We’ve lived here 12 years now. Before us, the original owner lived here for 45 years. The house was builder grade, and nearly all original, when we moved in. Thankfully we had very few actual surprises until this year, but I did find evidence that the original cast iron drain pipe for the kitchen sink had rotted out and was replaced before I took the kitchen down to studs for a planned reno.

All in I think our kitchen was around $20k and that was with me doing all the work other than installing the counters :( I also pulled down a wall, but thankfully didn’t need to put in a beam.

We had a minor surprise around 5 years ago: a galvanized pipe that was screwed into the cast iron stack rotted out. I replaced that section with PVC.

This year we had our first real surprise: the cast iron pipes in our basement floor had rotted out pretty badly. That was… not fun to deal with. Break up the slab, find asbestos floor tiles, get 12 years worth of stuff out of the basement to deal with cleanup, etc.

I loled. The flow has been restored!

That looks pretty intense, haha. Nope, nothing like that here. The repaired area looks like some dingus decided to use a tiny section of pipe for some reason, but looks normal otherwise.

That’s fair, I was more worried about the slipping portion that a root might be able to get in through.

All in this was less than $10 excluding the glue. Just a section of 1.5" pipe, a normal coupler, and a coupler that lacks the center stop.

That stinks. I was able to find this within about 6" on the first dig. It’s about 10 feel from the outlet, so I could use the snake as a depth gauge.

Hope your dad is able to get to the bottom of it soon!

This was pretty cheap TBH. I cut out the old joint, spliced in about 8" of new pipe with a traditional coupler on one side, and then used a repair coupling on the other side.

I had somewhat mixed feelings about burying anything that can slide. It’s probably in my head, but I didn’t want to give the roots another opportunity.

All in I’m probably looking at $20. Need a fresh batch of PVC glue, two couplers, and a small section of pipe. I doubt I could reliably span a gap that wide by only replacing the coupler.

If you don’t live in an area where basements are common odds are you wouldn’t ever encounter one.

I completely agree that the name is very weird. “Why yes, I’ll call an area that tends to accumulate fluids a sump. No, not a swamp. A sump.”

In the world of internal combustion you know someone is serious about their engine when they tell you it has a dry sump. “I took the place the motor oil accumulates and made it dry”. Which is honestly kind of a misnomer, they really just added a drain and a pump to put it in a remote reservoir.

Out of curiosity when did you get out? We have kids in elementary school and they were issued Chromebooks. Our older one is expected to bring it to/from school daily.

I hate the device. Chromebooks kneecap computer literacy. This kid also has a (used) Thinkpad, but greatly prefer the Chromebook because it’s not locked down. It has no time limits, can access websites like YouTube with zero content filter, etc. It’s on a VPN so I can’t easily block sites like I can on everything else, but at least I can limit Internet access time to make it less appealing to use. The list goes on.

Another source of annoyance are the apps teachers use to communicate. Teachers are allowed to choose between two and one of the apps paywalls functionality behind a subscription.

That’s interesting. I do not have any desire to start smoking, but I probably do drink more than I should. I don’t drink daily, but if I have one I’m probably having 2-4. I’m a hair holder than you are fwiw.

and hardware innovation has stalled out. Because of course it has. They don’t have the space of a dedicated camera.

You’re totally not going to fit even a micro four thirds sensor in a phone, but there are a bunch of Chinese phones with larger sensors. Although they can be a PITA to find if you’re on the US, reviews like them.

I suspect the reason why we don’t see them from the mainline phone manufacturers comes down more to hardware BOM cost than packaging or size.

The US isn’t #1, but our placement on this list still sad

Tech genius is only the most recent wave in this fad. We love our hero worship, which results in cycles of this type of thing.

The most recent example is probably the Robber Baron era of the guided age. Some notables of the time include Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Leland Stanford, etc. Edison and Bell didn’t reach that level of wealth, but they probably would have if they were alive today.

Don’t worry, a lot of that money is still around wrapped up in family trusts. Sure, they’ve given a decent chunk away to white wash their names but these weren’t good people.

0 is really cold, 100 is really hot. How hard could it be 🤷

/s

All units are made up to some extent. Things like oz vs cups vs pints vs quarts vs gallons absolutely drives me up the wall. Let’s not even talk about things like using cups as a unit of measurement for flour…

Late to the party, but to add on:

• the glamor shots of finished prints that you’ll see in photos and videos are super misleading. Shine a harsh light at most prints at a steep angle and you’ll see a fairly rough exterior finish in the z-axis
• Ellis’s tuning guide is a good thing to run through. It’s pretty straightforward and will give you a feel for what to tweak and when to tweak it
• I’ve been printing for something like 8-10 years and have never bothered with a filament dryer. I tend to buy 3 kg spools and some of them sit open for quite some time as I work through them. They live in my basement, which does have a dehumidifier in it but is usually around 55% humidity
• keep in mind that FDM printers are basically a CNC hot glue gun and keep your expectations in line
• 45° print orientation can be a cheat code if you have crazy overhangs
• watch the first layer. If you get a good first layer odds are your print will be fine
• different filaments have different physical properties and will print differently. This is true across polymers (ie PLA, PETG, ASA, ABS, TPU, etc), but can also be true across brands, colors, and blends (PLA vs PLA+, etc)
• don’t get hung up on things like acceleration or velocity. Speed is all about flow and the best way to bump that up is bigger nozzles, thicker layers, and wider extrusions

For real advice: get a pair of calipers and print some radius gauges. Then jump into CAD, even if it means learning it. The real magic of 3D printing is in making custom designs. I’m personally a huge fan of functional prints. Once you start seeing opportunities to print replacement parts, make jigs and fixtures, and make your own designs for things you’ll find tons of opportunities.

This is an actual thing. It even has a fancy name. Geophagia is nearly universal around the world in tribal and traditional rural societies.

In the past five years, the air district has issued 369 notices of violation to the company, mostly at its Fremont facility. Though all of the violations are still pending, meaning the agency has not resolved the issues, data from the past five years does not show any financial penalties associated with the alleged violations.

Sigh

She was always too small for her breed. Not sure why she was sick.

Sounds like a runt, which is fairly common with cats and dogs. That’s where “the runt of the litter” came from. It also applies to farm animals with singles litters (cows) and larger litters (pigs). I have not seen it get applied to a bird before, but it make sense.

A runt is just something with a low birth rate. It turns out that there’s a very strong correlation between birth weight and health.

Goodhart’s law in action.

But let’s only do it in some English speaking countries and not others! I am joking, but this is one of the reasons why American English has diverged from British English.

Relevant xkcd: