Streetwiseguy said:Water heater life is remarkably varied, it seems. I think a bunch of it is initial quality of the part, but the mineral content and acidity of the water is a big factor too. My brother in Regina had a lease deal, got a new one whenever they started leaking. 5 years or so, each. Mine, in a city with different water, is about 25 years old.
Also the lifespan between electric and gas water heaters is shocking as well.
My parents house has an electric water heater. Two of them had the bottom rust out and flood the basement. The original to the house (built in 1986) failed while they were at work. The water ran for about 4 hours before someone came home. The replacement lasted about 5 years before failing the exact same way. Fortunately it happened while we were all home.
The house me and my now ex-SWMBO bought in 2009 had a gas water heater that was 26 years old. We had it inspected after closing and it was determined to be in good shape. I didn't replace it because I had to sell the house 9 months later due to divorce.
My current house's electric water heater is 12 years old. It sits directly on carpet (that's a whole 'nother WTF) that shows signs that it's been soaked before. It's getting replaced as soon as I get back from deployment.
In reply to Dusterbd13 :
I figured your advice would be to light that bitch on fire out of spite.
Toyman! said:In reply to Antihero :
I wore Wrangler rip-stop cargo pants for years until their quality went to E36 M3.
I went through quite a few brands, and I'm now wearing Lee Extreme Motion cargo pants. They have been durable and flex enough to let me move without cutting off circulation to important parts.
They are about $25 on Amazon.
I have a pair of Lee Extreme Motion jeans. I think I paid about $19 on the jungle website (thanks BensBargains!).
They are my favorite pair of jeans I've ever owned. The stretchiness keeps things comfortable. They are amazing.
[the following is a first world problem]
car upgrades are depressingly expensive...
This rant came to a head this morning but has been festering since last fall...
Last fall I purchased a set of buckets for my corvette. I got what I thought was a good deal on a set of barely used Marrad ST3 seats. The seats came /w FDF raceshop seat mounts and set me back around $1200 plus shipping. By the time I got the correct seat mounts, harnesses, airbag simulators, harness bar, and the assorted nuts and bolts I more than doubled my investment and am in at least $3000.
Today's rant is where the reality of car upgrades became depressing. After getting the car out and about i started to think about a big brake kit on the front. I had picked out the Aero6 kit used on the spec Corvette only to find out it won't fit behind my stock wheels. Corvette wheels that fit big brakes all require wider tires which means to run bigger brakes I need a new set of wheels, matching tires, and the brake kit. A $1900 upgrade turns into $6000. Kinda hard to justify my entire entry fee budget worth of dollars for what amounts to a better brake pedal.
ShawneeCreek said:Ashyukun (Robert) said:I was excited to win a box of 10 reams of paper for about half price from one of the local auctions since we were just about out of the last box that I got since The Dancer goes through a fair amount of it for her nonprofit. It wasn't until I was unloading the box at home (meaning I'd already loaded it into the car after getting it from the auction place...) that I realized it was a box of 10 reams of Legal size paper (8 1/2 by 14) and not standard 8 1/2 x 11. -_-; I don't think our printer even has a tray for Legal (though it can use it I'm sure, but only a few sheets at a time).
So now I get to figure out what to do with 5,000 sheets of Legal-size printer paper...
Find your local print shop and ask them to cut them to size for you. They have heavy duty shear cutters that can cut multiple reams at once. It might take them 5 minutes, most of that setup. Or maybe they'll just trade you for reams of 8 1/2 x 11.
That's not a terrible idea... we have a fair number of posters and such printed each year for the nonprofit and pretty much exclusively work with one print shop so have a decent relationship with them- they might be willing to help us out.
stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:Streetwiseguy said:Water heater life is remarkably varied, it seems. I think a bunch of it is initial quality of the part, but the mineral content and acidity of the water is a big factor too. My brother in Regina had a lease deal, got a new one whenever they started leaking. 5 years or so, each. Mine, in a city with different water, is about 25 years old.
Also the lifespan between electric and gas water heaters is shocking as well.
My parents house has an electric water heater. Two of them had the bottom rust out and flood the basement. The original to the house (built in 1986) failed while they were at work. The water ran for about 4 hours before someone came home. The replacement lasted about 5 years before failing the exact same way. Fortunately it happened while we were all home.
The house me and my now ex-SWMBO bought in 2009 had a gas water heater that was 26 years old. We had it inspected after closing and it was determined to be in good shape. I didn't replace it because I had to sell the house 9 months later due to divorce.
My current house's electric water heater is 12 years old. It sits directly on carpet (that's a whole 'nother WTF) that shows signs that it's been soaked before. It's getting replaced as soon as I get back from deployment.
I've never had a hot water heater rust out- but both houses I've owned have had all-gas appliances and thus gas water heaters. My old house that I was in for about 10 years I never had to do a thing with the water heater (I think it was pretty much new when I bought the house, I don't remember). The current house had a less-than-year-old gas hot water heater when we bought the house. After about 8 years IIRC it stopped working, and I eventually figured out that the gas heating element portion of it had failed. I had to drain it to replace the part, but it wasn't very expensive or difficult to replace, and it has worked perfectly since.
I wonder if there's some kind of galvanic corrosion in play with the electric heating elements that causes them to rust faster that isn't present in gas heaters...
Updated rant:
Apparently my possible failing bearing is actually a frozen caliper just barely dragging.
So that's cool, that like......4 times the work to replace both calipers and bleed them. I hate bleeding brakes
(total first world problem) WTF is with phone menus still using 'button presses' rather than spoken responses? It's a pain with a cell phone. Or assuming that the phone itself is always listening in, why can't the phone auto-convert a spoken number to touchtone, or at least get rid of the 1-second delay before showing the number pad...
In reply to Antihero :
I have never in 29 years seen a failing wheel bearing get noticeably hotter than the other.
In reply to Oapfu :
I have about a 60% success rate with voice recognition. I need to press buttons
Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to Antihero :
I have never in 29 years seen a failing wheel bearing get noticeably hotter than the other.
I have but not to this extent. Warm would be better way to put it, not steaming hot.
I was assuming bearing just because it wasn't pulling, which is what usually happens to me when I've had a dragging brake but apparently I was wrong.
Oapfu said:(total first world problem) WTF is with phone menus still using 'button presses' rather than spoken responses? It's a pain with a cell phone. Or assuming that the phone itself is always listening in, why can't the phone auto-convert a spoken number to touchtone, or at least get rid of the 1-second delay before showing the number pad...
Counter-rant: WTF is with devices and/or phone trees demanding that I speak to them? I speak willingly to people, to domesticated animals, and occasionally to inanimate objects that warrant praise or encouragement or a good berating. I'm admittedly not a well-educated man, but I am at least functionally literate, and can read and hammer a button or an icon in a hell of a lot less time than it takes to listen to some spoken prompt and reply with a spoken response. The more time I lose to the process, the less intelligible I become, prolonging the misery that much further. And yet the device, or phone tree, or whattheberekeleyever, doesn't care. It is free to either repeat its incessantly chipper requests that I repeat myself or to shut me down entirely, and I'm powerless against it.
Maybe I'm using the phone differently than you. Mostly I just use it to complain to 'er indoors about trivial inconveniences via text message and to follow the goings-on around here. If I have to scan a QR code or speak to a robot, I walk away, metaphorically speaking.
Feeling cute, might go back to landline later.
I've never been in line for a website before... I'm not sure what to think about that.
In reply to wae :
Is that sort of like the Ticketmaster virtual line before you can try to buy tickets?
I owe on my taxes. Apparently things changed and withholding didn't automatically with our payroll company. berkeleyers.
In reply to Spearfishin :
I think so? I was trying to help my daughter schedule her written test to get her permit - Kentucky just made into law the bill lowering the permit age to 15, so she can get started a couple months earlier than we had planned.
In reply to wae :
I have, but it's been for product releases (the first few iPhones I ordered as soon as they were available back when I was still doing the App podcast come to mind as does pre-ordering the LEGO BTTF DeLorean).
In reply to DarkMonohue :
I have gotten to the point where I press zero repeatedly until I get a human or the system hangs up on me.
Most systems will kick you to a human.
In reply to Toyman! :
Swearing at the system seems to work too. There have been a few places I've called where the second or third round of progressively louder "I WANT TO TALK TO A berkeleyING HUMAN!!". put it right through, no menus, prompts, or anything
Sunday I was ready to buy this wagon.
The listing as of Sunday:
My messages to her on Sunday and her replies.
Then sometime today she updated the listing to this.
So it would seem it's still available. Possibly awaiting a title. I still have the cash for it. But kinda turned off on trying to contact her again.
Like umm please can I come give you money in exchange for for the automobile?
Usually when I sell things and a possible deal falls through with one buyer I do reach out to others that have messaged me.
I don't get it.
In reply to Oapfu :
DTMF (touch tone) is the basic phone menu, and it's been around for a really long time. IVRs are usually used until they literally can't be made to work any longer. Lifespans of 20+ years aren't uncommon.
Moving onward, it costs real money to use speech recognition. Getting a speech IVR to work well takes constant speech tuning, tinkering, etc. So, it's an ongoing expense. Get DTMF right, and it keeps working no matter what kind of accent you have.
The take rate on DTMF versus speech still leans heavier towards DTMF, and if you fail in voice, you wind up in DTMF anyhow, so the final take rates usually wind up looking like 70/30.
Lastly, technology took a leap, and many companies don't see the point of spending money on a fancy speech recognition IVR when the vaaaaast majority of people prefer to self-service online. I'd hazard a guess that just like where I work, most companies are investing more on phone apps, chat and web portals than on telephony.
Everybody I know that prefers speech to DTMF tend to be constantly wear headsets and are multitasking on their phone and don't want to interrupt their game/web browsing/distracted driving/whatever to have the keypad up and have to look at the screen.
In reply to Toyman! :
There used to be a website called Get Human that advised how to bypass phone menus. Hmmm... Wow, it looks like they expanded quite a bit since the 90s. https://gethuman.com/
Another hint is to call the sales number for a company and then ask to transfer to regular customer service. Transfer calls often have higher priority, and can jump ahead in line.
In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :
I think it's odd but my wife will ask to talk to someone in the United States and most times they transfer her. Now these are the big guys - Comcast.
I love it when the voice-activated systems pick up on background noise and shuffle me off to places unknown... I'd rather just do straight DTMF.
dan0 said:Sunday I was ready to buy this wagon.
The listing as of Sunday:
My messages to her on Sunday and her replies.
Then sometime today she updated the listing to this.
So it would seem it's still available. Possibly awaiting a title. I still have the cash for it. But kinda turned off on trying to contact her again.
Like umm please can I come give you money in exchange for for the automobile?
Usually when I sell things and a possible deal falls through with one buyer I do reach out to others that have messaged me.
I don't get it.
So one time I was looking at a Rampage, it was a good price and I messaged them.
They were oddly standoffish and very uncomfortable when I mentioned that I work on my own stuff. After talking to me they re upped the ad with " this is not a -car guy- car!!!!!'
The assumption I had was there was waaaaaayyyyyyyy more wrong with it than they said and they didn't want someone looking at it that knew wtf they were looking at.
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