captain_aggravated

This episode of Dull Men is brought to you by The 1990's. The 1990's: They Sucked, But You Probably Miss Them Anyway!^(TM)^

My house is full of ceiling fans, all but one of which have a janky, decades old battery operated remote control associated with them. The one in the kitchen dies all the time, it takes a single AA battery, no real problem. Last night, at like, 2 in the morning, I wanted to turn the one in the living room on. The remote is dead. Okay, lemme go get a AA...the battery door is oddly small.

I pop it open, there's a battery as big around as a AAA but half the length. Ah shit it's an N cell. What braniac looked at a AAA and went "still too huge." Dammit. Are N cells 1.5 or 3 volts? I don't have one but maybe I can rig up one or two AAs...A23? 12 volts? What in the, why does a remote control need automotive voltage?

Okay, The Past, you may be infinitely large, and full of infinite incompetence, but jokes on you: I'm from The Past. I'll see your bullshit, and raise you shenanigans.

I got out my tacklebox. From my tacklebox I got out my breadboard power supply and some jumper wires. I found a 20V DC wall wart in my bin O' wall warts with a center positive barrel jack on it. I used my multimeter to regulate it down to 12.5V, figure it's an open circuit, I jammed the pins of the jumper wires into the springs in the remote, and turned on my ceiling fan.

Now that the remote receiver in the fan is "on" the pull chain on the fan works.

Between the typical few cents a gallon for having a membership, cashing in some rewards points I had saved up, and a labor day deal they're running, which all stacked, I got a 98 cent/gallon discount on gas. What's better, my emergency reserve was getting a little old so I poured it in a car and filled my jerry cans, so I got a LOT of cheap gas.

I got me a lawnmower that runs on drill batteries, and I've also got one of those portable power stations with a couple solar panels. So I just mowed my lawn with garden fresh artisanal electricity harvested myself.

This one is worth at least three dagnabbits, a golly gee and two daggums.

I use KeePass, or some of it's forks, flavors and versions, for password management. I store the database locally on each device and keep them synced between devices with Syncthing.

I got a notice that a password on one of my accounts had been compromised. So I went to that website on my desktop, logged in, changed my password, and updated the entry in KeePass, saved and quit the application. I checked my phone to see if the change had propagated there...it hadn't.

I started poking around, making sure Syncthing was running, I went so far as to copy the database on my PC somewhere, delete it from both systems, and then put it back on my PC to see if I could get it to resync the whole file at once. The change didn't propagate.

Somehow I ended up in Keepass' settings menu on the phone, and noticed an option called "Database Caching." Turns out, it had copied the database to the app's cache directory, and it was pulling from there rather than the actual file. I guess assuming that the database would be stored in the cloud or something, rather than in the device's onboard storage.

That's 25 minutes I'm not going to get back, and now neither will you!

Not long ago I bought an Anker power station, a C2000. It's basically a 2.5 gallon bucket full of electricity. 2 kilowatt hour battery, a fairly beefy inverter that can put out 22A continuous and peaks at something like 33A so it can both run AND start my table saw.

It also has a solar power input, A DC jack on the side, with I believe an MPPT charger built-in. It came with a big weird flexible solar panel that is allegedly rated for 200 watts, I barely ever saw 80. I think it's built the same way as like a backpack solar panel, but it's 2 feet tall and 6 feet wide. Difficult to deal with.

Went to Harbor Freight, picked up a pair of 100 watt panels there. $119 each. More typical glass with aluminum frame rigid panel. These are working considerably better. The one thing: The panels have Anderson Powerpole connectors, I had to buy a separate cable set, and the Anderson to MC4 connector cable I bought at Harbor Freight is backwards. I guess it's designed to be a load-end and not a source-end cable?

I had to pull the Geordi Maneuver: Reverse the polarity.

What I did is cursed. I know it's cursed. On the adapter cables, I de-pinned the Anderson Powerpoles and swapped them left for right. So a red wire is going into a black connector. The color coding on the cable is backwards. You know that movie Defending Your Life, with Rip Torn? When I die and go to Judgement City, they're going to ask me about this. But it works.

It's cute and there's nothing you can do about it.

Izzy has two purrs, there's her contented comfy purr she does when settling in for a nap, and she's got her guilt purr which she does about an inch from my eyeball when she wants her breakfast. It's a noise she can make continuously for hours that is simultaneously irritating and adorable.

Or she throws things.

Tomato plants come in one of two types: Determinate and Indeterminate.

A Determinate plant knows what it will be when it's a seed. It's gonna grow into a bush, flower, fruit, wilt and die. An indeterminate plant isn't an organism, it's a program. A stalk will emerge, it will grow a stem, from the stem will arise an alternate pattern of leafy branches and flower clusters. At the crotch of each leafy branch will emerge a sucker. That sucker will grow like a full plant, alternating leaf flower clusters and leaf branches, with their own suckers.

Tomatoes also have an interesting characteristic: Anywhere they touch soil, they'll put out roots.

So pinch a sucker off a young tomato plant (part of pruning them) and then stick that sucker in some fresh, moist soil. It'll put out roots and become it's own plant, genetically identical to the original.

Took 5 minutes, most of it walking.

What rolls downstairs, alone or in pairs, rolls over the neighbors dog?

It's great for a snack, and fits on your back, it's Log Log Log!

I can't find one. I've tried about a dozen across Linux and Android, not a single one is even remotely usable. It may be that epub is a write-only format?

I noticed water backing up into my sink when my dishwasher drains. Oh no, I thought. A partial blockage. I used some Liquid Plumr.

Side note, you go to the store, and there's big jugs and small jugs and three brands and liquid and "gel" and one part and two part...I don't know if you've seen that youtube short of a tiktok of a Tumblr post talking about how there's no such thing as "glue"? Well this reminds me of that because who the fuck knows what these substances are?

Anyway I bought one and followed the directions and it didn't work so I'm probably going to have to take my sink drain apart which isn't going to be fun.

Greetings Fediverse woodworkers

Our little corner of the internet remains a happy, friendly and mostly wholesome place, barring the occasional bawdy joke. Steady stream of project sharing and technique discussion.

I figure about once a season I'm going to check in with the community at large to ask y'all if we can make it better. Any ideas for community activities or events? Anything you'd like to see around here? Anything cool you want to build?

In cherry. It's mostly a copy of one my parents have, though they requested replacing three drawers with a swing door and movable shelves.