dsavitsk

Sorry for your loss, Larry. I wouldn't worry about the son -- everybody deals with tragedy differently and it's not worth your energy to worry about him. Use the energy to take care of your mom instead.

Happy Birthday!

How to dissolve a tap embedded in aluminum: http://www.forkrobotics.com/2013/04/dissolve-a-tap-broken-in-makerslide/

Happy Birthday!

Finally got through to customer service -- only took two days -- and they are going to send new ones. So all good.

Perfect. That's just what I was looking for and I couldn't remember the name. Thanks.

We just got some new chairs, and they seem to have wrapped the arms in foam for shipping prior to the finish being, well, finished, so there is no finish on them. Shipping back seems like more work than refinishing them myself, but I am not happy. And they don't seem to be answering their phone.

Where are people buying large heatsinks these days? Other than heatsinkusa.com which does not have what I am looking for.

Are you sure it isn't a software/driver issue? Did you try loading a live Linux distro to see what happens?

Fuck them, too.

Glad to hear he's OK. Are you shitting me? Fuck them.

Yes. Bottom paragraph: http://www.triedandtruewoodfinish.com/environ.html

I use the original wood finish. It has worked well on everything from maple to walnut to teak to cherry. It leaves the wood feeling like wood, not like it has a layer of plastic on it. And if it ever starts to wear, you can just put another layer on. I'll add that over 7 or 8 years, I've managed to use about 1 quart, about half of which was spilled. Consistency is like honey. Use an old cut up t-shirt and put a very thin layer on. Wait an hour, and rub it off. Repeat 24 hours later. For a kitchen surface, 2 or 3 layers is sufficient. If you want to build up a sheen, 6 or 7 is nicer. Then burnish with a very soft cloth or very fine steel wool.

This is my favorite finish for wood. http://www.triedandtruewoodfinish.com/ It is an oil that cures to a hard finish. You just sand and wipe it on once a day for a few days. I use it on my amps, but I also use it on butcher blocks, etc. It is totally safe and even smells kind of good.

Get a USB3 drive with Windows to Go and use a computer at your local library/hackerspace/friend's house/university/coffee shop.

Heard back from OSH. All is well. Really the screw up here is the USPS, and even then, it was a temporary guy. The frustration was not being able to reach anyone. But as I say, all is OK. Sometimes you just need to vent

While we are complaining about vendors, a small warning about OSH Park: For those who don't know, OSH park is a PCB manufacturer, er, aggregator/middle man. You upload PCB files to them and they send you 3 of your design in a few weeks. They have replaced BatchPCB basically. For the most part, they have a lot going for them. The boards are reasonably high quality, the turn around time is not awful, and they are a neat purple color. And you can upload Eagle files directly without having to muck around with Gerbers. The downsides are that the turn around time is not really great, the purple is kind of ugly, and most importantly they are a little on the expensive side. For very small boards, it is a good deal, but once you hit 10 square inches or so, there are better deals out there. If that were all of it, OSH would be a great resource for DIYers needing one off utility PCBs. And in most cases, it is. Here's the rub -- there is no way to contact them. If something goes wrong, you are out of luck. Case in point, 4 orders from them were supposed to be delivered to me last week. According to the post office, they were, but in reality, they weren't. I have talked to the post office which said there is nothing they can do. There was a temporary mail delivery person working that day. I tracked him down to ask if he'd help find the packages (he was still working yesterday) and he said no. Our regular mail delivery person was back today and said he'd help, but seemed doubtful of finding them. It is only $70, so not the end of the world. The bigger issue is the time which is frustrating. Back to OSH, the issue is that I have tried to contact them to see if they can/will help, and there is no way to do it. I went to their support site and filed a question. They say they'll reply in 24 hours, but no such luck. I tried to escalate the issue, and it generated a new support ticket, referencing the original, which they have also not responded to. I sent an email to the only email address they publish, and this resulted in the automatic generation of yet another support ticket, which has also gone unanswered. So I assume I just suck it up. You get what you pay for, and sometimes not even that.

Ask 5 transformer winders and you'll get 10 answers. Short answer is nickel (which is the same as mu-metal) will saturate quickly with DC requiring a larger core. The increased core undoes nearly all, or possibly more than all, of the benefit. Some people still like it, but you'll get less bass and less power for the same size. And it costs a fortune. There are likely better ways to spend your money. But if you really want to spend it on big cores, check out Lundahl. For push pull it can work better. And push pull sounds better anyway. Slagle has experimented with adding a winding for filaments that is in the opposite direction as the main winding allowing currents to cancel. No idea how successful he's been. For small signal stuff with no DC, nickel or amorphous or whatever is better that steel hands down. Where the dividing line is between small signal and large is the question. Interesting. Less than an hour from me. Might be worth a trip down one of these days.

This may be too old fashioned, but I still us Pythonwin for Python on Windows. Have since 1.5.2.

Interesting option for quick and dirty wood cases: https://www.inventables.com/technologies/ply90-corner-brackets

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I am looking for a small, relatively inexpensive, VPN router box for a small office. Does anyone have a suggestion of where to look? Budget is a few hundred dollars -- more than a cheapo consumer model, less than an enterprise level box. Ability to be configured by an idiot who doesn't know much about this stuff (i.e. me) would be most helpful. Sonicwall is the name that keeps popping up, but I am not sure if that is the right solution or not. I would use pfSense, but so far as I can tell, there are no Windows VPN clients that work with it that allow one to connect at login (instead requiring one to log in and then connect to the VPN). As stupid of a requirement as that is, it is a real one.

I was college buddies with the guy who started Secretly Canadian. There are good stories that involve him, a 1lb bag of powdered sugar donuts from the Big Foot gas station, being the King of Bloomington, and his MBA roommate who looked like Sam the eagle.

Dill, smoked paprika, cumin, cayenne, onions, carrots, and garbanzo beans over rice is excellent. Put some yogurt and mint on it, too. Also, zucchini slices, cream cheese, and dill on pumpernickel is pretty good.