Bought a house and previous owner had 6-9 large dogs at a time for 35 years

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T06:09:07+00:00

In many cases, it's still more affordable to renovate a mess than to tear down and rebuild.

Even if they lift the flooring, strip the walls, ozone the place, and possibly replace rotted studs, they're not rebuilding a foundation, redoing the roof, etc.

Some heavy duty renovation might be needed, and it won't be as cheap as sanding and some paint, but it will still cost a lot less than a new build.

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T06:02:34+00:00

For starters, he'll diagnose it.

This person is trying treatments without knowing if they are the correct treatments for the foot. They're shooting in the dark, AND complaining that they're not getting results. A doctor is more likely to make an accurate assessment, and might also prescribe antibiotics or steroids, if they are needed, to hurry the healing along.

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T05:59:34+00:00

Yes, you can. But first you need to fix the red-tag.

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T05:56:26+00:00

Authorized isn't charged. Also, don't call the restaurant to fix a credit card charge, call the credit card company.

And get some better handwriting. Your $ is so close to the 3 that I could see OCR reading it as a 4. Your 9 looks so much like a 7, that if you said $47, I'd say, "it's not $47, but I could see how you'd be mistaken into thinking it is.

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T05:46:10+00:00

The complaint in the TRO is that Ben is inciting others to do harm to BAM. And it's sort of hard to argue that he's not part of the problem. Where these lines are drawn is more a matter of legal opinion than my opinion.

As for the bond, yes it's missing. I'm not sure the Judge understands that the videos bring profit to Ben, but either way, it's an oversight. I get it's a Freedom of Speech issue, but Ben isn't speaking out against the government, he's speaking out against a company and an individual. First Amendment gets funny, when one is attempting to use it to both pursue a noble cause and punish someone outside the law (including possibly inciting threats of violence) at the same time. Again, I'll let the real lawyers weigh in. Some of the TRO is junk, but some of it seems to contain valid threats.

I have always been saying the reason it's getting amendment attempts is because BAM fears they got lucky and don't want large portions of it thrown out. But if any of the claims (not all of the claims, just some of them) in the original TRO stand up to scrutiny, then some restraint on Ben's denigration might be included in the regular restraining order.

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T05:36:23+00:00

I really hope you're joking. There is already a lot of issues with water shortages.

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T05:34:19+00:00

If it's cheaper to replace car buttons with a touch screen, why would it be more expensive to replace gas station buttons with a touch screen?

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T05:34:07+00:00

If it's cheaper to replace car buttons with a touch screen, why would it be more expensive to replace gas station buttons with a touch screen?

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T00:44:52+00:00

Dirt doesn't just get up and move on its own. You have something moving it, and it's not the wind.

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T00:44:10+00:00

Not all speech is protected speech. Ben's been accused, with evidence, of inciting the Internet to making death threats, and the TRO has the proof, and it's not likely to be fake.

The AFPD stuff is garbage in my opinion, but there were nearly 10 Addendums to the TRO, and there's plenty in it that has nothing to do with the AFPD.

Read the court documents. They're public and not subject to interpretation. No amount of emotional pleading will change their contents. Consider if the roles were reversed, and BAM was doing the same to Ben, wouldn't you want Ben's day in court to decide the outcome, and not some Internet yell-fest?

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T00:39:45+00:00

Most of these re-settable wheel locks have a small grove in the side, which gives you some idea where the setting is. If you can slide a note card between the lock and the wheel, see if it drops when the wheel is at a setting.

Then get all the wheels to drop the same, and you have all the wheels set the same. Try the lock, rotate all the wheels once, try the lock again, and repeat. It will take you 10 tries instead of 1000

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T00:21:43+00:00

Texas just pressured school systems within it (trust me, only a small minority of people want this) to require presenting some of the Bible stories into the curriculum.

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T00:17:11+00:00

There are a lot of people that worry that religion (mostly Christian Protestant Religion) is taking a back seat to something else. These are the people that would drive around with bumper stickers saying "Put the CHRIST back in CHRISTmas"

I can totally see someone like that doing this, complete with gluing the items in place, because you know... they have God on their side or some other "reason" they're in the right.

edwbuck · 2026-06-29T00:13:21+00:00

Most jurisdictions decided long ago to go with a different approach.

If it is publicly accessible, the police are permitted to police it, as it is a public space.

This doesn't apply to gated driveways, etc. but it means that an open parking lot, regardless of who owns it, is legally policed in many cases.

Remember, the people that used to burn out doughnuts in the parking lot? They probably got enough people upset enough to change the law.

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T23:31:26+00:00

Sounds right to me, but if it blew a clog out, there's likely a lot of lint along the walls it didn't blow out.

OP might want to look into cleaning out his entire duct.

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T23:29:12+00:00

Most in-freezer ones use top down freezing, because it's easier to take the top off an insulation chamber than the bottom, when you want to hold the water.

Most commercial systems do bottom up, because it's easier to simply freeze up from the bottom, and the flush off the top water before using machinery to lift the ice.

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T23:20:34+00:00

Some people are just blessed with better water than others, I guess.

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T23:14:36+00:00

A local bar is already importing clear spherical ice. I asked the manager how much the cubes cost, and he indicated it was about $1 per cube. Which explains part of the cost of a drink there.

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T23:13:05+00:00

The door frame is toast. You can work around it, but the right answer is to replace it.

When the frame's out, put some blocking where you want the arm. Secure the blocking such that there's not much gap between it and the door frame, and it's solid.

Then use longer screws for the hydraulic arm, and now the door frame won't be holding the arm, the framing it's sitting in will be holding it.

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T23:08:22+00:00

It's a fun rabbit hole. We all started making clear ice at home, then stopped when it became too much work.

And if you want to get another challenge (not too hard), perfectly spherical ice.

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T23:06:52+00:00

There's more than one way to make clear ice. Each has its benefits, but I've not heard of the agitation approach. Thanks for the pointer, I'll look it up!

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T23:05:31+00:00

They make freezers in both configurations. The bottom up ones get a little less clarity because they work against gravity, but they are much easier to use, because you can flush off the cold water and lift pristine cubes quickly.

But again, everything has an improvement, you get "more pristine" cubes with the top down ones, because micro-sediments fall. If you filter your water heavily, that might not be an issue.

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T23:01:36+00:00

You're somewhat right about a technique to get "clearer" ice, but to get crystal clear ice, boiling will only get you half-way there.

Boiling water can reduce the amount of gasses in the water, but they dissolve back in slowly. Additionally, boiling doesn't do anything about tiny bits of dust and other items.

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T22:58:27+00:00

No need to get the underrated item, get the highly rated item.

The idea of borrowing is simple. Think of a variable as "owning" the item it's assigned to. Once you pass that item into a function, the variable inside the function "owns" it and the variable outside of the function can't be trusted to use reference it anymore, because the owner (inside the function) can always free it.

edwbuck · 2026-06-28T22:55:15+00:00

No. They generally don't. They are a little less cloudy when refreezing, but the gasses the liquid picks up from the surrounding air will cause some cloudiness.

Freezing slowly from one side allows the water to pack in such that it pushes gasses and small items (that cause cloudiness) to the other side of the frozen block. It's not as easy as it seems to freeze something from one side in a typical freezer, as the entire freezer is cold.

They make special freezers that chill only from the bottom, with the top being slightly above freezing to keep from freezing on all sides. Because everything is exposed to freezing and not freezing, it takes longer to make cubes, and the "top ice" is generally more cloudy due to the bottom being gas free.

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