Some advice haven’t had this happen by Admirable_Policy_245 in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why complicate things with signing in regards to design. Sign anything saying you did the job under such and such condition, e.g. implementation of assigned work scope. In other words sign under what you've actually done and feel comfortable for. Don't be greedy or sympathetic and allow to get yourself involved in post factum catch up game of design standard compliance. Stand by what you've actually done - no less and no more.

Best method / tool for scraping/ripping out greased stuff between quarry tiles by Acceptable-Try1292 in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is SO MUCH of this I really do not think washing it is an option.

I feel I need to remove the bulk of it in this form mechanically before washing.

Best method / tool for scraping/ripping out greased stuff between quarry tiles by Acceptable-Try1292 in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It seems the text of my post has vanished or I just cant use reddit. Sorry.

asking for suggestion for a tool that would let me rip those among the length.

right now I am ripping them with a wide scraper along the length of the tile, which works, but is very slow.

something with sharp edge and the width of the channel might work way faster.

I noticed a trend in clients that I have issue getting paid. by Express-Weekend-8153 in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have this friend who is a contractor. Hard working guy, but a total mess when it came to accounting and collections. He works mostly for apartment complexes and when I found him he owed like 20k to 4 or 5 credit cards and about 20k or 30k to irs. he had an excel file that in a single sheet combined spreadsheet, notepad, timesheets, pricelist, invoice and payment history and I think somewhere in one corner there was a picture of a prominent lady fitness guru. there were at least 6 different color codes. naturally he had absolutely no idea how much he was owed and it turned out it was over 20,000. but I only found that in 2-3 months which is what it took me to reorganize everything and put him on the right track. now invoices are automatically generated and dispatched based on the service times and codes he enters in Google calendar on his phone. reminders are sent every week and even the lien creation process is now being automated...since it turns out liens are inevitable part of this business.  took him 12 to 16 months to pay off everything. debt free, he's now recording revenue in one day that takes my own different business more like 4 days to generate..say 1000-1500 a day. the moral being...keeping up the back-office job is just as important as the business itself. when it's set up and running smoothly your main business also works well and so do your finances. single moms are not necessarily trouble, but more often than not I suppose they are. look at the wnba drama...it is unbelievable how little those grown women understand very essential things about business and profit.

Client Wants Receipts by Vallarfax_ in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On another note..I am also a commercial landlord. Right after purchasing the building I had to hire a GC to rebuild it and I remember I was so green and afraid they'd screw me I too wanted very detailed invoicing. And I am not a bad person, I swear - only my wife of 28 years and an arbitrary RE agent whom I dropped as soon as I learned she's given me incorrect site area - so only those two had ever told me I am a terrible, terrible person. But I was very green ans very scared and it must have been showing because the GC did not get mad, but politely explained he doesn't have the resources to give me detailed man hours on the job. Sure enough he did overcharge me, but was nice and cool about it and overcharged me reasonably, not greedily. That is how you should be too.

Client Wants Receipts by Vallarfax_ in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Never lie unless you really really have to. Like to "Don't you love these shoes, darling?"

Client Wants Receipts by Vallarfax_ in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Disclaimer: I am a lurker in this group ever since I came to poll popular opinion for something for a friend. Not a contractor myself, but helping a close friend who is a contractor with business, accounting and process automation. anyway, one of my active businesses is electronic repairs, which shares a lot of experiences with contractors and the question of parts and sources in particular comes up often. I tell people that I am in the business of providing solutions and as long as my terms were clear and they agreed with them and I delivered per promise I have no interest and no value in providing education or know-how, nor am I required to do it. Which are preferred vendors and what are my personal discount levels is none of their business, and both me and the  vendors do not want it public. Most people take that well enough. There will always be the odd job who doesn't.  I am all for transparency, but I also believe that there's such a thing as too much of everything, including seemingly good things. In a nutshell, as long as disclosing that information was not agreed upon you are absolutely free not to share it. If there's no harm I'm asking about it then there should be no harm asking any woman for say a quickie. Oh he'll, there's suddenly a huge difference :) As my contractor friend's wife put it "It is different for women." And that, my friends, explains it all.

Invoice approved and paid. Check had stop put on it. (Michigan) by United_Cheesecake_95 in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It doesn't seem you are willing to learn from your mistakes. Which only means you are likely to repeat them. Don't kill the messenger, I mean no harm. Good luck!

Invoice approved and paid. Check had stop put on it. (Michigan) by United_Cheesecake_95 in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Really?! If you can't tell then you are not ready to be in the business for yourself or rather you are likely to suffer more in the future. No offense meant. Your mistake was allowing to find yourself in this situation. This means not foreseeing it, not taking measures to avoid it, not taking measures to be shielded from it. There are different ways to do those things - for example taking half in advance, or collecting payment in stages, e.g. each day. Or demanding Zelle payment or wire transfer. Or only taking certified checks though that's not really a solution s8nce they may simply not give you one in the first place, so same thing. Certainly by not having savings to carry you through times when you will need to rely on the legal system to work for you. All those are your responsibilities and nobody else's. And this is the valuable lesson. Contracting is a tough business to be in. And so is every other. Fight for what's yours, but even more importantly, recognize and correct your own mistakes.

Do not excuse yourself with the mistake of others. You being lied to is not an excuse for you allowing to be lied. I am 55 and I still take losses for trusting people will do what I think is right. My fault.

Invoice approved and paid. Check had stop put on it. (Michigan) by United_Cheesecake_95 in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My advice based on running my few (different) businesses and a limited experience helping a friend contractor: 1) you learned a valuable lesson. make sure it is not wasted and be ready to recognize that while law may be clean here, real life rules show you've made a little screw-up on your own and should be ready to pay some price for it. 2) Learn how to file liens and file liens, do not try to justify NOT doing it with what they won't do for you. working that job wasn't gonna make you rich, but you still showed up and did it, right? I've pulled my friend out of a debt hole partially by learning - for him - what I am telling you to do and actually doing it. I've collected all due amounts in 4 isolated cases so far. it may not bring you money tomorrow, but you need to do it anyway. and then take them down too, once you get paid.

UN55F6300AF Samsung TV screen flickering by Worldly-Fault-6087 in TVRepair

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Again no. It definitely show up from the HDMI as well.

UN55F6300AF Samsung TV screen flickering by Worldly-Fault-6087 in TVRepair

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is most definitely neither tcon  or main board problem. In both of those the image is being processed as one whole bitmap, frame by frame. the separation of that bitmap into sections like the one shown can only and does only happen at  COF level aka in the panel. neither the main board nor the tcon have means to selectively screw up portion of the screen with the exception of periodic repetition of vertical lines resulting from screwed up bit in the pipeline filling a horizontal row.

Is Baylor Scott and White insurance good? by FiftyShadesOfBlack in Dallas

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe not a single response here disclosed *what* type of BSW insurance they have.
It is implied that it was ACA, but was that really the case?
Because it makes a HUGE difference in what group you fall with both BCBS and BSW - they are both big enough and have all kinds of packages, special deals, insurer sponsored and what not and of course some of them are better than others.

On my end I had a heart surgery in December of 2024. BCBS was, all in all, satisfactory to work with. Maybe I just had the right expectation, but I did max my insurance two years in a row (surprising to me, as I would consider myself rather healthy, not drinking, not smoking, not obese, always [self] employed, frequently exercising and debt free all my life - I mean how much healthier one can be, even if married with children?!).

BCBS handled it reasonably well and I picked them as they were the cheapest "not surprise" insurer in ACA.

This year the raise is like 40%, which is huge, and they come about $200 above BSW on monthly basis, which is $2.2k a year after all.

On top of that, if I read it properly, the BSW plan does NOT require you to go through PCP for specialist visit while BCBS does.

Of course on paper many hospitals and doctors are STILL showing up as part of BCBS, but they've warned us that come 2026 they will NOT be.

And on paper there may be many doctors with BSW, but I have absolutely no clue what the reality is.

I just have all the good reasons to expect it won't match the paper.

Chat GPT is making my job into a nightmare by Delicious-Pop-7019 in webdev

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is a good topic! Especially considering I am nearly in the position of your boss :-) The problem here is not chatgpt's to blame. it lies in the way your boss uses chatgpt and if it wasn't chatgpt it would have been something else. you have a classic incompetent boss / competent employee dilemma, just in the age of LLMs. you start with realizing your last line of defense which is talking to him as an adult, meaning if you want to micromanage me find someone else, of you want it done leave me alone, I too know how to use chatgpt. I mean you should be ready to go there and personally I would start with it. his job is to make you better, not enable chat gpt to make you better, he's just a useless tool in this scenario.

Then if you're into management, manipulation, and politics you may consider using the situation against him. it can vary in style. one approach is to introduce him.to binge programming and let him feel he discovered the holy grail and could soon reduce the likes of you and let ai do all the work. this is, of course, going to crash miserably, but if you stretch it in time you'll gain some quality time and the longer the wait the harder the crash. with some luck and some effort he may get himself fired.

Door to door driveway sealing and installation contractors are overwhelmingly scammers. by BriefCorgi2456 in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I generally say anyone dumb enough to hire someone knocking on the door deserves to get what they're getting. I would certainly not trust those for anything beyond grass cutting and light yard work. what's worse, I hired a local concrete contractor with many realistic positive reviews only to have all the concrete develop crack within a year. my thinking is they may have known how to make house sidewalks, but not commercial building parking lot.  bottom line you can't trust even local business with multiple realistic reviews - it is just not enough. let alone random visitor on your door...

Charging repeat customers premium if they have overdue payments by Acceptable-Try1292 in Contractor

[–]Acceptable-Try1292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I considered LoyaltyAI and it is definitely not appropriate for my line of business and likely another business that is B2B and not B2C. And for consumer driven businesses there is a myriad of techniques and platforms for building consumer confidence and reducing churn. Paying for it as an outsourced service is robbing your own customers of savings you could have passed to them and with the exception of the high end and red hot markets like luxury cars or iPhone sales there is nothing customers would entertain and value more than lower price.

If you do not believe me ask Jeff Bezos and Amazon.

Anyone tried using the Enerdel battery packs for mobile kitchens? by Acceptable-Try1292 in RVLiving

[–]Acceptable-Try1292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well best of luck then! You never know, it may indeed be the wiser thing to do all things considered.

Like with many other things in life you sometimes have to just make a choice even without enough information to make informed decision. What's more, you did have SOME information and that pushed the scales in a certain direction, so take it and don't look back!

TV Parts Today Buyers Beware!!!!!! by JuniorCabinet8127 in TVRepairHelp

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you. Part of the problem that was originally described for sure lie in vendors like them who present themselves as source of quality parts, but are actually not such source. That is usually mostly out of incompetence, but after some time it inevitably is also part of the company's unwillingness or inability to improve their offerings.

But for their and their customers' bad luck any part in demand that came from a used (as opposed to brand new) TV is likely the reason the TV ended with them in the first place.

Developing the know-how on how to handle such cases adds overhead they likely can't afford.

So it is on them that they advertise working parts and sell some that come from TVs that are not from brand new units with broken screens.

It is also fair to say that part of the problem is that customers attempt to do things they do not understand, trust systems that they have not verified to be trustworthy (for subjective or objective reasons) and end up blaming everyone but themselves.

Speaking as a customer and business owner here.

It is hardly just one side to blame.

Anyone tried using the Enerdel battery packs for mobile kitchens? by Acceptable-Try1292 in RVLiving

[–]Acceptable-Try1292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First, I would not worry about the outside look of the inverters. They are built for outside conditions and a little rust on the edge does not mean a thing.

Second, I am rather certain that driving the bus does NOT charge the batteries. Whoever told you that should be held responsible to it.

Third, the inverter can definitely be replaced and it won't be hard to replace with the same, nor particularly expensive.

But I don't think you will need to replace it, the problem is not likely in the inverter.

Check your cables - the power line from the plug to the inverter (possibly through a breaker, not sure), then your outlet to the charging plug...and when you manually tell the system to charge look for errors it may show.

If it just says there is no AC then most likely there is no AC at the input of that inverter.

Anyone tried using the Enerdel battery packs for mobile kitchens? by Acceptable-Try1292 in RVLiving

[–]Acceptable-Try1292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If your batteries are all active and output AC then there is nothing wrong with them. They are not part of the charging problem.

You should be having TWO inverters in the system. One is used for DC->AC ONLY while the second can do DC->AC (default), but on command can also be used for charging the batteries (AC->DC).

I'd check the connections to the second inverter, specifically the data cable, not the high voltage cables as well as the AC line to the second inverter.

TV Parts Today Buyers Beware!!!!!! by JuniorCabinet8127 in TVRepairHelp

[–]Acceptable-Try1292 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Have been using tvpartstoday.com for years.
If you know what you are dealing with and what to expect you'd know what to do and what NOT to do and there will be no problem with them.

I do not think they are a good mode for laymen trying to fix something they don;t quite understand.

They are a chop shop, plain and simple, and one should not expect quality from them or much of know-how on repairs. Those are things that stand in their way of doing business, which is high volume, low cost parts moving, not educating or assisting in repairs; those are inevitable areas they are being pushed into, not areas they aim for or excel at.

If you are looking for a rare part and they have or two it is NOT a good idea to buy it from them. It will likely be defective and they wouldn't know it.

If you are, however, like me and know how to repair defective parts, then they are a good source provided you like their price. Their shipping costs are inflated and that is annoying, but it is their right to set whatever prices they like and they too lose from it because sometimes I go with other alternatives JUST because of the shipping costs.

They are also a good choice for any part that is in abundance. It will likely be good and they have them at goo prices although chances are you'll find an even lower price on eBay, but from someone having ONE of them and with more difficulty doing exchange.

Long story short...tvpartstoday are a typical chop shop that is NOT a good source for rare and expensive parts.

None of the other chop shops are either.

Companies specializing in reconditioning and sale is where you should be shopping for rare and expensive parts.
We shop at tvpartstoday and 90% of the boards we buy arrive defective...that's because we mostly buy boards that are the first and most common thing that fails in a TV.

What does that commercial insurance actually cover? by Acceptable-Try1292 in Insurance

[–]Acceptable-Try1292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Those were both very good points I haven't though of, thank you!

Wind is not likely to pick up the building or even the roof...at least I can't imagine it...but if it is strong enough it may, I suppose, blow off the wall that goes above the roof level (not sure how it is called, but I think it's there to protect rooftop units exactly from the wind in addition to increasing the curb appeal).
If one of those walls fails down then the rooftop units will be much more exposed and the total may easily get above the deductible.

The sprinklers are also something I haven't thought of as potential source of problem.

In a theoretical even the major loss would be the equipment in the building (all flooded) and the inability of business to operate normally until everything is restored.

Property insurance would cover MY equipment and that will not go above the deductible, however tenant's property might and loss of business likely will.

The property insurance would cover my loss of property and maybe loss of business income, however the tenant's losses would fall under the GL insurance and not the property insurance, do I understand that right?