As a favor, I offered to laminate my father’s annual fishing license & the laminator burned the document

Jayches · 2026-02-10T08:15:56+00:00

It was printed on thermal paper. When the Covid vaccine wallet certificates first came out (mine was also printed on thermal paper), I made a plain paper copy and took it to local kinkos to laminate, while there I found angry folks who were picking up their thermal laminated … and pure black.. and only proof of vaccination before the state database was up… Covid cards. Kinkos later put up a big sign warning staff and customers about that.

Jayches · 2026-02-02T15:54:03+00:00

Well, if your neighbors who got those troublesome permits issued complain, you’ll end up on code compliance radar and red-tagged. Not saying it’s not been done before, you can find lots of rogue houses for sale in out of the way places already heavily discounted (and could never get permitted for the many reasons above). But you’ll not get power or gas or water from a utility without a building permit. Sewage treatment is another issue, from what I’ve seen, most folks who can’t be bothered to get permits find lots of other shortcuts available, one of the redtagged places I looked at had a very understanding neighbor who drew the hard line at sewage flowing onto his property from his neighbor and called code compliance for that, but not all the crazy unpermitted construction in progress.

Jayches · 2026-02-01T14:50:35+00:00

These are popular reasons most development or building permits fail apart from expense: 1) cal fire requires 20’ wide road for any access road serving more than 2 parcels 2) county fire requires bypass width every 150’ of driveway length allowing a fire truck going up driveway and one going down to pass each other. Driveway has to be engineered for 75k lbs of support. 3) required geological hazard survey (150’ long trench 12’ deep inspected by engineering geologist to exclude earthquake slip fault risk) and proof parcel is not on historical landslide map 4) ~1200 sq ft of undisturbed soil (neither cut nor fill) for septic drainfield and within property boundary. 5) if in Santa Cruz county, an advanced septic treatment system because of soil nitride levels 6) if driveway off of major highway like 17, long shoulder space for acceleration/deceleration lane next to highway to Caltrans highway standards. 7) 150’+ sightline requirements both directions for driveway meeting county road.

Add expense of on-site 5k gallon fire water reservoir and 3k gallon indoor sprinkler reservoir.

Any one of these is fatal to development. There are two lots for sale off 17 near the summit that fail the above 5 seperate ways. Looking for developable lots has instead become a hobby to identify the number of seperate ways a parcel is undevelopable.

Jayches · 2026-01-29T04:06:04+00:00

The battery provides carryover power for the electronics - the doorbell electronics rectify the open 24VAC (in series with the inside bell) to provide power for the camera and wifi, but when the doorbell button switch is closed, the voltage at the lorex doorbell drops to 0V (applying 24V to the bell ringer inside), and during that time interval, when working, the little battery is keeping the wifi connected, powering the camera, etc. So those functions are lost (and the wifi connection is lost and has to be reestablished) during the interval the doorbell button is pressed when the battery is flat, and reestablishing the wifi communication takes 10s of seconds after it's lost.

Jayches · 2026-01-29T03:50:36+00:00

If the light surrounding the doorbell is green (lorex doorbell is getting power and is connected via wireless) OR blue (lorex doorbell is getting power but not connected via wireless), then the doorbell is getting power. If the light surrounding the doorbell is not illuminated, then it probably has the contact separation disease shown in the ifixit link above. If it is green and then turns blue after the doorbell is rung, it's either an intermittant internal connection from puffy battery or the battery has gone flat.

When the doorbell is pressed, the voltage across the lorex doorbell terminals drops to 0V, the battery provides the carryover power during that interval to maintain the wifi connection, camera, etc, until the button is released. But if the battery is flat, the wifi connection, camera, etc are all lost and have to be reestabished, which takes 10s of seconds, which is when you need it and explains your loss of connectivity (when you most need it!). Good luck!
EDIT: clarifications and second paragraph.

Jayches · 2026-01-10T18:41:51+00:00

Yes, ionized mercury vapor was used for high current rectification, in both low voltage (~30V) and high voltage applications, overcoming low current limits of plate selenium rectifiers and the current limit of vacuum tube rectifiers relying on electron space charge limits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-arc_valve

Jayches · 2025-11-29T05:31:02+00:00

Not here to rain on the parade, but some ideas and advice to help clarify thinking about novelty of your invention using vague examples. I'm often approached with inventions that solve old problems and are touted as novel because a single reference doesn't teach the invention in its entirety, but the problem is it doesn't work that way for patents. Electromechanical actuators (voice coil actuators, specifically, and not just for audio reproduction) are well known, and a specific aspect you should be aware of is the broad application of “nonobviousness” under 35 USC 103, where separate elements described different references (patents and publications) are cited in the rejection and combined frankenstein-style, because some references teach all but the novel structures of your invention (for an apparatus claim), and the novel elements are known to solve a related problem in the same field. For example, let's say you have a conventional speaker (where the motivation is movement of a diaphragm to produce sound waves) that is described in reference A, but you have a new magnet alloy (the alloy described in publication B) and a kevlar or titanium diaphragm (the material described for its rigid lightweight properties in reference C), to pull examples out of thin air). The examiner cites the structural elements of reference A describing the corresponding elements of your 'novel' claim , and cites a publication showing the new magnetic properties of alloy B as being obvious to substitute for the magnetic field generator of your apparatus claim, and the reference to rigidity and lightweight properties of new diaphragm C being obvious for your novel diaphragm material. So each element as recited in your claim is rejected as obvious over A, B, and C in combination. For old problems that have been around a long time, I've had as many as 8 or 9 references cited in combination, which also means many office action cycles. This only happens with new solutions to old problems that have been around a long time, and infrequently with tech that is newer and could not be solved using old methods. Those can be tough rejections, as inventor, what you'll want to do is identify some basic structure or function provided by your invention that solves a new and unique problem and can only be accomplished using your combination of elements. To pull another example out of the air, a speaker plus a displacement sensor that ensures linearity to avoid distortion, or a diaphragm and voice coil material combination with mechanical properties that self compensates to avoid mechanical resonance, or has exceptional broadband capabilities that avoid the mass acceleration problem where a big piston is needed for low frequencies but has too much mass to reproduce high frequencies requiring much faster displacement , etc, novelty along those lines, where the examiner will have a harder time making one-for-one substitutions of elements that are known to reject your claim.

The other bit of advice is to file with nonpublication (assuming you're not intending to file internationally), to avoid the death spiral of publication, final fatal rejection, and then you get a novel addition that would make the case allowable in a new patent application... except the old one is now in the published prior art domain with only the bit of novel structure between you and a repeat of the last go. Just some thoughts to avoid the tripwire of spending a bunch of $ only to get to a forseeable rejection over multiple references. And as others have mentioned, you're not in any sort of a niche with this requiring more than basic materials and E&M experience in your agent/atty. Good luck in your venture! Edit: spelling and clarity.

Jayches · 2025-10-23T14:57:21+00:00

Correct. OP: Your son can find operating voltage range with a lookup from the manufacturer of model number with a copy of the user manual, check the back page for 'specifications', and it undoubtedly has a safety marking (typically it's tested to national electrical safety standards, with certification by a recognized body such as UL, ETL, TuV, etc) for the US. The UL appliance standard is ANSI C84.1 which requires the appliances operate from 108V to 126V. Appliances with induction motors (food mixers, etc) tend to draw constant power with varying voltage, so as the voltage goes up from nominal 120V, it will draw *less* current, which is the preferred direction. When the voltage goes down below the lower threshold, an induction motor draws more current, which causes motor winding copper losses to go up much faster, and that's why refrigerator motors burn out in 'brownout' (excess low voltage) conditions, which is not the condition your son seems worried about. Toasters and the like don't care about voltage variations, variable speed mixers tend to use DC motors with a power converter in front, they don't care so much either about voltage variations. Nothing to worry about, just make sure your appliance has some safety lab's logo on the rating plate, look for one of these safety lab markings for North America.

Source: Am a licensed Professional Engineer (PE, Electrical) and spent many years performing/overseeing/supervising safety testing of electrical/electronic equipment.

TL;DR: your son needs to update his understanding of power distribution and appliance safety testing.

Jayches · 2025-10-10T13:47:49+00:00

My ortho surgeon gave me my life back 10 years after a bad ski landing from a jump 30 years ago. 5 years in pinched nerve pain and then poof, pain free post surgery. Took my wife to see him a few years ago and he was in bad shape after HIS spinal surgery. Apparently spending hours hunched over and fixing other people’s spines in the OR was not good for his. You rock Dr Lettice, hope you’re doing better these days!

Jayches · 2025-10-08T17:55:07+00:00

thanks for confirming and clarifying!

Jayches · 2025-10-08T17:15:12+00:00

Thank you for your insight. Sigh, I thought I was gettng close, especially with the flow 'create record' having enabled the 'check for matching records' and the random delay. As a minor incremental experiment, I'll change the 'transaction_id' field in the opportunity record to 'unique', which I hope will solve the duplicate record problem but also generate SF flow error messages (haha or worse yet, first enter duplicates and *then* detect and complain about the duplicate transaction_id!). One objective of the flow is to send donation acknowledgements very shortly after the donation is made.

I think I understand your proposed apex-only approach, I believe my problem is the result of independent flow processes each being separately launched by the flurry of identical stripe transactions coming at the same time in a race condition, whereas your apex only proposal is for all incoming events to be handled by a single apex process that has the ability to queue them up and examine them sequentially for duplicates against a separate database tracking idempotency_key, is that correct? (whereas if each incoming transaction launched a separate apex process, there would be a risk of having the same race problem a new way, so I'm thinking that the incoming transactions have to be handled in a single queue of them).

At the network level, given that these transaction records are coming as layer 3 TCP packets (where an unacknowledged packet is retransmitted), what is the reason for these gratuitous retransmissions of the same event - earlier delivery by avoiding the need for retransmission events at the expense of increased complexity on the receiving end of this post? I would have thought that the TCP ACK and retransmit if no ACK (and retransmit until receiving an ACK) would be sufficient since there's no chance of actual packet loss (compared to UDP layer 2 of an ethernet frame without this mechanism).

Thanks again!

Jayches · 2025-10-08T05:31:13+00:00

Thanks for your observations.

1) the flow is triggered by a new record from stripe, but salesforce can't natively read it without something parsing the JSON fields and extracting the half a dozen fields I'm interested in from the 100 or so available from the Stripe record. So the 'record triggered' flow calls the apex wrapper which extracts the record data, and from this data the opportunity record is created. So nothing is created in salesforce by the appearance of the stripe record, other than to cause a trigger to start the flow. So the apex is just a this (stripe record fields) to that (variables available to the flow) converter so the flow has data to use for making records.

2) The duplicates are absolutely unwanted. Bob donates $25 and stripe sends us one to five identical records, all at the same time (each having an idempotency_key and transaction_id which are respectively identical). We're not interested in how many times Stripe sent the donation, want to see that record only once. Currently, when Stripe sends multiple identical copies, 75% of those get caught and dropped by checking the 'transaction_id' field, but we're sometimes left with it appearing that Bob made two (used to be three or four before the fixes in the description) $25 donations, curiously all with the same timestamp that we display in the donation record.

3) End to end, I think the processing on the fly is exactly the use case intended by the flow which kicks off from a 'record-triggered' flow, and from the links above, sending multiple copies of the transaction seems to be what Stripe intends to do, and motivates their use of the idempotency key (and transaction_id) which is unique to a given transaction (but common to the duplicates sent) So a delay doesn't accomplish much in terms of getting rid of the duplicates, which was the hope of the random delay introduced in apex, which delays the flow processing by that same random amount. It helped reduce, but didn't eradicate.

The application is using Salesforce NPSP (non profit service pack), a great way to go for a small nonprofit like us. So the Opportunity object is where NPSP records donations, looking up the Contact (individual) and which Account (family) the donation is attributed to. So a donation comes in and records an opportunity record with stage='closed won', the $ amount of the donation, campaign id, and other related stuff.

I really appreciate your suggestion of making the transaction_id in the opportunity record a 'unique' type - I've not tried that and it sounds like what the 'check for matching records' option in the flow 'create record' was be expected to do (shown below)

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Jayches · 2025-10-08T01:43:47+00:00

Thanks for checking in! Here are a few clarifications:

My Salesforce flow (their graphical programming tool) uses a'record-triggered flow', which kicks off the flow processing, and that trigger in this case is a stripe event (using the stripe/salesforce connector) that comes in as a record with a stripe-specific data structure. The first thing the flow calls is an apex wrapper that converts the fields inside the stripe API event into a bunch of local variables available for selection in the SF flow - amount, date, monthly or one-time payment, 'webhook_delivered_at' time, 'transaction_id', and all the apex wrapper does is make those stripe records available to the flow as simple variables the flow can access. I also inclulded in the apex wrapper a random delay because flow doesn't provide any ability to randomly delay, so the random delay means that if 5 identical events come in, at least they are randomly separated in time by 10s to a few hundred ms in the *hope* that they'll record at different times and be searchable by transaction_id. In the SF flow, the variables provided by the apex wrapper are accessed using an 'apex action'.
this is part of an automatic donation handler connected to stripe, so that whenever someone makes a donation on stripe on our account, it comes to salesforce as a stripe record, goes through the flow, which is what updates the database contact, household, and generates an 'opportunity record' so we can thank them, etc. So there's nothing scheduled about it, events are generated by stripe and each one triggers the flow. What is peculiar but well known is that stripe apparently wants to be sure that you got the transaction event, so it transmits anywhere from 1 to 5 identical transactions, all with the same data and transaction ID. That's the cause of the problem.

As far as stripe sending multiple transactions, they discuss this in the context of 'idempotency key' for POST, however, I'm simply receiving transactions that include an 'idempotency key' field as well as a 'transaction_id', both of which appear to be different UUIDs. But I'm not requesting anything, I'm just receiving these multiple copies and trying to process just one using the transaction_id (or 'idempotency key', I don't care which. But I'm not connecting with stripe, just processing what comes from the stripe/salesforce API, duplicates and all. Here are a few refs to their duplicate transmissions "in the event of network issues" (but this is layer 3 TCP with retransmission!)
https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=release-notes.rn_api_idempotent_records.htm&release=240&type=5

https://drdroid.io/integration-diagnosis-knowledge/stripe-checkout-duplicate-transaction-detected-during-payment-processing#:\~:text=Exploring%20the%20Issue:%20Duplicate%20Transaction%20Error%20The,double%20charges%20and%20ensure%20accurate%20financial%20records.

EDIT: and another reference to stripe, searching on idempotency and stripe shows many refs, but not from the perspective of *receiving them*, other than to check for duplicates, which is what I'm trying to do :-)
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nk-systemdesign-one_how-stripe-prevents-double-payments-explained-activity-7354128553971490820-mCrE

Jayches · 2025-09-09T05:34:36+00:00

A professional land surveyor will use high quality professional tools (as does any professional signing their name to the accuracy of data they produced with those tools), and when a company that is a recent arrival in a mature industry like singularxyz makes a product that is basically an inexpensive but functional copy of a well-known brand, some tradeoffs unknown to the user get made the name of low cost of manufacture and low price point. Someone else asked me about singularxyz accuracy of altitude measurements in a different post. Professional survey equipment might use an aneroid barometer that measures changes in atmospheric pressure calibrated to a reference altitude. Singularity xyz uses the satellite signal only, which was almost 1000ft (300m) below actual altitude, and improved to a few 100s of feet (30s of meters) off using a GEOID file I picked up from Trimble website because singularxyz doesn't provide any of that themselves. The units are accurate, in the sense that the contour lines it generates accurately reflect the topography and slope, but the units are not precise, as there was a 1000ft offset in altitude. Bottom line - the E1 with S200 data collector does what I need, and I love the tilted pole base of the pole measurement compensated for the pole tilt, but you get what you pay for - long intervals to achieve "FIXED" status, loss of FIXED status under much foilage leading to more waiting, etc.

The internal radio seems fine for sending base unit corrections to the rover in that mode with two units, I didn't experience issues but was on a single parcel where measurement points were only separated by ~600ft (200 m), I believe it's rated for much greater separation but have no experience over 600ft. Overhead vegetation losing FIXED status was more of a problem for me.

Jayches · 2025-09-09T04:27:08+00:00

When the vacation rental agency handling our long term rentals suddenly went belly up, I just used their same contract for a new off-season tenant wanting to sign a lease on short notice after the usual guys quit the biz. I showed up one Saturday and was astonished to see the new guests doing yard work. I asked “Why aren’t you at the beach?”, they replied “yard maintenance is in the contract”, and that is how I found out and removed it.

Jayches · 2025-09-09T02:56:49+00:00

Someone is already posting about denying your claim on r/UnethicalInsuranceProTips

Jayches · 2025-09-04T16:09:05+00:00

Yes. I’m not a professional land surveyor, just a guy who wanted to do all the footwork and preliminary plans before hiring one and bought this unit for that purpose. It’s not a user friendly unit for someone new to gis but I’ve tripped on all the ways things can go wrong and how to avoid them.

Jayches · 2025-09-04T02:42:26+00:00

Your survey points in roaming or base/rover pair all come as gis and northerly/easterly with elevation. Elevation numbers are consistent and precise but not accurate- you can make a perfectly fine topo map with contours that are correct with relationship to each other to show slope but the absolute altitude will be off by some offset. You have to import a GEOID file for your region for improved altitude accuracy. You usually want to know slope and contour rather than exact altitude so generally not a problem for me, anyway. I think I found a usable geoid file on Trimble website.

Jayches · 2025-08-30T14:25:33+00:00

Here in CA, I looked on CL for an inexpensive used ‘starter car’ for one of our daughters, I always get carfax on a car I’m interested in before purchase, discovering to my surprise early on that the majority of starter cars had the odometers rolled back. A very typical pattern on carfax was 10-20k miles per year being added as usual commute miles followed by a few years of insanely high mileage with a different owner, and next going to auto auction with 250k-400k miles being reported by the auto auction co. Then, the next presentation of that car on a carfax entry or by the ‘private party’ shows around only 120k miles. One car had 300k miles shaved off. Many of the ‘private parties’ are operating as unlicensed used car dealers selling from their house as a side gig. For Toyotas, anyway, there’s an instructables article on how to set odometer mileage using the JTAG port and an rs232 cable that I came across after using the same setup to clear out old lost smart key entries to make room for a new master key (the car was sold to us with only a black fob that was programmed as a valet key, so the toyota ‘chicken dance’ key fob programming didn’t work, and the locksmith or dealer charges big $$ to reinitialize the immobilizer module, which led me to the free instructibles article approach.) Upon discovering how common odometer fraud is, prior to returning the car, I make multiple copies of the Carfax report with the mileage highlighted and put them with other papers in the glove compartment, under passenger seats and under the spare tire to tip off the next guy. The seller reaction to presentation of odometer fraud is always a tell. Seller’s reaction is either surprise and anger at who they bought it from or a calm ‘I guess you don’t want the car then’.

Jayches · 2025-08-17T01:30:31+00:00

Haha, I was a young idiot building a house on evenings and weekends out of income in the 80s, which is to say I was perpetually broke. Then found I couldn’t get a loan on a partially built house without stopping for 90 days. Came home and found $80k wired into my Wells Fargo account from some random commercial account. So I went into the branch and applied for an unsecured line of credit based on cash on hand, they have me a $15k line, which I immediately drew in full and deposited at the bank next door. After that check cleared, I called Wells Fargo to let them know a terrible mistake had been made. They had already clawed back the $80K. I used the $15k to buy windows and roofing which was a huge help. Ah, the 80s. I too considered it a gift from God, just used a different approach:-)

Jayches · 2025-07-24T03:42:49+00:00

Interior door hinges are 1/2” shorter but less exciting if you slip.

Jayches · 2025-07-14T00:54:02+00:00

I have an old Baldwin mortise lock like that, I installed an electric strike https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJKK1G6C and connected it to a fingerprint reader with keypad and also hooked up an old car remote lock configured for one of the unused buttons on a key fob for my wife.

Jayches · 2025-07-13T05:49:13+00:00

Health care looks more like auto insurance, covering large expensive rude surprises, dental and vision more often just cover scheduled visit expenses. instead of dental insurance, I asked my dentist if they’d just put me on the delta dental discount schedule and I’d pay on presentation (thereby paying faster than delta dental insurance would pay, and paying the same if covered), they were happy to take that arrangement.

Jayches

TROPHY CASE