Cool and wet, possibly COLD and wet later. Wasn’t bad yesterday, but it was wet and gloomy. I think we’ll get more of that today. We got actual rain last night, not just misty drizzle like we had during the day.
I slept in, then did plumbing. Had to McGyver a piece. No one had the reducer I needed, but they had one with threads. Threads I could remove with power and hand tools…. It just took longer than it should, and entailed a trip into town. Stock at the hardware store and at Tractor Supply was wide but very shallow. And there were big holes where they hadn’t gotten any new stock in a while.
Walmart looked pretty well stocked, but only with the stuff they have, which does not include plumbing fittings. They had a lot of stuff on Clearance too. I worked slow but got the drain installed. Got the supply ready to connect today. Turn off the water, cut the pex, insert and crimp new T fittings, turn it back on. I love making changes to pex, it is so easy.
Still need to drop the gas line into the wall, and change out the romex to grounded 2 wire for the outlet in the wall. Then button it all up and pack for home.
That’s the plan, but we all know about plans…
Watched “The Producers” with wife and D2 since it was raining and we couldn’t have a fire. It was the Mathew Brodderick, Nathan Lane version and it was really good. I love the original movie with Gene Wilder, but the new book and music (written by Mel Brooks) did a great job of freshening up the story while keeping the best parts. The movie did a fantastic job of melding the stage action with the “film” segments to tell the story but still capture the feel of a Broadway show. D2 is turning into a theatre geek too and laughed out loud throughout.
Stack up the good times.
nick
Noooooo! That way lies poverty, alcoholism, and probable homosexuality!
My first wife, who identified as a musician*, said, when our son was a year or so old, that she’d be heartbroken if he wasn’t a musician when he grew up. In fact, she said that she’d prefer that he be a broke, gay musician than a straight, wealthy doctor or engineer or whatever. I’m not sure how serious she was – she wasn’t joking but that may have been an off-the-cuff remark which she doubled down on rather than admit that she’d said something she didn’t really mean. (Her inability to admit that she was wrong in any way was part of the constellation of personality quirks which led to her becoming an ex-wife.) As may be, the kid has found his way into a STEM field, or at least STEM-adjacent, and is looking to be making big bucks in a couple years.
* Never made a living as a musician. She got a few hundred dollars one year from the mostly-volunteer orchestra she was in, got the occasional gig playing piano at a wedding, and so on. But she was a musician, just ask her. I respect a musician, artist, actor, or author who can support himself with his art; talent aside, I have an idea of the grit required. A musician etc who can’t even pay his grocery bill with his earnings but insists that he’s a musician? Sorry, dude, you’re just fooling yourself.
Uma Thurman and Captain Jack Harkness himself, John Barrowman (!), were very good in the update while, surprisingly, Matthew Broderick was flat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvM_JpqViBA
Brooks must have gone crazy watching the dailies with Broderick phoning it in.
The kids are a bit young, but “Moulin Rouge” is the gold standard movie musical of that era. One of the great crimes in recent Academy history is that this performance could not receive the reward it deserved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtpzmaQ6TSE
And “El Tango De Roxanne” deserves a mention IMHO even if it isn’t original to the movie. Revisiting Roxanne is one of the running threads in Sting albums, and this is an excellent version of the song that arguably started punk in the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn0xXo1gwGY
@Nick – I trust you’ve already run “The Greatest Showman” at your house.
BTW, if you’re going down the Meatloaf/Jim Steinman rock opera rabbit hole, Transsiberian Orchestra’s “Beethoven’s Last Night” merits attention.
I consider myself a photographer. I don‘t make enough to buy a meal at Outback once a month. I don’t do the sports pictures for the money, I do it because I enjoy it, enjoy the process, it’s something to do. Many musicians, I know a few, do it for the enjoyment. I know many photographers that do it for the enjoyment and not the money. Of course we all have other sources of income.
I don’t think someone needs to make a living at something, especially involving the arts, to call themselves a member of the community.
I get what you’re saying, Ray, and don’t disagree. I need to shade my critique more finely.
If your primary identification, to self and to others, is as a musician or actor or photographer, then you need to be getting recognition from others as such, whether in money or other forms.
Banksy, so far as I know, is still anonymous and gets paid only a little, by irregular means. No one disputes that he’s an artist. How he (or she or zir) makes his living is unknown to me; for all I know his day job is as a tailor for a High Street shop.
One of my former coworkers made his living as a database engineer, with a side hustle as a portrait photographer. If anyone asked him if he was a photographer, he’d agree. If anyone asked him “what do you do?” he’d probably say “I’m an engineer and I also take pictures.” I doubt he’d say “I’m a photographer but I pay my bills by working on computers.”
Contrast with any numbers of artsy types I’ve known (including dating and marrying) who would say “I’m a musician but I teach in a public school to pay the rent” or “I’m an actor but I wait tables for a living” or even “I’m a thirty-year-old artist but I still live with my mother and she pays for my car and gives me money every month because I can’t make a living.” (For that last one, so far as I know my landlady’s daughter never admitted that to anyone, but she would have if she’d been honest.)
Much of yesterday was consumed with car work. Turns out that I didn’t need to make the hour-plus drive each way to my dad’s shop. I could have done the work in my driveway with a few dollars’ worth of parts and tools. I just didn’t realize it was going to be so straightforward and thought I’d need his tools and expertise.
In fact, doing the two repairs was easy enough that we were each wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. Remember, it’s not paranoia if the universe really is out to get you. But no, everything came apart with minimal grief and went back together with no grief and I didn’t even get run over by a cement mixer on the way home. Baffling!
@Nick
The same government that conspired with tech companies and the MSM in the wholesale violate of First Amendment rights.
The same government that is quietly and without debate insinuating devices into automobiles, highways, phones, and power distribution, to name a few, to track and ultimately control the everyday behavior of citizens.
Did something happen to Joe Montana?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcgRrMMfAvA
Ok, I know. Playoffs. With Letterman’s channel lately, however, you never know.
Gotta root for the Niners because of GM John Lynch.
Lynch was there when the Yucs nearly stopped the legend of The Amercian Underdog before it started. You will see his name on the stadium walls in Gronk’s shoe commercials when those start airing again next Fall.
And, yes, Brady gets the press and has the rings, but Montana still defines “cool”.
Eerie bit with the ambulance and Dave. Less than three years later that was real.
@Ray Thompson
I’ve taken many thousands of photos before and after digital cameras. I have more than a passing knowledge of the craft and the process, but don’t claim to be a photographer.
You have my vote for photographer.
Adam Savage expresses his thoughts several times on the acquisition of expertise in levels. One example is this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE7dYhpI_bI
with his almost giddy delight in starting to understand measurements, and in particular, gauge blocks.
@SteveF
You are in danger and know it.
Your best move right now would be to rub grease into your hands, take a surform tool, bloody a couple of knuckles, then wipe them on your favorite shirt before cleaning up with pumice soap rubbed good and hard into the wounds.
It may not help much, but will at least give you a point for humility.
It’s an old saw by now but there is something to be said for multiple streams of income.
There’s a guy out in Colorado that can speak to the perils of running afoul of the woke. Bloody but apparently unbowed, he may be headed to the Supreme Court for the second time.
65F and overcast with steady drizzle. No wind at all.
No worries about the kids being theatre geeks, it was very good to both me and the wife. Some of the most innovative engineering and production is going on in the big spectacle shows, (Cirque in Vegas, forex), and it let me put my backyard engineering talent to work without having to become an actual engineer. And theater and band give “odd” kids a place to belong (odd in the sense that Sarah Hoyt uses it.) In 1990 in my grad school program, there were two licensed AutoCAD labs on campus, one was in the engineering department, the other was my lab in the theater department. There is a LOT of tech in theater.
WRT Nathan Lane’s performance, brilliant. He’s always good but the Birdcage and this stand out. Brodderick looks like he’d been botoxed. LOTS of smooth forehead when he used to have a very mobile and expressive face. It looks in many scenes like he’s wearing a support vest, or something else that holds his upper body erect. You can catch edges of it under the costumes. It was weird. Moved like someone in a body cast, or stiff back support. His forehead and face looked a lot like Elon Musk looks. It’s def odd looking.
—
Breakfast is eaten, time to do some work.
n
Dan Bongino says what FAR too many refuse to say about Tyre Nichols video
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2023/01/29/boom-dan-bongino-says-what-far-too-many-refuse-to-say-about-tyre-nichols-video-watch/
https://twitter.com/DTheKingpin/status/1619591730432704512
I don’t know anyone who is refusing to say these things.
I do know that the immediate machinations of the race baiters to fit this into their white supremacy schtick does more damage to the memory of an innocent man that any attempt at justification.
I also know that recent history is littered with equally and more horrific crimes and the publicity they receive is almost entirely dependent on how they are framed in terms of race or sexual orientation.
Broderick has been a stiff in films since “The Freshman”.
I had a hardcore fan defend Broderick in “The Producers” as being a “Broadway” style performance which I didn’t understand, but I don’t think I missed anything.
Nathan Lane was good recently as F. Lee Bailey in the first “American Crime Story” about the OJ trial. Lots of stunt casting in that miniseries, but everyone brought their “A” game, particularly David Schwimmer (!) as the Kardashian patriarch.
The Schwimmer money line: “Please, OJ, don’t kill yourself in Kimmy’s bedroom.”
He’s also excellent in The Gilded Age as a southern cornpone elite.
WRT Challenger explosion, I understand it very well. I spent 10 years working in the Propulsion Group on the Delta Launch Vehicle Team. On three launches discrepancies were noted in a propulsion system component and I was tasked with determing Yes or No on launching. After my analytical analyses, I answered Yes to launch on all three. Two of those were possible reductions in performance if I was wrong, but not result in total failure. Actually, the perfromance reduction was not noticeable in the flight data. However, had I been wrong in the other, the result would have resulted in the second stage engine blowing on ignition up and complete mission failure.
I worked on a number second generation GPS satellite launches during that time. If the GPS unit in your car works, I made no fatal mistakes.
Schwimmer?
Just before Friends aired its first season, I saw an interview with the unknown (to me) David Schwimmer. He clearly thought he was starring in a sitcom with a talented group of supporting cast behind him, in a vehicle clearly for him.
Poisoned the well, it did. Made his role in Band Of Brothers perfectly believable, it did.
@Nick – That’s a 80s/90s flick that may be ok for the kids if you’ve run “Ferris Bueller” previously. “The Freshman” is PG-13, and that is probably for all the talk of cooking and eating the animals (you’ll see) … or possibly Penelope Ann Miller’s leather miniskirt (you’ll see that too).
Paul Benedict is really good, and that’s saying something considering the leads.
Yes, Schwimmer.
He was good casting for the part of Bob Kardashian if you believe that Kardashian was OJ’s “bag man”, unknowingly smuggling the murder weapon out of the house ahead of the search in the golf bag.
(I believe Kardashian *knowingly* took the weapon out of the house, but that would require different casting.)
The miniseries doesn’t take a stand one way or another on what was in the bag, but Schwimmer as Kardashian does wonder if he was an accessory, which calls for Ross-style self doubt.
Schwimmer also directed an early post-“Spaced” Simon Pegg film in the UK, “Run Fatboy Run”.
In line with SteveF reasoning it may be better described as an old fart that takes pictures.
I got recognition in the form of being inducted into the sports hall of fame, I get recognition by being published in the paper, I get recognition from the historical society in their calendar and newsletter. My attitude towards photography is I do it as something I enjoy. If I were to make a living the pressure would be on me all the time to produce. Taking senior pictures, family portraits, weddings get monotonous and can be spotty work. If I needed to make money the fun, the joy, would be gone. I am just not wired that way.
My brother builds (and races) race cars for fun and is always tinkering on his cars because he enjoys it. He quite wisely doesn’t fix cars for others, aside from favors to family and friends. No better way to drain all of the fun out of a hobby.
re: Musicians
My ex-wife identifies as a musician. And she gets paid for it. It was never enough to live on, but it was a component of our family income. She plays piano and was a member of a professional a capella chorus, several volunteer singing organizations, and sang weddings, funerals, and regular church services, all of those for money. She also led the church choirs and formed a small bar band. Where, incidentally, she met her first lover, a choir member and member of her bar band.
My son is a musician. He meets the higher standard; he makes a living at it. Mostly.
To do so, he plays and subs in bar bands, dueling pianos, works for the local middle schools, high schools, and the university. He plays piano and sings and teaches the high school kids their songs for musicals, and plays in the pit orchestra. He learned keyboards, percussion, guitar, and bass, and singing. He makes recordings, basically backing tracks, so people can rehearse their parts alone at home.
In other words, it’s a lot of work involving complicated scheduling and discipline.
I have friends who enjoy playing music. A couple of them I would even call musicians, based more on skill and talent than on income.
I guess what I’m saying is it’s a grey area.
I never wanted my son to try to make a living as a musician. I wanted him to have music as a part of his life, and maybe augment his income with music. I even went so far as to point out the difficulty of making a living at it with bad dad jokes.
How do you make a musician go away from your front door? Pay him for the pizza.
What’s the difference between a musician and a large pepperoni pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.
My wife’s friend delivers pizza. He can feed his family on his VA day job, but he wants a big Generac.
I was working on a showcase show, for industry people, in LA. Lots of unsigned acts, or acts looking to generate buzz, or move labels, etc. Record people, radio people, DJs, etc are the target. One of the rooms had a jazz/funk band, where there were clearly a couple of session players and then whoever the actual “act” was. After the short, 3 song set, the guys were packing up and the drummer asked the band leader, “Hey, that was pretty cool, you got any charts for that?” to which the bandleader scornfully replied “ no, charts are for musicians. ”
I learned a lot of ‘drummer’ jokes later that day 🙂
n
Peanuts: Psychiatric Help
https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2023/01/29
I did not know that Lucy has an assistant. And note the price increase in 1976.
I never saw “Band of Brothers”, but comedy guys know drama.
Look carefully at the “Inglorious Basterds” assembled in front of Pitt – a couple of comedy stars and a horror flick director.
Mike Myers also shows up doing a spot on WWII British General, and Simon Pegg was originally cast as Pitt’s character’s English counterpart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScA4s92G_0U
Tarantino. You will see the scalpings.
And, no, the lynching scar is never explained.
Much of yesterday was consumed with car work. Turns out that I didn’t need to make the hour-plus drive each way to my dad’s shop. I could have done the work in my driveway with a few dollars’ worth of parts and tools. I just didn’t realize it was going to be so straightforward and thought I’d need his tools and expertise.
In fact, doing the two repairs was easy enough that we were each wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. Remember, it’s not paranoia if the universe really is out to get you. But no, everything came apart with minimal grief and went back together with no grief and I didn’t even get run over by a cement mixer on the way home. Baffling!
But you got to spend time with your dad. Go for the win !
Good to know. I am about 8 years away. I count every vertical day a win.
Huh. Comment lost. No links and no error message, so it’s probably not awaiting moderation or lost to a server glitch. I closed the tab without submitting the comment? The NSA got in and deleted the packet on the way to the server? Could it be I slipped into an alternate reality in which local-SteveF never wrote that comment??? The world(s) may never know.
Anyway, yes, my dad is pushing 80 and a good part of the reason that yesterday’s (almost painless) work took most of the day is that we spent time chatting afterward.
Have to agree, he and the team were the only reason we started watching football. That all ended for us a year and a half into Steve Young, though arguably successful just not the same pleasure to watch. Haven’t bothered to watch football since.
According to the Merchant of Death, Ezekiel Emanuel, you should end it at 75. You first Zeke. He’s about 75.
“Not a Theory”
https://areaocho.com/not-a-theory/
“A deeper dive into the Twitter files shows that the Federal government was sending so many requests for censorship to Twitter that the company was having to triage the requests. Twitter was receiving requests from more than 80 agencies- everyone from the DOD to the FBI.”
You have got to be kidding me. And the federal agencies were probably sending the censorship demands to facecrack and the other social services too. Extreme violation of the first amendment there.
One of the HP laptops here starting doing a ‘white screen of death’ just after loading the Win11 desktop. It was approaching 3 years old, and is used daily, so I purchased a new laptop for her.
I figured the old laptop just needed a rebuild/repair of Win11. So I tried various Windows Recovery tricks, but those didn’t fix the problem.
Then I decided that I could use the 256GB SSD that used to be in my laptop (I replaced it with a 512GB SSD – it contains the Win11 OS and programs; data is on a new 2TB SSD that replaced the 1TB WD drive). The 256GB SSD had Win11 on it, so all that was needed is a SSD to SATA converter.
There’s lots of those on the “Big River”, so ordered one. The SSD is an M2 type (22×80 form factor), with a “B&M” key (two key slots). When it arrived, I installed the SSD, then plugged the adapter into the old laptop. “No drive detected”.
I’ve got an external SATA to USB adapter, so tried that and connected it to my laptop. No drive sensed. I took the SSD and put it in a SSD to USB adapter, and the drive and data was recognized. So I figured I got a bad USB/SATA adapter.
Ordered another one (different brand). Same issue: “no drive detected”. Ordered a third at a slightly higher cost, as it had what appeared to be a ‘name brand’. (This one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6PMZLW?th=1&linkCode=sl1&linkId=2e2de784147a601e7af1defa14affc24&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&tag=ttgnet-20 ) Still no joy.
All three are being returned to the Zon for credit (Amazon returns are quite easy; pop it into an envelope, attach a shipping label, drop it off at UPS or a UPS dropbox. On pickup by UPS, Zon applies the credit.)
The original drive in the old laptop is a WD10SPZX SATA drive manufactured July 2020. Don’t know why all of the SATA-SSD adapters don’t work.
Next step (unless others here have ideas) is to reinstall Windows on the WD drive. But really wanted to use the SSDs instead of a ‘spinner’.
Wrapped up my plumbing, and ran a test load of laundry. No leaks. Got the gas line for the (future) dryer installed and tested. No leaks.
Family headed home about an hour ago, I’ve been waiting for the laundry to finish.
Working on hanging the replacement doors. Oops. I’m not the lucky mcluck I thought. The 24″ doors are all good, but the 30″ doors are all 2″ short. As in should have been 32″ doors. Oh well. Something will come up. At least the 24″s have been going in very easily. Only the top hinge matches, but the knob lines up, and it’s pretty straightforward to rabbet the other hinges. Bummer that I got the size wrong. Still, I can probably flip them, or just give them away. The 24″ doors will work, and the total I paid is still far less than the cost of just the 24s if I bought them new. Savings, just not as great as I thought. Lucky, just not as lucky as I thought.
I think I’ll hit the head and head out.
n
Yeah. Spend all the time you can with your dad. Like, for real. He’s your daddy.
My dad was oh, from here to there, a solid five hour drive if you ran ten or twenty over the limit. And I have things I want to ask him. But I can’t now.
Just saying.
“No, Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not dissent in Obergefell — and other things ChatGPT gets wrong about the Supreme Court”
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/01/no-ruth-bader-ginsburg-did-not-dissent-in-obergefell-and-other-things-chatgpt-gets-wrong-about-the-supreme-court/
“We sought to find out. We created a list of 50 questions about the Supreme Court and fed them one by one to ChatGPT. The questions covered a range of topics: important rulings, justices past and present, history, procedure, and legal doctrine. Some were requests for basic facts (like Question #3: When does each new Supreme Court term begin?). Others were open-ended prompts that demanded a logical explanation (like Question #36: Why was Anthony Kennedy considered an important swing justice?). Many were inspired by common questions we receive from readers on our live blogs, on Twitter, and on TikTok. The bot has limited knowledge of events after 2021, so we didn’t ask about current cases and controversies.”
“ChatGPT’s performance was uninspiring. The bot answered just 21 of our questions correctly. It got 26 wrong. And in three questions, its responses were literally true but struck us as incomplete or potentially misleading. You can read all of the questions and ChatGPT’s responses, along with our annotations, here.”
So, ChatGPT either lies or is mistaken about things. In either case, ChatGPT is not trustworthy.
@Lynn
80 agencies, at least 80 names.
Bring them in. Deal is, complete cooperation in describing how and who originated requests in their agencies , they get to keep their government pension and limit jail time to 12 months.
Actual investigation should not be difficult, as the computer trails should be easy to follow. If someone in IT has managed to erase the computer trail, 20 years hard, reduced to 10 upon conviction of the requester.
I’ve been busy, but lurking as usual. I haven’t missed much, but still need to catch up.
I just used the search function (thanks, RickH) to find Ray’s Epson EcoTank printer.
Ray, you didn’t say which EcoTank model you bought. I would appreciate anything you can pass along from your use of it. I need to make a decision quickly, and have not read any in-depth reviews, only some user reviews, mostly NOT on Amazon. They are the usual mixed bag of disorganized effluvia, but there are also some very well written reviews. I will be looking at some better professional reviews from the usual sources (PC Mag, Tom’s, RTINGS,) with the hope of placing an order tomorrow.
I need a color inkjet (NOT a color laser) printer for general business use, Windows 10. A document scanner is a good idea, but doesn’t need an automatic document feeder. Auto duplexing (two sided printing) is not needed. It will be used by my wife, so it has to be as fuss-free as possible. My biggest problem with her past printer use has been mechanical reliability, so that is very important. I can’t get an accurate number of pages per month, but it will likely be used for a couple hundred over a day or two, with <10 every few days, and possible nonuse of up one month between. She has had inkjet printers in the past and has liked them. Our only complaint has been cost of operation, and chipped HP ink tanks that expire due to age. That latter one was a very good printer, but expensive to feed. New HP printers get a lot of poor reviews.
From your description of yours (no Ethernet, no auto document feeder for scanning,) it seems close to the current model ET-2800 or ET-2850. Both of these have only a 100 sheet rear paper tray, and there have been complaints about this misfeeding. If really true, all the ones up the list have a 250 sheet front tray that seems to have no complaints. No need to have a second input tray for such things as envelopes.
It seems Epson has several ink bottles, and I don’t have time to look them up for capacity before I post this. Can you remember which ones your uses? Capacity? Any comments? The one size I looked at (T522) seems low cost, but I couldn’t find out its capacity. I am skeptical of these printers with high initial cost and low consumable cost. Kodak had a supposedly similar concept that seemed to disappear from the market quickly.
I read that many of the current printers, and maybe the Epsons, will not print unless they have access to the Internet. How about yours? I assume the worst when I read this. Possibly the manufacturer can disable the printer when it is considered obsolete.
Do you leave your printer powered ON all the time? One of our older inkjets used 10 watts when idle, an excessive amount IMO. It also took a while and used some ink when powering up, a nuisance. All of our monochrome laser printers have been ready to print in a few seconds.
Thanks in advance for your response, and I also welcome anyone else’s thoughts.
We saw the touring play at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles several years ago, and the movie with Nathan Lane. Agree that both are really good entertainment. I admit that Mel Brooks is a good writer, but don’t like some of his stuff. This one excepted.
I call that uncommon success. Congrats. Were hammers or torches a part of the toolset? 😉
I got the Epson ET-2850. Set up was easy. Filling the ink tanks is easy and no mess. I have copied, and printed with no issues. Not a lot of use so far. Prints are good. Only one jam from the wife feeding in paper crooked. Wireless works. W10 and W10 detected the printer when adding a new printer, which must be connected to the same WiFi network. I have printed from W10, W11, MacBook, iPhone and iPad without issues. No info on ink consumption as I have not printed enough. I do feel my ink costs will be cut by 75% over my Canon printer, probably 90% over an HP printer.
I got the printer from Costco as they have a really good warranty and return policy.
I have no idea about Epson shutting down the printer. Based on messages from the Epson software on my computer I don’t think the printer communicates directly. The software informs me of firmware updates, not the printer.
Yes, I leave it powered on all the time. Starts printing quickly. No head movement until printing starts. The printer can print an alignment page where the user chooses the best pattern. There is also diagnostic printing and nozzle cleaning available from the printer screen.
Overall I have no complaints. I had a Kodak, worked well, until something in the inking system leaked and destroyed the printer. I had no complaints with the Canon except for the cost of ink. HP lost any hope of my business due to their ink policies.
Heh. I needed to remove a brake drum so that I could replace a broken wheel stud.* We rummaged around the Jar O’ Bolts to find a couple long bolts to screw into the removal holes. No real problem in getting the drum off and none at all in replacing the stud. We had to reassemble the brake shoes, because of course we did, then everything went back together with no problem. This was the task where I half-expected that we’d need to cut the drum off.
The other issue was replacing a windshield wiper arm. Toyota minivans, and other Toyotas for all I know, have a really crappy design for putting the arm on the motor post. I was trying to figure out if the $200 (!) replacement arm was needed or if some $0.15 toothed washer was missing or something dumb like that. My dad looked it over, identified the poor design, and we figured out that the new arm is needed. No problem, I just didn’t want to waste the money if it wasn’t needed. No tools needed other than a ratchet and socket.
* Why don’t lug nuts go on a lug? Whoever’s in charge of naming things dropped the ball on this one.
I took a peek at my brake pads on the 2019 Highlander during the last tire rotation. It looked like the front disc pads are getting close to needing replacement.
I’ve done disc brake pad replacements many times on my various cars. Not hard to do. (Except the one time when I took the rotors for turning, and one was returned warped. That was frustrating, as I reinstalled several times before figuring it out.) Have even done drum brakes a couple of times in prior decades.
Anyway, I’m getting old. So I was thinking that maybe I should let someone else do the work. Asked the local Toyota dealer, and they quoted $450 for the front pad replacement. And extra if the rotors need turning. (And spark plug replacement at $850!) Yikes! I’m a bit of a cheapskate, although I could afford that cost.
Will be asking around at the local independent brake shops for pricing. Will require OEM-level parts. But hoping it will be cheaper. Otherwise, I’ll spend the <$100 and do it myself.
Home safe. Light misty drizzle and some thin fog for most of the trip. Traffic was light.
The woods were deep and dark. It was like flying thru the void for miles at a time, no lights, nothing visible more than 5 ft off the side of the road.
Stopped and got gas before turning for home. $2.80. it was $3.09 in the sticks.
n
My local Toyota dealer charged me $292.01 for the brake job on my 2014 Rav4.
I didn’t even ask if it was all 4 or just the front. I suppose I should pay more attention, but that’s what it cost, for whatever service they said I needed.
Cops.
Way too many cops enjoy the escalation and use it as an excuse to punish people who stand up for their rights by arresting them on bogus charges which are later dismissed by the DA. Or they lie or invent laws in order to get ID, or to search a vehicle. I’ve had the “passengers must ID” lie used on me, before I knew better.
In the current video, they yank him from the car, guns drawn. For alleged reckless driving? That’s an absolutely insane overreaction, and it only gets worse from there.
Does your Highlander have a 4-cylinder or 6-cylinder engine?
Replacing spark plugs on the 6-cylinder engine is an ugly job.
2019 Highlander XLE, AWD, V6. About 67K miles.
Engine runs smoothly, so maybe the sparkies are OK. Most trips are 20-40 miles a couple times a week, with trips from WA to CA or WA to UT 4-5 times per year. Overall 25 MPG.
Plugs on my 2013 Highlander are a maintenance item at 120K. Each plug cost $20.00, so $120.00 in parts without including shop supplies. The dealer also cleaned the intake manifold. I also needed a transmission fluid change, brake fluid flush and change, and coolant flush and change.
Changing the plugs on my old Expy was a dealer thing, or at least real service center. They were famous for breaking off in the engine. There is even a special tool to remove the remaining piece… no way I’d take the chance on what would otherwise be a simple service.
That said, I had a 73 Chrysler New Yorker, 440 with a 4 barrel, iirc. Dad changed the plugs, all of them, for the first time since the car was new. One plug was so hard to get to that no one had ever changed it in over 10 years. Poor design.
n
I once cross-threaded a spark plug on an 82 Ford Escort. What a nightmare to get the plug correctly seated afterwards.
My wife’s 2002 4Runner got about 25 MPG, and the Highlander tries to be a more refined version of that vehicle, having grown a foot in the last 20 years. That sounds about right, and we didn’t have AWD.
Take one of the front plugs out and look. Denso should still be good at 67K.
The intake manifold has to come off anyway to get to the back plugs. Might as well do any necessary service there.
Simple jobs, until they go pear shaped…
n
Thanks, Ray. You answered much more than I deserved, and it will be helpful to me.
Too many interruptions since I posted my question, so no progress. Dinner, though. :-d Ordering will definitely be deferred to tomorrow, but that’s OK. I will do more reading tonight, but it will be very late in your time zone. Then, I can sleep on my gathered thoughts and decide tomorrow. It’s not a hard deadline: I just want to get it done.
I agree with your findings on brands: I have used HP Laser printers for decades, mostly at work, but two at home, and all of them have been great. I cheated: I used to know an HP repairman, and he guided more than one purchase, including supplies. I thought buying one of their “business class” inkjets would be a good idea for my wife; she has a need for color and cool ink instead of laser heat. It wasn’t too expensive, and definitely worked OK, except for lousy drivers and the ADF (Auto Doc Feeder,) which skewed the pages randomly, with no easy fix. We didn’t do much scanning, so just fed each sheet on the flatbed. The printer worked flawlessly, but the “nearly out of ink” reminder was way too early, and drove my wife and me nuts. This one has four replaceable ink tanks that feed two print heads, and the tanks have date limits encoded in them. A set of four tanks cost about $100, and it seemed there was always one that was nearly out of ink. Plus, they didn’t last very long. Strike two. When two of them aged out, I decommissioned the whole box, but keep it set up as a scanner, connected to a spare Linux computer. The Linux print driver was much better than any one I could find for any version of Windows, but there was no scanner driver. I used a TWAIN-compliant scanner app, and it works well, but has a really bad UI, which my wife could never master. Now, we need something that Just WorksTM.
The only other inkjet we had was an old Canon all in one, and it worked great until it just stopped working. It was only a few years old. We did have problems with head cleaning, but I expect that with inkjet printers in our dry climate.
Some friends have had Epson inkjets, and like them, but no EcoTank versions. Seems like a good idea, but the reviews are divided between fantastic and a small percentage of serious problems, including high ink consumption. That, of course defeats the purpose. There are other brands that have fixed ink tanks, but I think Epson is ahead of them. I think my decision will be which Epson to choose. I am leaning toward the ET-3830, which appears to be similar to your ET-2850 with a bigger and better input tray. Thanks for the Costco reminder. Although the nearest one is about 100 miles away, I could order online. Some people complained that the ones Amazon sells have different kinds of serial numbers that aren’t recognized by Epson. Will try to check that.
I was once fascinated with printing, and had a couple of friends who did commercial printing way back. One worked at a small print shop, and the other had a letter press in his basement. I considered getting into the business, until I learned how hard it can be to make money. Early on in computers, I adopted the paperless office. I still joke that I have scanners, but my only printer has a slot for quarters. Some people believe me! Of course, the paperless office failed miserably, but I keep trying. It is a struggle. Thanks, and good night.
The auto manufacturer’s want to capture all the maintenance as a profit center right alongside the engine repair profit center and the body repair profit center. The dealers are all-in, of course, although they are a bit irritated about the constant stream of special tools required. Only a matter of time before you won’t be able to open the hood on your new vehicle. Then government will make it a safety issue and forbid you from opening it, and no, the enormous contributions made to the “representatives” that put that power in the hands of a non-elected alphabet agency is just a coincidence, as are the obscene salaries those alphabet agency employees get when they move into jobs provided by the automakers.
Just STFU and learn to like it in your all-electric dwelling that the benign government is supplying with power for most all the hours this month.
It’s ‘Adios!’ to ‘Aloha!’ as the Left-wing Word Police Strike Again
Kathleen J. Anderson, January 27, 2023 at 3:10pm
https://thepoliticalinsider.com/its-adios-to-aloha-as-the-left-wing-word-police-strike-again/
This in reply to a screed in USA today, which prompted mostly hostile Twitter responses, including “Two Words, One Finger”
I always offer to trade when someone starts talking about “cultural appropriation”. Like, if the Hawaiian natives want “aloha” back, it’s fine with me–just quit growing coffee and we’ll call it even. Other “native” (aka descendants of those that committed ancient genocides and did not record their deeds for posterity*) peoples can get the same kind of deal–most of them are exercising their fishing rights with fiberglass boats and gasoline engines, and what about those horses they stole from the Spanish?
Speaking of the Spanish, they invented the guitar and I’m sure that those sensitive groups would want to be proactive and give them up.
Myself, well, my people are Americans and we invented the telephone, the internet, jelly beans, the Second Amendment and getting enough to eat, among other things. You sensitive groups can just leave all that behind when you get on the boats to go home.
*Heard the story about the last Neanderthal? He died waiting for the Homo Saps to make good on their treaty obligations.
Only a matter of time before you won’t be able to open the hood on your new vehicle.
– unfortunately this isn’t a joke. Support whoever is fighting for ‘right to repair’ in your local legislatures. This is already fact for farm equipment and almost completely true for apple products.
n
Just S*** and learn to like it in your all-electric dwelling that the benign government is supplying with power for most all the hours this month.
Nah, eventually there won’t be any electric power for you and me. The power will be supplied to the privileged class.
There won’t be any driving around by you and me. You will walk or ride your bike or a scooter. Not powered of course.