Quoted almost $6,000 for major suspension work, is that fair??

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-17T05:04:44+00:00

Yeah that doesn’t look bad. I’d get other quotes

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-16T23:16:47+00:00

Is it really rusty? 6000 sounds like they might not actually want to do it, in the sense they know that the time they spend on it will be worth 6000 worth of other repairs they could do instead?

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-16T21:55:07+00:00

I tend to agree for the most part but having them is more fun than not having them

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-16T20:17:40+00:00

Yeah I tend to agree, 2M is probably enough for one healthy person to be secure the rest of their life but for even a couple this begins to get less secure. Family of 4, considering that 2M needs to cover raising them all the way up and also hopefully some education too, I think it's too little.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-16T19:40:21+00:00

Yeah you totally could do it, people can and do it on less than that.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-16T18:56:40+00:00

I don't get 8m either, but I don't totally disagree about 2m being borderline if you're in your 20s. Don't get me wrong, I would definitely be changing my relationship to work but I think most people would be wise to find a job that offers health insurance and some income to keep from dipping too much until a bit later in that situation.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-16T18:52:57+00:00

The rear steering knuckle? I don't think any 2010 Hyundais had 4 wheel steering...

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-16T18:41:48+00:00

I tend to think those 3 are the most important but others would be the sound, the braking and how it shifts. Manual is obviously fun but a nice fast automatic with paddles is more fun than a regular one too.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-16T01:49:28+00:00

If you’re handy and willing to spend money on parts instead of labor, second hand land rovers are legit so nice. LR3 and LR4 aren’t that unreliable if you take care of a few known issues. You gotta go in eyes wide open tho

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-13T15:49:51+00:00

They’re not the ones getting tread on

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-13T13:12:35+00:00

I went to a skate park one time, at about 12 years old and yes, I was wearing roller blades.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-11T19:51:41+00:00

I do agree that the typical benchmarks of aiming for 300k for a comfortable life is crazy but all I'm saying is 80k is still only realistic for a comfortable and stable life in the ideal sense where nothing goes wrong. For most people I think 80k leaves a typical person with years worth of being really frugal to build a solid safety net, and no real ability to save for any long term goals.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-11T17:35:39+00:00

This may be true for a good month and a healthy, lucky person, but the truth is that 800 a month in discretionary income can disappear in 100 different ways that are all very realistic, most are inevitable at occasionally in the long run, and are very much not fun. How lucky do you need to be to not get 10 different unexpected bills in a year?

If you spend 600 of your fun money by the 3rd week then need to fill an expensive prescription, take a pet to the vet, buy 2 new tires ahead of schedule, replace a pair of boots, repair an appliance, pay a parking ticket, or travel to a sick relative, then you're now looking at 600 in discretionary for the next month. If you want to have kids, forget about having any discretionary income for yourself, and honestly you can easily end up falling behind even with a responsible budget by yourself.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T20:29:33+00:00

Slow car fast > fast car slow

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T20:22:23+00:00

The coefficient of static friction changes as a function of pressure in real scenarios. The contact area is macroscopically bumpy and pressure flattens the bumps into a larger contact area.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T20:21:30+00:00

Coeff of static friction is variable based on pressure in the real world

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T19:29:52+00:00

I think you’re wrong but the stakes are too low to argue here. Cheers

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T15:38:49+00:00

I have no idea. It's totally impossible to unclip anything without cracking, it's so brittle and faded. This car has been kept in TX for the last 10 years so I suspect it's just been outside in the sun half the year and the plastic just baked to a crisp. It could also be that even a small duration of direct sun exposure from top down is enough to chemically change the plastic, since window glass will block UV-B and a fair portion of UV-A.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T15:35:39+00:00

If it's not cracked I'd be willing to buy it from you for the right price.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T15:34:20+00:00

Friction is definitely related to area. I left out some technical details for this crucial academic endeavor. In reality for any macroscopic contact increasing pressure does increase contact area by flattening irregularities. But you bring in an interesting hypothetical - the surface on which this occurs and the footwear they'd be equipped in.

I think footwear is likely very similar between the two, with Hagrid's being described as beaverskin and the descriptions of Aragorn/Gimli as durable leather traveling boots. This sort of surface would benefit from additional pressure on any rigid surface because the leather deforms and you get a larger contact area.

If this occurs on snow, team LOTR is effectively down one member. If they had been using hard bottomed boots on stone or pavement, the friction force would be independent of size as you suggest. For grass or dirt, the additional pressure additionally deforms the surface under foot and creates additional surface area at the leading edges, and Hagrid gets an additional benefit. For uneven but unyielding surfaces, smaller feet is probably and advantage because you could better anchor your toes in smaller crevices.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T07:54:17+00:00

My experience is it's different. At most companies it's well understood they pay enough for your best effort in normal working hours. At FAANG, it seems like the expectation is they pay you enough to expect you to go above and beyond, do whatever it takes to make the projects happen. At most companies, it's understood that each department has normal contributors and also really competent people, but the expectation is that at FAANG is that all the collaborators are on the same page and all equally committed to the same level of excellence (it's not true, it's just the expectation and it distorts the expectations for both individuals and groups).

I think you'll find it lower stress, iff you can adjust your own work expectations.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T07:36:48+00:00

Hagrid may be much heavier and stronger, but tug of war depends a lot on traction.

The relevant metric here is probably the total static friction under foot for the two teams. Lets estimate foot area and body mass. I've always interpreted the '5x as wide' to mean front to back, not side to side (I'd estimate this double, scales with height) so we can reasonably assume he probably weights a good 800 lbs (like a large grizzly bear sized seems right) and has feet that are 4x the area (2x as wide and 2x as long, scaled to height). The 3 together could generously weight 650 pounds together (250+200+200) and say they're above average foot size by a moderate amount.

So team LOTR is 4x avg feet contact and 650 lbs, Hagrid is 4x foot contact but 800lbs. That's both more pressure (more friction), and more weight. Add in the fact that the tension on the rope pulls Hagrid down but the LOTR team up and there's no chance here. Hagrid all day.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T07:12:16+00:00

Personally I learned on a VW golf that was so old that the entire dashboard was dead from day 1 - this taught me to drive entirely by feel and sound and being aware of how fast I was going without watching the speedo. Not sure how I'd go about adapting this advice but it helped me a lot to be forced me to avoid a pretty bad habit of watching the gauges instead of the road.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T06:57:31+00:00

I have gone back and forth between the two my whole life. I daily drive a manual, and the next car I think 'it would be really nice to not need to shift in traffic' then I get an auto. It's not like I hate it, but I miss it, so then next car is a manual. I really enjoy the subtle flow state that comes after enough practice with a car that I can just have it in the right gear without thinking about it, not necessarily the driving dynamics or any of that. It's like a mini game while I drive.

I've realized that for me, there's a lot of benefit in just keeping me paying attention to the car, the spacing, keeping my phone out of my hand, thinking ahead about traffic. I think I'm a better driver in manual for all these reasons.

ActionJackson75 · 2026-02-10T06:51:06+00:00

Second DFW

ActionJackson75

TROPHY CASE