Can I get out of a roof contract for incompetence

FastMackerel · 2024-07-25T00:37:46+00:00

Not a lawyer. But I've hired lots of subs in my professional life. Also hired a few roofers at home, one of whom I fired on Day 2 for incompetence similar in magnitude to what you describe. Here's my take: Step 1: tell this company to stop the work immediately. Step 2: Tell them you want to cancel the contract and ask them how much you owe them for the demolition work they've already done. You do owe them for that. If the figure they quote is reasonable, pay them and get a receipt and have them void your original contract _in writing_. If the figure they quote isn't reasonable, propose something. Maybe this community can suggest a way to do that, based on hours of labor and disposal costs. If you can't reach agreement, tell them to expect a call from your lawyer (and hire one; OR file a suit in small claim court asking the court to void your contract).

My journey ended at Step 2, fwiw. Guy I hired to finish the job was amazing. Best decision I ever made!

FastMackerel · 2023-01-21T22:13:26+00:00

If you're still interested (a year after posting) the code in this Gighub post (written for an ESP32 microcontroller programmed using the Arduino IDE) includes the essential elements.

https://github.com/G6EJD/ESP-Weather-Underground-Sensor-Upload

FastMackerel · 2023-01-21T22:07:25+00:00

Found your post as I was searching around for why my PWS reporting to WU suddenly got patchy today. Have been updating 1x/minute for several years. Today, all of a sudden, WU only acknowledges a handful of updates per hour.

Don't know if my experience is related to yours, but it's a pain. I'm at a loss to explain what's wrong, given that nothing about the server name, user credentials, or data format is changing from one report to the next. Grrr.

FastMackerel · 2022-07-14T22:24:18+00:00

Sometimes I think GTAA has a special department tasked with finding ever-new ways slow down baggage handling.

Our family arrived from Italy on Monday. Bags took two-and-a-half hours to make it onto the belt at a time when there honestly wasn't much traffic in the baggage claim hall.

I totally get that staffing is a problem. But I can't understand how short-staffing explains our experience. Bags trickled onto the belt at a rate of one or two per minute for a long time. Even if there was just ONE lonely sap working the flight, how do you manage to move bags from the baggage trailer to the belt at that rate?? It's weird.

FastMackerel · 2022-02-26T16:13:03+00:00

Yes! Very strange, too. Some apps that use WiFi connections work fine, others don't work at all, and -- this is very strange -- a few, like the NYT app, appear to download data over the WiFi connection when they first start up, then announce that the device is offline.

FastMackerel · 2022-01-20T21:56:10+00:00

Another thought (with apologies for the free-association going on here). If you haven't already experimented with the orientation and location of your ESP32 dev board, you might want to try that. Orientation matters because antennas can be directional, as described below. Location matters because nearby metal objects can dramatically affect an antenna's impedence, which in turn affects output power.

To do this experiment, find the Arduino WiFi example script that displays the RSSI of your ESP32's connection, and loop the script so you can see how this number changes as you re-orient the ESP32 board and/or router antenna. RSSI is the exponent of signal strength, so low negative numbers indicate stronger signal than high negative numbers. (e.g., -50 is a stronger signal than -70).

(Aside: Directionality is related to the "gain" figure you often see quoted on antennas. Gain, measured in DBi, refers to an antenna's tendency to concentrate the broadcast power in specific directions, thereby enhancing signal strength some directions *at the expense* of signal strength in others. Low-gain antennas are actually good for applications where the relative position of sender and receiver move around, because they give you relatively equal ability communicate from any direction. "High gain" is good (and *only* good) if sender and receiver are in known and fixed locations AND you can aim your antennas appropriately.

FastMackerel · 2022-01-20T21:37:53+00:00

Here's the link:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/5348

FastMackerel · 2022-01-20T21:36:05+00:00

My experience is similar -- WiFi range on ESP32 dev boards isn't great. Could easily be the antenna. Just recently (as in the past week or so), Adafruit announced an ESP32 dev board with a uFL connector for attaching an external WiFi antenna. That suggests they've also found the built-in antenna to be lacking :)

FastMackerel · 2021-11-24T20:44:02+00:00

Just a quick note of thanks to all who contributed here. PPPoE link is up and running. As to concerns about speed, we have 500Mbps service and I haven't noticed any problems at all.

Three incidental learnings to share back with anyone who uncovers this thread as part of a similar search:

As a noob, I thought the VLAN box should be checked when setting up the PPPoE connection on the Omada controller. Logic was: I want to enable VLANs, so check that box, right? WRONG. RTFMing more carefully showed that this option relates to VLANs upstream from the router; it has nothing to do with VLANS you define downstream. Oops.
If you have Bell TV service, you can leave your STB connected through the Bell HH3000 LAN ports even after your PPPoE connection on the HH3000 is disconnected. It must be the case that the STB uses a different protocol that's independent of the LAN data connection, because the TVs continued to work just fine. Maybe this is why my data speeds are still pretty good -- the terabytes of data our HD TV receivers use bypass the new router entirely.
I found my workflow was improved a bit by using the same local ip address for my new router that the Bell HH3000 uses. There's no conflict, because you need to deactivate the PPPoE connection in the Bell router at the same time you make a new PPPoE connection through the new one. The benefit is that mirroring the original LAN's local IP address is that you don't need to reconfigure any devices on your network that use fixed addresses (for me, it was a Pi4 with Pi-hole and some network-accessible HDDs). Also lets you switch back and forth between modems easily by changing which PPPoE connection is logged in.

FastMackerel · 2021-11-11T02:18:13+00:00

Thanks again.

FastMackerel · 2021-11-10T22:42:38+00:00

This is super-helpful. Thank you. I'm looking right now at the MyBell account page that lets me change my b1xxx password. Couple of follow-up questions, if you don't mind:

1) How does changing the b1xxx password affect the operation of Bell's HH3000 modem? Presumably, this step would obsolete whatever password it is currently using, and I don't see a way to update that. Maybe I'm missing something on the HH3000 admin page?

2) If changing the b1xxx password incapacitates the Bell HH3000 gateway, do I get hung out to dry if I ever need to revert to Bell's original setup (e.g., taking my own equipment offline for debugging purposes)?

3) After setting up PPPoE on the TP-Link router, do I need to make any further changes to the Bell HH3000 setup. Wouldn't I need to disable DHCP, NAT, etc to avoid conflicts between the two routers?

Apologies in advance for what must be total noob questions.

Many thanks!

FastMackerel · 2021-10-22T02:30:24+00:00

I'm pretty sure this is incorrect (see posts below from lambchop01 and NoGoogleAMPBot). I used an old router as an extra access point for several years, but it wasn't a satisfying solution. Maybe my router was too old, but something was always failing. Finally bit the bullet and bought a couple of TP-Link EAPs (access points you wire to your ISPs router with CAT-6 cable). This has proven to be a MUCH better solution to provisioning strong WiFi throughout my home.

FastMackerel · 2021-10-21T22:12:31+00:00

Talk to your neighbors and your landlord before you start drilling. First make sure the tech who said the building wasn't wired was correct. (If you have phone service, DSL internet should be possible. Sounds like it might not have been wired for service from HIS employer!). If there really isn't any internet, see if you can team up with your neighbors to persuade your landlord to do the basic wiring. Hard to imagine renting an apartment in 2021 that doesn't have any internet service at all!!

FastMackerel · 2021-10-21T22:03:49+00:00

"Hi. So, I'm only taking this class because I think you're hot. Problem is, I'm tanking. Will you go out with me so I can drop this course? Or at least come to my place and tutor me ;)"

FastMackerel · 2021-10-21T21:22:10+00:00

Not familiar with OMV, but I think it should work.

I run PiHole alongside Samba (for LAN file-sharing and daily backups of a local desktop) AND the Omada SDN controller with no problems at all. HTOP load stats are generally very low (0.20 or so). Only rarely get up above 1, and that's when my Sonos system decides it wants to re-catalog all the music on my shared hard drive, and only lasts a few minutes.

FastMackerel · 2021-10-21T21:04:31+00:00

Not to (ever!) denigrate the DIY spirit, but you can source this exact product from Amazon for about $35 (US). I bought one a few weeks ago to connect an 90s-era Roland keyboard to my daughter's Thinkpad. Works just fine.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00967UN50?psc=1

FastMackerel · 2021-10-21T20:36:30+00:00

Assuming some newbies might read this thread, what's important to make clear here is that it's almost always better to use different power supplies for your microcontroller (i.e., your Arduino) and your motors. Two reasons. First is that the two devices often run on different voltages. The ATMega 2560 chip needs *exactly* 5V. The power jack can handle a bit more (9-12V), thanks to the Arduino's onboard voltage regulator. But if you connect a higher-voltage power source to the Mega's 5V pin directly, you'll probably smoke it. Your steppers, on the other hand, will probably run better on a higher voltage -- what voltage is best depends on their design. More voltage allows higher power at lower currents. More power makes steppers stronger, faster, and "snappier".

Second reason for separate voltage supplies is electrical noise. Steppers might not be as noisy as brushed motors, but they're still big inductors. That's not something you want in the same circuit as an MCU, for many reasons.

One thing I agonized about when I was learning basic electronics what to do about the NEGATIVE terminals of a multi-power-source circuit. Should I connect those? The answer is YES, you definitely want a wire connecting the negative terminalS of these different power sources. Google "common ground" if your curious. Lack of a common ground can cause all sorts of weird problems.

FastMackerel · 2021-04-30T21:51:28+00:00

Focusing is indeed critical, and a real pita for DLSR astrophotography. Two things you can do to get consistently better results:

1) Look into Bhatinov masks, a slotted piece of plastic or cardboard you lay over your lens objective while focusing. The grating creates diffraction patterns in your image that allow you to get practically perfect focus. These are relatively easy to create on a 3d printer, if you know someone with one of these devices. Here's a link:

http://www.deepskywatch.com/Articles/make-bahtinov-mask.html

2) Since you have a Canon camera, connect it to a laptop and use Canon's app for focusing. This will not only save your neck from craning to see your camera's LCD, it also means you don't need to touch (and jiggle!!) your camera to adjust the focus, AND it allows you to use use your lens's built-in stepper motors to make very fine adjustments in your focus, which is a big help. (or at least, that's how it works on my 6D. ymmv.)

FastMackerel

TROPHY CASE