Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
Hatfield
ParticipantGreece has too much government overhead, but that issue aside, I don’t think they’re ever going to get from out behind the eight ball as long as they’re shackled to the Euro.
Hatfield
ParticipantIf the property is in the city of SD, you might also try code compliance.
One of my tenant’s dogs had been barking and a neighbor called code compliance, who came after me, and man, they don’t f*ck around. They sent out a code compliance officer who heard the dog barking, and wrote me a letter. I had 20 days or whatever to resolve the issue. I called the office and was told that if they came out again and the issue wasn’t resolved I would be fined, and if I didn’t pay the fine they’d put a lien on the property. I asked about due process, and near as I can tell, there really isn’t any.
So if you want to strike fear in the heart of a property owner, forget the police, go to code compliance. I don’t know whether this will work in your particular case.
Hatfield
ParticipantThe crazy thing is that everybody knew at the time that Greece joined the Eurozone, that they’d cooked the books in order to meet the fiscal policy requirements. They’ve NEVER met the requirements. I remember reading about it at the time in The Economist, so it’s not like it’s a state secret. But it was boom times and I guess everyone figured it would all work out.
I think the only path forward is for Greece to default, exit the Euro, and inflate their way out of this mess. Greece is a tiny portion of the Eurozone GDP. The problem is when Italy, Portugal, Spain, and possibly Ireland all decide to follow suit, and I don’t see how that can be prevented one Greece establishes a precedent.
I really don’t see the Euro surviving, long-term.
July 7, 2015 at 10:36 PM in reply to: OT: How to combat a repetitive scam phone call from “Windows Technical Support” #787776Hatfield
ParticipantMy brother gets these calls all the time. Sometimes he toys with them, sometimes he berates them for not getting into an honest line of work. He think that some of them actually have no idea what they’re doing, they just work in a call center and are working off a script. If you take them off script they’re totally lost.
Hatfield
ParticipantWe have a front load Whirlpool (LG) washer. I’m not impressed with it. On the plus side, it does seem to use very little water and detergent. On the minus side, it takes a long time – shortest normal wash cycle is 40 minutes. At the end it spends about 5 minutes doing this stupid BS where it just rotates the barrel slowly in one direction and then the other. I don’t think it adds anything to the proceedings.
The big issue for me though is that the outer barrel never completely drains. You can’t leave the door closed or else the washer gets funky and mildewy fast. So we have this fancy washer and we have to always leave the damn door open when it’s not being used. Even then, every now and then I still need to run an empty load with a little bleach to get rid of the funkiness.
Top load washers don’t have this issue because the door does not need to be air & water tight.
Hatfield
ParticipantDunno if this is still the case, but for a long time salaries in San Diego were a tad lower than LA/OC, and considerably lower than the Bay Area. I guess because so many people want to live here?
Hatfield
Participant[quote=XBoxBoy]he suggested rebuilding it. For a couple grand.[/quote]
Find a new repair guy. There’s not a lot of black magic to a refrigerator. It’s a closed system with refrigerant, which might have leaked out. Unlikely, but there’s a test for that. There’s also a radiator which might be caked in dust or ice, which would prevent heat transfer. That would cause it to never stop running. There’s a compressor that circulates the refrigerant. There’s a logic board that decides when to run the compressor. There’s also some logic for the defrost cycle for the freezer. There might be a heating element for that. There’s not a lot to “rebuild.”
Wasn’t a built in fridge, but I once had a standalone that ran all the time. Repair guy came out. This particular fridge had a mechanical cam on a clock motor, with a little finger that felt the cam so it knew to run the defrost cycle every X hours. Well the cam had broken, so defrost never ran, and the radiator iced over, preventing heat exchange from occurring. He charged me $5 for a new plastic cam and $95 for the service call. That’s the kind of guy you want to hire. I’d give you this guy’s number but he since has retired.
That was in a rental unit. Our place has a GE Profile fridge. While it was still under warranty, the ice maker and water thing in the door stopped working. The GE repair guy came out, played with it a bit, rolled the fridge out, removed a little panel in the back, and took out a circuit board maybe 4″ x 4.” Popped in a new circuit board, everything works again. I asked him how much the service call would have cost had the fridge not been under warranty. “Lemme look that up!” he says. $430. “Say, can I have that old circuit board?” I ask. Googled the part number, found it on eBay for $45.
Find a repair guy who doesn’t need to “rebuild” you fridge to fix it.
Hatfield
ParticipantI lost a cousin last week too. He was 52. Went in for heart valve surgery. The surgery went great, but apparently something got knocked loose, traveled up to his brain and he had a stroke. They removed part of his skull, he was in ICU for about a week and then passed away. Left a wife and two teenagers behind. So freaking sad.
Hold your loved ones close because nobody knows when this merry go round tops turning.
Hatfield
ParticipantKnob and tube was phased out around 1940 or so. If it’s in good condition it’s not inherently dangerous (the house has survived this long, hasn’t it?). It can be hazardous to folks working in the crawlspace, tho. We have a 1929 rental unit that had been remodeled a few times but still had some live knob and tube wiring, and several years ago a pipe broke loose and made contact, and boy that sure caused some excitement. After that we had an electrician go through and replace all the knob and tube with modern grounded electrical.
Hatfield
ParticipantConsidering that his whole purpose in buying the paper was to pimp a new stadium from which he would directly benefit, the fact that he’s selling now leads me to believe that he thinks the Chargers are headed to Carson.
May 3, 2015 at 5:16 PM in reply to: replacing 4 foot fluorescent tubes with some sort of LED #785736Hatfield
ParticipantYeah… I’m not doing a full remodel for this.
I’m also reluctant to go with a solution that uses the ballast, because I think some of these ballasts are getting tired. And in any event, designing an LED bulb around a ballast is dumb, I’d rather take out the whole fixture and wire in something that can be dimmed.
So, who has a good selection of reasonably priced low-profile LED fixtures? Wasn’t that impressed with what I saw at Home Despot.
Hatfield
ParticipantAll I know is that the streets of Mira Mesa will be empty at 6pm tonight.
Hatfield
ParticipantI think for a young student it does not make sense to buy a piano, and certainly do not buy a new one. (Actually, I would never buy a new piano under any circumstances. I would buy a quality used piano from a piano tech instead.)
For now, you should find a small, portable electronic piano with built-in speakers and full-size weighted keys. Specifically, I suggest you look at something in the Casio CDP line. Casio has really stepped up their game in the last ~ 10 years, and these keyboards are a remarkable value. They action and sound of these pianos is pretty decent, plus there’s a headphone jack for silent practice. If only violins had that too. :p
New they run $300 – $500 depending on the model, but you could even find a used one for less. You’ll also need a stand and a stool, and you’ll also want to get a proper sustain pedal instead of the sewing machine pedal that it comes with. Yamaha makes a nice one that works great.
After a few years, if your child’s interest in the instrument is still going strong, you can think about upgrading to a better instrument and sell the Casio.
Hatfield
ParticipantHuh? QTL and QCT are still part of the mother ship. QCT is part of the new QTI entity which operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary, and everything still trades as QCOM. I wouldn’t call any of this arms-length.
-
AuthorPosts
