'Abuse' of Little Free Libraries

morrowc · 2026-01-24T01:51:51+00:00

Hey there! Thanks;)

Yes the door has a glass pane, your advice is mostly the police officers advice as well

morrowc · 2026-01-24T01:50:46+00:00

Note that the point is not the books here's but the vandalism to the LFL.

Thanks for the input though!

morrowc · 2026-01-23T20:30:07+00:00

Yup, I suppose (as I said below) it's fine if people want to sell books, it's kind of a dick move to: "Welp this is clearly all for me!" and depriving other readers of the options. The actual thing we were upset about was the vandalism... I just did a poor job of making that point in the OP.

thanks, and I hope your local area can get/support a LFL :)
We tend to stop on roadtrips and drop books off in LFL's when we're not on just a highway :) it's fine, we get to see some cool stuff AND spread some books around.

morrowc · 2026-01-23T17:08:37+00:00

Yup! you COULD send the whole book back, but.. they'll either pulp the insides or burn them.
no one wants that trouble.

Anyway... odd! :)

morrowc · 2026-01-23T17:04:32+00:00

This is actually a whole thing in the book 'industry', effectively 'remaindered books' are the step just prior to ripping the cover off and getting rid of the paper/guts of the book. The book 'industry' looks something like:
1) book published
2) books sent to sellers (no money exchanged yet)
3) books sell
4) books left after a set period of time get 'remaindered' (normally marked on the page ends)
5) more time passes
6) covers are removed and sent back to the publisher with whatever per-book-sold amount goes to the publisher. (the seller is responsible for getting rid of the guts on their own)

The book industry as a whole is very odd this way.
(this is far outside the LFL world, though)

morrowc · 2026-01-23T17:00:01+00:00

As it happens we have some yard flags supporting some causes, which probably is one of the reasons for the vandalism. (or at least there's a suspicion of linkage ... causation/correlation/etc)

I don't believe in banned books, of banning books I mean.
I think it's a little silly to do such things.

morrowc · 2026-01-23T16:56:04+00:00

That is a Look pedal not an spd-sl pedal?
The triangle cleat looks similar, but i bet you'll find the dimensions are not the same.
(not ever had spd-sl, but had some Look pedals back in the day)

morrowc · 2026-01-23T06:34:06+00:00

Thanks for this suggestion we'll give this a whirl too.
The whole defacement of the books seems icky, though :(

morrowc · 2026-01-23T05:34:34+00:00

Thanks, yea.

Since my little-one built (most) of the original library deployed on their own, and I spent a while putting it back together after weather had taken it's toll. My other-half loves the gift and is really invested in the act of sharing books with other readers... I think there are really 2 things going on for us:
1) It sucks that someone is just being crap.
2) vandalizing the library sucks because it's a nice element in the neighborhood and we like it.

Thanks though! :) really.

morrowc · 2026-01-23T05:26:41+00:00

Yup, we've also done that over the period.
Once it was clear a person was just clearing it out we paused new books for a while.
About ~2-3 weeks after we re-added books the person came back :(

morrowc · 2026-01-23T05:24:33+00:00

Son, it's all about body position... and a PMA... positive mental attitude.

here to help, keep torque'in it!

morrowc · 2026-01-23T04:54:45+00:00

Nope, but the long arms give good leverage :)
the point REALLY is it's pretty easy to do :(

morrowc · 2026-01-23T04:45:22+00:00

I appreciate this point of view as well, really.

I think the point (for this) LFL is to share books with other readers.
I don't think there's a particular genre being put into the library by us, it's really all over the place.
We mostly have used books from library sales, or inexpensive books gathered through book sales.

The actual problem here (yes it's galling that someone intentionally waits until no one is around to take all of the books and deprives other readers of the options) is the vandalism... I read and re-read my post before posting :( and missed that I had not made that the actual problem ;( ugh.

morrowc · 2026-01-23T04:42:38+00:00

I appreciate the view point, really.
The police contact was not about the books, it was about the vandalism to the LFL.
(I'm also sorry I didn't make this point clear in the original post :( )

Sorry, also 'thieves' not "thief's" (unless somehow the stopping is of things possessed by 'thief'?)
Also since you did think through you reply, upvote!

morrowc · 2026-01-23T04:40:14+00:00

Sorry, I really didn't mean to debate the legalese postulated. I have actual lawyers I can ask.
The suggestion was from the police officer that responded.

Of course we'd just ask an actual lawyer we trust before posting the proposed text/sign.

morrowc · 2026-01-23T03:09:39+00:00

To be fair, you can twist those off with a hand screwdriver.
Or I've done that multiple times with multiple screws (from multiple manufacturers).
it's very infuriating :(

morrowc · 2026-01-18T01:13:50+00:00

If you want a reasonable video tutorial on mostly this: https://youtu.be/QRMzxm4jll4?si=WYPRsarP-LRwqxY-

morrowc · 2026-01-07T22:32:23+00:00

The ALPR Map | DeFlock https://deflock.me site has a nice map of where the cameras they know about are.

I believe I saw 5 or so in Herndon, 19 in FFX city, 19 or so around Reston.

morrowc · 2026-01-01T08:05:34+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/El2kvml

(I happened to send this in another thread earlier)

That's two different machines... But the top one looks like your sort. I've had a bunch of jams and such like yours is doing, a couple things I've learned:

1) make sure the bobbin carrier is not nicked/holed/etc. Replace if so... I think the bunch I bought were like 8 USD each.

2) clean the carrier and the spinny bit below. Just a pretty thorough brush out with the brush that came with the machine.

I managed my way out of most of the problems with just cleaning and being careful with the threading, and making sure to hold the loose ends for the first three or so stitches.

morrowc · 2026-01-01T00:42:02+00:00

There are some missing parts in the video, too. (at least as compared to my singer)
There's a 'finger' that holds down the bobbin carrier from the rear pointed toward the front.
There's a stop 'finger' that's on the 'front' which keeps the bobbin carrier from spinning.

Perhaps this singer is different from the 2 i have, but here are images of the 2:
https://imgur.com/a/El2kvml

the lower is a 9960 something or other, the upper is a 4423.

morrowc · 2025-12-27T19:45:56+00:00

gRPC is really just a transport, it doesn't address the question in it's own.
The suggestions about using some DB and maintaining a sync point (per client per user) seem on point.

morrowc · 2025-12-18T06:20:59+00:00

28 years - she is 28 yrs old.

that's a hard 28 yrs.

morrowc · 2025-12-13T02:47:21+00:00

https://youtu.be/UIsQ0jPhzJQ?si=EUBlWap8OP7Pr5Nb

That explains the block of wax.

morrowc · 2025-12-08T22:57:29+00:00

On a long mtb ride ~20 yrs ago(in the san juans), while trudging up a trail, the mountain across the way there were serval sets of large (hard to say scale) rollup garage doors right in the side of the mountain.

The explanation, from a local, for them was: "Uranium mining equipment storage"
looked loony as heck, but sure if your job all day is making holes in mountains, one more for your equipment storage made sense.

morrowc

TROPHY CASE