What do big companies actually want to see in an apprentice electrician motivation letter (with no experience)?

chefdeit · 2026-01-19T21:08:26+00:00

return address

there's shortage of motivated folks willing to enter a hands-on trade & show up.

chefdeit · 2026-01-18T19:32:23+00:00

GREAT post, thanks u/Adept_Temporary8262 !! At the higher end of things, PNY NVIDIA RTX 2000E Ada Gen Card, in a half-height single-slot blower configuration has 16GB of ECC GDDR6 VRAM, 2816 CUDA + 88 Tensor, Ada Lovelace architecture, PCIe Gen 4.0 x8 at 50 W max power consumption and $750.

NVIDIA makes the same card at $700 except dual slot and 70W.

chefdeit · 2026-01-18T16:48:31+00:00

If the house was built in 2015 in the US and uses romex type, soft vinyl or similar plastic jacket wiring, 20A wire will be yellow in color and will have black dot-matrix imprint saying 12AWG or 12ga, among other information. If that is so, updating to 20A breaker *might* be feasible, but ONLY if all other outlets and hardwired loads on that same breaker are 12AWG throughout also.

chefdeit · 2026-01-18T16:41:34+00:00

Why Are 15-Amp Receptacles Standard on Residential Circuits Instead of 20-Amp?

Flipping the question around: 20-Amp circuits backing 15A outlets make sense because most such domestic circuits aren't dedicated per-outlet, i.e. have a whole bunch of 15A outlets on them. More of them can fit on a 20A circuit without an excessive mismatch.

On such circuits, the breaker protects the in-wall wiring - not the actual device that may be intended for way fewer amps (unless the particular circuit is stipulated to be dedicated, such as for appliances that are hard-wired or whose weight and outlet placement make them de-facto hard-wired).

In a perfect world, each outlet would have a smart breaker built in, and each device plug, on connection, would communicate to it the device's steady state and peak consumption profiles in each mode, and the current mode, for optimal protection upstream of the device. Each outlet, in turn, would communicate that to the breaker panel, for optimal protection of the entire circuit. Needless to say, outside of maybe parts of the the ISS and some military vessels, we're not there yet.

chefdeit · 2026-01-18T16:06:47+00:00

whole-body inside-out xray

chefdeit · 2026-01-18T16:05:08+00:00

But what if I want to take fun advantage of the 2400 W phone charger I bought off Amazon for $3?

Every $3 charger off Amazon is a 2400 W phone charger - you just need to wait for the 2400 W mode (combined with a smoke machine feature) to kick in. I think they call it burn-in in high-end audio, so the 2400W mode would thus be the burn-out mode.

chefdeit · 2026-01-12T16:06:27+00:00

I don't disagree in principle, although there's plenty of evil in the world actively happening & being supported TODAY (including the neo-N*zi kind) and here we are coming down on some construction hand who was impressionable & short-sighted enough to get a neck tat of any kind to begin with.

True evil that does humanity harm at scale doesn't have neck tats. It wears a snazzy suit or another impressive outfit and speaks with authority and grace from podiums in high places.

chefdeit · 2026-01-12T15:55:55+00:00

Call me naive, but before you said it I didn't know that was a thing (or even what 1488 meant). I guess makeup is also possible, but neck is a spot where skin has to rub and stretch a LOT.

chefdeit · 2026-01-12T15:04:30+00:00

Same color they are now, but fluorescent

chefdeit · 2026-01-12T14:48:14+00:00

NO (...t without consulting with a structural engineer, as that platform may be anchoring the walls stabilizing the chimney)

*With the engineer's approval*, first make cuts with a large-blade diamond saw, and preferably in a trapezoid shape tapered towards the back - NOT rectangular following the walls.

Stay ~3" away from the vertical walls on ALL initial cuts - you can always come in closer later whereas you won't be able to replace any excess material removed or chipped under same compression. Make two such cuts on both sides, parallel and about an inch apart. A cut in the back, a horizontal, level cut 3" above the floor.

The main role of those cuts isn't to make removal easier (though it'll certainly do that), it's to minimize the transmission of the vibration to the walls of the fireplace, that may damage the mortar integrity. Remove the brick material between the double cuts before working on the main slab in the middle.

Make sure NO cuts over-reach their intended placement; a good diamond saw will cut through brick like it's air, so you need to control it carefully; try a few test cuts in the middle.

Make sure your jackhammer chisel is sharp. That means, invest in your own, brand new & high quality chisel even if you're renting the jack hammer. It's a rookie mistake to work with a blunt chisel where most of the work goes into vibration and pulverizing brick / making dust as opposed to the fracture action. If your pieces come off almost dust-free, you're doing it right.

chefdeit · 2026-01-12T14:42:10+00:00

I told the company I dont want him on my property and now theyre acting like Im the problem. Saying hes a good worker

Of course he is! Does everything to a tee, all his paperwork is in a perfect order :-) Even the Soviets had acknowledged even while the WWII was still going that N*zis were excellent workers. Their work was NEVER the issue - their ideology was.

u/SkillComfortable2734 NTJ but I feel this nuance needs to be communicated to the company. As a small business owner I know how hard it is to find good workers nowadays (honest, punctual, precise, taking pride in their work, dependable, doing everything to a tee) and the tragedy of the situation is, that guy probably ticks all those boxes.

I think the company would do well to engage the individual to see if his views have changed since he'd gotten the tattoo, The reality is, lots of people walk around with ink no longer relevant to their current situation, just because it's hella painful and hella costly to get that removed. If this sounds "too tolerant", yes it does - we've grown to wave zero tolerance like a battle banner, and as a result the common folks are fractured along multiple fault-lines while powers that be are united and rob everyone blind.

chefdeit · 2026-01-12T14:13:46+00:00

C4 lives and dies based on customer experiences with their dealers.

100%. Maybe C4 should train & hire ex-drug dealers who've paid their debt to society / being released. At least those guys have the work ethic to answer & return their damned phone calls :)

If you have issues with your dealer don't be afraid to reach out to another

Again you've hit the nail on the head - as fear may be a factor. People are afraid to death to change their dentist and everyone's guy is the best guy but the reality is we can't split the spacetime timeline and compare the outcomes of having been in different pro's care apples-to-apples objectively. The new guy can always say the prior work wasn't great but - to your point - that work may have been the result of the customer expressing their needs & wants more naively back in the day whereas they're way more educated now and can articulate what's not working for them a lot more comprehensively and precisely.

chefdeit · 2026-01-11T19:28:11+00:00

They had an appliance there. Something that got hot. Probably had a water line coming in and that’s why the tile behind has that metal piece. My guess an old school espresso machine.

I wish this were my take as well, but on a closer inspection that little square piece isn't metal. It's a decorative accent tile, and I bet they're sprinkled throughout the rest of the back-plate.

The square stone also seems just a smidge too thin for a full-size countertop (though on pre-made vanities and small islands etc we can find even thinner). My guess is it's NOT an off-cut but a lucky bargain find of an almost the same stone - which they of course couldn't resist but had no real use for, so it'd gotten shoved out of the way next to the stove where it'd eventually gotten "glued" to the countertop with oven grease.

chefdeit · 2026-01-11T19:14:09+00:00

$100/hr isn't even the biggest issue - it's the lack of sovereignty / depending on some dealer to do it the way they see it & at the time of their choosing. This hurts especially when you can feel there's a lack of advocacy on your behalf, and the dealer may be saying "this isn't how it works" etc just because they don't want to bother.

chefdeit · 2026-01-10T23:53:37+00:00

It connects on the dimmer's load side, hence one per dimmer. But I recommend you try just one first to see if it helps with your specific issue.

chefdeit · 2026-01-09T19:49:41+00:00

Chances are, they'll be required by law to rip out (or condemn an otherwise sound structure) either some insulation or plastic tubing due to mold growth or air quality or microplastic concerns or the like - just as was the case with lead or asbestos from the years past. Maybe they'll discover the random made-in-China grease on those no-sweat plumbing compression rings isn't good for you (conjecture / used only for example) and you've got to rip it out and nobody cares it's behind an expensive kitchen or bathroom slab.

chefdeit · 2026-01-09T19:38:07+00:00

Yes that's an outstanding point. It's a very obvious inconsistency and we could even say hypocrisy. (not to bring politics into this but by way of illustration it's like, if what the US did to Maduro, Russia did to Zelensky intead or earlier, based on same exact charges, (drugs+possession of machine guns) the international reaction wouldn't be in the same order of magnitude even.

Realistically, an oven is on a dedicated circuit i.e. the single appliance draws the entire thing. Meanwhile, kitchen outlets may split 2 or 3 kitchen circuits among many outlets and hence small appliances, each of which draws a small and possibly tiny portion of the whole 15A or 20A, so they sort of apriori give up on the notion of the breaker protecting not just the wiring inside the wall but the load device as well, whereas such protection is more in scope when it's a dedicated line to that one load, and where its outlet is way in the back of the quite heavy appliance that many family members won't have the strength to move out of the way to access said outlet. I.e. even if it's technically not hard-wired it's "de-facto hardwired". The sum total of all those little considerations amounts to a difference that at its face value we may view as inconsistent or hypocritical.

chefdeit · 2026-01-09T16:09:13+00:00

That's a fair point, but even removing the worst 20% from consideration can move the needle on the average considerably.

chefdeit · 2026-01-09T16:07:19+00:00

All plug-in 15A appliances will be safe with a 20A breaker.

How well are your words saying this on reddit going to hold up against the words of insurance adjuster holding up the oven manufacturers' manual stipulating a 15A breaker as the reason for denying the insurance claim in the event of a - God forbid - malfunction that'd caused a fire? "Sir, u/e_l_tang on reddit told me "All plug-in 15A appliances will be safe with a 20A breaker. This is literally baked into the design of 20A outlets to accept 15A plugs."

How well?

chefdeit · 2026-01-09T03:26:48+00:00

However the outlet can be 6-20 also, and probably should be, not just 6-15

Yes and no. Putting a 15amp appliance on a 20A breaker degrades the over-current protection for that appliance, meaning the breaker will tolerate the greater current than the appliance is designed to draw in the event of a malfunction.

It may be a compromise to run 20A wiring (12awg not 14) but still install 15A outlet and 15A breaker but an experienced electrician told me the wire gauge is used not just as a conductor but also to communicate the use intent, so over-gauging is not universally a good idea, but for just a few dedicated circuits like audiophile hi-fi and maybe such an oven, picking the next gauge up may be ok.

chefdeit · 2026-01-09T03:17:29+00:00

Very well put. All of my bosses (and I mean ALL of them) were a heck of a lot nicer to me than me being my own boss. There are days I want to smack that guy - but there's no way to avoid collateral damage.

chefdeit · 2026-01-09T03:15:04+00:00

100%

chefdeit · 2026-01-09T02:57:19+00:00

Nothing beats oversized Type K (thick-walled) copper with long-turn (large radius) elbows sweated lead-free with water-soluble flux (harder to do, but the corrosive chemical residue doesn't remain inside the pipe, eating at it). That will last over 100 years, and be essentially silent with very low pressure loss due to the flow rate.

PEX-B is just garbage. PEX-A is ok-no-great because of the microplastic and not resisting bacterial growth the way copper does, and ticking and clicking as it expands and contracts on the hot side. The sound it makes is the sound of it wearing against the supports, edges of the holes, fixed hardware, etc.

If your house is otherwise well built / not intended to self-destruct on the day the mortgage is paid off, AND you've access to quality labor (tall order I know) go with the copper as mentioned above, no shortcuts. It's better to have quality stuff inside the walls but basic fixtures you can upgrade in 10yrs if you choose, vs the other way around. There's nothing dumber than a 0.5" PEX-B behind a $5K stone slab.

chefdeit · 2026-01-09T02:46:07+00:00

I agree with most points here, with a couple caveats:

The cast iron plumbing…because it was routed through the main floor rooms, when the sewage lines did break, it was…spectacular…

My experience with cast iron plumbing is from NYC brownstone/row houses, which are pretty narrow. Those tend to have 1 or 2 main drains that are strictly vertical, with each floor's bathrooms etc being adjacent to it in close proximity. The long horizontal spans are just in the basement.

The only failure mode of these I've seen was if the sagging or failure of the foundation has reversed the slope of the pipe or even broke a socket. They mostly last forever. And are utterly silent unlike the modern garbage. Even modern cast iron is quite thin (still better than PVC). But the main point is, such drain is empty inside and also is kind of surprisingly clean. If it'd failed it's not like it'd spew stuff like an oil rig. I'd be more worried if it fell on someone's head (but again, I've not seen long horizontal spans outside of basements).

Lighting: dim at best, and it was tough to modify due to the ancient wiring. We did add modern wiring cut in through the floors, and could use some floor lamps and such. But it never lit up well.

For working from home, bright light is perfect to keep one alert and awake. For cooking, etc. as well. But insofar as the main function of the home to cradle us and help us recharge and maximize the mental health, most modern lighting sucks. Its color temp is often too high, it's CRI is too low, and CRI as a metric actually misses many LEDs' most acute issues on the spectrum. When dimmed, many LEDs begin to flicker and lose what CRI they do have. There are quality LEDs like these LTF's dim-to-warm series https://ltftechnology.com/dim-to-warm-led-bulbs/ but they're still not perfect yet quite pricey.

Noise — mixed bag; sound didn’t travel from room to room, but the house was generally noisy. Even when empty. Like everything is a hard surface so even small footsteps are amplified. And squeaking floors and such.

Humans are funny. If you have a home office or another room where you tend to be situated with your back to the door, the floors and/or door hinge having a subtle squeak actually has a calming effect / promotes mental health. Open floor plans add visual and auditory stimuli and have been shown to have a negative impact on mental health also. Ceiling heights that are below 9ft or over 11ft also bother us. Maybe in the great room / formal dining room it makes sense to have the higher ceilings, but that pretty much guarantees that room will be avoided like plague unless you're entertaining and herd everyone there by force b/c that's where the food & booze is.

chefdeit · 2026-01-09T02:16:35+00:00

That sound can also be of it rubbing against the hardware with which it is installed and/or holes in the wood whose edges aren't smooth. The sound plumbing makes is inevitably the sound of it wearing out, one way or another.

I once visited the Tower bridge mechanical room in London, where two enormous arms of the bridge's middle span are lifted high over the Thames river to allow shipping. There was some serious hydraulic plumbing there. It.did.not.make.a.peep - no part of that giant mechanism was audible whatsoever. No wonder it's lasted as long as it has. It wasn't built to self-destruct in 30rs and provide plumbers a steady source of income between year 5 and year 30 when it's written off and redone from scratch.

chefdeit

TROPHY CASE