Random Rants 76: Argh! Augh! Ahhh!

[Synobun]

I have just watched The Phantom Menace, so the appropriate quote for this is ‘I WILL MAKE IT LEGAL’.

How wude!

 

[Cutlass]

I wonder what the plumbing market is like in East Asia with the craze for computerized toilets there. Do plumbers need to know how to troubleshoot and resolve those problems or is that an industry of its own now?

For a number of years I worked for my landlord as his oncall person and handyman running his several small apartment buildings and multi-family houses. I would do some of the lightest duty plumbing and electrical myself. But the difficult jobs, he called in a professional. So I'd talk to these people, as I was working with them. A licensed plumber today has to have at least a low-moderate ability as an electrician. Because there are a lot of things a plumber does which overlap with electrical work. Boilers, garbage disposals, sump pumps, thermostats, as just a few examples, are plumbing fixtures that require electrical connections.

 

[Kyriakos]

The problem with being a plumber (or similar jobs) is not the pay (though you can get slave-waged) but that it is looked down upon as a work.
Eg here virtually everyone is expected to get some degree; ussually uni degree. In some places people are even encouraged to get degrees on medicine even with no prospect of work (cause Greece has a huge number of doctors, lawyers and pharmacists).

 

[Takhisis]

I suppose that those special computerised toilets might just have a special repair shop of their own, like auto repair shops with diagnosis software.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The problem with being a plumber (or similar jobs) is not the pay (though you can get slave-waged) but that it is looked down upon as a work.

The other problem with being a plumber is that you have to deal with, uh, crap. Literal crap.

 

[Kyriakos]

I live in the eu already

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Here's a small rant: I often wonder if the rich people are trying to push public opinion to shift more of a burden on individuals I'll take two examples, here: Welfare fraud and plastic bags.

Welfare fraud: People are often up in roars about people "milking" off of welfare and/or disability benefits, despite the actual amount of fraud being very tiny (no exact numbers, sorry). Meanwhile, big corporations often receive lots and lots and lots of money from the government, enough to make the amount of money going into welfare look like peanuts. Then they say "oh, but the companies are making jobs," but many many times the jobs aren't very good ones, or they go away after a few years.

Plastic bags & straws: There's a lot of waste and pollution from the corporations, too. Getting rid of plastic bags is a good thing (straws not so much because of accessibility), but why aren't we also going after the industry too? There's a lot of unnecessary plastic packaging, but I don't hear much about them trying to ban that.

 

[Synobun]

Lobbyists rule the world is the simple, short answer, honestly. Corporations can afford to lobby while more altruistic organizations cannot. Placing the burden on the individual makes it so that the corporations are absolved of responsibility.

---

My landlord has had three repairmen come today to look at the washing machine. I told her the tub bearing is shot, at a minimum, and that the part alone will cost $110. She responds with a simple "I don't know" and has a professional come over to have a look (fine by me). He looks at it, confirms the diagnosis, and says he'll fix it for $400. Landlord says no (fair, at that price she might as well get a "new" used washer).

She has another repairman come. This one says the pump is shot and he'll fix it for $300. Again, landlord says no.

Third repairman comes, and he says that she might as well just replace the machine because fixing it will probably only give her a couple years more out of it while purchasing a new machine will get her at least 10 years (the current washer is from 1992). She says "oh, maybe" and they leave.

Now I hear that she's having a fourth repairman come over. Are these people doing free consults? I'd be surprised. Normally they charge you an hour's rate just for stepping through the door. At this point she may be spending so much on trying to have a repairman tell her the machine is fine that she could have just bought a new washing machine.

Anyways, landlord's official recommendation is to put towels on the floor and to hold the tub while it spins. Problem solved.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Haven't posted in a while, but

I took a glance at the front page and the second one

And I'm starting to see what people have told me ever since I joined, that the site "is dying"

I'm a bit sad I haven't contributed more to keeping activity up

 

[Kyriakos]

Sounds like a three billy-goats story; your landlady being the troll.

 

[Takhisis]

Welcome back, Lohrenswald!

Don't worry about CFC, it's been dying since some three years before Kyriakos joined IIRC.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Rant: Windows Update has been whirring away for over an hour now. Would be fine if it didn't lock up my HDD at 100% the whole time. It's supposed to do this outside of my active hours.

You don't schedule yours for a specific time?

My lunch is just two prunes, that's what I ate today around noon, and I'm not going to eat again until about six.

My home care nurses would lecture me if I did that. I got quizzed today on the old Canada Food Guide (since nobody understands what's in the new one). You're short by 3 of them (4 if you count chocolate as one of the food groups, which it totally is).

Here's a small rant: I often wonder if the rich people are trying to push public opinion to shift more of a burden on individuals I'll take two examples, here: Welfare fraud and plastic bags.

Welfare fraud: People are often up in roars about people "milking" off of welfare and/or disability benefits, despite the actual amount of fraud being very tiny (no exact numbers, sorry). Meanwhile, big corporations often receive lots and lots and lots of money from the government, enough to make the amount of money going into welfare look like peanuts. Then they say "oh, but the companies are making jobs," but many many times the jobs aren't very good ones, or they go away after a few years.

Plastic bags & straws: There's a lot of waste and pollution from the corporations, too. Getting rid of plastic bags is a good thing (straws not so much because of accessibility), but why aren't we also going after the industry too? There's a lot of unnecessary plastic packaging, but I don't hear much about them trying to ban that.

The Alberta finance minister held a phone-in town hall meeting last night. I was tempted to call in and ask about some stuff, but once I realized that his answers were so vague a to be totally useless, I decided not to bother.

I'll email him instead, since I express myself much better in writing.


Regarding straws... have you seen this article about the Accessible Canada Act? Apparently the federal government doesn't think disabled Canadians vote, so they don't bother to put in legislation that is actually effective.

There are some really ignorant posts in the comments regarding straws and other issues that matter to the disabled but some able-bodied people don't think we deserve to have access to any sort of normal life.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Haven't posted in a while, but

I took a glance at the front page and the second one

And I'm starting to see what people have told me ever since I joined, that the site "is dying"

I'm a bit sad I haven't contributed more to keeping activity up

You wanna see what a dying/mostly-dead/undead site really looks like?
https://apolyton.net/forum

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I fainted about an hour ago just after getting out of a hot shower. I started feeling light headed as I stepped out of the tub. I made it back to my bedroom and closed the door behind me, but then collapsed and knocked over the chair and garbage can next to my desk. The sound of my fall really scared my mom. I did not hurt myself and I don't think I lost consciousness, but my vision was blurry and the room seemed to be spinning as I struggled to get off the floor and into my bed to lay down.

I've fainted a couple times before, years ago, but only right after a red cross blood drive or a bike accident in which I lost an equivalent amount of blood. This time there was not such an obvious cause. I did notice I was thirsty afterwards, so I guess it must be dehydration plus the heat of the shower.

I decided to check my blood pressure and blood sugar to see if I could identify a cause, but since mom's meters were downstairs I had to wait until I was feeling more steady before going to get them and my that point both numbers were perfectly normal.

Those things aren't included when you're billed for the surgery?

I believe everything is supposed to be covered by medicare, or her medicare supplement, regardless of where it comes from. I'm not really sure why they want us to pick it up early.

By "pick up" it may just mean from another supplier. There were numerous times with my mom and dad that stuff they were using in the hospital was hospital property, and to have the same stuff when they went home it had to be acquired from the local supplier. Still under insurance, but the hospital wasn't in the business of selling wheelchairs, or oxygen bottles and concentration devices, or crutches, or really much of anything. And the hospital pharmacy only dealt with 'in house' customers, so scrips that were continuing at home had to be picked up from an outside pharmacy.

When we went for a pre-op at the hospital before they gave us a few things we had to keep track of, including a bracelet showing her blood types and a breathing apparatus which they never ended up using but said we must bring back on the day of the surgery or else they would charge us for a new one. When we did bring it back they just left it in the room where she went to get undressed. It seemed rather pointless to me.

The podiatrist we saw twice already will be performing the amputation herself, but using the operating theater at the nearest hospital (about twice as far from our house as her regular office).

Dad was the one talking to the person from the podiatrist office today. He put her on speaker phone for part of it but I'm not sure I caught everything. I did hear her say that we need to pick up a special protective boot, a cast, and some pills she needs to start taking before the day of the procedure. We pick those up from her office on Monday, and then also go for a pre-op meeting at the hospital on Tuesday before the amputation on Friday.

I believe the antibiotics mom had been taking to keep the infection under control only last through Monday, so I imagine they'll give us a prescription for more.

The podiatrist had mentioned before they they would give us a shoe insert to help mom balance so she could walk normally, but I imagine that is probably something that would be fitted after she has healed somewhat rather than given to us next week.

They are taking the toe and about an inch at the end of the metatarsal bone, but the podiatrist said they are leaving enough that she should still have a healthy arch to her foot and be able to wear normal shoes and walk pretty normally. Dad has a former client who had this done when he was mom's age and 6 years later is still getting along well enough to continue working as a bouncer in a dive bar. He was not recovering from a series of strokes that damaged the balance centers of his brain though.

 

[Takhisis]

I fainted about an hour ago just after getting out of a hot shower. I started feeling light headed as I stepped out of the tub. I made it back to my bedroom and closed the door behind me, but then collapsed and knocked over the chair and garbage can next to my desk. The sound of my fall really scared my mom. I did not hurt myself and I don't think I lost consciousness, but my vision was blurry and the room seemed to be spinning as I struggled to get off the floor and into my bed to lay down.

I've fainted a couple times before, years ago, but only right after a red cross blood drive or a bike accident in which I lost an equivalent amount of blood. This time there was not such an obvious cause. I did notice I was thirsty afterwards, so I guess it must be dehydration plus the heat of the shower.

I decided to check my blood pressure and blood sugar to see if I could identify a cause, but since mom's meters were downstairs I had to wait until I was feeling more steady before going to get them and my that point both numbers were perfectly normal.

How much sleep are you getting?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

egarding straws... have you seen this article about the Accessible Canada Act? Apparently the federal government doesn't think disabled Canadians vote, so they don't bother to put in legislation that is actually effective.

There are some really ignorant posts in the comments regarding straws and other issues that matter to the disabled but some able-bodied people don't think we deserve to have access to any sort of normal life.

Yikes. Some people just don't really understand how little things affect disabled.

Anyways, silly rant: I still don't like what they did to Mozilla Thunderbird's icon. They had a perfectly nice one:

And then they go and change it to...what is this? It's so flat-looking.

 

[Takhisis]

I don't know about Thunderbird's specific case, but a lot of similar changes in style have been committed because ‘it loads faster’.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

No, just the icon. Flat design is pretty popular. I first noticed it when Windows 8/Metro came around, though I'm not sure if they started it or were just following the trend. I'm not overly-fond of it.

 

[FriendlyFire]

My landlord has had three repairmen come today to look at the washing machine. I told her the tub bearing is shot, at a minimum, and that the part alone will cost $110. She responds with a simple "I don't know" and has a professional come over to have a look (fine by me). He looks at it, confirms the diagnosis, and says he'll fix it for $400. Landlord says no (fair, at that price she might as well get a "new" used washer).

She has another repairman come. This one says the pump is shot and he'll fix it for $300. Again, landlord says no.

Third repairman comes, and he says that she might as well just replace the machine because fixing it will probably only give her a couple years more out of it while purchasing a new machine will get her at least 10 years (the current washer is from 1992). She says "oh, maybe" and they leave.

Now I hear that she's having a fourth repairman come over. Are these people doing free consults? I'd be surprised. Normally they charge you an hour's rate just for stepping through the door. At this point she may be spending so much on trying to have a repairman tell her the machine is fine that she could have just bought a new washing machine.

Anyways, landlord's official recommendation is to put towels on the floor and to hold the tub while it spins. Problem solved.

Yeap some landlords are like that, your landlord is looking for a cheap quick fix
All the large appliance service companies charge you, a fee if you dont give them the repair job to do

I had landlord delay repairing broken bathroom tiling, for nearly a year it kept getting worse as more tiles broke off, got quotations for repairs and everything, didnt do anything until water started leaking into the unit below
Cost them a lot more because they didnt repair it straight away.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

A few apartments ago, the landlord kept complaining at us for excessive power consumption (utilities were included), even though I had previously confirmed with a meter thingy that it was the old fridge included with the unit. Then they broke into the apartment when we weren't home and turned off my computer.

EDIT: The meter thingy I think was a Kill-A-Watt. My mother was able to borrow it somewhere but asked me to check.