[Hatfield]

I suspect you’re gonna find out that it’ll be treated as passive income.

[Hatfield]

[quote=spdrun] I’m not changing my opinion that the US would be better off today without legislators from the South and Southern Midwest obstructing progress in DC.[/quote]

On this much we agree. Have you read Ask Not What Good We Do?

[Hatfield]

Horseshit. “As happened in the South since the 1950s?” This increase in freedom did not happen on its own, it happened because the federal gov’t intervened. The Civil Rights movement in the South would have stalled and probably failed had it not been for federal intervention. How anyone could argue otherwise is utterly beyond comprehension.

Getting back to the topic on hand, I enjoyed Lincoln and was pleased that Doris Kearns Goodwin assisted with the screenplay. Daniel Day Lewis (once again unrecognizable) will probably win an Oscar for his nuanced performance. Can’t recommend the film highly enough.

[Hatfield]

Our house is a two-on-one in OB. The original house was a 1929 beach cottage built straddling two lots. (In OB the standard lot is 25′ wide and curb to alley in depth, typically around 150′). In the late 80s a second house was built and the city required a four car garage to provide off street parking. If you drive up and down the alleys in OB, particularly at the south end of OB you’ll see lots of houses like this. It sounds like you’re being subject to the same rules.

And yes, there’s no getting around the height limit. However, IIRC they measure from the highest point on the lot, so the effective height depends a lot how your lot is graded and the house position relative to that grade. You do see three stories in OB but they’re not common. You see a lot more rooftop decks on top of two stories because your limit is set at the deck railing.

[Hatfield]

My lawn guy comes every two weeks, and if it’s raining he’ll come back some other day. There have been a few times where he couldn’t make up the visit, and he didn’t charge me for it, which I think is reasonable. I can’t imagine paying a gardener for work they did not do, any more than I can imaging paying a dentist for a cavity he did not fill, or a mechanic for an oil change he did not perform.

[Hatfield]

I’ll have to ask my dad what he pays in HOA fees. He bought one of the co-ops a few years ago for around $90k for a ground floor 2 BR with patio. If you’re seriously thinking about Laguna Woods, do what he did: rent a place for a few months and see if you like it. There are LOTS of units available for rent. I think there is a restriction on how many days per year a unit can be rented out, but there seems to be lots of rentals available. So try it out, avail yourself of all the amenities, and see if you like it. I think folks generally love the place or hate it.

On the plus side: they take very good care of the facilities, there’s a woodshop, darkroom, swimming pools, and more bridge games than you can shake a stick at. They seem to have a full-time gardening staff, as they’re always out mowing, trimming, replanting stuff, etc.

On the downside, it’s the most busybody HOA I’ve ever seen. His neighbor bought a unit and after she moved in got a terse note from the HOA that the front door had been painted a non-compliant color. It was that way when she bought the place, and you can’t even see the door from the street. When I visit I need to show a pass to get in, and if I want to stay overnight, I have to stop at the guard shack, they have to call my dad to approve my visit, and they get out a clipboard and take down my name and license plate and issue me an overnight pass. This is new in the past few months and it’s a pain in the ass. The HOA and management seem really out of touch and arrogant. My dad has a busybody neighbor who left him a note complaining about my mom’s unsightly perfume bottles on the bathroom window ledge. Keep in mind, this is a frosted glass window so all you can see from the outside are amorphous blobs AND as viewed from the driveway this window is sorta behind the dumpster corral. It just boggles the mind who would complain about such a thing. I told my dad we should have some fun and make a middle finger out of cardboard and put behind the blurry glass but he declined my offer to make one. But by and large his neighbors are quite nice.

[Hatfield]

[quote=edna_mode]Hi there, thanks for all the great advice! Wondering if anyone has ever upgraded two pronged outlets across a whole house before (~1200sqft, late 50’s construction). Any recommendations, advice or cost estimates? Is it possible to do this without tearing walls apart?[/quote]

One of my rental units is a 1929 era beach cottage that had been partially upgraded over the years, so it was a weird mix of romex and knob-n-tube. About a year ago I had all the old wiring ripped out and replaced with modern wiring, new switches, grounded outlets, GFI in the kitchen & bath, etc. I think I also had an additional circuit added in the kitchen. I got two estimates from licensed contractors. One was $8k, and the other was under $4. We went with the cheaper one and were very happy with the results. One other note: the electrical panel had been upgraded at some point. My understanding is that it’s a big expensive PITA to replace the electrical panel, so hopefully yours is modern enough that you won’t need to replace it.

Whether or not the walls need to be torn apart will depend greatly on the construction of your unit. If you’re on a slab, yeah, they most likely will need to rip a channel in the wall to run new wiring down from the attic to switches and outlets. Most of the beach cottage has crawlspace below, and in those rooms they were able to fish new wire up to the outlet locations without cutting into the walls. Also, for ceiling lamp fixtures they may be able to keep the existing wiring if it’s still in good condition.

[Hatfield]

(duplicate post)

[Hatfield]

[quote=desmond]Maybe you guys can help, I broke the head off a small bolt in my ATV’s rear differential. What is the best way to get the bolt out?[/quote]

You can try using an extractor. It kinda looks like a tap except it has left-hand threads. You carefully drill a hole into the center of the broken-off-bolt, and then using a t-handle, twist the extractor into the bolt. Because the extractor has left hand threads, as you drive it deeper and it catches, you’ll be twisting in the direction that loosens the bolt.

Two caveats: 1) it works miraculously well on small bolts, but I’ve never tried it on anything larger than about ~1/4. It’s probably worth a stop at Tool Depot to ask the guys there what they think. 2) your rear diff is a cast housing, which is much softer metal than the hardened steel of this bolt. Be very careful when you drill, and even then there’s a chance you might still ruin the threads. Your next step at that point would be to try replacing the shot threads with a helicoil.

[Hatfield]

[quote=ucodegen]I find Harbor Freight an interesting mix of quality.[/quote]

http://www.flutterby.com/images/2012/10/01/hf_tool_sale.pdf

[Hatfield]

For most of my life, 3.5 has sounded weirdly low.

[Hatfield]

[quote=flu]You can get a USB car charger for 90 cents includes free shipping… Lol…..[/quote]

Yeah, it makes no sense. Somebody in China puts this in an envelope, it gets put on an airplane with a bunch of other stuff, gets flown across the Pacific, clears customs, gets sent to a USPS distribution center, then gets sent to the local post office, where it eventually gets “cased” by the letter carrier and delivered to your door. Forget about the cost of the item itself, I don’t see how it’s possible to do all that for 90 cents. The incremental cost of fuel alone probably cost more than 90 cents.

I don’t get it.

[Hatfield]

It’s been like that for a month or so. You just need to delete your utsandiego.com cookies to resume reading Papa Dougie’s rag for free. Some browsers (such as Firefox) allow you to pre-emptively block cookies from specific sites, so you can set this once and never worry about it again.

[Hatfield]

In order to sue for $10k you would have to be able to show $10k in damages.

[Hatfield]

Although print media is on its deathbed, I do worry whether Dougie will be effective in using his new media empire to sway public opinion in favor of port district and downtown development project he has vested interests in. This is the whole reason he bought the UT in the first place.

Interestingly enough, KPBS reported earlier today that the SDUT and Manchester have both denied the acquisition of the NCT, but SDBJ is standing by its story.

[Author]

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