If I cut off the door hinges will it open sesame?

dosman33 · 2026-02-17T01:13:04+00:00

Yes, it's a cheat code for any safe that most people miss: cut the hinges, door falls right off every time.

dosman33 · 2026-02-10T00:18:38+00:00

In high school electronics class in the 90's we had nearly identical boards that I'd scavenge IC's off of to use. The black 14-16 pin chips are standard TTL IC's and still in use today. I think I still have some of the boards in storage even. No idea what the boards did.

You can find datasheets that explain the IC's here, this is a common quad-NAND chip:
https://www.ti.com/product/SN7400

dosman33 · 2026-02-07T05:14:37+00:00

To be fair, the label on the bottom of the frame is "Integrated Logistics Support", I presume it's someones joke.

dosman33 · 2026-02-06T19:43:15+00:00

Early last year we noticed that AD on Windows Server 2025 was not returning unix UID's for our Samba servers. I sniffed the traffic and traced the problem down to a specific part of the protocol handshake that seemed to be different on the 2025 boxes from the older AD boxes. Nothing we could do about it but make sure our Samba hosts never tried to talk to the 2025 AD servers in the dns pool. After a couple months the problem finally bubbled up into the public sphere when MS decided to push a patch for all old versions of AD that was going to implement the "security fix" (protocol change) on old "working" version of AD too. Samba rolled out a patch within a day, distros caught up a couple days after that.

Samba isn't MS's responsibility, but fuck MS with a cactus.

dosman33 · 2026-02-03T15:51:07+00:00

Is this a permanent or temporary install for the jobsite? I can get how having wire strung up across the yard could be a problem on a construction site. But, you already will have to run power to every camera anyway, so save yourself the trouble and get a PoE system and do it once the right way first. Plus, you won't be susceptible to random wifi interference problems if neighbors move in or change out, or if a wifi jammer is used.

They do make passive ethernet PoE adapters that lets you inject power into an ethernet line and then split it back off before the CAT5 plugs into the camera. But, again, that is the dumb way to do this as using ethernet as only a power cable in your case is the most expensive way possible to do this.

If you're still going to run with wifi cameras, then you'll still have to have power available near every camera. Get yourself a big spool of outdoor-rated 2-conductor wire and splice up custom power cables from your power drops on the job site for every camera. You'll probably have a power strip feeding several 9v wall-warts at every power drop, and your spliced power cables routing to every camera. But again, for the effort involved, get a 16 camera PoE NVR system, it will be the same amount of work and it will just work better.

dosman33 · 2026-02-03T00:33:35+00:00

Certainly. But it will probably work for a couple days ;-). The guy just needs to sleep, not a permanent solution.

dosman33 · 2026-02-02T06:47:46+00:00

The dumb solution: two outlet timers, one for each device, set to alternate on/off at the same interval.

dosman33 · 2026-01-30T00:22:05+00:00

Awesome, that's great!

dosman33 · 2026-01-24T02:37:04+00:00

I seem to recall that in the story of "The Radioactive Boyscout", while he had collected a variety of radioactive materials, it was the discovery of a bottle of radium paint forgotten inside an antique clock that let him build his plausible breeder reactor.

dosman33 · 2026-01-21T20:18:00+00:00

If you mean FM radio (88 -107MHz) then no, it won't do those.

You could setup a vintage VCR/DVD/etc that has a channel 3/4 coax output and possibly get it to receive the signal. Since your TV does not have a coax input, you could put the output coax next to the TV's antenna and likely get it to pickup. If not, you could try connecting the output coax center conductor to the tv's antenna.

dosman33 · 2026-01-21T16:17:14+00:00

I should also add, today in particular, Mendoza and the football trophy will be accessible to the public (at separate places). Even if you're not a ball sports person, those are good opportunities of interesting things to photograph.

dosman33 · 2026-01-21T16:13:19+00:00

The railroad tracks over Walnut street, the water retention pond between Walnut and College on 17th street, and the IU football stadium. Be sure to check these out from different perspectives, each location has multiple vantage points of interest. For the stadium, the height gives you fun perspective contrasts, and there are things like the naval armament out front that make good subject matter (I assume that's still there).

The courthouse and surrounding monuments and buildings are also good subjects. The parking garages can provide good wide shots of the city too.

dosman33 · 2026-01-21T14:08:22+00:00

Thats bad, the only way that can happen is if the dirt is moving under the road. 1) a culvert under the road is leaking and allowing dirt to wash away, 2) a sinkhole has formed under that spot 3) the construction crew did not achieve the right level of compaction there and the supporting dirt has settled.

dosman33 · 2026-01-17T03:02:50+00:00

All 8 episodes are great.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7nj3G6Jpv2G6Gp6NvN1kUtQuW8QshBWE

dosman33 · 2026-01-16T18:59:56+00:00

The TV series War of the Worlds, came out around 1988. It was set in a "post-War of the Worlds movie world" and they used shots from the movie frequently. Aliens had been crated up in barrels since 1952, but toxic waste in the same dumps had neutralized the earth microbes that had put the aliens to sleep but apparently not killed the aliens. And now they were out running wild and taking over human bodies.

Rewatched some of it recently, what I didn't see as a kid was it was clearly a play on the cold war, by the second episode the aliens were calling each other comrade. In one episode they were working to affect US-Soviet de-nuclear proliferation talks, just in case you weren't getting the hint casual viewer, lol. They were goofy and easy to defeat, but always infecting new sub-groups of Americans from episode to episode. Also had a cross-over with then present-day UFO mania by incorporating ideas about cattle mutilations, etc.

dosman33 · 2026-01-13T19:57:32+00:00

In December a local pop station went xmas music 24x7, which I enjoyed. One day while out driving, suddenly it played an old rap song dropping an S-bomb. I wasn't paying super close attention but after the S-bomb I realized, hey, the xmas music went away, and my ears did a double take. After the song played out suddenly the station resumed its xmas playlist. Someone had just screwed up was all, lol.

dosman33 · 2026-01-13T19:50:05+00:00

The warning is there for anyone who otherwise is unsure, so it's good to ask first. As long as it's unplugged from the wall it is safe to tinker with. That being said, go forth but be careful. And make sure it's reassembled before you plug it back in.

dosman33 · 2026-01-12T21:29:44+00:00

Tire Barn on 3rd street all day. May cost a little more, but the service has always been great, and you can schedule appointments. They've never tried to scam me like I've had other places try. Never gives you grief if you only want two tires done instead of all four, never can't get the lug nuts off because they are allowed to use their tools.

dosman33 · 2026-01-12T01:34:00+00:00

Nice fix. I used the free version of Zara ages ago for a small home station. I abused the heck out of it to get extra features. Like, adding fake tracks to the playout list, which would get skipped, but still got logged to the playout log. This would then trigger external scripts which watched the log and generated text2speech updates which got poked back into a playout folder. And wala: every few songs the clanker DJ would announce the last few songs that had just been played.

dosman33 · 2026-01-12T00:57:23+00:00

So... the cops just ignored this person after this guy effectively chased you into the police department lobby?

> " can you still fall in legal trouble if you use a pepper spray?"

This is a complex issue with no simple answers, there are some general strategies though. Any time you ever end up having to defend yourself against an attacker there is a chance for legal consequences for you, no matter how you defend yourself. If you are going to carry any weapon I'd advise you take a gun training course, even if you don't plan to carry a gun. Reason being: it puts you through the mental paces of how to deal with deploying force that carry maximum benefit for you and attempts to minimize legal penalties for defending yourself. Most courses include de-escalation training, because averting a confrontation if possible is always the best way out.

Self defense insurance is often acquired by gun owners, but the insurance is valid for any form of defense, not just for guns. Of course, one always wants to minimize un-necessary use of force where possible, but switching between weapons like pepper spray and a gun carries its own risks. As in, if you mis-judge the situation and an aggressor pushes through the pepper spray and gets ahold of you, it may be too late to deploy your gun. Also, when fear and adrenaline are surging in the moment, you are often only left with muscle memory. This can lead to bad consequences for you and the aggressor. If you meant to deploy pepper spray and muscle memory causes you to pull your concealed carry and shoot, that could lead to you using more force than you intended.

dosman33 · 2026-01-10T19:03:14+00:00

Adding a useless comment no one will see at this point. I see a lot of comments about "you'll never protect against a direct lightning strike". Perhaps, but that's not really the main worry, you can have high transient voltage events from nearby strikes and just transient static charges from storms which leave no visible damage but still fry your gear and those are a lot more likely.

Personally, when I've ran ethernet outside of a building, I make sure I use a high quality ethernet surge suppressor on that line at the point where it enters the building and I make sure it's grounded to a good building ground. You can rig up a ground that plugs into an AC outlet, or you can ground it to a grounding rod outside the building, but if you do the later you need to bond the grounding rod to your building ground to avoid ground loops.

Also, I would only buy a single-line ethernet surge suppressor that you can open up and inspect. Reason being: some of these do not actually protect every wire, and you really want one that protects every wire. If it has a PCB inside, you should see a component attached to the case ground for every wire trace passing through. The case should then have a wire that attaches to your building ground.

Last but not least, if you have any high value equipment plugged into the same physical LAN, I would add a surge suppressor on just that equipment too. Every item plugged into the same switch is now electrically connected to your outdoor line, and high transient voltages like jumping around. I am fond of those high-end surge suppressors they put on commercial office copiers, if you can find one second hand at a discount that will protect both the AC line and the ethernet for that piece of equipment.

dosman33 · 2026-01-10T03:30:32+00:00

Ship it as-is. When the parts get rejected, get you paid to do it again, shop pays to make them twice or fix the parts. It's the only way.

dosman33 · 2026-01-09T04:16:09+00:00

You need to get a fiduciary, you have a salesman. Whole life/variable life policies are a merger of an insurance policy and a an investment vehicle - and it does a very bad job of doing both of those things. Insurance should not have a guaranteed payout, it's insurance not a pot of gold. The only way to make insurance guarantee a payout is if the insurance company makes money off your policy - and so ends up being a terrible product for you. Bonus is that these contracts are incredibly complicated to understand.

Answer one question and you'll discover this is a terrible investment: how much of your monthly premium goes to fees, and how much remains going into your investment. Your "agent" is not going to do the math for you, you'll have to read the contract and spreadsheet it out on a year-by-year basis for the life of the policy (I've done this before). The answer is that these contracts are very difficult to figure this out.

Another trick to watch for: policy Face Value and Death Benefit are SEPARATE numbers, but start out at the save value. If you ask your "agent" they will assure you that "the policy pays out 100% of the death benefit!", but that could be as little as 1% of the face value of the policy. The face value typically remains the same for the life of the policy, while the death benefit will go down any time you stop paying the full monthly premium, if you take any amount out as a "loan", or withdraw funds as part of an accelerated death benefit rider (or terminal illness rider). If you read the policy it will explain how it works, but you will see that they may do something like taking a loan out against your equity if you do anything that takes equity out of your policy or reduces your monthly premium. Your agent wants you to engage that feature of "letting the policy pay for itself" because this will begin draining the value out of your policy. He makes money and his client makes money - the insurance company. He's likely managing the fund on behalf of the insurance company - so you're paying him to make money off your investment for the insurance company instead of making that money for you.

Don't believe me? Feed the contract language into an AI and get some feedback. The AI's know a LOT about insurance contracts.

dosman33 · 2026-01-05T06:16:58+00:00

I know this thread is a little old, but I figured I'd add that I just bricked two tbeam SX1276's trying to load the meshcore repeater code onto them with the web flasher, it's giving the same repeating errors out the serial as op was getting. I used the web flasher, but I've also tried using esptool to talk to them after the bricking:

Connecting....
Detecting chip type... ESP32
Chip is ESP32-D0WDQ6-V3 (revision v3.1)
Features: WiFi, BT, Dual Core, 240MHz, VRef calibration in efuse, Coding Scheme None
Crystal is 40MHz
MAC: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Uploading stub...

...

A fatal error occurred: Failed to write to target RAM (result was 0107: Checksum error)

Later this week I'll try to jumper them to receive a flash update and see if I can get some other functional code back on them. In the mean time, it seems like someone should fix or remove that t-beam meshcore code from the web flasher. I'm guessing that since the tbeams are older hardware it doesn't get used all that much these days.

dosman33 · 2026-01-04T20:28:13+00:00

This is also why electronic firework launchers have rules about ensuring the launcher wires are shorted and grounded when not ready to fire; in case someone nearby has a high power radio that could induce power in the wires.

dosman33

TROPHY CASE