I replaced the original air filter on my Mazda3 today. It essentially looked like the innards of a blanket. I can't imagine much air got through that thing.

Ugh.

So back in Feb. I was driving on a road that has various passing zones, you know, the ones where your lane opens up into two lanes in your direction to ease congestion. Well, I was on such a road and had a bad driver in front of me, I got a passing zone, made the pass and moved back into the right lane. As I got close to the end of the passing zone, the truck that was behind me decided to overtake and go speeding past me to "beat" me to the end of the passing lane. Just as he did so, we passed a county sheriff, whose radar was running. The truck noticed him and slammed on the brakes, and in response to his sudden evasive maneuver, I applied my brakes in anticipation of not knowing what he was doing. This is when I noticed the sheriff going in the opposite direction with brakes on and blue lights flashing. I knew what happened. The officer turns around and passes me and pulls the truck over. As I approach, the officer waves me to pull over too. He says he "saw us side by side" when his radar went off and issued me (and the truck) a citation for 81 in a 55.

Go to court, a bench trial, and long story short, blow the officer out of the water trying to prove that the the truck and I were doing the same speed. You know, questions like "how long did you observe the two vehicles side-by-side?" and "at about what distance in front of you were the vehicles in question?" and "could you definitively see if one vehicle was ahead or behind the other at the distance and time you observed this?". All of these questions were met with "I don't know" or "I can't say" from the officer. Basically I made him prove that he couldn't prove that both vehicles were going the same speed at the same time he looked at us after seeing his radar display a reading. Yet, I was still found guilty "because the officer saw you side-by-side" by the judge.

So today I go speak with an attorney to see if I have anything to appeal....and pretty much I don't because no legal errors were made in court. Talk about being disappointed in the legal system.....I hope that judge slides off a desolate road in the middle of the night and suffers painful injuries for an extended period of time before keeling over.

So after a week of troubleshooting with a client on their daily data file. I had to convince them on their internal process converting unix to dos was the issue. They swore up and down that nothing had changed on their end all week, pointing fingers back at us. :facepalm:

I finally got the guy to explain how his files were being created internally and they mentioned the conversion.

The unix to dos on their end was adding a EOF '1a' hex character at the end of the file causing our process to break.

Feeling victorious! :party:

I need some victorious feelings :/

Ask the jury of your peers this: when a truck going 100 mph passes a pedestrian, are they at some point "side by side?" And at that point what is the speed of the pedestrian?

I'm guessing the jury of his peers, in this case, was the sitting judge or magistrate who listened in silent humor to the argument and at the end sided with "Billy" who he's known for years... Hell, they probably had a good laugh over a beer later.

Justice sucks sometimes...

If it had been a city officer where I went to court, I would probably agree. But it was a county sheriff and a new-ish bitch judge.....


According to the officer and the judge, the person was indeed doing 100mph too. That's the point I made in court.

Judge's usually start out as attorneys with a history. You never mentioned how fast you were actually going when the truck was beside you? 55 or less?

JK... Points suck.

I believe the lesson here is: split pea soup is inferior to clam chowder.

Tackling a new project: headlight lenses.

Encouraged by the successful result I had with my prior vacuforming endeavor, I have decided to fab new headlight lenses out of 2mm polycarbonate.

I have already built a vacuum forming table that is big enough for the headlights, and bought the polycarbonate board and had it cut to proper size pieces for the job.

Getting the correct plaster for the mold was tough, so I ended up buying 10 kg of dental mold plaster. Very hard surface, and shows great detail.
I am thinking about treating the mold surface with CA when it dries completely.
I found a University study where they achieved great results with CA as a surface hardener for plaster molds.

Polycarbonate MUST be dried to get rid of the inherent moisture, or you get thousands of tiny bubbles in the final product. I experimented with drying times, and 2.5 hours at around 125C seems perfect.

Let's hope I can pull this off..
I will definitely make a couple extra sets if all goes OK, in case anything happens in the future.

Those headlights are damn expensive.... and then, there's shipping charges to Turkey.

^ looking forward to seeing results on this, sounds like a very cool project.

@doppelganger... that sucks man.

Actually, I did. I initially told the officer I was going 60-63mph. In court, he told the judge I said I was doing 65...I did correct him in front of the judge. The officer also said the road was straight and level, and again I had to correct him that it was the crest of a hill and that it limited forward visibility/time available to watch oncoming traffic. I know its a couple small details, but details make up the big picture. More or less, I was hoping the officer's recollection wasn't as accurate as it should have been...further proving his credibility of what actually happened.

I've learned a long time ago that unless the cop stumbles in half drunk and slurrs incomprehensible babble and then pisses on the judge, he will most likely win.
No...matter....what

^^ This

Having commuted over 110 miles per day (round trip) for 11 years, I consequently racked up quite a few citations, and used to fight every single one of them. The only real hope was that the cop wouldn't show. If he did show, no matter how much he (or I) lied or exaggerated, his testimony was always believed over my own. That's just the way it is. :dunno:

The good news is that, overall, I enjoyed a better than 1 in 3 chance that the cop wouldn't show up for court, i.e. case dismissed!

Well yeah, just follow the cop felon thread for a day and you'll see that cops are more corrupt than the government.. and you're trying to clear your name against both of them together.

Spent the afternoon removing one headlight, disassembling/cleaning the lens and getting it ready for casting plaster.
The shape of the lens presents the biggest challenge so far.
It is very much like a deranged fishing boat, the far ends are considerably high (and uneven) than the sides. That means it is impossible to fill it to the brim with a liquid.

So, I came up with a bastardized rotomolding method to get the plaster evenly on the actual surface that is visible when the headlight is assembled.
Once that was covered, I tilted the headlight one way or the other as I poured the next batch of plaster.
I poured the successive batches pretty quickly so the final mold would not have layers - plaster bonds beautifully while it's still somewhat liquid.

The first "trial cast" is drying as we speak. It gives off a ton of heat!

I have discovered a couple bubbles on the smooth transparent surface, but I can deal with it later.

I will start a thread on this if it turns out to be a success.

Hell, I could even sell some at m.net...

Oh, Czubaka/Gregg, I got your message.. Thank you!

It does indeed, as some people have learned the hard way.

Art class girl loses eight fingers after putting hands in plaster of Paris - Mirror Online

That's pretty terrible, reminds me of the story I heard of a student with contact lenses around airborne formaldehyde gas but I guess that one isn't all that true. My Biology teacher sure told quite the story though, she must hate contacts...

snopes.com: Contact Lenses Fused to Eyes

I just got an email from a customer of mine. What's the best way to send large sums of money to the Ukraine?

I would say bitcoin if they already knew about it and had everything set up already, but it's probably the worst option if they don't.