Unpopular Opinions (?)

The Monroe Systems DASDEC literally looks like some hack job I’d have put together out of shell scripts and awful HTML on a Fedora Core Linux box made of spare parts in my parents’ living room when I was 17 years old and still thought Drowning Pool was kinda great

Flori-DONE

This morning, some prick jammed a toothpick through the sidewall of one of my tires. Yes– one of THOSE damn tires.

This coming about two days before what’s expected to be a Category 4 hurricane wiping Florida like a piss soaked rag being thrust onto your windshield by a zombie bum in downtown Miami.

Beautiful! Luckily, that same Tire Kingdom (yes, Bullet Hole Kingdom) still stocks that size tire.

There’s no propane, bottled water, canned foods, bread, batteries, or anything else particularly useful left in the stores, and it’s been that way since Monday night. I actually saw some of the questionable little “Food Store” places in the… unsavory areas… spray painted “No Supplies Inside” or “No Water” on their roll up shutters. Yes… All the way back on Monday.

This is pretty much a guarantee that hilarious price gouging will happen on a widespread basis, and to the first person who tries to use supply-side economics to justify this, I will counter with the following argument:

Say I have a great surplus of a special kind of large trout. Its prime directive is to be used for slapping people in the face. However, I have far more slapping trout than I can use, so the cost of a trout slap is so low I just have to deliver them free of charge.

To your heartless late-stage capitalist face.

  • KG4CYX slaps you around a bit with a large trout!

Things You Should Not Do

Things You Just Don’t Do:
Leave an EFP camera out in the rain.
Leave said EFP camera lying on the ground in the rain.
Drag a lav mic across the wet ground.
Grab the iris ring on the lens and force it open against the servo while it’s in remote control by the color video operator trying to shade the shot.
Shoot in the rain with water streaming down the poor lens so your engineer has to go borrow a hair dryer from a reporter to steam it out.
Unplug the triax hot (he didn’t do it today he ALWAYS does every day but I’m just waiting for him to do it with the plugs soaking wet and the 170VDC turned on)
Complain that your engineer doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Shut up, brain, or I’ll stab you with a Q-Tip

Why do I keep feeling like nobody wants me to make really neat ambient electronic music, as if there’d be nobody who’d listen….

While I listen to music of that style a lot and see other artists on Bandcamp and SoundCloud with their compositions?
Picture unrelated.

Though I am curious as to whether it’ll pick up sun noise if I aim it at the daystar. Yes, sun noise on microwave BAS bands is quite noticeable.

Tri-Color Foaming RF

Me: ponders whether I should have a really nice professional looking website talking about some of my engineering contract work

Press plate on to make the airwaves shiny

Also me: slaps photo of one of my clients towers through the 1980s neon art meets tri-color foaming wax filter and posts it

Golden Beach is a total joke.

Not only is it one of Florida’s most notorious police traps, but it’s also kind of literally useless. Last night they abruptly sealed off all traffic on A1A for over three hours to start checking vehicles… Guess the ticket quota was running behind.

But what even is Golden Beach?

Useless.

From 1981:

They are the poster child for shitty little beach towns, really.

Cost engineering blows warm air, or “don’t murder your AC”.

May I take a moment to express my admiration to auto makers for not putting sight glasses or high side service ports on their air conditioning systems??

“Pound My System In The Ass can”

Sure, while having a gauge on the high side while charging and testing the system isn’t an absolute necessity, it helps a lot!! It can warn you if the system is overcharged, the orfice tube or thermal expansion valve is obstructed, or of bad cylinders in the compressor (wild gauge vibrations).

Excessive high side pressure can pop the compressor or even cause an explosion.

With only a low side port, you might as well just be using one of these stupid “pound my system in the ass” cans.

Believe it or not, I’d actually say the TOP of that can is kinda alright to use, if you have a one port system. Guilty parties I’ve seen this from to date: Mazda, Ford, and Volvo.

The problem is the can. These kits come with a can of pure death: the can injects additional compressor oil into the system as well as a “stop leak” compound.

The additional oil can really screw things up. It’s not compressible. There’s a sump in the bottom of the compressor that collects it and splashes it on the swash plate drive and backs of the piston rings. Overfill and it will enter the cylinders and cause liquid slugging which will bend and break parts. BANG!!!

Stop leak is just vile. The most common form is a substance that soaks into, swells up, and structurally weakens elastomer O-ring seals. There just aren’t that many in a car a/c system and they are easy to replace. The proper procedure is, if you have a leak, have the system recharged and a UV dye injected. This will make the leak glow and it can be detected with a blacklight. The o-ring can be changed after recovering the refrigerant. My own experience has been that a compressor seal failure tends to follow the use of one of these, leading to a slow expensive leak.

Okay, so if you still really want to use one of these goofy can top kits….

Do not use the can with stop leak and oil. Get a can of straight up R-134a ONLY.

Put a digital thermometer in a dash vent and place it where you can watch it while charging. If you observe a rise in temperature, STOP, turn off the ac system immediately, and go confess to your local actual professional what you’ve done.

NEVER TURN THE CAN UPSIDE DOWN. You’ll slug the compressor.

Incompatible

There are two places I can think of that I’ve been to where I felt like a horrible match to the crowd there:

1. The Bal Harbour Shops in Bal Harbour, Florida.

I don’t think I’ve had enough starring roles in movies or television or been an old Russian mobster long enough to belong there.

2. A Tractor Supply Co. store.

Being the goth dude who walks in there in black leather …..

Well at least that wasn’t a total waste, I got to watch the little cheeplets.

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And I laughed immaturely at these.

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One size fits all, i guess.

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