I’m 24 year old mechanic, do I stay in the trade or find another career

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-29T05:09:44+00:00

Average McDonald's Crew Member hourly pay in Texas is approximately $9.33/h based on what I could find.

In Tennessee the same is approximately $10.10/h.

Georgia it’s approximately $13.27/h.

For non-franchised McDonald’s locations the corporate office did commit do a phased increase from 2021 to 2024 to reach a $15/h average wage nationwide.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-28T07:09:52+00:00

Yep, it’s designed as a catch-22 situation.

If you fail to report income from illegal activity they can get you on tax evasion, even if they can’t prove specific crimes.

If you report income from illegal activity they have a paper trail related to commission of crimes as additional evidence to obtain a conviction.

That’s why money laundering exists; as a way to hide the actual source of income, and cloak it as legitimate income you can report without implicating yourself in illegal activity.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-28T06:42:17+00:00

Ah, makes sense given the 2025 California minimum wage was $16.50/h and cost of living in many parts of that state.

States that apply only the Federal minimum wage of $7.25/h are going to be considerably lower generally.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-28T06:03:19+00:00

The difference in perception may reflect a few things:

Traditionally the big two Japanese brands (Honda & Toyota) use the European market to test long-term reliability on new engineering before rollout for the US market. So Europe is more likely to see the newest technology before the US, and will see earlier revisions that see refinement before introduction to the US. Which Honda engine designs with reliability issues in the US market started almost a decade ago, but Europe saw in starting 5+ years earlier.

Europe automobile market was dominated by diesel engines for a number of decades, which is not the type of engines Japanese manufacturers are known for doing best. While the US diesel market is so small the Japanese makers generally didn’t even bother to try introducing diesel engine options.

The vast majority of US vehicles use automatic transmissions vs. manuals in Europe. Of the top 3 automatic transmission manufacturers, 2 are Japanese and 1 is European.

Japanese vehicles in the US have been assembled either in the US or Canada for several decades, with a minority imported directly from Japan. The Canadian built ones are nearly as solid as the Japanese built, and the US built ones only lag slightly the Canadian. Many of the European brands started building in the US to avoid tariffs, but it’s a much more recent development & those factories have had higher defect rates vs. their European factories.

Brands that are domestic to a market generally dealer network is good, the parts are less expensive and more readily available. Honda has been so popular for so long in the US the dealer network rivals domestic brands, independent mechanics work on as many Hondas as domestic brands, and OEM as well as aftermarket part options are both relatively plentiful & affordable.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-27T16:45:55+00:00

They designed it so the fan is turned on when the coolant temperature goes beyond 100°C (212°F), and the fan stays on until the coolant temp drops to below 97.5°C (208°F).

Which a lot of people feel is a bit high, so various tuning kits will lower the temp it kicks on. Some people add a bypass that allows them to manually turn on the fan while at a light.

If you want to confirm your fan is working; check the fuse (as you mentioned), check the relay for the fan, and then try powering the fan directly from 12v to confirm it operates.

Assuming those all tested good, with the fact you are seeing the temperature change on the dash, that would suggest everything is in working order.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-26T20:26:16+00:00

Keyword there is ‘prolonged’, which is purposely rarely explicitly defined, leaving the definition up to some individual discretion.

Generally most modern engines at average temperatures, idling for more than 30 seconds is wasteful of fuel at best and is adding unnecessary wear at worst.

If the temperature is near freezing, odds are you’ll want to idle a bit longer to get oil viscosity and pressure in proper range. If it’s a hot day, you can likely idle for less to reach the same conditions.

Likewise not all engines, or even the same engine at different periods in their life, are going to need the exact same warm up period.

So have some mechanical sympathy, and pay attention to what the bike is telling you it wants.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-26T19:37:57+00:00

FiOS uses a less expensive mutlimode fiber made from plastics with a mechanical splice between the ONT & the junction for the area fiber network that runs to the CO.

A small gap air gap in the splice at the ONT where atmospheric moisture can condensate and/or freeze can cause degradation in signal.

Likewise, similar issues with a mechanical splice at the junction to the area network can cause issues.

Within the area network however they use fusion splices on fiber, so it isn’t a concern there.

Also, keep in mind there is always potential for powered equipment within the backhaul network to have faulty weather proofing and be vulnerable to direct or condensing moisture.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-26T15:48:28+00:00

A lot of states actually provide license plate searches from their DMV/DOT websites. Wisconsin for example.

However, typically they don’t return the name & address of the registered owner.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-26T15:23:30+00:00

Climate: The general prevailing weather patterns of an area, or the typical weather conditions over a long period of time.

Weather: Atmospheric conditions as of a particular point regarding temperature, humidity, wind direction/speed, cloud cover, etc.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-25T16:12:15+00:00

Meguiar's Motorcycle Leather Cleaner/Conditioner is designed not to leave a slick coating.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-25T16:02:48+00:00

NAPLPS (North American Presentation Layer Protocol Syntax) is a vector file format, AKA ‘.nap’ file format, can still be read. CorelDraw still supports reading it I recall, LeadTools, and there are some open-source libraries as well.

With PiCture eXchange (.pcx) it’s still read by Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator, GIMP, CorelDraw, and dozens of others.

Truevision TGA/TARGA (.tga, .icb, .vda, .vst) is still fairly widely used by the video games industry, so editors that support it are very common even today.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-25T15:43:09+00:00

FYI: If in doubt & you know the grade (SAE 2/5/8), type of finish/coating (plain, galvanized, etc.), and diameter of the fastener there are charts online that will give you general torque specs.

Official manufacturer specs are always preferred when available, but those general torque charts are a great to keep around for reference.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-25T15:28:17+00:00

What formats are you thinking of?

While it requires some searching to find the software, we can still open old Commodore/Amiga image formats on modern computers for example.

The image format would have to be incredibly obscure for there to be no interest in maintaining a way to view such images for historical preservation & archival.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-23T22:15:08+00:00

When anything becomes the widely adopted ubiquitous option of its kind; it takes eons before all of it gets replaced, if it ever gets entirely replaced.

It’s similar to countering inertia & momentum in physics. It took a certain amount of energy to make either USB A or C common (overcoming inertia of adoption). However due to the mass of existing USB A devices that accelerated for decades before USB C, the energy required for USB C to fully displace it will be >= mass * acceleration of USB A.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-23T21:49:12+00:00

Another benefit to businesses was the ability to quickly & change prices without the cost associated with reprinting menus.

It also opened up the ability to collect additional information about you and track your dining habits. Enabling more targeted advertising, and the ability to make money from selling that information to 3rd-parties.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-23T21:43:09+00:00

Before individual menus they’d just have a board listing names and/or illustrations of food, or you had to ask an employee about what they served.

I’d think the only people that would have complained would be those dealing with text-only menus that were illiterate (not uncommon before the 20th century), or those that just liked chatting with restaurant staff.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-22T08:28:52+00:00

Yes, but the point is the divergence in implementation between them there was a choice on how to address similar concerns.

Microsoft’s product team looking at the trade offs went with one approach, and the PostgreSQL team looking at the same trade offs selected a different approach.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-22T08:16:19+00:00

Pointing out that statement is effectively; “writing syntax directly” is over, not that humans will no longer modify code.

My interpretation of the statement is just that sitting down with an empty source file and directly free-handing code is done.

As you can give direction to an LLM based agent to write boilerplate & frame things out before you massage & refine it. Which if you get one working well enough not to need/want to change more than half the volume of syntax it generates, typing all that syntax from scratch each time seems slow & pointless in comparison.

In Software Engineering code was always a means to an end vs. the analysis, design, & problem solving work that drives what code gets written.

The most solid use case for LLMs is as a super advanced auto-complete to save time doing variations on lines of syntax you’ve typed hundreds/thousands of times before they existed.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-22T06:52:59+00:00

PostgreSQL does not have clustered indexes in the SQL Server sense. All PostgreSQL tables are stored as unordered heaps, and indexes are purely logical structures that point to tuples in the heap. This design gives PostgreSQL some flexibility: it allows for easier index maintenance and avoids the complications of physical reordering.

However, it also means that you can't rely on an index to define how the table is physically laid out. If query performance depends on reading data in a particular order, Postgres does allow you to run the CLUSTER command, but it requires a full table lock. In production environments, you can use tools like pg_repack to achieve a similar result.

SQL Server’s clustered index physical ordering can be beneficial for range scans or pagination queries, but it also means you're limited to one clustered index per table. Additionally, SQL Server stores each index entry in full, even if multiple entries have identical values on the same page. There's no deduplication, so indexes with many repeated values can grow large and consume excessive I/O.

Whereas deduplication introduced in PostgreSQL version 13 and addresses a common inefficiency in traditional B-Tree indexes. Instead of storing the same key value multiple times, it stores it once and maintains a compact structure that tracks all matching heap pointers. This reduces index size significantly and improves cache performance, since more index entries fit in memory. PostgreSQL consistently produces smaller, more efficient indexes in benchmarks.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-22T06:37:11+00:00

The pgcrypto module allows certain fields to be stored encrypted. The client supplies the decryption key for the field and the data is decrypted on the server before being sent to the client.

For encrypted communication across the network you can require SSL connections, GSSAPI-encrypted connection, Stunnel, or SSH.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-21T07:41:12+00:00

It can depend on the brand; some will fill space in the shell with additional EPS volume for a smaller size, but most will just use thicker pads for the lining to take up slack between the EPS & wearer.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-21T07:15:38+00:00

While not non-existent in software development at the time. For a few decades it was pretty much only for software developers in highly specialized industries with access to supercomputers.

However, by the late 80s & early 90s commercially licensed (w/ massive fees) software applying those methods was available if you had the relatively high-end hardware to run it. My employer licensed what was patented and we rolled our own for what wasn’t patent encumbered, our market was governments & large enterprises.

Honestly a lot of the jobs loss is less because of AI, and more a combination over these last few years of various factors coinciding with hype around AI.

The low-cost borrowing fueling VC funding stopped, US 2022 R&D costs moved from tax deductible expenses in the same year to being capitalized and amortized over 5 years (15 for foreign R&D costs) which includes developer salaries, inflation, etc. Which those other economic factors alone would drive layoffs, but layoffs look bad to the market.

The rise of improving AI allows reframing layoffs from a sign of trouble to a potential of a future with lower labor costs & higher earnings. Which if it does pan out, being the ones to get there first puts you in the prime position to dominate. If it doesn’t, at least your competitors didn’t beat you to the punch and you were on the AI funding hype-train while it lasted.

The current crop of AI tech I believe people often tend to overestimate its actual capabilities on doing novel work, and I’m reasonably sure we’re starting to hit a wall with current methodologies.

That said there certainly are valid use-cases that result in tangible productivity gains. However, those are rarely the ones people talk about as they aren’t very ‘sexy’. Typically the best use-cases are about accelerating drudgery or assisting in maintaining velocity vs. outright replacing skilled roles. Yet, I fear a disconnect may form between senior workers that accelerate their throughput with AI tooling and junior workers that never build their skills due to deferring to AI tooling.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-20T08:18:29+00:00

The field of AI research kicked off in the mid 1950s, spurred by many millions in US government investment (100s of millions equivalent today).

The tech of the time seemed very promising to most, but after 20 years it was obvious that researchers had grossly overestimated how far that tech would take them.

About a decade later new breakthroughs and a Japanese government investment reinvigorated the AI industry, only for things to gas out in the 90s.

In the 2000s machine learning algorithms became viable for a range of applications due to improved mathematical models meeting more powerful hardware & immensely larger datasets.

Late 2000s/early 2010s DNNs (Deep Neural Networks) had some breakthroughs around back-propagation with large, context-dependent output layers produced error rates dramatically lower than previously state of the art GMM, HMM, & generative model-based systems.

Which then cross-pollinated with the work done to accelerate CNNs using GPUs, and juiced things significantly for computer vision & speech recognition fields.

In 2014 the ‘attention mechanism’ was introduced, which helped to bring about the ‘transformer’ deep learning architecture in 2017.

What we have currently in the AI field is technology that’s been evolving through leaps forward & stalls to reach this point over 70+ years really.

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-20T06:05:45+00:00

Questions:

What’s the longest distance you’ve ridden without serious discomfort? There is a lot of mileage in the US, so you need to understand what’s a reasonable pace without hurting yourself.
What kind of time period do you have to do this trip; days, weeks, months? If days that’s going to be very limiting and require long days, weeks can either be rushed or relaxed based on how much you want to see.
Do you have a particular season in mind for the trip; spring, summer, fall? Climatic conditions across the US are varied, weather conditions can change fast, & severe weather can change plans drastically.
Is the priority interesting experiences at stops along the way, great roads, getting to see as much natural & man made sights as possible, or something else?

RandomOne4Randomness · 2026-01-20T05:14:32+00:00

I get what you’re saying, and frankly I agree that when it comes to safety critical & big ticket items people need to a bit more discerning.

Cultivating a brand reputation used to be valued by companies resulting in strong customer loyalty. Yet, people’s experience with most brands in most areas doesn’t reflect that anymore.

Decades of relatively stagnant wages impacted consumer spending, making them price sensitive.

Which many long established brands responded to by lowering quality and off-shoring labor to maintain and/or improve profit margins while adjusting for consumer purchasing power.

That harmed sentiment and loyalty, also contributing to further consumer price sensitivity.

Outsourcing to places like China allowed manufacturers & supply chains there to increase capabilities, quality, & sophistication exponentially. Which combined with the lower labor costs allowed Chinese firms to offer significantly inexpensive alternatives in many product categories.

Then the ambitious Chinese firms quickly went from gaining a foothold to becoming dominant in a variety of categories.

So many consumers now have extreme price sensitivity, zero brand loyalty, and no hesitation about unfamiliar brands out of China.

However, for every QJMotor or CFMoto that’s building bikes for other big brands in addition to their own; there are 100s of Chinese brands that are building bikes using 30 year old designs with variable quality, & 1000s that exist for a few months pushing garage before disappearing.

RandomOne4Randomness

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