[TriEmbed] Hardware "Debugging"

[Pete Soper]

Here's one more bug hazard to watch out for. If you have equipment 
outdoors, a good design detail is to have "weep holes" on the bottom of 
an otherwise sealed enclosure so repeated wet air leaks and day/night 
cycles don't cause an accumulation of water The problem with a weep hole 
is that wasps and other critters will get in and hose things up. The 
clue is to discover the hole is filled with dried "wasp mud" (or, I 
guess, electrocuted ants). I eventually learned to put a very fine mesh 
screen over weep holes specifically to keep the wasps out. However, they 
outsmarted me several years later. I  took the lawn mower key out one 
spring and noticed I couldn't get it into the key hole: Yep, completely 
blocked with dried mud!!

-Pete