Standard Mischief

…OK, well I guess I can cross something off my bucket list.

The DC area was nudged by an earthquake centered about 82 miles southwest in Virginia. A 5.8 one, down there. The shake lasted a few seconds, long enough to know it wasn’t a bomb blast.

While we did have a tiny earthquake last year, that one barely woke me out of a sound sleep, so I never counted it.

At work, someone suggested that people move to the doorways. I think the current behavior in vogue is to move close to a solid wall instead. In any event, most east-coast office walls are made of gypsum and steel 2x4s with all the thickness of a tin can.

Traffic lights went out in DC, but parking ticket meter-maids continued their crucial work undeterred.

A few bricks fell from really old stone buildings downtown. Everyone who was embarrassed last winter when a half inch of white stuff closed schools in their district can start laughing. Five seconds of rumbling today has managed to close all the public schools for tomorrow for inspection, but officials assure me that the dozen bridges I crossed on the way home today were perfectly safe.

I had a few things knocked off my desk on the third floor at home.

We had the snowpocalypse a year and a half ago, the “earthquake of the century” today, and I suppose a good chance of a hurricane at the end of this week.

I found the above on a pair of thrift-store jeans. I guess “artificially aged to spoof the appearance of real vintage clothing that you can pay full retail price for in a mass-market retailer” probably would not fit on the label.

Anyway, in my size and $4, so I don’t care if I get paint on them.

It’s harder to tell since ebay stopped displaying the handles of the bidders that bid against you. But this one looks pretty suspicious:

(clickable to enlarge)

Above is the recent bid history of the partly-anonymized second highest bidder on an auction I recently bid on. This poor guy has made 463 bids in the last 30-days, yet he only has a feedback level of (7). It’s almost like he’s not trying to win any auctions at all!

The last 15+ bids he’s made were on the merchandise for sale from the same seller. All the bids were placed between 8 and 9 hours before the auction ended. (Can you say bot?)

I’ve reported the suspected shill, but I don’t expect anything to happen. The person offering the auction in this case is a high volume seller that makes a lot of money for Ebay.

So I’m out a small amount due to fraud. If his bid was retracted, I’d get about one dollar back from the seller. This is my first detected shill and I wasn’t burned too bad this time.

I make it a practice to submit one bid, my final bid, at my top price within about 15 seconds of the auction ending. (Thank you jbidwatcher. ) While Ebay “sniping” is 100% allowed by the rules, my top bid going in that late makes it very hard for confederates of the seller to react and nudge the auction price upwards. Not foolproof, but a damn sight better than the “15 minute rule” over at gunbroker.com

Update before publication: Ebay sent me a nice form letter. The meat of the matter: “To protect the privacy of the member that you’re reporting, we can’t tell you exactly what actions were taken. ”

I guess there’s no chance at all for getting my buck back.

My inner-machinist has a man-crush. I signed up for metal shop class three times during my time in high-school, sadly each time the class was canceled due to lack of interest. Woodshop is a poor substitute for the urge to make durable goods out of durable goods.

While I’ve scratched the inner-machinist itch with a small welder, a little tool and die making on a brake lathe, and my silver-soldering gunsmith work as “Bubba Mischief”, I still pine for the full size lathe and mill that couldn’t possibly fit in my present home. Along with that, since I’m still dreaming, I’d want someone like tubalcain (a/k/a mrpete222) as my next door neighbor.

Failing that, this former shop teacher’s videos are the next best thing, and if you know anything about metalworking you’ll agree that in the age of outsourcing our manufacturing to China and India, these videos on molding, casting, model making, and machine work are a national treasure.

I only needed the yellow belt in searchengine-fu to find this:

https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS07F9227S/GS07F9227S_online.htm

This looks like Cobham’s GSA price list. I guess the SWAG in my previous post wasn’t too far off the mark. Example:

426-4Q ST820-CS-1 820 Orion Tracking Subscription $861.46

That’s just the subscription, which can’t be anything other than a cellphone dataplan with the serial numbers scraped off and rebadged.

426-4Q ST-MAPNA Orion MapPoint North America $1,316.12

I guess this is just a digital map. And here I thought the upgrades for my tomtom’s map were outrageous.

426-4Q BP-103 Standard 8D Battery Pack $526.45

Got that? Over five bills for a eight D cell battery pack. I’m sure that batteries are not included. But it’s black, and all tactacool and those neodymium magnets aren’t free. Neither are those zip-ties.

426-4Q ST820BP 820 Battery Pack $382.87

This looks like the one in the photos. Let’s do the math:

1 Maglite S6D015 6-D Cell Flashlight, Black $20
1 Hour of machine shop time $40
1 Lamp cord cut from an extension cord at Wal-mart $1.09
1 power plug from Radio Shack $2.09
10 zip-ties, black $2
1 tube of superglue $1.49
2 packs Super Magnets .47″x.11″, 6 Pack $5.18
…
Ripping off Uncle Sugar with a 533% markup… Priceless

426-4Q TRAINING-1 Training 1 day $2,057.93

426-4Q TRAINING Training $2,632.24

It doesn’t say “per-person”

426-4Q ST820TK-SW Guardian with Software $5,259.70

This looks like the all inclusive price for the hardware and software. I guess I guessed low. Do you get the battery pack for that or is it extra? And why is it called a “Guardian”? It makes it sound like it’s a security alarm.

orion guardian st820