Tag: Misc

Friday night as we were about to goto dinner, my wife tells me that she sees some water running down the driveway. I took a look, saw a pool of water near the water shut off, shut off the water to the house and asked her to call a plumber. After I turned the water off, I could still hear the water running, so I knew there was an issue between the house and the street. I shut the water off at the street and the fun began!

The plumber took a look and gave me an estimate; as he would have to chop out concrete on our front patio, it wasn’t going to be cheap. The next morning, the plumber, Brandon, arrived, and started jack hammering the concrete. After a little while, he knocked on the door because he had to show me the problem.

It looked like a rubber hose was connected to our main water line. This, obviously, wasn’t up to code. After a lot more jack hammering and digging, Brandon couldn’t find the other end, so he gave me an estimate on running a new main water line. Brandon asked if we had Quest piping in the house; this type of pipe is polybutylene, it was only used between 1978 and 1995. Our house was built in 1973, so it wasn’t used originally when the house was built.

While Brandon was digging and jack hammering, I did more research on polybutylene pipe and became convinced that what we saw was polybutylene and at some point, a repair had been done and instead of putting back copper, a cheaper alternative was selected.

Around 3 pm, I saw that it was going to take Brandon awhile to dig the trench to the straight and I wanted our water turned back on, so I offered to help. Well, we didn’t finish the trench, but Brandon duct taped the broken pipe and put a rubber coupling on top of it in hopes that it would last enough for a few showers (you really didn’t want to smell me after digging for 3 hours). I went instead to say goodnight to my son, turned the water on and quickly realized that the temporary fix wasn’t going to work; water pressure dropped almost immediately.

I ran outside to find water shooting in the air. I went into the garage, looked around to see what I had and found some PVC. I cut the PVC lengthwise and grabbed some zip ties. I put one side of the PVC on the top of the pipe and the other on the bottom and zip tied it altogether. That managed to hold for 2 showers and then I shut it off.

Sunday came around and we managed to lay the pipe and Brandon got a chance to do some plumbing! Who knew that plumbers had to be ditch diggers, tree trimmers (Brandon had to cut a tree root), and concrete destroyers.

So while we now have water restored, I have to get concrete poured to patch the front patio; at this point. I’m not sure that I want to undertake this as we’ll have to get some tiles replaced and who knows if it will match and if the concrete pour will be level with what we have.

The amount that this cost me reminds me of a Fraiser episode where Niles Crane is talking to the plumber about cars and the plumber said that he was getting rid of his BMW, the same model that Niles has. Niles asks why and the plumber said that he upgraded to the next bigger model of BMW which makes Niles mad because he can’t imagine a plumber making more money than he. I know how much work went into this and with any plumbing problem, you really don’t have much of a choice.

As our son gets older, we realized that we’ll need some place to place his artwork, pictures, and our items. Most people use magnets to put this on their refrigerator, but our fridge has wood inserts on the front to match our cabinets. Unfortunately this means, magnets won’t stick to it. My parents painted their wall with some type of metallic paint, so we thought that would be cool. My wife ordered a paint additive this weekend and we received it on Thursday. I put 4 coats of primer mixed with the metallic additive on a wall adjacent to the kitchen and it seems to be working well. Magnetics stick to it and we can put pictures on it. Of course it isn’t going to hold heavy pictures like magnets on a fridge, but it looks like it will do the trick. So far, I’m quite happy with this and I hope our son likes it as well.

As is pretty routine in our lousy local paper, I read an article where the author didn’t bother to do his research. He lumps LinkedIn with MySpace and Facebook as social networking sites routinely used by those under 18. Here is my letter to the editor:

In your article today (Saturday, March 7) about social networking sites, your author has clearly failed to due his research as there is a glaring mistake in the first sentence. The author lumps LinkedIn with MySpace and Facebook. Anyone that has used LinkedIn or visited its home page knows that it is for professionals and is quite unlike Facebook and MySpace. In fact, I suspect that very few people under the age of 18 use the site. I’ve used LinkedIn for several years as it has helped me establish and maintain professional contacts. In fact, I routinely receive job inquiries and last summer was offered a job based on contacts through LinkedIn. LinkedIn is clearly not the same as MySpace and Facebook.

Last Sunday, I went to take in our trash can and found a surprise, dog poop wrapped in a paper towel (no, I didn’t touch it). The trash got picked up on Saturday, but I didn’t get around to bringing in the can until the next day. To make matters worse, it rained, so I had to attempt to clean out the trash can by scooping out the poop with a stick and then hosing it down. What kind of neighbor, a) puts their dog’s poop in someone else’s trash can (I always take my dog’s poop in a bag back home as I think it is rude to deposit it in someone else’s trash can and b) didn’t use a bag to scoop the poop!

Uggh. We live in a pretty decent neighborhood and have friendly neighbors, but I guess when people aren’t watching people just do whatever they want.

People have speculated that we’d become a cashless society years ago, but this clearly hasn’t happened. While I try to use a credit card for most purchases, sometimes I use cash. For me, they are effectively interchangeable as I pay off my credit card every month and use a credit card with no annual fee. There are a few advantages to credit for me: 1) cash back, 2) easier to keep track of expenses, 3) consumer protection in case there is a problem with the charge. I use cash for purchasing gas to get the cash discount and for the very few places that don’t take credit.

Here’s a case where I should have used credit:

The day after Christmas, I went to pick up my wife and son at the airport and parked at the lot at the airport. When I went to pay the $2 fee, all I had was $20 bills and credit cards. For some reason, I decided to put in a $20 bill and expected to get $18 in $1 coins back (at least that’s what I hoped). Well, the machine took my money, validated my parking ticket, and didn’t give me my change or a receipt. We hit the button to contact someone and after talking to someone in the box, a supervisor for Lindbergh Parking, Inc. came out about 15 minutes later. The supervisor opened up the machine, but didn’t have the key to the money box. We followed him back to the office, my wife filled out some paperwork and we were told to call in the morning. When we got home, there was a message saying that they’d mail us a check. A phone call or two the following week yielded nothing. Last week I wrote a letter to them, but still don’t have my $18. So what do I do next? It is their word against mine. If they reconciled the machine, they would have seen that it was $18 off (unless someone stole $18). It shouldn’t be that hard to get my money.

Anyway, if you don’t want to leave a paper trail, use cash, but for me, credit is far more convenient. I’m not sure why I still pay some things in cash, but I do.

Some people may ask why I don’t use a debit card? Well, consumer protection. With a debit card, money comes out of my bank account and if there is a problem, I have to fight to get it back; with a credit card, I dispute the charge and I don’t pay it. Having had my wife’s debit card stolen and dealing with this, I don’t use debit cards. I asked my bank to send me ATM cards which are different as they only accept PIN based transactions (such as at Costco) and not credit card transactions providing another layer of protection. For secondary accounts, a debit card may not be a bad idea, but for my primary bank account, I won’t use a debit card.

Another letter to the editor….

In your article titled “DeMaio seeks break for sole proprietors on license code”, the author needs to check his facts. He talks about a business “license” in the City of San Diego. A license is defined as “formal permission from a governmental or other constituted authority to do something, as to carry on some business or profession.” The City of San Diego does not issue business licenses, it issues business tax certificates which are completely different from licenses. In fact, the “Certificate of Payment of Business Tax” states “This is not a License to do business within the City of San Diego…”.

The business tax certificate only means that you’ve paid the city money and nothing more. While they may sound like the same thing, they are not.

I’ve had a business tax certificate for many years and it means squat. In fact, I had a disagreement with Washington Mutual years ago where they wouldn’t let me open a business checking account because I didn’t have a “business license”. As far as I know, I don’t need a business license to do software development (nothing I do is health or safety related). I ended up going to Bank of America as they accepted by fictitious business name filing as proof of my company.

A few months ago, my Makita Cordless Drill started to die. The NiCad batteries were basically at the end of their useful life. This drill has served me well over the course of the last decade (yes, the batteries have continued to work for over 10 years). I started looking at replacing the batteries and the cost was about $35-$40 a piece which almost didn’t make sense to just replace the batteries when I could get a brand new drill with 2 batteries for a similar cost or I could upgrade my drill.

I started looking at new drills and asked my dad for some advice. He recommended one with a Lithium Ion battery, 18V (or higher) and one that could use the battery in different tools. That all made sense, but when I looked at cost, it made me sit back and do nothing as combo kits (drill, saw, etc.) were about $300. We were in Home Depot on New Year’s Day and I saw the Ryobi 12V Lithium Ion drill for about $80 and it looked compact and seemed liked it was all I needed. My Makita was only 9.6V, so this should have had more power. I looked across the aisle and saw the combo kit with circular saw, hybrid saw, and worklight for $119. I knew the limitations on 12V for a saw, but decided to give it a try. I’ve had the kit for about a week now and like all the components. The saws work for me needs and the drill seemed to work well. If I had bought the kit a day before, I would have gotten a $20 rebate. Oh well.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I figured out what was wrong with the kit. The drill didn’t have a clutch to change the torque. While this sounds like something I really didn’t need, I’ve used the clutch setting on my Makita lots of times. So I pondered what to do and decided to get the Factory Reconditioned Ryobi 18V combo kit. The cost is about $200 with no sales tax putting it about $70 more than what I already had (I have a few more weeks to return the kit to Home Depot). While this kit isn’t the newest (it doesn’t have the auto-shift drill), the Ryobi 18V setup works with over 35 of Ryobi’s tools. I’m sure that this kit will be more than adequate for my simple needs.

I’m looking forward to receiving this (I’m actually bidding on it on eBay to save a few more bucks, but if I don’t get the auction, I can still get it for $200).