Happy Friday the 13th! Is @Revengeofthenerds still alive or did you have a finally fatal accident? Anyone have a history of weird shit happening on this fateful day in the past? It is also National Prosecco Day. Get it on with simultaneously celebrated National Filet Minon Day. With a combination of extreme heat and low air quality from nearby fires, we are pretty much stuck indoors this weekend with all the air purifiers running. Time to move to Vermont! Happy Friday, y'all. Kick up your feet and enjoy a day off.
I am alive, though it was reasonable of you to check on me. As I’ve mentioned before, broke my nose one time on a Friday 13, had the worst break of my life (until most recent one) with a compound fracture of my wrist — both bones — on a Friday 13. Also broke my shoulder on a Saturday 14. I just got home from work and am attempting to help the pain in what I learned just yesterday is a fully broken fibula (that fracture went all the way through, so it’s a clean break just not dislocated). Medicine of choice is some amazing CBG seltzer by a buddy of mine, made in collaboration with Kevin smith
13 is so real-world unlucky for me that I joke it's my lucky number since I haven't died yet. So I play it in casinos whenever I can. Some people take that shit really serious. They get mad if you play 13 in roulette. I've seen hotels with no "13th floor" in the elevator.
Well this week has been shitty. Had my first run in with a shady contractor who ended up basically scamming us out of ~$1000. Came, did the quote, took the deposit, showed up over 3 hours late every day for 4 days, did about 5 hours of total work (most of it shit work at that), and then the last day said he couldn't finish the job unless we paid him the remaining balance which we told him, fuck no, and he ended up just taking his tools and leaving. Called him, had it out over the phone where he basically talked all kinds of shit and was trying to gaslight me about what he did. Guy is a subhuman piece of trash. Sadly, there's like NO ONE within 20 miles who will actually follow through on any work at the moment. Had 3 different people come out for quotes, walked them through about 30k worth of work they could have gotten and every single one hasn't even attempted to give a quote. Two other guys said they'd come over on a specific day to just look at the work and then ghosted. I don't know how these people are running a business because almost every contractor I've dealt with has been just absolute dog shit. I'm trying to do as much as I possibly can, but we are at a point where we just need to throw money at some things to get it finished. Have a contractor from an hour away coming by on Monday who charges a $75 consultation fee which can be applied if he takes on the job, but at this point it's like, fuck, if the guy just shows up, he's already 90% got the job.
Today I had a complete waste of time with a plumber. My tankless hot water heater threw an error code halfway through my shower this morning, so I called in the company that installed it. Dude shows up pretty fast, spends 2 hours ripping through stuff while I'm working, says "I'm done, but I can't find anything wrong... so I just cleaned a bunch of stuff, blew out all the hoses, put it all back together, it seems fine." I walked through the error code that we were getting, which was "clogged neutralizer", and he'd never heard of it. I pointed to the neutralizer, and he said "yeah, I don't know what that is." (FYI, exhaust condensation is highly acidic, so they basically have a plastic container full of calcium carbonate, limestone, in small rock form, that it soaks the water in before it goes down the drain, thereby neutralizing the PH). I'm conflicted... the dude did nothing deliberate to address the specific error that was thrown. But he says it's all working. Sure enough, I run the hot water and it kicks on, no issues. I let the water run for 5 minutes or so, and yeah... no issues... it's working as expected. Fine... let's chalk it up to the yearly maintenance and maybe he unclogged something along the way. One less thing broken, time to go relax and have dinner. Go to wash the after-dinner dishes; there's no hot water, and it's throwing the same error code. I called their 24hr service, left a message, and ripped the thing apart, taking out the neutralizer and sensor wires. Sure enough, it's all clogged up with sediment, rust, whatever, and the water isn't flowing through it as it should. I rinse the fuck out of it, shake the hell out of the rocks, run water through it, and it's fine. I also learn way more about how that thing works than I ever wanted to. (Turns out that the water inlet from the condensation was a little bit faster than the rate it was draining out of the neutralizer, so after a short period of time under very heavy load, the neutralizer backed up, triggering the "clogged" alarm, and killing the system). By this time, the "24 hr" service calls back... it's the dude at his trailer for the weekend, so his only advice was "turn it off and on again." I literally said, "are you fucking kidding me? You think that's what's going to fix this? Here... let me explain what I did that your guy didn't..." and rattled off the shit I'd learned... including how the circuit board figures out the clog in the first place, and how I had just spent the last hour and a half. His "oh" in response spoke volumes. It fucking PISSES ME OFF when I hire so-called "experts" to come and handle something that I don't want to have to deal with, only to find out they were shit at their job, and I then had to handle it myself anyway. All while they have the balls to charge through the ass. Needless to say, I dare them to send me a fucking bill for that guy's time. Excuse me while I go have a nice, long, shower beer...
That's basically how I learned how to work on a rotary engine. Every single time I took my RX7 to a shop (Including Mazda dealerships), within a day I was under the hood trying to figure out why the car was still not running right. The best was when I bought a Chilton manual to help speed the process. My slave cylinder for the clutch went out, so I brought my new book out to the garage and it told me to jack up the car to access the cylinder. So I did and slid under the car with my wrenches and....nothing. I looked and looked and the damn thing wasn't there. After a few minutes of puzzling I slid out and let the jack down, peered under the hood and right there on top of the bell housing was the slave unit. In to the trash went the book.
Here's a pic of the guts of the unit. See that white plastic container with all the hoses? Yeah... that's the neutralizer. Dude had no idea what it was or what it did. I learned it in 3 minutes from the manual. Yep... HE'S the expert.
There are people out there who can bullshit their way even into trades. They’re lazy and the no doubt faked half the signatures in their training block checklist when they apprenticed. They depend on the fact they (usually) know more about the job than the clients, and cruise on ignorance. If YOU figured your own issue out, he should have already known it when he looked at it. I had basically an opposite experience recently: Never had a plumbing issue here, but when our Water Heater went for good the company replaced it with a new one, no fees whatsoever in less than twelve hours from when we called. The installer asked for nothing from us before arriving and was a wizard at his job. Complete competence top to bottom.
I had to take a crash course in how a geothermal board actually works. I paid someone almost 70k for them to basically feed me a giant line of bullshit about why the system wasn't working. Turns out, the original guy we bought the system from sold his company to another guy who had no fucking clue about anything. They actually installed the wrong control board for our unit and the new guy is trying to tell us to get it working like we intended it to, there's another "optional" part we need to get to. Thankfully the original guy was still attached to the company and he ended up taking care of everything, but it was this giant ordeal that didn't need to happen, all because of incompetence and an inability to do a decent job.
Water heaters are actually pretty easy. I'm talking about the typical tank type units. I've done complete replacements in under 45 minutes, when I was maintaining apartments. My first one took me about 6 hours and a couple extra trips to the hardware store because I didn't know everything I would actually need when I started.
turns out if you buy an electric pressure washer you wife will enjoy it so much that you won't have to pressure wash off the house anymore
Nothing, really. It's never been UNlucky for me. All you guys talking about getting burned by "pros" reminds me of why I seriously pursued being a mechanic as a career: I couldn't trust anyone else to do the job right.
I just picked up this one: https://www.briggsandstratton.com/n...ressure-washers/2000-max-psi--35-max-gpm.html Briggs and Stratton electric. Super handy for washing the car/truck/trailer, and folds down nicely to take with the trailer. If I have a big job, like resurfacing the driveway, I still have the 5hp gas one, but this is a nice in-between a hose and the big pressure washer. Pretty convenient.
Gonna be honest, given your "joking" nature towards your wife, my first thought upon reading this is that you blasted your wife with it and she got some weird sexual pleasure from it.
What a great, albeit expensive weekend. Not expensive because it's Napa valley. Expensive because I'm an idiot. Wake up Saturday morning, shower, go to get dressed and realize I packed zero boxers. Google maps says the nearest Target, Wal-Mart etc is 18 miles away but there is a clothing shop in town that sells suits, jackets etc. We cruise on in there and holy shit, they sell boxers. Score. Grab two pairs and head to the cashier. He rings them up and says "That'll be $78" "Um, what?" Whatever, better than taking an hour out of my day to drive to the nearest town. They're nice boxers, but not $40 nice. After the smoked meat fest, we had back into town and grab some drinks at the local cantina. Couple of drinks turns into quite a few drinks and we head back towards the hotel. We're passing a tasting room and I think I'd like a glass of wine. Unfortunately, they're closing up and won't serve a glass. I ask if I can just buy a bottle to take back to the hotel. She says yes and swipes my card. We get back to the hotel, open the bottle, pour half a glass and then go to bed. Check the bank in the morning. $80!! WTF! I've never spent $80 on a bottle of wine. I'm more of a $20-25 guy.