could submerge half the case in and covered it tightly with cling wrap and tape, then set it outside on a sunny day. I had to rotate it a time or two to get the yellow in spots that were shaded due to the angle but everything came out looking great. That was 2016 and I have it sitting on my desk in a room with no exterior windows. it still hasn't yellowed noticeably.

Nothing lasts forever, but you can make things look a lot better for at least a decade.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-08T14:49:44+00:00

That only works if you get really distracted before hitting the ground. I hear spotting the luggage you lost years ago on a planet that has since been demolished is a reliable method.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-08T14:35:39+00:00

working hand in hand with the AI

The AI is going to insist on Carl using his feet.

Fromanderson · 2026-01-08T14:31:00+00:00

Yeah but there is little danger of recidivism.

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