Treasury Gate, Dolmabahce Palace, Istanbul

Treasury Gate, Dolmabahce Palace, Istanbul

The palace, located on the European coast of the Bosporus strait, served as the main administrative center of the Ottoman Empire from 1856 to 1887 and from 1909 to 1922.

The construction cost 35 tonnes of gold . . . This sum corresponded to approximately a quarter of the yearly tax revenue. Actually, the construction was financed through debasement, by massive issue of paper money, as well as by foreign loans. The huge expenses placed an enormous burden on the state purse and contributed to the deteriorating financial situation of the Ottoman Empire, which eventually defaulted on its public debt in October 1875, with the subsequent establishment in 1881 of financial control over the "sick man of Europe" by the European powers. - extract from Wikipedia

"massive issue of paper money'. Where have we heard that before? Oh, right the 2 or 3 trillion dollar stimulus package Congress approved. I really wonder how long it will take us before we start looking like Venezuela. I would like to think that we'll stop before we elected a ruthless dictator, but maybe not. I suppose it depends on how many voters are impoverished. 

Mitsubishi Rainstick Update

Clogged Heater Core Replacement
EZElookout
This video is just for reference.

CRAFTSMAN Craftsman 3 Ton Garage Jack

After the first go round with this problem, I decided I needed to get the car up high enough to really get under it. Driving up on a couple of blocks helped, but it wasn't enough, so I bought a floor jack. I used to have one I got from Costco, but I sold it a few years when I decided I wasn't going to be working on cars anymore. However, getting this problem fixed at a repair shop is liable to run $1,000. (See above video to get an idea of the scope of the work involved.) If I can unplug the drain, then I can avoid the thousand dollar repair bill, for a while anyway.

I took one stab at it, but I wasn't able to access the drain. The photo in the last post is like the drain for the drain. The real drain is hidden. Today, I got Osmany to give me a hand. He is a talented guy. If anyone can fish a wire into the drain, he can. I don't whether he did or not, but we didn't get any water out of the drain. But we haven't heard anymore water noises since the last go round either. The weather has been a little cooler, but still, we should be getting some condensation. Our best guess is that draining the water out through the blower dislodged whatever was clogging the drain and everything is working properly now.

We took out the glovebox and removed the side panels off the center console, but all that did was show us how far the A/C box was buried in the dash. I did find a description of how to remove it, but it's like the instructions for replacing the heater core in our old Ford Fairmont. Step 1: Remove the dashboard. I did that once and I don't relish doing it again.

More photos here.

Thor's Hammer

Thor's Hammer, Now with Lightning Bolts

Make has a video about electroplating a plastic replica of Thor's Hammer so they can play with lightning bolts. It's fairly amusing.

Jigsaw Puzzle Pic of the Day

WW1 Cockpit
90 pieces

Jigsaw Puzzle Pic of the Day

1958 International 405

 A fine old machine.

Twice is a Coincidence

[1352] I Got Rick-Rolled Via Mail (Locking USB Drive)
LockPickingLawyer

This was a fun little video, he's got a clever little case that conceals a USB flash drive. But then he talks about malicious drives that contain microcontrollers with firmware that has been designed to mimic typical innocuous USB devices like keyboards and mice, but in fact are designed to gain access to your system. And then there are the USB devices that are designed to dump a high voltage charge into your computer and damage or destroy it. I suspected the existence of the malicious drives, but I had never heard of the destructive ones.

O.MG CABLE - * TO USB-A

Then Detroit Steve tells me about the O.MG Cable, designed to look just like an ordinary USB cable (for Apple computers maybe?), but actually can contain a variety of spyware. 'You cable isn't working? Here, have one of mine.'

While some of these might be used for legitimate criminal enterprises (legitimate in that their end goal is to make some money), I suspect most of them are being used by people just to screw with other people, get them in hot water or somehow screw up their lives. People can be very creepy.

Since both of these items showed up today, I thought the quote from Moscow Rules made an appropriate title.

Truck Dream

1980 INTERNATIONAL TRANSTAR II

My wife and I are sitting in the cab of a cab-over semi-truck. There is no trailer, just the tractor. She is in the driver's seat and the engine is running, doing like big diesel engines do. We are supposed to be heading somewhere in a little while and I suggest we should go on over to our official point of departure. It's not far, maybe a couple of blocks, but I have a feeling that something might go wrong, so we should get a jump on whatever it is, and it's not like it's going to hurt anything, the engine is already running. My wife puts the truck in gear and we start moving. We are on an country road a short distance from a rural two-lane blacktop highway. The place we need to be is likewise a short distance from this same highway, but on another road running parallel to this one but a couple of blocks to the north. She pulls up to the highway and checks for traffic, and wouldn't you know it, there's a tall, hipster pedestrian wanting to cross the street just as we get there. He's got black hair and a beard and dark tinted glasses. His hair is a little rumpled, but he's had haircut recently, he looks respectable, not like a jihadist. He makes eye contact with us and decides it is safe to cross, but wouldn't you know it, once he starts actually crossing the street, his pace slows to a saunter. Hipsters. Bah. We wait till he crosses and then pulls out onto the highway. There is no traffic. It's a short distance to the road we want and we turn off there and park the truck. We get out and start walking toward our immediate destination but after a bit we can see that the place we need to be is at least a mile away, straight down this road. The road crosses a field and we can see that it goes up a slight rise and through some trees on the far side. We should just go ahead and drive. I volunteer to go back and get the truck while my wife and the other person we have with us (!) waits. The road back to the truck goes up a small hill. I'm walking in the small roadside ditch, maybe a foot wide and a foot deep, pulling myself along with my hands. Surprisingly I am not out of breath. This dream exercising is great. I get to the top of the hill and the first vehicle I see is a white SUV. It is not our truck, I go on, and then I wake up.

Should I mention that my wife has never driven any kind of big truck?