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that's kind of worrisome given the size of my steam library

just brew it! wrote:

Found yet another half-assed DIY home improvement job courtesy of the previous owner of our house.

We're re-doing the 1st floor half bath. Went to remove the toilet tank so we could scrape off the wallpaper behind the toilet. Bolts were rusted on solid because the tank bolts/washers were improperly installed, resulting in just enough seepage to completely corrode the bolts (but not enough to make a puddle). Looks like they "fixed" it by putting multiple layers of plumber's putty over the bolt heads inside the tank until the leak (mostly) stopped.

I had to drill the bolts out from inside the tank.

It gets better. Went to remove the light fixture (we're replacing that too), and discovered a huge ragged hole in the drywall behind it. There's no junction box; just a run of BX cable with the wires poking through the hole and spliced to the fixture wiring with wire nuts. The fixture itself was screwed into the drywall.

Aside from not being to code, many bathroom light fixtures are designed to mount directly to a junction box. So down the rabbit hole we go again... I just finished mounting a junction box (using a pair of metal braces that screw to the adjacent studs). Now I get to patch the hole (which I had to enlarge to get the braces and new junction box into place).

I hate home improvement projects. It would be nice to be able to afford to pay someone else to deal with them, but I've decided that paying someone else to fix my car is preferable, and I can't afford to do both.

At least they used wire nuts (and not scotch tape)!

BiffStroganoffsky wrote:

At least they used wire nuts (and not scotch tape)!

That is one good thing about modern wiring and practices: even if somebody takes extremely foolish shortcuts, the finished product is sufficiently robust that it tends not to catch fire so often as you'd otherwise expect.

I've seen an (abandoned) knob-and-tube wiring installation in a circa-1900s schoolhouse and my grandfather described to me how those conductors were carelessly scraped, wrapped, and taped by amateur electricians to install branch circuits. Combine that with old-school lamp-base fuses that could be defeated with aluminum foil, and It's a miracle the entire country didn't burn down.

Now we have cheaply built powerstrips encased in flammable plastic to thank for making the building codes moot.

The Movie: Ice Age.
The Scene: The dodos are marching in a circle around Sid & company, chanting "Doom on you!...Doom on you!..."
The Re-enactment: Yesterday the part of Sid & company was played by me, and the dodos, appropriately enough, were Microsoft Office applications. Specifically, Excel, which (after 5-6 hours of work) corrupted my previously-saved spreadsheet during a final save-changes operation. Thereafter, both Excel '07 and Excel '03 (with the converters) would fail to finish loading the file after opening the program.

Ironically, a third-party extraction was required. Step one was to open the spreadsheet on my personal tablet, obtain the critical numbers, and then email them to the project manager. Step two was to install LibreOffice this morning, open the spreadsheet, save it as a new ODS; then re-save the ODS document as a new XLSX. After that, Excel was able to open it and generate a Corrupted File Error, recover the document, and voila, everything was back to normal.

It felt like Windows95 all over again.

I refuse to pay good money to be subjected to that kind of abuse. LibreOffice is just as squirrely as MS Office in its own way, but at least it is free.

just brew it! wrote:

I refuse to pay good money to be subjected to that kind of abuse. LibreOffice is just as squirrely as MS Office in its own way, but at least it is free.

Just wait until you encounter some of the "Federally-developed" apps I have to deal with in the day job that rely on ancient Access run-times. I don't have a choice in the matter and trouble-shooting is useless given how random Access can be with its error messages. For one of the apps I've learned that data prep is the key. We get a text file with about 90 or so fields in a flat file with thousands of lines, representing the bank's loan portfolio and the key data we want to look at. This is supposed to seamlessly import into this Access run-time app. If there's a single character in a numeric field the entire thing barfs and doesn't even give you the courtesy of telling you what line in the file is causing the problem. Hence, a week spent going through the file to ensure no data type errors, converting it to Excel to fix other numeric errors (each bank main processing platform has its own little ways of not giving us what we really asked for), then converting it back to a FIXED-WIDTH (really, you couldn't use delimited fields ) text file to import.

I'm the only one in my office who can grok this process and make it work reliably, so I get stuck with this job on every bank exam. I've tried to train others but when they see how the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash really works they run screaming.

Captain Ned wrote:

I'm the only one in my office who can grok this process and make it work reliably, so I get stuck with this job on every bank exam. I've tried to train others but when they see how the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash really works they run screaming.

Vee callz eht "job security".

I think my wife has ya'll beat. The computers they use at work are all command line prompt, 1990 era survivors. I don't know how the hell they function.

ludi wrote:

Captain Ned wrote:

I'm the only one in my office who can grok this process and make it work reliably, so I get stuck with this job on every bank exam. I've tried to train others but when they see how the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash really works they run screaming.

Vee callz eht "job security".

That would be ironic if I weren't a State employee.

Captain Ned wrote:

We get a text file with about 90 or so fields in a flat file with thousands of lines, representing the bank's loan portfolio and the key data we want to look at. This is supposed to seamlessly import into this Access run-time app. If there's a single character in a numeric field the entire thing barfs and doesn't even give you the courtesy of telling you what line in the file is causing the problem. Hence, a week spent going through the file to ensure no data type errors, converting it to Excel to fix other numeric errors (each bank main processing platform has its own little ways of not giving us what we really asked for), then converting it back to a FIXED-WIDTH (really, you couldn't use delimited fields ) text file to import.

Sounds like something that an AWK (and I'll kill anyone who mentions PERL) script could help automate significant parts of the job. At least it could validate the data fields and output to fixed-width.

Captain Ned wrote:

We get a text file with about 90 or so fields in a flat file with thousands of lines, representing the bank's loan portfolio and the key data we want to look at. [...]

Obviously you can't send me bank data. But you can send me a file with dummy data, with all the possible errors that you come across, and I can get you a script to clean it up and/or export to Excel/MDB.

I picked up a John Deere 265 riding mower with a 48 inch deck at the beginning summer and have had it out twice all summer due to my grass not growing in the heat. I actually enjoy mowing my lot now and the whole thing dries up! I'm not sure if I am disappointed that I can't use my new toy or relieved that I don't have to be out there in the heat.

I haven't wanted to get drunk this badly in a long time. Chaos for the last 3 days at the office, with a coworker making the type of mistake that can get people killed and us trying to clean up fall-out.
Thankfully it's a no-harm so it's not as big a cluster as it could be. But it's still significant. Gah.

monts wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

How the heck did I miss this? XKCD has a new weekly feature, called "What If?". The tagline is "Answering your hypothetical questions with physics, every Tuesday."

Check it out: http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

It is good, thanks for reminding me, better go and read this weeks edition.

Good one last week: http://what-if.xkcd.com/6/

Too bad nothing exists (for free at least) that converts 10's of thousands of lines of legacy VB6 code into VB.NET or C# with any hint of success...

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/cookbook1945/index.htm

The standard US Navy onboard cookbook as of July 1945. There's actually some good stuff in there for the vintage, though the base recipe is 100 servings.

Now I am become Dizik, the destroyer of loofahs. Seriously...I can't get one to last more than 2 weeks.

Dear coworker: if you quit boring the office with stories about how you're the hero and your estranged spouse is the goat, i'll quit not listening when you ask work-related questions.

I stupidly drained spoiled milk down the drain the other day. Big mistake. The next morning the whole house was stinking.
I tried everything: baking soda, dishwashing soap, vinegar etc. Nothing worked.

Then I put a 2L of diet 7up to work. And it has worked wonderfully.

codedivine wrote:

I stupidly drained spoiled milk down the drain the other day. Big mistake. The next morning the whole house was stinking.

That means you have an empty trap somewhere. Make sure to run water into every drain in the house.

It's probably the basement floor drain unless you have AC draining in to it in summer and a condensing furnace draining in to it in winter. Houses around here are built with trap primers on the laundry sink in the basement - every time you run the tap some water goes in to the line to the trap.

Captain Ned wrote:

codedivine wrote:

I stupidly drained spoiled milk down the drain the other day. Big mistake. The next morning the whole house was stinking.

That means you have an empty trap somewhere. Make sure to run water into every drain in the house.

notfred wrote:

It's probably the basement floor drain unless you have AC draining in to it in summer and a condensing furnace draining in to it in winter. Houses around here are built with trap primers on the laundry sink in the basement - every time you run the tap some water goes in to the line to the trap.

Will run water in the drains. Thanks!
I live in a studio, there is exactly one room and three drains so thats easy.

codedivine wrote:

I live in a studio, there is exactly one room and three drains so thats easy.

I'm guessing that means kitchen sink, bathroom sink, and shower/bath (plus latrine). In that case, it's possible you just didn't get all the milk rinsed out of the drain and trap, and the 7-up probably did the trick.

1. Put cold, chewy bacon in a plastic bag.
2. Slap a label on it that says "Bacon Jerky".
3. ????
4. Profit!!!

Saw this stuff at the local Walgreens this morning. It was on clearance (perhaps an indication of how well step 3 is going for them?), so I figured I'd give it a try. Just because it's bacon. And jerky. And half price.

It's about like you'd expect based on step 1!

just brew it! wrote:

1. Put cold, chewy bacon in a plastic bag.
2. Slap a label on it that says "Bacon Jerky".
3. ????
4. Profit!!!

Saw this stuff at the local Walgreens this morning. It was on clearance (perhaps an indication of how well step 3 is going for them?), so I figured I'd give it a try. Just because it's bacon. And jerky. And half price.

It's about like you'd expect based on step 1!

God Bless America.

Someone shot Scruffy with a pellet gun He's gonna be perfectly fine after a shot and some bandages but if I ever find out who it was, they sure as hell won't be.

Damn stupid idiot dog continues his jihad against skunks with the usual results. Ugh.

What's that, like the third time this summer?

Sorry man.