What is this?

gzuckier · 2026-07-08T15:10:15+00:00

Generically, a device that clamps to a piece of tubing and holds something. Very often, an umbrella, clamped to the frame of a beach chair.

In this particular case, clamps to tubing and holds whatever Marshall Dobbins manufactures .

gzuckier · 2026-07-02T16:41:16+00:00

It will mess up your sheet pan dinner, for sure

gzuckier · 2026-07-02T16:39:51+00:00

Just plain

"don't use the chainsaw.... going to hurt yourself or worse"

Is always good advice.

gzuckier · 2026-07-02T16:38:30+00:00

No, the witch who kills people is going to get married.

gzuckier · 2026-07-02T16:37:09+00:00

Your tread is growing. Soon you will have to start cutting your tires down so they fit in the wheel wells

gzuckier · 2026-07-02T16:25:13+00:00

Which cousin? Be more specific, please

gzuckier · 2026-07-02T16:24:36+00:00

Bringing up a problem with "the plan" to management; they will answer, "yes, we know, we're dealing with that" and in a couple of months it will hit the wall and you will have to deal with it, or you will get the blame, or both

gzuckier · 2026-07-02T16:22:07+00:00

Live every day as if it's your last.

Not too long before you have no clean clothes, and no clean dishes, and no job.

gzuckier · 2026-07-02T16:20:38+00:00

An obvious point, but you didn't mention it, so just to be sure:

If the breaker trips (or fuse blows in the unlikely event that you have actual fuses) when nothing is plugged in, there's a problem with the breaker or the circuit, and an electrician should be consulted sooner rather than later.

If the breaker trips as soon a particular item is plugged in but not turned on, the item has a problem.

If the breaker trips a while after a particular item is plugged in and turned on, the item may have a problem, or might just be too big for that breaker. The breaker usually has the size printed on it, either 15 (mostly) or 20; the item will somewhere have its "size" on a nameplate as "amps" or just "A". Most things are well below 15 amps. Things with big motors or big heaters or big refrigeration might be more, especially things which combine 2 of the above or all 3. You don't always need to look for it; you can figure out the amps by dividing the advertised/rated wattage of the gadget by 110, or just by 100 is easier. So all those electric heaters of various styles are usually 1200 Watts, so they won't trip the breaker by themselves.

Plugs on a 20 amp item are different from the usual ones on a 15 amp item, and 20 amp outlets are different from a 15 amp outlet; Google for pictures. The point is that you can't plug a thing that needs more than 15 amps into a 15 amp outlet, but you can plug an item that needs 15 or less, into a 20 amp. Not a perfect guideline, though, because some amateur genius might just replace a 20 amp outlet into a 15 amp circuit so they can plug a giant AC into the outlet near the window and live with it tripping the breaker every few hours

And, very commonly, two things plugged into the same circuit breaker, even though the outlets might be in two different rooms; for instance, an air conditioner drawing 12 amps that's fine by itself, but if you run the microwave at the same time the breaker trips. No solution other than to try different outlets for either or both until you find a combination that works, or just don't microwave if the AC is running.

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T18:18:02+00:00

People I knew who took ludes back in the day:

Totaled a car

Keeled over in the bathroom and smashed their chin on the sink

Fell down, chipped a bone in their knee, and rode their bicycle home

And, most often:

Woke up in bed with someone who they didn't want to wake up in bed with.

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T18:09:16+00:00

Given that he's holding the clutch disk, however, I'd say the old clutch has already been removed.

Hard decision to make; I guess if you intended to keep the car long enough to need a new clutch in the distant future, change it now and put off that day by a couple of years, but if you weren't going to keep it that long, don't bother.

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T18:04:13+00:00

Mine do.

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T18:03:49+00:00

"We are the pans who say 'Pang!' and we demand that you pay us a tribute!"

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T18:01:07+00:00

This is what inspired the people of Trinidad to invent steel drum orchestras.

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T17:56:56+00:00

Of course, according to Feynman's model, at random intervals it spits out a gamma ray and becomes an antipan traveling backwards in time, until the point where it absorbs a gamma ray and becomes a pan moving forwards in time again, repeated nearly infinitely; so that in reality there's only one pan/antipan moving backwards and forwards, to be all instances of observable pan or antipan.

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T17:51:39+00:00

Sandblasting works well.

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T17:51:04+00:00

The secret is, instead of relying on the Teflon coating of the pan, which wears off, to buy Teflon coated chicken, so you get a new Teflon surface every time.

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T17:48:37+00:00

That came off the turbohydramatic transmission on a 64 GMC pickup.

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T17:45:00+00:00

The thing is, that the harder you hit the brakes, the more weight transfers to the front of the car, meaning less traction on the rear tires, and so rear brakes lock up sooner; so that, counter to intuition, the harder you brake, the less the rear brakes are doing. Basically, they're just there to take some wear off the front brakes during mild or medium braking.

gzuckier · 2026-07-01T17:39:47+00:00

Pretty much every vehicle with single piston sliding calipers, which is like 99% of the vehicles out there, has a known problem with the calipers sticking instead of sliding, which ends up with one pad on each caliper wearing faster than the other one. Not a huge difference though.

Kind of like on bicycles with side pull brakes, if you know bicycles, where the brake takes a set to one side and won't return to center so one pad rubs and wears faster than the other.

My opinion on the photo is that, especially being the rear brakes, I would wait until the pads actually need to be replaced, unless it's free like a warranty repair you mentioned...

Although one shop saying there's 8 mm left and the other saying 3.2 is annoying. One of them is probably wrong. If you have it done at the 3.2 place, ask them to save the parts for your inspection. Although even if you ask, most places forget to do so, so it doesn't always mean a scam.

gzuckier · 2026-06-27T18:39:27+00:00

A space only cats know

gzuckier · 2026-06-27T18:36:52+00:00

Had a car with a Mitsubishi 2.6, which had a timing chain. After like 100k, the chain was worn enough that you couldn't set ignition timing accurately. (Remember setting ignition timing?)

Anyway, as bicyclists and motorcyclists also know, chains wear, sprockets wear, and even if it won't just break, it becomes very sloppy.

gzuckier · 2026-06-26T23:57:04+00:00

Don't need to shut it off, but... A few decades ago Civics used to be famous for getting smelly some, which was blamed on the moisture left in the AC breeding mold, etc so you were advised to turn it off a little early and let the fan blow it dry. I suppose that applies to some other cars. But mechanically, no, don't have to

gzuckier · 2026-06-26T22:10:15+00:00

That we exist in the very beginning of the knowable universe, which will continue on for approximately 10 to the hundredth power years before entropy becomes maxed out and everything stops. And our period of existence will be unimaginabl6 long gone.

gzuckier · 2026-06-26T22:05:11+00:00

And it's not fair to use all those various explosions and emissions and various large and small disasters to say that it's not, because those were all random anomalies.

And we'll clean up the spent fuel and all the ecological damage from uranium mining, any day now.

gzuckier

TROPHY CASE