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@chrishuck Wow! I can imagine that everyone involved deeply cares that those bolts don't vibrate loose. Adventure vans aren't exactly sitting still but probably not in the same league.
My naive thought is that the toothed lock washers dig into the sheet metal which I would expect to help prevent vibration loosening. But, IANAE and am certainly open to informed corrections. It sounds like I've lucked out so far thanks to proper tightening.

@chrishuck TIL

@chrishuck I don't know. When I use a torque wrench set to manufacturer's recommendation, I've had good luck. But, maybe it's luck?

... and when do we want it?

@attoparsec What the actual frick?! How does that even happen?

TIL about kep (AKA k-lock) nuts that combine nuts and tooth lock washers. Tooth lock washers dig into sheet metal in order to prevent loosening by vibration.

Boy, a lot of folks are going to be so surprised to learn that raising tariffs is raising taxes.

One aspect of the last few years that surprised me is how effective servility can be when aimed at fash leaders. It takes a small, consistent amount of kissing the ring in private and publicly declaring fealty to land a cushy role in the palace, at least until they need a sacrifice.
I realize it's probably always been so but I didn't understand that it's simple and requires a small number of basic skills.

Hell, I'd pay a fair amount for a digital release of the STLs, BOM, and good set of instructions.

Hell yes! This guy replaced all of the proprietary aor locked down parts in his Bambu Lab X1C. He will receive So Many requests to make a kit. I mean, I want two kits and would happily pay a fair price.
https://youtu.be/z6Solk2XQcY
(hat tip to Hackaday: https://www.hackster.io/news/unproprietarifying-the-bambu-lab-x1c-2a3118891c48)

I could weld up a lockbox for the van but also, gun safes exist. I wonder whether a gun safe manufacturer's marketing department would be up to sponsor the build. It's a pretty good story, right? Van abode electrical system is stripped. Gun safe to the rescue!
#vanBuild #vanLife

Groggy morning thought: The van robbers didn't steal my clean, unused emergency cassette toilet so I should install my LAN devices in a seemingly used dummy toilet. Then I can keep a tiny collapsed emergency toilet kit out of sight. It's important to have an emergency toilet but it doesn't need to be as fancy as my current one.
#vanBuild #vanRobbery

Ok. Police report and insurance claims filed. The police said that there's basically no chance they'll look into it. Unless I can provide videos of the thieves actually doing the deed and also identify them by name the cops file the report and then never look at it again.
But, I needed the police report to file the insurance claim so here we are.

They took a pill bottle with some expired heart meds. Good luck with that! Thank Dog my meds were not in the van. That would have been a PITA.

I guess I'll need to figure out a way to more easily unload infrastructure when I leave the van parked in Seattle.

This is bad and I'm hurt and mad. I'll recover and I try not to be attached to things, especially things in vehicles. I'm deeply lucky that almost all of my IT stuff (laptop, modem, router, RPis, etc) weren't in there.

I'll spend the rest of the day realizing more things that are gone. I just realized that they took my bin of kitchen stuff. Pots, pans, utinsels, knives, bleh.

I unpacked quite a bit but not everything because I'm still pretty weak from germs. Lesson learned, I guess. I've parked carefree in this neighborhood for twenty years but in a car. A van is too tasty, I guess.

Well, I guess it was going to happen sooner or later. Someone smashed a window to get into my van and took everything of value. It was somewhat unpacked but they took the entire electrical system (batteries, dcdc charger, fusebox, suitcase solar panels, everything) and I'm surprised they didn't take the wiring for the copper. Also, my camera bag and a few power tools.
They had bolt cutters because the expensive stuff was security cabled. So, not a casual crew.
I have regrets.
#vanLife #ouch

Almost every day while I was selling printed miniature mini/retrocomputers someone would ask to buy STLs so they could print their own. It's a reasonable request, but I always said no because of the many stories like Scott's where as soon as a digital version of a fun thing is released it goes up on all of the sites for sale, often using the creators' own marketing assets.
I wish it weren't so, but it totally is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPG6PdfpUlY