What's your current headache?

[Pauleo1214]

Leaf fall alone episode 2:

My yard was spotless a minute ago...now it's not.


Thanks neighbor!


For all intents and purposes I should be done. The problem is my house is on a corner, at the bottom of a hill. I live across from two octogenarians who don't clean their leaves. At the end of every week it looks like I did nothing to clean up.

Rhey have my sympathy in that it is hard to do manual labor in old age. That only goes so far though. They won't pay for a crew to collect them either despite being well off enough to own vacation properties and a farm that they like to brag about.

Their leaves blow into my yard en masse. If I could compel them to pay for unsolicited services, I would totally clean up their stuff and stick them with an invoice.

 

[Mentaltossflycoon]

Lentil soup + old tired blender = dinner for the house centipedes. Also some minor burns on my hand and back pain from the cleanup. It exploded right over the gap between the counter and the stove. Wheeee!

 

[Brett]

I’m in the GHA , if the hvac guy gives you the run around let me know.

Thank you. They ended up getting it fixed and it's been working great since.

I both have worked in the trade but also have a few close friends who work for Goodman and can help me help you get away from the crappy stuff

Good to know. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't call the equipment we have "crappy", actually, I firmly believe it's quite the opposite. Their UI for their proprietary thermostat software is a mess, but the equipment itself seems very well made. The problem and why I recommended avoiding them is because of after sales support and the lack of availability of adequately trained technicians. They give distributors and dealers resources for training on these variable capacity communicating systems, but the training for the technicians that actually service these systems seems basic and mostly related to installation practices.

The company we purchased the system from came out on day 10 or 11 without AC (they were waiting for parts) and replaced the outdoor control board and display. They knew that those two parts needed to be replaced because the system was throwing codes that indicated as much. When that didn't solve the problem, they replaced the thermostat. That didn't fix it. Then they decided to run new control wire to the outdoor unit after getting some indications of crosstalk between lines. That didn't fix it. They spent so much time out here trying to figure out why this system wasn't working when by all accounts, it should have been. They left that night (at about 6pm) and we still had no AC. I almost had no words. My patience was wearing so thin by this point that it was better for me to refrain from speaking at all, and everyone involved knew it. We booked a hotel room and told them that either the servicing dealer, the distributor, or the manufacturer will be expected to foot the bill until the problem is resolved, regardless of how long it took.

They called the following morning and that's when things improved. The Johnstone branch manager brought out a high-level technician that previously owned a business with his father where they worked almost exclusively on variable capacity communicating systems. The technician went against factory guidance on connecting the communicating wires and went direct to the PCB rather than through a pigtail (the way the factory "requires" it to be connected). He mentioned seeing issues like this before and knew almost immediately how to resolve the problem. It took him all of twenty minutes to have the system up and running again. I was thrilled to have AC again, but had some serious "come to Jesus" conversations with the Johnstone Supply branch manager that was on-site on both occasions. He seemed to understand, but I seriously doubt the next situation will be any different. The only difference will be that I won't wait 11 days before I book a hotel room the next time this happens.

Long story short, there are guys that know how to make these systems sing, but unless you're buying from a brand with outstanding after sales support in place, I'd avoid purchasing any communicating system.

 

[Pauleo1214]

Lentil soup + old tired blender = dinner for the house centipedes. Also some minor burns on my hand and back pain from the cleanup. It exploded right over the gap between the counter and the stove. Wheeee!
View attachment 85953

Reminds me of the time I threw a steak on the pan and the hot oil splattered right into my face causing me to get blisters on my eyelids.

We're you using an old style blender or an immersion blender? I bought an immersion blender and never looked back.

 

[Mentaltossflycoon]

Reminds me of the time I threw a steak on the pan and the hot oil splattered right into my face causing me to get blisters on my eyelids.

We're you using an old style blender or an immersion blender? I bought an immersion blender and never looked back.

Oof, blistered eyelid sounds unpleasant. It was a regular glass blender, the plastic base was the failure point. I actually only used that one because I broke my immersion blender last winter. I'll likely just be replacing the immersion. I'm not a smoothie guy.

 

[jimilee]

Leaf fall alone episode 2:

My yard was spotless a minute ago...now it's not.
View attachment 85950

Thanks neighbor!
View attachment 85951

For all intents and purposes I should be done. The problem is my house is on a corner, at the bottom of a hill. I live across from two octogenarians who don't clean their leaves. At the end of every week it looks like I did nothing to clean up.

Rhey have my sympathy in that it is hard to do manual labor in old age. That only goes so far though. They won't pay for a crew to collect them either despite being well off enough to own vacation properties and a farm that they like to brag about.

Their leaves blow into my yard en masse. If I could compel them to pay for unsolicited services, I would totally clean up their stuff and stick them with an invoice.

Sounds petty, but I believe you should return them from where they came. Leave a note that you returned their leaves.

 

[Pauleo1214]

Sounds petty, but I believe you should return them from where they came. Leave a note that you returned their leaves.

My leaf blower has been rendered useless due to the strong winds the last two weeks, so blowing them back is an impossibility.

I suppose I could take the bags I collected and mulched and dump them on their yards followed by a good hosing.

 

[Robert]

FNIRSI LCR-ST1 Mini Smart Digital Tweezer LCR SMD ESR Tester Resistance Capacitance Inductance Continuity Diode Test Measurement Tools

【LCR Tweezer Tester】The FNIRSI LCR-ST1 is a multifunctional and portable testing instrument that supports precise measurement of resistance, capacitance, inductance, and diodes 【Measurement Range】3 test frequencies – 100 Hz, 1 kHz, 10 kHz. 2 test voltage - 0.3 Vrms, 0.6 Vrms. R: 10 mΩ to 10 MΩ /...

www.fnirsi.com

View attachment 85948

I've been considering trying something like that. I have tweezers for my capacitance meter, I just used the DMM probe for scale.

Measuring them isn't so bad, the fun part is desoldering them and putting them back.

 

[Gordo]

Yeah man, absolutely. It's a bit of a twist, not a straight bow, but I can absolutely bring it by sometime when I get it back. What shop are you at now? I'll shoot you a text when I get it back (assuming you're still at the same number) and figure out when I can swing by.

I'm over at Dr Woods Guitar Emporium in Fox River Grove on Saturdays, although when I hear from you I'll let the folks there know to expect you if you want to drop it off on a day other than Saturday. Same number but I'm living in the city these days. James and I have still threatened to get together one of these days as I can train in and it'd be good to get together with you as well.

 

[Stickman393]

Hey, Hey, anybody done this one yet?

A Migraine. Vision gone all to hell. Pounded four ibuprofen and an energy drink. Lets try to keep soldering through this extremely literal bitch.\

 

[jwin615]

Hey, Hey, anybody done this one yet?

A Migraine. Vision gone all to hell. Pounded four ibuprofen and an energy drink. Lets try to keep soldering through this extremely literal bitch.\

Dude. The flux fumes from your solder are legit. I thought I burnt some plastic or crackheads were hiding in the basement. Surely can't be good for a headache.
But thanks again for the solder. The rosin in mine is definitely spent after doing a 1:1.

 

[jwin615]

Hey, Hey, anybody done this one yet?

A Migraine. Vision gone all to hell. Pounded four ibuprofen and an energy drink. Lets try to keep soldering through this extremely literal bitch.\

Dude. The flux fumes from your solder are legit. I thought I burnt some plastic or crackheads were hiding in the basement. Surely can't be good for a headache.
But thanks again for the solder. The rosin in mine is definitely spent after doing a 1:1

Leaf fall alone episode 2:

My yard was spotless a minute ago...now it's not.

One of my 2 neighbors just blow their to the property line. I have several dozen mature tress around my yard(and a half acre of woods in the back) so leaf season is super demanding.
I finally bit the bullet last year and bought a Echo commercial grade backpack. Even with the large price tag($670ish after tax, iirc)I wish I had done it years ago. 750+ CFM at 230mph is kinda fun too. Shot my kids volleyball 20-25 ft with it yesterday. But it saves so much time, plus a bad back and missing half a rotator cuff, it saves a lot of pain. I piled up a semi load yesterday. Burnt half in 3 piles and mulched/composted the other half. The trees only have ~30% of their leaves left so hopefully nearing the end of leaf season unless we get high winds before a few rains and all the neighbors stuff blows over.
Anyway. Not sure how much yard you have to cover but if it's a bit, highly recommend a backpack. Sooo much better than any handheld I've used or owned.

 

[Pauleo1214]

Dude. The flux fumes from your solder are legit. I thought I burnt some plastic or crackheads were hiding in the basement. Surely can't be good for a headache.
But thanks again for the solder. The rosin in mine is definitely spent after doing a 1:1

One of my 2 neighbors just blow their to the property line. I have several dozen mature tress around my yard(and a half acre of woods in the back) so leaf season is super demanding.
I finally bit the bullet last year and bought a Echo commercial grade backpack. Even with the large price tag($670ish after tax, iirc)I wish I had done it years ago. 750+ CFM at 230mph is kinda fun too. Shot my kids volleyball 20-25 ft with it yesterday. But it saves so much time, plus a bad back and missing half a rotator cuff, it saves a lot of pain. I piled up a semi load yesterday. Burnt half in 3 piles and mulched/composted the other half. The trees only have ~30% of their leaves left so hopefully nearing the end of leaf season unless we get high winds before a few rains and all the neighbors stuff blows over.
Anyway. Not sure how much yard you have to cover but if it's a bit, highly recommend a backpack. Sooo much better than any handheld I've used or owned.

Half acre property so a commercial grade is probably overkill. The handheld blower gets it to the street in a long pile. I proceed to mulch it all up with my push mower and sweep it into lawn refuse bags using a cardboard scoop.

 

[Stickman393]

Dude. The flux fumes from your solder are legit. I thought I burnt some plastic or crackheads were hiding in the basement. Surely can't be good for a headache.
But thanks again for the solder. The rosin in mine is definitely spent after doing a 1:1.

Wasn't so bad actually, powered through it by building my new shoe pedal rack. Thanks to @bean on that one.

Though I got some heavy bullshit on it right now. Probably gonna need to re-assemble with fender washers to get it to be a little more rigid.

That's RA flux: Rosin, Fully Activated. Removes oxidation like a beast. Best to clean it off once you're done though. Might continue to etch through the traces otherwise.

 

[bean]

Wasn't so bad actually, powered through it by building my new shoe pedal rack. Thanks to @bean on that one.

Though I got some heavy bullshit on it right now. Probably gonna need to re-assemble with fender washers to get it to be a little more rigid.

That's RA flux: Rosin, Fully Activated. Removes oxidation like a beast. Best to clean it off once you're done though. Might continue to etch through the traces otherwise.

Just don't stack those shoe racks. They might topple and break the stick in half.

 

[Stickman393]

Just don't stack those shoe racks. They might topple and break the stick in half.

For real. That would be a sticky situation.

 

[Bricksnbeatles]

School stuff, or mental stuff. Or maybe both.

Been in the studio anywhere from 10-20h (mostly on the upper side of that) every day (including weekends) since the semester started, working on stuff for a solo exhibition. Admittedly my communication with my advisor has been terrible, largely because a) the isolation of working in a cold mostly dark basement day in and day out, totally alone for 95% of the time, with none of the people who told me they’d visit me all the time having actually stopped by even once, has been terrible for my mental health and b) I felt like I was letting my advisor down every time I talked to them because I didn’t have enough tangible work to show made me start avoiding them as I frantically tried to catch up.

Well anyway, I was planning on meeting with my advisor again today— five days before I’m set to install, and right as I’ve been in the middle of a mind crushingly difficult crunch time –but this morning I got an email suggesting that being my advisor was maybe a mistake, that my grades will be negatively impacted by all of this, and some words that leave me now wondering if I’ll be having an exhibition at all.
I asked to still meet today so I could try to explain myself and actually show what I’ve been working on, but then I had a full blown panic attack while I was alone in the studio while I was on ft with my girlfriend, during which the only thing I could manage to do was beg her to email my advisor explaining why I wasn’t able to meet when I said I would so they wouldn’t think I was avoiding.

Sorry for the trauma dump or whatever this is, but god it just sucks so bad. I haven’t heard anything back and I don’t know what to do anymore because this week was gonna be all 20 hour days trying to pull things together for install, and now idk if I even have a show or an advisor anymore (not to mention the fact that the advisor has been super important to me for the past 3 years, and now I feel like they might be done with me and writing me off altogether), and with today being a total loss, idk what I can do to try pulling everything together into a passable exhibition when even at full productivity it would be a mostly impossible feat in the time remaining, not to mention the fact that after this whole ordeal I feel broken, defeated, deflated, and humiliated, and that’s certainly not the kind of mindset that can mentally or physically withstand more lonely sleepless high-anxiety nights.

Not looking for pity. I fucked up, but what frustrates me is that I don’t know that I really could have done things all that differently. And it’s killing me not that my fuck up was being lazy or not working hard, but that it was just my letting fucking anxiety make me hide away and hide that I was pushing myself too hard.

I’ve had a lot of regrets in my life, but this sucks in a different way that I really can’t articulate. I wish I could go back and redo every part of my life that’s put me where I am right now.

Things seemed better for a bit. Now they seem worse. I’m really not sure where I stand with things now, but it’s literally killing me. I feel like I’ve been set up to fail, and now I’m being made to jump through hoops that I’ve never seen anyone else have to go through. This semester has broken my mind, my spirit, and my body, and yet when I tearfully apologize for not living up to expectations, I just get hit with more to feel guilty about. I fully expect to have a heart attack or crash my car from exhaustion before the semester ends, but what can I do? Life is shit, and the most I can bring myself to do to fight back is complain about it to people on the internet— how’s that going to help me?

 

[BuddytheReow]

Things seemed better for a bit. Now they seem worse. I’m really not sure where I stand with things now, but it’s literally killing me. I feel like I’ve been set up to fail, and now I’m being made to jump through hoops that I’ve never seen anyone else have to go through. This semester has broken my mind, my spirit, and my body, and yet when I tearfully apologize for not living up to expectations, I just get hit with more to feel guilty about. I fully expect to have a heart attack or crash my car from exhaustion before the semester ends, but what can I do? Life is shit, and the most I can bring myself to do to fight back is complain about it to people on the internet— how’s that going to help me?

Things will get better and you'll come out the other side better as long as you keep moving forward. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it WILL get better. It happens to all of us to some degree or another. I do feel for you

 

[darwin999]

@Bricksnbeatles
It's not the falling down, but the getting back up that is the most important.
Whatever you live through makes you stronger.
I wish you better days ahead.

 

[Mentaltossflycoon]

Things seemed better for a bit. Now they seem worse. I’m really not sure where I stand with things now, but it’s literally killing me. I feel like I’ve been set up to fail, and now I’m being made to jump through hoops that I’ve never seen anyone else have to go through. This semester has broken my mind, my spirit, and my body, and yet when I tearfully apologize for not living up to expectations, I just get hit with more to feel guilty about. I fully expect to have a heart attack or crash my car from exhaustion before the semester ends, but what can I do? Life is shit, and the most I can bring myself to do to fight back is complain about it to people on the internet— how’s that going to help me?

We're all on team Bricksy around here. Hope things improve for you soon.