Stuck Screw

I had a stuck screw in my garage several years ago that was blocking the next project. I knew I needed to do my research about stubborn screw removal before getting frustrated. When the first step worked, I thought I had "over-researched" the topic, but two days later my best friend texted me that some guys were getting frustrated at a stuck screw, they weren't impressed her best friend is an engineer, so did I have some suggestions? My immediate reply: too long for a text, check your email. We don't know which step worked (just that they removed the screw after exposure to my list), but I no longer feel like I did too much research!

My record so far is all screws were removed by a much bigger screwdriver (12 inches / 30 centimeters long!), except one (a stripped Phillips #2 #4-40 inside a computer) that turned after a few minutes of a heat gun.

Here are the steps I collected, and the order I would try them.

1. Try a different screwdriver: larger head, longer handle.
2. For stripped or worn screws, improve screwdriver's grip with: rubber band, steel wool, duct tape (sticky side on screw), green abrasive pad from a kitchen sponge, friction paste (like Drive Grip by Vibra-Tite), abrasive paste from car repair shops.
3. Heat the screw for 2-3 minutes with a hair dryer or heat gun or small torch or soldering gun, and try again.
4. Chill the screw with ice cubes, and try again.
5. For screws into metal that might be rusty, or might have paint or debris, clean around the screw as much as possible, apply a rust penetrant (Liquid Wrench, PB Blaster, WD-40) or paint stripper, wait 15 minutes, try again.
6. If headroom, tighten a drill chuck over the screw head, and unscrew with drill.
7. If headroom, remove with a pair of pliers. Flatten opposite sides with a file or dremel to improve gripping.
8. Tap the screwdriver with a hammer, primarily for Phillips head. For a standard #2, drive a #1 bit into the screw. Tap the screwdriver while turning (improvised manual impact screwdriver).
9. Use a manual impact driver. (manual better than electric for forward thrust)
10. Drill a shallow hole into the head, so the screwdriver sits deeper.
11. Use a dremel to cut a slot all the way across, and use a large slotted screwdriver.
12. Adhere a nut to the head with welding adhesive, let dry recommended time, use ratchet.
13. Drill a pilot hole, and then use a screw extractor.
14. Use a hole saw to remove the screw and a plug of wood around it; replace the plug of wood with one without a stuck screw.
15. Drill out the whole screw.

References:

• wikiHow: How to Remove a Stripped Screw
• wikiHow: How to Remove a Stuck Screw
• Wikipedia: impact driver about forward thrust

VirtualBox and shared clipboard

Based on the number of results from a search, I feel grateful that I haven't had the shared clipboard between the Mac OS X 10.11 host of my work laptop and the Xubuntu 16.04 guest break sooner.

I read the documentation. I read many of the search results, including this older thread. Those commands gave me error messages! (This is useful, not terrible.)

/usr/bin/VBoxClient-all: 31: /usr/bin/VBoxClient-all: /usr/bin/VBoxClient: not found
/usr/bin/VBoxClient-all: 32: /usr/bin/VBoxClient-all: /usr/bin/VBoxClient: not found
/usr/bin/VBoxClient-all: 33: /usr/bin/VBoxClient-all: /usr/bin/VBoxClient: not found
/usr/bin/VBoxClient-all: 34: /usr/bin/VBoxClient-all: /usr/bin/VBoxClient: not found
/usr/bin/VBoxClient-all: 35: /usr/bin/VBoxClient-all: /usr/bin/VBoxClient: not found

I did a directory listing to look at the available VBox scripts, and saw that those were symlinks. Based on that, if I had to guess, the VBoxClient script was renamed to VBoxClient-all without updating the script itself where it called itself. Doh! The simplest fix was not to edit the script giving the errors but to add a symlink for the "old" name. The symlink solution will also aid any other scripts that were also not updated to call the new name.

user@guest:~$ cd /usr/bin
user@guest:/usr/bin$ ls -l VBox*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jan 18 08:58 VBoxBalloonCtrl -> ../share/virtualbox/VBox.sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 62 Jan 18 10:06 VBoxClient-all -> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/VBoxGuestAdditions/98vboxadd-xclient
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 46 Jan 18 10:06 VBoxControl -> /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.0.32/bin/VBoxControl
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jan 18 08:58 VBoxHeadless -> ../share/virtualbox/VBox.sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jan 18 08:58 VBoxManage -> ../share/virtualbox/VBox.sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jan 18 08:58 VBoxSDL -> ../share/virtualbox/VBox.sh
user@guest:/usr/bin$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/VBoxGuestAdditions/98vboxadd-xclient VBoxClient
user@guest:/usr/bin$ ls -l VBox*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jan 18 08:58 VBoxBalloonCtrl -> ../share/virtualbox/VBox.sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 62 Apr 12 11:04 VBoxClient -> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/VBoxGuestAdditions/98vboxadd-xclient
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 62 Jan 18 10:06 VBoxClient-all -> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/VBoxGuestAdditions/98vboxadd-xclient
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 46 Jan 18 10:06 VBoxControl -> /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.0.32/bin/VBoxControl
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jan 18 08:58 VBoxHeadless -> ../share/virtualbox/VBox.sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jan 18 08:58 VBoxManage -> ../share/virtualbox/VBox.sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jan 18 08:58 VBoxSDL -> ../share/virtualbox/VBox.sh

That might have been sufficient, but I thought this command also sounded promising.

user@guest:/usr/bin$ sudo rcvboxadd setup
Removing existing VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules ...done.
Removing existing VirtualBox non-DKMS kernel modules ...done.
Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules ...done.
Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions ...done.
You should restart your guest to make sure the new modules are actually used

And the report after a reboot is: OUCH! Lesson 1: do not try to install the HWE kernel (hardware enablement)! Virtual Box is not happy when you mess with the kernel. (Longer version: installing HWE conflicted with virtualbox-guest-x11 and that's necessary. I thought virtualbox-qt would be sufficient, but that didn't seem to be the case.) Without a skilled administrator, I don't think I would use that VM again! Lesson 2: make a snapshot before kernel upgrades! Or just any ol' time, because backups are good! I suspect the symlink helps too, but overall VBox feet were shot in the process of trying to restore the shared clipboard.

Greasy Knees

A few weeks ago, on both Monday and Tuesday, I got a grease mark on the knee of my pants. The first one didn't wash out with just a stain spray, so I looked for other treatments. (What is it with me lately, and marks that don't come out in the laundry?)

• How to Get Grease Stains out of Clothes | Cleanipedia
• How To Remove Grease From Clothes: Home Remedies & Tips
• How to Remove Oil Stains or Grease Stains from Clothes

I am happy to report that dish soap (I had Palmolive in my kitchen) and a little scrub brush action before letting it sit in the laundry basket for several days worked just fine!

For grass stains, also common on knees, read Grass Stain Removal at House Cleaning Central, especially the note not to use ammonia, degreaser or alkaline detergent. I was impressed with how much peroxide and bleach removed (although not all).

The Battle of Chocolate Milk

There was an incident last month, between chocolate milk and gravity. Gravity won, of course; and I ended up with chocolate milk spattered far and wide. The Very First Step is to make sure no one is freaking out about this! A certain child was sure he was going to get into big trouble. I'm still trying to clean up the impact, but it clearly wasn't intentional, and these accidents aren't common. The hardest hit were a white teeshirt and my hardwood floor. (Of course the shirt was white. This can't be easy!)

After cleaning up the main splatter and the child, I ran cold water over the white shirt. This reduced the chocolate marks, but did not remove them. I tried soaking the shirt in water; no improvement. I tried soaking the shirt in salted water; no improvement. Salt acts as a water softener to make water-for-cleaning more effective, but this chocolate was more stubborn. Next I put the shirt in the washing machine and washed it in cold water with OxiClean White Revive Whitener. The stains might have been lighter, but were still present. So I did some research:

• How to Remove a Chocolate Milk Stain from Clothing
• How to remove chocolate milk stains from clothes - Laundry Advice
• Removing chocolate stains from clothing

Based on that research and availability, I tried soaking the formerly-white shirt in a solution of water, hydrogen peroxide, and baking soda (I purchase the last two in large sizes because they're both so handy). Success!!!

I didn't try ammonia or an ezymatic cleaner or club soda (didn't have any); I figured the bubbles of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda could approximate the fizziness of club soda, assuming that's how it is effective. I didn't try cream or full-fat milk because I don't keep that around either. I have Borax; it's a component in my homemade laundry powder, so I figured it would be tested in the washing machine soon enough.

I've been known to forget what worked last time, so I'm sharing with everyone.

Canon MX870 Print Head "Repair"

I'm usually cranky when the directions I want are only available on YouTube because I can read much faster than the video plays, and I find the extra time to be excruciating. Seriously, please just tell me in words!

A few months ago, my Canon PIXMA MX870 printer decided that it would mostly print yellow: no cyan printing, and only sometimes the faintest magenta printing. I suppose the other colors weren't cheerful enough? Some searching indicated that the problem was the print head. I tried all of the printer's built-in cleaning routines to no avail. I looked at replacement printers (I mostly print kid pictures), but I decided to see if I could fix it. It wasn't useful the way it was, replacing it seemed likely, so I had nothing to lose for trying. After a while, all remaining hints pointed YouTube. I decided that removing a print head might be best described in a video, so (prepare yourself for the shock!) I watched YouTube videos about printers.

The video that worked for me was "How to remove and clean a Canon printhead" and it delivered on the promise of its title! I thought I might need to watch "The secret on how to remove the Canon print head" but the first video with some gentle but persistent jiggling was sufficient.

What I had to do was to remove the ink carts, then remove the print head. I rinsed the print head in warm water from my kitchen faucet at a low pressure for several days (in between bouts of going about my regularly scheduled life), until I no longer saw any ink bleeding out when I did so. Yes, I spent days rinsing the print head, but it was essentially a free experiment. La, la, la, several days of rinsing and a day of drying later, I re-installed the print head and the ink carts. And my printer worked again! I couldn't believe something so cheap and easy actually resurrected my printer, but it did! I'm so glad I didn't replace it hastily!

TIL: 3-way CFL bulb

I have a set of reading lamps, one everywhere we might sit and read, all with 3-way CFL bulbs. The lamp I use most often only had two settings: two clicks for OFF, two clicks for ON. Since I've had many 3-way incandescent bulbs before, I shrugged, and thought, "that's how it always goes: one filament burns out long before the other." I knew it was CFL, but I didn't put much thought into that because the "failure" mode was familiar. Tonight I decided to replace that bulb. And that's when I discovered it wasn't screwed in all the way. As soon as I screwed the original 3-way CFL bulb in all the way, it had four states again: HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, and OFF. Now I wish I had checked sooner!

Xubuntu 13.04 and Amazon Prime

I had not tried to watch Amazon Prime videos since upgrading my media PC to Xubuntu 13.04, but discovered I couldn't. Luckily, this fix also worked for me: run hal in verbose mode, create the directories that it wants to use, and restart hal.

install HandBrake

I ended up not needing HandBrake (by not needing to transcode the video), but I discovered how to install HandBrake in Xubuntu 13.04: sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk. Without the -gtk, I kept getting the message

E: Package 'handbrake' has no installation candidate

Wireshark 1.8.0 capture-filter

At least for what I do, the capture-filter options in Wireshark 1.8.0 are definitely on the Need To Know list! I agree with the comment that frequently-used options should not hide behind a double-click. I've been known to mark "too much clicking" as a negative point for an application.

Easy Fix

Well, I think that was one of the easiest fixes ever! I had an external monitor hooked up to my home laptop for extra pixels. I used the mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter that came with my laptop. The monitor developed interesting colors and patterns, so I quit using. When my 4-year-old asked for his own computer (ORLY?), I borrowed a Mac mini from a co-worker, and decided to try the failing monitor. However, the Mac mini only had DVI so I dug up a DVI cable ... and the monitor has been working perfectly ever since! Something in my VGA chain (the adapter, the cable, or the monitor's VGA connection) had gone bad, but it didn't affect the display on the DVI chain.

I love it when monitors are that easy to fix!

Squeaky Stairs

This house is 28 years old, and the interior stairs squeak. (Use wood glue and screws instead of nails!) For the past 9 years, I've been trying to figure out the pattern ("step here, then there") to squeak the least. But in the past few months, I discovered that I've been following the wrong approach. This isn't a position-dependent problem, but time-dependent! The faster I go (within reason: falling down the stairs at night would be very loud too), the less squeaking. The only exception is the third step from the top: it always squeaks.

VNC Server on Mac OS X 10.3

I didn't want to get more hardware right now, so I wanted to use the keyboard and mouse that was on my older PPC Mac, still running OS X 10.3. It doesn't do Remote Desktop's Screen Sharing as easily as newer OS X, so I wanted to use Vine VNC for a VNC server. I downloaded version 3.12, but the disk image wouldn't mount under 10.3. So, back to my newer Mac, mount, copy the application off, and (not wanting to hit further problems, although I did not test if this were still necessary) I also deleted Tiger.bundle before copying it to the older Mac. Voilà! it works!

Windshield Cleaning

The inside of my car windshield gets filthy (and I don't smoke!), so I tried making my own windshield cleaner from equal parts of rubbing alcohol, ammonia, and water. It worked, I suppose, although there were some streaks.

So I decided to work on the streaking angle. This time, I used an old sock with a hole and water. After I rubbed the windshield, I went over it with a squeegee to remove all traces of water. Guess what? That worked really well!

So pick the window cleaner recipe you like best or use water; my best advice is to use a squeegee immediately afterwards!

The Mustard Stain

I like mustard as a condiment. However, when the top flies off the mustard container while I’m squeezing, I get more mustard than even I wanted. All over my shirt, too. Eventually my shirt recovered; I think soaking overnight in detergent (well, oxygen cleaner) was the biggest help. If this happens to you, check out <a href=“http://web.extension.illinois.edu/stain/staindetail.cfm?ID=72”>one</a> of <a href=“http://home.howstuffworks.com/how-to-remove-mustard-stains1.htm”>these</a> references.

The Squeaky Printer

One of the HP LaserJet 2200 printers at work had been very squeaky. Since it was the only printer that still duplexes, I preferred it. However, the squeaking was so loud that everyone on this floor knew when it was printing! I was very surprised to learn what fixed the awful noise: replacing the toner cartridge.

Good Feature

I really like that I can link to a specific slide on Slideshare with the dead-simple approach of adding "slash-slidenumber" to the URL. Thanks folks, that's doing it right!

So if I happen, quite hypothetically you know, to want to send someone with a short attention to a slide show, I know he's not going to click through to the slide I want him to see. But since I can send a link to the exact slide, I can hope to capture just enough attention to get somewhere. For instance, I like this summary of teacher gift ideas.

Secret Life Of Machines

Yes, yes! I found a tip that you can now download episodes of The Secret Life Of Machines! That's one of my favorite shows ever, but I never see re-runs on TV anymore. The Exploratorium archive has streaming QuickTime, but I found the easier format (can download, doesn't stutter) to be Flash video at secretlifeofmachines.info; I'm not a fan of Flash to put it mildly (check out the boss phrase generator while you're there), so when I prefer Flash to QuickTime, you know it's a genuine statement.

Opt-out of Time-Warner/RoadRunner's DNS Hijacking

I am opposed to ISP DNS Hijacking for many reasons (DNS needs to be trustworthy, DNS needs to follow the RFC standard and return "Not Found" as specified especially since my browser would then tack on ".com" for me, I already pay TWRR more money for less bandwidth than most other developed nations so I resent this standards-breaking monetization), but luckily today I found the opt-out page. Thankfully it's easier and less intrusive than Comcast's opt-out.

A bright spot on a rainy day!

I was about to use the hosts file, like this tip. The bazooka approach would be to download this impressive ad-blocking hosts file and add http://ww23.rr.com/ to it.

Three Things Women Should Know

I try to tell my girlfriends these.

• Prenatal vitamins can cure a weekly+ bout of sprue without the suffering of a diagnosis of IBS. I thought I was headed for IBS myself, but prenatal vitamins fixed that when a regular multivitamin didn't. This has worked for me and for two friends who are also professional women with stressful jobs. I note that prenatal vitamins are slightly higher in B vitamins, and I know research studies have shown that stress interferes with the absorption of some B vitamins. So my theory is that stress is blocking some vitamin B absorption (not sure which one or ones) causing the bouts of sprue, but prenatal multivitamins shore up your levels of B. (Yes, IBS is real, but for some women there could be a simple, effective solution. Note that a sample size of three women plus a heuristic argument does not make for good science. No harm in trying either!)
• Your menstrual cycle could be two days shorter without tampons. I heard this at a women's health seminar. I went to be moral support for a friend so she would go, and it wasn't the touchy-feely blather I was afraid of. The speaker cited research studies, although I haven't been able to find them. So I'll just say my sample size is one plus hearsay of research, but I don't miss those two days one bit.
• Talc, although it comes in powder form, is still a rock. Talc in the panties has been causally linked to increased infections. If you really want to powder, use a cornstarch one unless you have a yeast infection. Cornstarch is from corn, a food item. Yeast can eat it and thrive. So no powder is best, but the occasional puff of cornstarch baby powder is fine.

These are non-obvious tips that can make life better. Share!

Annoying Treo (not) Charging

I like to test things before I go on a trip. I was hoping to go on a trip without my laptop (this may be the first in years for a week-long trip), and I wanted to be sure I could charge my Treo from my iPod's wall charger (a small adapter from wall current to USB). Cell phones come in handy on the road, at least while the battery lasts.

My Treo 700p failed the test! It would not charge from anything but my actual laptop. The closest I could come to faking it out was to plug a powered USB hub into my laptop, plug Treo cable into hub, plug Treo into cable, let Treo start charging, and then sneakily unplug the hub from my laptop. That's a lot of hassle just to get it to charge!!!

I'll just bring the spare battery instead, but it's annoying not to be able to charge how I wish, so I had to ask Google why. From Treo charging in cradle from Palm Support Forums:

Besides using the charger to charge the phone, the PC will need to be on to use the trickle charge method. Some motherboards can allow continuous current even if PC is shut down but clearly your PC does not have such motherboard. The reason why your powered usb hub is not charging the phone is that the hub itself regulates power by "On Demand" and that demand is active data xfers from A to B or vice versa. So if no data is moving, then there will be insufficient power from that usb port to initiate a trickle charge.

Phooey. At least the mystery is explained; too bad my Treo wall and car chargers died (I think it wears out the connectors somehow since new cables work, but that's another story).