Truckwall is the worst ransomware

For over a year I’d been trying to rent a storage unit to stash some of my equipment in when not in use. I had no luck for a very long time– every offering I found was either over $300 a month and/or required an astronomically large deposit and a yearly contract. Finally one place I’d gotten on a waiting list with eight months ago had a unit available and it was surprisingly affordable, especially for a climate controlled facility, even after the $10 a month extra fee for the 24 hour access they never disclose anywhere as requiring an extra fee!

It’s built in and around the site of a former large bakery, which left South Florida due to a necessity to consolidate and the exorbitant costs of producing their goods here.

It now houses a large number of climate controlled storage units in the old bakery building and some additional ones in outbuildings, as well as a maintenance facility for rental trucks.

Of course there’s gotta be a reason it’s so cheap, and that’s that it is nearly impossible to access.

Access to the facility is only possible via one road, in one direction, which in turn is only accessible via one small isolated industrial district. During the day, that’s a two hour queue to get in and another half hour to get back out.

At night, it’s perfectly fine…. Until they suffered the Truckwall infection.

A tow truck driver collected the shattered remains of one of the company’s rental trucks from what looks to have been a pretty severe crash. The whole front of the pickup was smashed in and the cab appeared to have been cut open to rescue the occupants. The tow truck driver came in and dropped it…. right in front of the only access gate to the storage facility.

I came up trying to get in as he was filling out his paperwork and asked if he had to leave the truck there or if he could move it a few feet away from the gate to restore access (if anyone is inside the facility right now, they’re trapped as well!!)

He told me that he would…… If I gave him $150 in cash within the next ten minutes. Otherwise he’d just leave.

OOPS! YOUR STORAGE HAS BEEN BLOCKED BY TRUCKWALL!!!

I gave up and left after calling the city’s police department, who outright refused to send anyone.

There are just some things you have to, sadly, come to live with as a fact of life in South Florida, and one of them is that you sometimes you’ll find yourself locked out of where you want to go due to road based stupidity.
Infection resolved!

As I feared, TruckWall had trapped users of the facility. One of them had a large pickup truck with bull bars on the front. TruckWall’s payload was shoved back from the gate…. with slightly more damage than it had originally.

Your design is bad and you should feel bad for it.

A friend of mine posted a link to this on Facebook and it is literally one of the worst designs for anything I have ever seen.
Straight from the Walmart online marketplace, right next to the counterfeit Duracell batteries

Not that any of these have ever been designed WELL, but this is worse…

It’s literally the worst designed ear piercing gun I’ve ever heard of. Of particular note though, the description suggests it can also be used on the nose or navel. How? No, don’t. Just don’t. On anything.

Also note the random weirdass stud jewelry that comes stuck in a sheet of pink antistatic foam.

A little background on how these things are supposed to work: The tip of the stud (not seen anywhere in the description photos) is pointed. Not really all that sharp, but pointed. The butterfly back of the stud earring is placed in the other end of the gun and it’s driven by brute force (this one appears to use a spring) through the earlobe.

The most common place you find these things is in kiosks and stores in the mall. Claire’s uses a variation made by Studex and theirs has a disposable sterilized plastic cartridge that goes at the end. The gun itself can never be fully cleaned or sterilized, but at least most of it is not in contact with the person it’s used on. Thanks to this, infection caused by bloodborne pathogens left on the gun itself is at least rare. The complications caused by the body trying to heal a rough bruised hole created by jamming a somewhat dull metal stud through, that’s another story. This one, uhhhhh….

good luck

On this design you just get a little stack of steel plates with a notch in them. The outer one is bent to hold the butterfly back of the earring. Sort of. I can’t really imagine how it keeps it lined up such that the stud will align with the hole in the end – chances are better it just kind of crashes into it and either further tears the hole by skewing at an angle, or launches the backing into space.

But it’s not covered with any sort of disposable part…. and it couldn’t even be effectively wiped down to clean it because it’s got all those gaps between the plates.

A felt tipped pen and a magnifying glass are also included for your convenience. I can’t even understand why, as there’s no logical reason this thing should actually make the hole where you want it to land.

 

It should be no secret that I think the ear piercing gun is one of the worst products of modern misengineering, but this just… this deserves some kind of award. This is BAD and whoever designed it should feel bad for it.

Yeah. Do yourself a favor and go find a member of the Association of Professional Piercers if you’re looking to get any sort of piercings and want the process to go as well as possible.

And do beware of the utter bullshit that shows up in the Walmart “marketplace”. Same goes for Sears. It’s all the ecommerce equivalent of the Opa-Locka Hialeah Flea Market or something.

STUPID DEVELOPMENT UPDATE!

A few years ago, I met a guy who came down here to South Florida after graduating with a master’s degree in community planning.

He could not find a job in Southeast Florida at all, because no planning exists. “Communities” do not exist. What exists is just spray and pray.

Here’s what’s making me mad due to its total illogic and general idiocy.

American [Wet] Dream Miami has not died, sadly. The developers are on board and Miami-Dade County, seeking a new economic engine to the region, is pushing for it to get built as soon as possible.

The State of Florida doesn’t think it’s going to work and may step in to stop it, as they realize the critical lack of transportation and other infrastructure to support the project. Broward County looks on horrified yet powerless to stop it, like a damsel in distress.

Speaking of damsels in distress, let me digress a moment and share with you one of the fucking creepiest ad campaigns I’ve ever seen:

This shit makes me cringe so hard in so many ways, but— I’m not one to speak, I’m just the engineer.

So, since the last time I’ve yelled obscenities at the wall about this thing, they’ve released some informative graphics on the project:

Please note the “Graham Project” – even MORE townhouses. Gr8. Why the hell does it have “DEMO VERSION” watermarks?

The Graham Project is just fucking stupid. Do you really want to live there and find yourself locked up in 1-5 hours of traffic just to get to anything as common as a full sized grocery store? Great! You’ll love this place. The only planned access appears to be by the feeder roads to the mall.

Sprawl kings Lennar Homes also want to shit out another development over protected wetlands to the south of the Graham Project.

And now, site leasing plans revealing an interior floor plan!

First level. Click for full size, but the resolution isn’t much better.
Second level. For some reason the image won’t scale the same way. I can’t even.

The ski slope looks like a robot dick. I’m sorry. It does. There’s no denying that.

And now, here is why this shit will fail and fail hard.

Miami-Dade County’s economy has been in a meltdown since the mid 1990s that is now almost complete. Miami’s got effectively two classes: The rich, who either come from old money, own big foreign corporations…. and those who attempt to make a living working in what businesses are left in Miami-Dade County, or— the flat broke.

Studies have shown that Miami is one of the least affordable cities to live in (or around). Rental housing? Forget it. You pretty much need to be ready to buy a property to live in Miami-Dade County, and you need to be ready to buy that in cash, because you will be competing with foreign cash buyers for that property who just want to sit on it to pad their portfolio with some crap houses that keep a more or less stable value.

Nobody who is going to work in this shit show will be able to afford to live in Miami-Dade County.

Nobody who is going to work in this shit show will be able to afford the time and expenses to commute from anywhere that housing still remains affordable.

And, most importantly:
RETAIL IS DEAD. DEAD. DEAD AS FUCK. STICK A FORK IN IT, IT IS FUCKING DONE.

Yes, I realize the alternate use of this little fuckball is that it contains a half assed “theme park” and water park in its two large open spaces, in addition to what appears to be a specially constructed lake where you can… go fishing?? I don’t get it. Also, where’s the water coming from? If you’ve seen my previous posts on this cocksplat of a plan, I’ve brought up the question of where they’re going to get water. Florida is in drought again this spring, and we haven’t seen the worst of it yet. I hope you’re ready to deal with begging for sustenance from the Department of Water and Power. 😉

FUUUUCK THIS NOISE.

Triple Five group made a half assed promise to run shuttle service between several existing transit hubs to alleviate the congestion. That… just won’t do a thing. They would have likely run shuttles anyway for tourists – Dolphin Mall and Sawgrass Mills have had airport shuttles for years. They transport a few dozen shoppers back and forth a day and that’s about it.

God damn it. I’m not even done here, because the idiots over at Mana Wynwood decided to dig the area a nice posh grave lined in million dollar velvet and bury it. What is Wynwood? Wynwood is an old warehouse/business district that attracted an artists’ scene because it was a good place to find affordable studio space and host some events. Unfortunately, well—

If you’re a Miami native, please try to jog your frame of mind and look at this like an outsider to see how fucking ridiculous it is–

The site of an abandoned RC Cola factory managed to become the preferred site for music festivals and performances. It’s all outdoor – in Florida – no climate control, not even a proper toilet. And now… everything around the abandoned RC Cola plant is HOT SHIT. Just like what’s inside the RC Cola Plant’s portapotties.

So now the plan is, redevelop this area with high density luxury housing, multi-million dollar condos, and high end designer retail that nobody will be able to afford to shop at. Also, the buzzwords “trade center” were thrown out there, but look at every other “trade center” project that’s been attempted in Miami. The “trade center” never materializes and all winds up being “empty-ass class C office space” or ballrooms or other under-utilized shit.

Please note the amazingly good roadway access to this super high density urban development. Oh baby. Fuck you. Fuck. You. (Public transit is available via overcrowded buses that run every 30 minutes on NW 20 ST and NW 2 AVE, if you’re lucky.)

 

Artist’s rendering of…. bullshit, with nauseating perspectives.

What in the actual fuck are you thinking? This is like Brickell City Centre run through a few funhouse mirrors. Unlike the Brickell City Centre, it doesn’t connect to Metromover, so there’s no easy way to just stroll right on in there.

This isn’t … gentrification. This is just plain dropping a Daisy Cutter on the neighborhood and telling everyone fuckety bye. So much for that art community that drew everyone to the area – this will surely make the spaces they work in more valuable as valet parking spots than studios. Oopsie! I’d heard rumblings that there was an effort to provide artists new spaces over in Opa-Locka before everyone just runs out of money and leaves forever, but that’s… Opa-Locka… and safely preparing that space for new use will probably require actual Daisy Cutters.

So previously I’d also questioned the redevelopment of two sites in Broward – the old Plantation Fashion Mall site and the old Boomer’s Dania– those… those seem almost… well designed in comparison. Both are infill developments slated to be mixed use with janky condominium housing and very limited road access. But at least… at least they have road access… and aren’t expected to be quite the same sort of massive overload on the surrounding areas.

Holy shit, nobody has even a sixty fourth of a fucking clue here.

The Florida Repeater Council Meltdown

If you are a US licensed amateur radio operator, please take a moment to read the following:
FCC Part 97.205

§ 97.205 Repeater station.

(a) Any amateur station licensed to a holder of a Technician, General, Advanced or Amateur Extra Class operator license may be a repeater. A holder of a Technician, General, Advanced or Amateur Extra Class operator license may be the control operator of a repeater, subject to the privileges of the class of operator license held.

(b) A repeater may receive and retransmit only on the 10 m and shorter wavelength frequency bands except the 28.0-29.5 MHz, 50.0-51.0 MHz, 144.0-144.5 MHz, 145.5-146.0 MHz, 222.00-222.15 MHz, 431.0-433.0 Mhz, and 435.0-438.0 Mhz segments.

(c) Where the transmissions of a repeater cause harmful interference to another repeater, the two station licensees are equally and fully responsible for resolving the interference unless the operation of one station is recommended by a frequency coordinator and the operation of the other station is not. In that case, the licensee of the non-coordinated repeater has primary responsibility to resolve the interference.

(d) A repeater may be automatically controlled.

(e) Ancillary functions of a repeater that are available to users on the input channel are not considered remotely controlled functions of the station. Limiting the use of a repeater to only certain user stations is permissible.

(f) [Reserved]

(g) The control operator of a repeater that retransmits inadvertently communications that violate the rules in this part is not accountable for the violative communications.

Part H omitted because it is not relevant here but you must refer to it if you’re near Arecibo Observatory.

So now we continue.

Photo: hamsexy.com – in the aftermath of the infamous Dayton Volcano

The Florida Repeater Council was originally established to fill a need to facilitate the voluntary frequency coordination between amateur radio repeaters. This ensures that repeaters on the same or adjacent channels do not interfere with the use of one another and promotes more reliable communications using the repeaters.

In addition, as the coordination agency recognized by the American Radio Relay League, they supply their coordinated repeater listings for inclusion in ARRL publications such as the neat little pocket repeater directory books.

Unfortunately, at some point, egos flared, communication broke down, and it became the worst sort of bullshit secret society. (Communication? People using amateur radio are supposed to— communicate?)

I first became aware of this as an ongoing problem as early as 2000. At the time there were a lot of hams active in the Miami-Dade community and the need was there for several good repeaters with countywide and wide area coverage. When the trustees of these repeaters were approaching the Florida Repeater Council for coordination, either nothing would happen… or they would get coordination, but only if they were personal friends of the then regional coordinator, Nilo W4HN. Very mysterious.

In some cases they’d get coordinated to frequencies already in use.

For a while the FRC also had a statement on their website that suggested that uncoordinated operation of an amateur radio repeater was in violation of federal law. This statement is perfectly negated by the actual federal law, which I have included above for your convenience. Read it if you haven’t already. Trust me, FCC Part 97 is the LEAST painful piece of the FCC rules I have ever read. This was removed after a couple of years and I’m not sure exactly when, so I can’t put up a link to it for you to laugh at them with right now. Oh well.

After a couple years of frustration with this, some of my friends who were being repeatedly screwed over by the FRC by not receiving coordination and then having highly, uh, effective, Papertron 4000* repeaters coordinated onto the same frequencies they applied for, they attempted to attend the FRC’s regular yearly meeting at the Melbourne Hamfest to complain and attempt to get this fixed while they were there in person.

Well…. the meeting was also a mere piece of paper, in a sense. The Platinum Coast Amateur Radio Society had assigned them a time and a forum room at the hamfest. As I recall, it was something like Saturday at 2 PM.

Saturday at about 10:30 AM, an announcement went out over the Melbourne Civic Auditorium’s PA system that the FRC meeting was due to begin in five minutes. The forum room was currently occupied with another event, and none of the FRC board of directors were in attendance. 15 minutes or so into the meeting, it was announced where they were—

At a hotel conference room about a half hour drive away.

Needless to say, nobody was very pleased with them for this.

Eventually Nilo retired his position as director for our region, and the Dade Radio Club of Miami recommended that I apply for this position. I sent off an email to the president of the FRC (now deceased, listed as deceased but still as president on the FRC webpage and never replaced because they haven’t held elections in over a decade.)

We continued to have no coordinator for a couple of years, and during this time, not only were new coordinations impossible, but existing coordinations wouldn’t even expire if the trustees were not sending in updates or notified the council that they were unable to continue operations! Not to turn this into YET ANOTHER “Miami-Dade sucks moldy donkey nuts” post, but around this era, access to good repeater sites was very rapidly dwindling away to nothing due to property flipping, so there was just almost nowhere to put them. Yet, they continued on forever on paper. (This is what I was getting at with that “Papertron” comment above.) There were PAGES of paper repeaters, especially on the 70cm band.

You can’t take it with you. Or can you?

I heard nothing back for about a day then my phone rang off the hook. I got calls and emails from each of the directors insulting and berating me for daring to apply for this position, as to be qualified as a member of the FRC, I would need to be trustee of a previously coordinated repeater, and by attempting to join incorrectly I was now permanently disqualified from ever coordinating one.

I have never answered a caller with that much FCC part 97.113(a)4 disapproved language before. Here I was politely offering to volunteer to assist in coordination activities and they saw this as if a personal attack. Amazing.

You can see above that there is one actual coordinator listed, Dana. Dana holds ALL the data on FRC coordinations, and he was very difficult to work with. If he left, so did every repeater coordination in the state. And that’s … likely what would happen.

Finally, after the FRC’s dealings got even uglier, an effort was coordinated to bring about reform to the organization. They met at the Orlando Hamcation and pulled some of their old tricks – change of venue AND started the meeting earlier than the published time. What happened there was spectacular — the board of directors decided to eject all members (who were paying dues to be in there!). Since this meeting I’m told they’ve also been searching out the hams who joined the petition for reform and removing their repeater coordinations. This is going to be uhhhh grrrrrrrr-eat for the data they supply to the ARRL.

This is the full meeting on video.


Enhanced audio here.

Sounds like a RAGEQUIT to me.

So where does this leave amateur radio in Florida?

…. The same place where it always was. Loss of a repeater coordination organization actually makes almost no difference. The bands just aren’t that clogged, and there just aren’t that many places to put up repeaters, so with a bit of due care, hams can work together to avoid interference between their repeater systems. If you’re not sure if a pair is in use, listen to it for a while, at least with a good mobile radio (driving to the top of a tall parking garage can help).

And, for that matter, if you have an active repeater – PUBLISH IT! There are several directories that are community based.
RepeaterBook.com and RadioReference.com should be used, among others. If you run an open repeater and it uses CTCSS access, set the ID to tell listeners which tone to use, or follow the standard for your area. To be honest, while the little pocket books from the ARRL were neat, their use and relevance has faded nowadays.

And don’t send your contact information to the FRC if you don’t want angry phone calls. Been there, done that, laughed my ass off at them behind their backs.

Filters Of Wal-Mart: Worst. Oil. Filters. EVER.

A little background: I drive a car that was made when Ford and Mazda shared a lot of engineering and manufacturing resources. They both used the same engine, but with different intake systems and controls and stuff. I have the Mazda and the dipstick says FoMoCo on it! In addition, well— nobody but me knows what oil filter it takes. It actually takes a CARTRIDGE type filter. Most of the auto parts stores try to convince me it takes a spin on– it’s not. Anyway, this same cartridge filter is used on the Ford models, and I always got either the Motorcraft OEM filter or the Purolator cartridge for each replacement.

Until last night—-

I went to a Walmart store for some late night grocery shopping fun (with extra bonus pallet jack traffic and floor refinishing fumes) and picked up the Motorcraft filter. I noticed that all the boxes on the shelf looked like they’d been previously handled, and some visibly opened. I picked up the nicest looking one… Then I noticed… the box was rattling as I carried it back to my cart.

Pandora’s box.

This simply has never happened before. I opened the box to see why– what was rattling?!

What?!

The shaking was the plastic cage inside the filter rattling end to end. Curious— I’d never seen one of these where the cage was free to slide back and forth. That seemed like a ludicrously terrible idea, as if it did that with the filter in service in the engine, it’d eventually start wearing through the paper.

Then I noticed it was totally askew.

The whole thing tilted a bit like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Hey, what’s up with that seam? Normally those are pretty closely bonded.

OR NOT! Not bonded at all! I could totally open the seam up with no real effort.

 

Now I’d like to point out the color of this filter media. Normally, oil filters are made of a thick paper with resin coated fibers, or sometimes a synthetic nonwoven fabric. In the case of resin coated cellulose fiber paper, a thermosetting resin may be used. This is a material that remains workable and flexible during the assembly of the filter, then kicked into its final set state by the use of heat.

This filter shows signs of very uneven heating, coating, or both. No loose fibers were visible… which was a cut above the fresh hell you are about to see here.

Briefly— if you were to place THIS filter in your engine and run it there is a good chance most of the oil circulation would bypass it. Chances are you’d get away without any engine damage.

What follows are weapons of engine destruction.

Fram.

Fram is a name known widely for low cost, retail channel filter products— the cheap ones you’ll find at your local auto parts store. They were originally built by a division of Allied Signal, who have been bought out by Honeywell.

A wonderful testament to the quality of Fram filters follows. This is from the excellent Oil Filters Revealed page that showed me, years ago, that not all oil filters are created equal.

Russell,
I obtained great satisfaction from reading your oil filter survey.

I worked for two years as the oil-filter production line engineer in
an Allied-Signal FRAM facility and I can confirm every bad thing you
have said about FRAM automotive filters. That’s from the horse’s
mouth, as it were.

I’m also a quality engineer and can confirm that FRAM applies no
quality control whatsoever to any of the characteristics for which we
buy oil filters. I frequently saw filter designs which were barely
capable of meeting J806. Many of FRAM’s designs will block and go to
bypass after trying to filter very little contamination. There were
often leakage paths at the paper end discs when these were not
properly centered on the elements. Some designs had the pleats so
tightly packed against the center tube that they would block off in no
time. I had discovered that the FRAM HP1 that I had been buying for
about $20 Cdn was EXACTLY the same as a PH8 inside – the only
difference being a heavier can – no advantages in flow capacity. The
paper filtration media was of apparently poor quality and the process
of curing the paper resin was very inconsistent – elements would range
from visibly burnt to white. FRAM’s marketers admitted that there was
just about no way the public could ever prove that an oil filter
contributed, or did not prevent, engine damage. The only thing FRAM
tested for was can burst strength. Another problem that they have from
time to time is in threading the filter base – often there are strands
of metal left behind on a poorly formed thread.

I have not used a FRAM filter since I started working there. Their
claims are entirely and completely marketing bullshit.

If people really want to protect their engines, a good air filter is
vital (which excludes FRAM from that list as well) and a combination
of one depth and one full-flow hydraulic filter, together in parallel,
will do the job of filtration to perfection.

Thanks for doing a great job in trying to get the truth out! You can
quote me anytime.

[name omitted to protect submitter]

Nice to see that Fram’s complete and total lack of quality control continues to this day. The nice thing about having a car that takes a cartridge filter — NO SECRETS. In fact, I always inspect the cartridge after removing it and letting it drip dry a few minutes to check for any metal or plastic bits. Try that with a spin-on filter!

 

First up– the Fram Tough Guard.

Well, nice to know the resin curing issues were not present as there simply appeared to be no resin. None at all. On handling the filter, paper fiber came off on my hands. The uneven pleating is a little weird but not a show stopper (I’ve even seen it on Purolator filters for the first pleat or so right near the seam) and the seam is at least sealed, albeit… questionably so, with a great besplodging of glue.

But we need to have a look inside.

Hey wait WHAT?
First of all, that sealing ring around the edge appears to literally be a heat sealed on piece of kitchen scrubber. It’s got enormous pores and would allow contaminated oil to bypass right through it. Second, do you see the support structure?

No.

There is no support.

Oil flows through the filter from the outside in. Under high RPM operation, it may be presented to the filter media at a pressure of over 100 PSI. In response to this, I suspect this filter would simply cave in. Combine that with the loose fiber issue and this filter may spell death to your engine. A structural failure of the filter would shower paper fibers through the entire engine, where they can clog the fine oil passages to bearings, build up in the variable valve timing system, jam up solenoid valves, and possibly even block the oil pump’s pickup screen. That’s a whole lot of GAME OVER right there.

 

Well, at least this one only left slight amounts of fiber on my hands, compared to the next model up—

This is supposed to be Fram’s finest. The crem de la…. CRAAAAAAPPPPPPP

A mesh backs this filter media. It looks a little like the mesh that supports the cotton gauze media on my K&N air filter. The K&N, however, never has to deal with this kind of pressure!!

Royal Purple’s oil filter has a similar mesh as part of its media, however, its media is actually

a) bonded together;

b) backed up by a metal tube to hold the oil pressure!

 

Now let’s look at that media— as it RAINS loose fibers all over my hands.

This is Fram’s fancy schmancy “synthetic” media. I guess it’s supposed to be bound together by a resin, but that resin appears to be… just… not cured. Not at all. This filter sheds like our assistant overnight guard at work.

Dear human, please take your other hand off that shiny rectangle and place it upon me as well. And go buy yourself a Purrrrrrrrrrrrrolator.

 

A metal channel is crimped over the seam, and kind of…. rudely crushed at one end. Possible weak spot, as if the media ITSELF isn’t.

The filter media.

what fresh hairy hell is this

 

If the other two filters were merely bad, this one… this one is malevolently awful. This one was shedding little dust bunnies of fiber as I handled it. Touching the surface would raise a layer of fibers. Whatever the method used to form and cure the nonwoven fabric media was, it was not done right– resin not cured, insufficient heat/pressure, who knows. It’s a major ugly quality control issue– oh wait, what quality control?

(Note that the manufacturing has been offshored to China since that statement about the quality control was written.)

So, in the case of the two Fram filters, this “quality” is believable. The Motorcraft one is an odd duck though and I honestly suspect a supplier FAKED IT. Here’s why– all of the boxes on the shelf had wear as if they’d been handled, opened, and repacked at some point in time. I have to wonder– were they boxes from factory rejects or overstock that got restuffed with fakes? Dare I say— could their own service centers be involved, saving the retail boxes from filters they install in customers’ cars and repacking them with bulk packed shit filters? This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen a lot of defective crap hit shelves at Walmart – I once got burned on an entire purchase of *SIX* SD cards there that turned out to be genuine yet defective repackaged Sandisk products.

They also had some filters from K&N and Bosch there. The Bosch filters, as I recall, are Champion Labs “Performance” line filters and they looked just fine.

From K&N’s website.

The K&N’s– they were the “Pro Series” being sold at the HP series’ prices. See this image for why the HP series rules. Not only does it have better filter media inside, but you don’t need an oil filter wrench to install and remove it. The “Pro Series” are just the ‘Performance’ model Champion Labs filter with the K&N name stamped on it and a higher price tag. This same filter element is used in ACDelco OEM filters.

 

In short, do not buy a Fram filter or any oil filter from Walmart unless you really want an excuse to do a full engine teardown and overhaul. And if you want a K&N, spend the few extra bucks on the HP series. You’ll be glad you did. For all practical purposes though, it’s the same as the Mobil 1 filter with an easy installation/removal tool built in.

iShartMedia quality

image

iShartRadio quality:
[Booby Trap commercial]
“This is a test of the Emergency Alert System.”
[Tootsie’s Cabaret commercial]

Heard on WBGG-FM about 1:18 AM. No data bursts were sent. Not even a period of silence.

Let’s not even think too deeply here about what a sin it is to put spots for two rival businesses of the same type in the same stop set. It’s very disrespectful to your advertisers. Then again if they had any respect they wouldn’t be cutting spots in a studio where the equipment has a distinctly audible whining hiss.

Misspent youth – the Yihua YH-305D

Boy, was I ever young and stupid. It was the summer of 2004 or so, and various Chinese electronics vendors were just starting to flood the US market with some really cool looking toys, and the quality hadn’t faded to zero on them yet either! Mostly….?

At the time I’d just gone through a big mess with most of my workshop having been left out in the rain for several days in my absence, so I didn’t have a power supply. I bought this Yihua YH-305D on eBay and thought it was pretty great for the price, even after it arrived with the instruction manual calling it a “DC POWRE SUPPY” and the plastic nuts on the front panel binding posts don’t actually… work. (I got around this using banana plug leads.)

Years later it finally occurred to me to be suspicious of the fact that the constant current regulation is sloppy as hell, and the cooling fan starts to run if you draw more than one amp off it continuously. At five amps steady draw, the Powre Suppy doesn’t get noticeably warm, but the fan continues to howl forever.

I opened it and realized just how misspent my youth truly was.

wp-1483573643309.jpgThis… beautiful… board greeted me right away. There are places where traces kinda got half etched over there on the side then subsequently, but incompletely, covered with solder to fix it. Ummmmmmmm yeeeeeaaaaah D-

wp-1483573603318.jpgThe underside of the regulator pass transistor assembly. That’s three *supposed* 2N3055 transistors, paralleled. Why would you need three 2N3055’s for five amps?? You can run 15 amps through ONE real 2N3055 if it’s heatsinked properly. Oh wait, I forgot the key word… real. Genuine. Official. Not Pure Unadulterated Chineseium. I couldn’t get a picture of the labels on these “2N3055” transistors that were SO GOOD that they had to put three in parallel to pass 5 amps, but I was able to get a peek at it and they were printed in a gray looking ink with a nonsense logo– it looked like the Marvell Semiconductors logo??!! Either way, this video details what I’m probably actually looking at and why they are… very… very… derated.

The heatsink they are bolted to also explains the fan behavior. It’s nothing more than a flat plate with very little mass and surface area.

wp-1483574274591.jpgThe fan sucks up air from right above it and exhausts it out the back when the thermal switch seen in the background snaps on. I’m not sure how hot it has to get to trigger that, but it sure gets there in no time.

wp-1483573638001.jpgThe main filter capacitor looks underwhelming and I have my doubts it’s actually a Rubycon as its clothing would suggest.

 

This is paired to, uhhh, the death capacitor, as I lovingly call it. If you are using a power supply like this as a limited current source and you lose connection to the load momentarily, and the voltage limit is significantly higher than the voltage the load pulls it down to, any capacitor on the output will be charged up to that level. Once connection is reestablished to the load, it is presented with very high available current at this higher voltage. I detonated some high efficiency white LEDs under test with a power supply like this years ago while trying to develop a boost converter based driver for solar lighting applications and was royally pissed. So, without further ado, the death cap…

wp-1483573631845.jpgand…. the… rubber cement disaster of the century. The entire front of the supply is just…… bespooged with this cement…. Another red cement is found splattered all over the place as well. At left in the above picture is the digital meter board which I am not even going to touch let alone try to calibrate the screwed up zero point on, FORGET THIS

 

wp-1483573620558.jpgThe board is supported only by one small bracket from the rear; if I drop this power supply it will experience the sweet release of death it so sorely longs for.

 

Yeah. I was young and stupid and I bought this.

 

There’s a great thread on EEVBlog’s forum about these, including the wonderful thing that happens when you switch one on and it goes wham, overshoot, boing, boing, boing, and either stops bouncing or… not…

 

American Dream… I’m so done

I’m so very very DONE and so are your chances of ever getting anywhere on the roads in northwest Miami-Dade in 2020. I had heard nothing but radio silence on this project for over a year, and this is probably why– they were trying hard to apply decorative wallpaper to an elephant in the room to conceal it.

“It is unlikely that all needed interchange improvements will be approved and constructed by 2020, the build out year for ADM,” Lisa Colmenares, a state transportation planner for South Florida, wrote in a Nov. 23 letter to Miami-Dade. “If any of the interchange improvements fail to be approved … by 2020, the base transportation network that is the foundation of [the county’s] traffic analysis will be invalid.”

They don’t even know—–

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Here’s its likeness in cable nightmare form.