Modern Vespa

My Craftsman C3 cordless tools have served faithfully for nearly 20 years. The batteries are dying off and the chinesium replacements (the only ones available anymore as the tools have been 86'd for probably a decade or so) aren't that great.

So some new Milwaukee kit is inbound. 18v impact wrench to go with my trim router, and the 12v versions of drill and impact driver since the Depot had a lot of extra batteries added into the mix to sweeten the pot.

I'll probably throw the craftsman stuff on marketplace or something to offset the cost a bit.

Thank me later.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CF4499TS?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2&th=1

Holy smokes that got pricey!

On the other hand, if you prefer a much lower torque air impact, I've got a different deal for you. Let me know....

obliged; the HD milwaukee buy was 3 bills with 2 6AH batteries, and has more torque than the dewalt (and it fits with my router already as previously mentioned).

i have a small compressor that's been great for blasting and cerakoting small parts, but the whole point of the cordless impact is not needing the faff of electrical connection and air hoses for the compressor (along with the noise).

i'm in a rental house for a bit (VA loan, had to pay off original before full benefit returns for another buy out here and we just closed the sale on the MD house) and it only has one working outlet in the garage....and half of it is used by the chest freezer full of fresh venison

I swapped out my Dewalt 12v system for Milwaukee a few years ago and don't regret it. The Dewalt stuff was actually great, and still working (I gave it to oopsclunkthud) but Milwaukee was doing some really interesting new tools and Dewalt just wasn't keeping pace.

This is by far my favorite of the bunch:

https://www.amazon.com/Installation-Drill-Driver-Charger-Battery/dp/B087ZR1RPC

Super versatile small driver. It is my most-used tool. Especially good at 90° and tight corners.

I still have my Dewalt 18/20v system, and some very large batteries for that, so I'm going to hold onto that for now.

This is cheering me up.

See: Celebrating 20 years of Modern Vespa

Just grabbed the plane ride for Carnevale 2026. We're also adding Florence and Rome into the mix as we have at least one friend joining us who hasn't been. Plus we want to hang out with our friend Massimo in Rome and hopefully grab a lil inkytat at a shop we've been stalking on IG.

And maybe grab drinks overlooking Ludus Magnus and the Colosseo again.

The first good snow of the season always cheers me up! Almost 24" at Mt Rose summit.

Posting to Modern Vespa from 30,000 feet is cheering me up today.

I need glasses for nearby, a matter of age.
My present glasses are set on being sharp at computer screen distance, so roughly 50cm, maybe a bit more. Nice and comfortable it is in daily life.

Finding this forum now I am finally a Vespa owner!

Oh, and ordering accessories, ready to fit for my first proper ride!

You're in a great part of the UK to be a scooterist as well 😎

So many amazing country lanes to explore around the South West... can't wait to get started!

Snow in the local mountains

But , it's still 84 degrees in the valley floor.

Coachella Valley California

So, I made art. Well, sort of.

Th newer editing tools in Apple Photos make doing things that used to require a lot of time and effort in Photoshop or Gimp easy. They've come a long way.

I particularly like some of the things I've seen the "clean up" function accomplish. Not all, but it allowed me to simply remove all of the text from the "Trysome Eatone" album cover.

I have a nice printer; a Canon Pro10 which does a good job with things when I think of jobs that warrant using it. It does grays really nicely. The ink cartridge kit for it is still north of a hundred bucks, so I don't want to use it unless I have to, or really WANT to, so it spends a lot of time sitting.

Anyway, this was the result on 8x10 glossy photo paper and a half price frame from Hobby Lobby. I'm happy with it.

Upgraded from the iPhone 13 Pro to the new iPhone 17 Pro. Stock is in short supply so I was happy to find one…

Just ordered a new Quad Lock system for my Vespa VXL

Came here to say the same. Love the new logo!

Oooohhhh... anniversary stickers, please???

[quote="seamus26"]
So, I made art. Well, sort of....

Striking result. Good on you !

Like your 'Chanter Kit'. Just the thing for practicing Pibroch. Och aye

Did some arts and crafts. Next up table saw cart with expanding sides (like the miter saw station) and am expanding outfeed. Government movers borked up the cart frame it's currently on (ridgid 4510 for those who are familiar) so it needs a new home anyway,...might as well improve on it a lil.

The IT Security people at work have a policy that we're to change our login password every three months. Of course, this means that users (including me) simply change one character of their passwords every three months.

I was talking to my boss a couple of weeks ago about our VOIP phones and mentioned that mine wasn't working due to not having in internet connection since I moved my desk and the network guy moved a drop to my area. She mentioned that hers wasn't working because it wanted her to re-login after her password update. I said that mine was probably going to expire soon, and I'd have to go through the hassle of updating all my logins. She said that she always puts in the same password when it prompts her to update it, and it always works.

So my password was set to expire at midnight last Friday night (10/17). Before I left for the day I went through the process of changing it, because it's easier to do it before it expires rather than after. While changing it, I thought I'd try "changing" it to the same password that was about to expire, to see if it worked.

It did.

And the ultimate test was this morning when I got here, the "new" password still works. Although I still had to re-login to Outlook, because it knew I had "changed" the password.

So I don't know which is worse: having a system where the passwords expire after 90 days (which the experts say is bad), or having that same system allow the user to "change" the expiring password to the same password. I suppose as long as it's a strong password, it's safe.

Either way, I'm cheered up that I don't have to worry about remembering which special character I'm using this quarter.

Our policy is much the same. But our passwords have to include n characters, caps and lowercase, numbers and special characters. And your new password cannot be the same or similar to your previous password. And our terminals automatically lock after ten minutes, so we are continually entering our passwords.

I hate it so much. Mine is currently 16 characters. I don't remember passWORDS .. I remember passPATTERNS. I use the same pattern each month with varying presses of the shift button over adjacent rows, starting on different keys. So far I haven't gotten a warning that I cannot use the same fingers to enter my new password.

I'm not sure if there's a minimum length requirement (and due to the global AWS outage I can't get into our portal to check). My current password is 10 characters, including upper & lowercase, symbols & numbers. PasswordMonster.com says it'll take 8 hours to crack. The 15-character password I used to use comes up as taking 94k years to crack, but it's probably been compromised on various site data breaches over the years.

That's a sweet website. It tells me my 16 character password would only take three years to crack, though.

I feel so insecure now.

Got a good result for my insurance claim after my last bike was stolen, Sully will soon be mine!

Only 3 weeks since I put the claim in, so not too bad by all accounts, heard some right horror stories.

For grins, I generated a Strong Password in MacOS, vajruw-tijqag-gYbki2, and tested it on various Password Strength checking websites.

Cyber.org says it'll take 3170979198 centuries to crack.
Security.org says 42 quintillion years.
Bitwarden.com just says "centuries."
Psono.com says "Time to crack the password: never"

I like PasswordMonster.com's response:

Every year in the spring I wash all the windows/screens in the house inside and out. This past spring I had a torn rotator cuff and couldn't do it. So now that my shoulder is 100% again, I knocked out that long overdue task this morning. Clean windows and fall colors cheer me up!

The wood working skill is one I struggle with. I'm envious of those who knock out these projects with ease.

Just went for a short ride, got caught in the rain @ 52ºF. Rather chilly, but any ride that gets me home intact is a good ride. That, and a good hot coffee are cheering me up!

The company I worked for once changed the password expiry to 30 days. That sucked. People complained. It went back to 90 days. I used to use the current day, like October20,2025. Now that I'm retired I don't use that anymore.

Oh I can promise you they're error-laden like nobody's business

I just can't bring myself to worry too much because they're just workshop furniture, glorified tool stands on casters. And i absolutely did not have anything to do with the design of any of them, i just grabbed plans from some of the more well-known youtubers (table saw and miter saw are from bear mountain builds and the planer/jointer stand is from fix this build that) and followed the directions (more or less anyway, miter and table saw both got modified because i have different models than the original designs).

gives my ADHD somewhere to hyperfixate anyway. keeps me away from internet shopping

Obligatory XKCD:

my method for passwords is large rand strings stored in KeePass with it's database file sync'd with Syncthing across all my devices. All open source and no clouds.

Scored tickets again for Michelangelo's Secret Room in Feb. Taking our friend Mike this time. They now only allow two people per time slot (it used to be up to five).

Wifey is going in the slot after us so i suppose we'll have to find a spot to enjoy a glass of wine and people-watch.

Oh and it's new patch day.

This is a screen shot from an actual Microsoft Knowledge Base article.
It's a little dated but still amusing.

I received a ten year service award from my employer. It's a $100 gift card. That's pretty typical anymore.

So, I'm putting it toward a Cuppini front rack for the Stella. That makes me happy. She'll have plenty of carrying capacity for camping in the spring. I'm already looking forward to that, and THAT makes me happy.

Bike paperwork sent in the mail, Quad Lock has been delivered, insurance has cleared so paying a chunk off the Vespa this afternoon. Just having my first coffee of the day! ☕☺️

My driveway camera sent me an alert that it had detected a person. It's too early for mail delivery, and we're not expecting any package deliveries today, so I checked the camera app.

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