twothamendment

Yes, and when you paint as much as they do they get good at it. I've seen a guy who's freehand looked better than what I can do with tape - and he was much faster.

Right, once you do a job you never look at it the same. By hiring it out you never know the details. The same quality of work might look better to you if you didn't do it, but it may be more satisfying if you do.

I've worked most construction trades and built three houses that my wife and I designed. The devil is in the details. Some machine layering out concrete like a 3D printer is something I saw in Popular Science decades ago. I always wanted to see it happen. Even with a giant 3D printer, you'd have to have people there to lay conduits for plumbing, electrical, etc. The devil is in the details and most of those details are hidden from view. Out of sight, out of mind for most people. Once you do these jobs you realize there is so much that goes into a house.

Once a house is built in a way that is "out of the norm", you'll raise a few eyebrows from inspectors too. We had that issue and it was because it was a timber framed house like someone might have made 100+ years ago - no bolts, nails screws, metal brackets, etc. It was 100% put together with joints and pegs. The inspector only walked around with his jaw on the floor. We finally sat him down to show that we did our homework and followed engineering guidelines - but they weren't guidelines that he was familiar with.

MVP - Most vulnerable product? Yeah, it is easy to cut the corners that the public won't notice.

I worked with a guy who was on a state fire crew (not California). The pay was super low, but he didn't care. Being outdoors in the smoke was way better than being in a cell and the time off for being good was worth quite a bit to him. He was totally happy with the arrangement and it sounded like many others were too. The state had lots of similar programs, roofing government buildings, etc.

I thought I'd share how he felt because it wasn't all all what I expected to hear. I expected he'd rip on it and all I heard was good.

Asking nice can work, but I find it depends on what is in my hand at the time.

If they do, maybe the USA will learn from Canada. In my area the Canadians are the ones buying stuff up. Other than property taxes, their contribution is to all show up on the same weekend and empty the grocery store shelves - and driving up prices.

There are many things I like about Ebooks, but until I can lend it to a friend or sell it when I'm done with it, I'm done with them.

I can buy a used (and sometimes new) paper copy cheaper than an Ebook and when I'm done I can decided if I want to keep it sell it or give it away.

Don't forget the key for the gas cap/charging port.

I switched to nextcloud a while ago. When Dropbox started sending me email after email telling me they were going to delete my account soon, I couldn't wait for it to happen. (OK, I could wait since I wasn't willing to spend time to log in and do it myself).

It is nice to know where my data is.

I use echos all the time and order from Amazon all the time. Those are almost complete separate. Twice those paths crossed, but only because Amazon did something crazy like sell a box of Cliff bars for half what Costco does. They got me to try ordering by voice, but I can't see myself doing that again until they sell me some more stuff at cost and ship it free.

How about a checkbox to avoid tunnels? Maybe that won't matter, hopefully there aren't too many autonomous Hazardous Materials trucks rolling around full of explosives.

Above, someone mentioned rebar in the foundation. That is a Ufer Ground. In places with very dry soil you can pound a stack of ground rods into the earth and still not get a good ground. Ufer figured out that concrete in the foundation provides a good ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufer_ground

5 years ago I built my house and did my all my electrical, I needed a Ufer ground in the foundation and 2 ground rods near the meter. Being a newer area, water lines were plastic.

Yes! A few years ago I quit going to a restaurant I liked because it was so noisy. I'd leave with a headache and felt like I couldn't carry on a conversation.

Vote with your feet and wallet.

I like the peace when hiking, except in bear country. I don't mind a loud mouth in the group so we don't sneak up on things that cause injury to life and limb.

I don't know about all the quiet people, but I fall into your generalization. I'm on vacation and while I've enjoyed the places I've been I can wait to get home to some peace and quiet where I can curse my refrigerator for being so noisy. (It is just fine, but when it is all you can hear it starts to seem loud.)

They have Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte in the list of false positives. Did they call it a false positive because they are sure he wasn't included in the 25,000 mugs they loaded? His mug is out there.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/756343001

Sometimes it is worth it. I spent 2 days to buy a truck. I flew to another state and drove it home. It mostly went according to plan except the leaky power steering hose that I spotted the first minute I looked at it - and then spent the next 5 hours waiting for them to fix it. I wish I could trade more weekends for $5,000.

Nothing wrong with a warrant, but that is a good indication it is time to look at a different brand.

404

I guess it depends on where you are. UPS is awesome where I am. They are always on time and have even called me to come meet them when they couldn't get up my road in the winter.

FedEx is hit and miss, depends on the contractor. One just stuffed a package in my mail box and marked it as delivered on my "Front Porch". My mail box is a mile away. Close, but no.

Amazon shipping - I hope it never expands to my area.

I love the puzzled looks of clerks when they ask for my phone number or address and I decline. I've only once had to resort to "I can make up a phone number if you really want one".

Amazon's packing skills have lead me to order in batches that I think will ship well together. Once I see that heavy item that is going to pound and smash the other items has shipped I'll order the rest. It is less than ideal, but as long as they suck at packing they can deal with two orders instead.

I used it in the early and mid 90's. I never liked it, but every time I tried to cancel they'd give me another month or three for free. It was hard to argue with that.

Now I have to have an ISP who lets me open any port I want, host what I want (within reason for a home connection) and just stays out of the way.

Not too impressive, but I'm glad I have it - a cronjob runs each night and makes sure I shut my garage door. It is an open source python project to talk to the alarm system and a relay between the pins of a raspberry pi and and a wire I soldered to my garage door opener.

I also threw together an Alexa skill that I can tell goodnight - it closes the garage door, turns off some lights, turns off my hot water heater and arms the alarm.

Nothing large or fancy, but they get used and save me at least seconds a day!

It is old, but potato alone will get you pretty far: https://www.livescience.com/10163-man-eating-potatoes-2-mont...

I'd need some variety just so I didn't go insane.

That is tough to do. I lived in a city where there wasn't any cable and the DSL sucked. A few WISPs were the only real game in town. They weren't bad - until evening when everyone started to stream. They upgraded several times over the years, but it is still a rough business to try to broadcast out so many streams at once. I had it pretty good because my WISP had a tower on my roof and I was hard wired to their backhaul. For everyone else in the neighborhood it was slower.

My two choices are my rural-telepohone co-op - or satellite. I'm not complaining b/c my ISP seems fine, but there isn't anyone else to run to if I'm unhappy. I don't consider satellite an option.

If we count satellite, doesn't everyone in the US have "access" to broadband?

Yes, a point to keep in mind when buying equipment. I had a very disappointed neighbor when I finally convinced him to shut the power off to his whole house and see what would happen. The salesman sold him on having power when the grid was down.

It takes more work, planning and some battery to have some power when the grid is down. I plan have enough to charge phones, power radios, power propane appliances and maybe keep me on the internet. I'd like to have enough for a refrigerator, but that starts to get expensive.

There is a coal powered plant in Eastern Montana that is having troubles.

"Data processing and blockchain interests are the latest entities to court the ailing Hardin Generating Station, a 109-megawatt coal-fired power plant that is seeking a buyer to avoid closure." - https://www.apnews.com/6a577c7d0dc1488b9481d03685950e96

Great, now we can watch train loads of coal go into a building and bitcoins come out! Yeah, that is the smell of progress.