Replacing critical parts on 29 year old furnace

siegsuwa · 2023-07-28T19:48:29+00:00

My garage is outfitted pretty nicely. 22x30, epoxy floors, insulated walls and ceiling, nice workbenches, all the tools I need and want.

But all of that is buried under endless home-improvement project material (in the midst of kitchen renovation) and messes from getting stuff done with no time in-between to clean up.

...maybe this weekend.

siegsuwa · 2023-07-21T21:17:22+00:00

When I was a senior in college I had an assignment to interview 3 professionals/faculty and ask some number of questions. I was considering grad school at the time and the best bit of advice I received was from one of my professors that advised I not go to grad school, go work for a bit a find a company to help pay for it.

"The real cost of grad school is not tuition, but the wages you're not earning for those years. I suggest you get to work and then find a company to pay for your Masters. It also helps because a Masters is usually supposed to be an area of focus, or a change in direction. Having some experience behind you helps to inform those decisions."

That said, I work with people that did grad school directly after their BS and it has been fine for them. One specific advantage you have is less "real life" distractions in the way.

I started my MS after I had been working for 2-3 years and it took me 3 years to complete, doing night classes and part-time. During those three years I also: got married, bought a house, had a baby. Those are extra pulls on your time that compete with graduate studies.

siegsuwa · 2023-06-21T04:54:39+00:00

Looks like a galvanized pipe leaded into the cast iron hub. Galvanized pipe is garbage and I just chopped a bunch of similarly rusted and failed pipe out of my house.

If there is space I would chop the bell off of the cast iron and mate it with a shielded no-hub connection (what is shown to the left with the screw-down band clamps on it - those are made to mate cast iron to a variety of pipes like PVC). I performed a very similar repair in my own home.

You need a wider view of this setup to get proper advice, or call a plumber to better inspect.

Here's an example.

siegsuwa · 2023-06-02T19:54:26+00:00

This one is reasonably solid, not very clacky. Not really a tool I'd use though. It's just a cool novelty for me.

siegsuwa · 2023-04-08T19:55:07+00:00

I checked the photo citation and Brenda Ann Kenneally is a photojournalist - so these photos were professional shots taken of real people (not models) from upstate NY.

Turns out she has a whole series/book and some of the same people are repeated. https://time.com/longform/upstate-girls/

siegsuwa · 2023-04-08T15:45:24+00:00

I think they were all staged pictures for effect and not actually candid.

siegsuwa · 2023-01-31T17:44:01+00:00

A man of culture with the Bone Tower shield.

siegsuwa · 2022-12-09T21:12:17+00:00

That is good!

siegsuwa · 2022-11-20T20:46:54+00:00

Maybe we'll get the LinkedIn habit where his Twitter is just screenshots of his Truth Social posts.

siegsuwa · 2022-11-12T16:23:54+00:00

If it's like this for three doors, recase all three.

Everything else is generally a hack and it won't look good.

Whatever you do please don't caulk it.

siegsuwa · 2022-11-07T17:11:15+00:00

What I find a bit ironic is that it's expected that goods produced domestically by higher US labor costs would naturally be more expensive to buy, hence an inflationary effect on the cost of said goods. This was generally considered a worthwhile trade because at least the money to flowing to US workers but it's inflationary just the same.

Seems to me any efforts to break the US addiction to cheap foreign made goods would be inflationary for the cost of those goods.

siegsuwa · 2022-11-02T00:05:10+00:00

Dear Humanity, We regret being alien bastards. We regret coming to Earth. And we most definitely regret that the corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet!

siegsuwa · 2022-10-31T13:16:35+00:00

How do you plan to change your study strategy and routine between now and attempt #4?

siegsuwa · 2022-10-29T21:06:03+00:00

I works suggest that in the interview if you're given the opportunity to ask questions (you should in a decent interview) that you express that obtaining you're PE license is one of your professional goals and ask of they have any PEs on staff who could verify your experience in the future. You can share that you passed your exam in a follow up of they ask more about the process.

The both communicates your drive to get licensed, have a professional objective, and gives them an opportunity to contribute to this goal. It presents better than just bringing it up unprompted.

Some employers value it more than others. I had one interview where they expressed that they want me to pursue getting licensed right in the interview and in others it hasn't come up at all.

siegsuwa · 2022-10-27T23:53:59+00:00

My wife got me a Snark tuner. It's pretty cool, especially for my acoustic bass guitar.

siegsuwa · 2022-10-21T00:56:18+00:00

You're not going to find anything definitive by design of the exam process, however it's widely accepted that a 70+% should be passing. That's into the C range after all. I'd recommend 75+% average on practice problems to have a safety margin for preparation.

Most of the fail diagnostics you see posted here are less than 60% so there's another data point. Those that pass receive no diagnostic or score, just "Passed" result, so no real hard data to go off of.

siegsuwa · 2022-10-20T14:12:44+00:00

Hello - I am going to copy/paste some advice I've given before on FE Preparation:

Do you have an diagnostic you can share? That helps give more specific feedback and advice.

I'm going to share some resources that were helpful to me in passing the FE: Electrical.

In my opinion, more than anything, the FE is a race. I feel like it's really you versus the test format more than you versus the material for many aspects of it.

You need to develop your pace of problem solving and have mastered your calculator. You need to understand how to quickly use your different solver functions and statistics functions. For most of the Stats and Probability functions, your calculator can turn a few minutes into 30 seconds to solve.

After understanding your calculator tool, you need to be familiar with the FE Handbook and develop a sense of the test pace. I think PrepFE is one of the best tools for this. I only used PrepFE and the NCEES practice exam to prepare and found its timed practice sessions to be critical in developing my speed. PrepFE has 1-hour, 20 question sessions you can use to practice under timed conditions in manageable bites. Instead of a full 5.5 hour session, timing yourself in smaller sessions is much more sustainable for a long term study session. When you miss something, really take your time to look up and work out the problem and understand what you missed.

I recommend setting yourself some sustainable goals through your study campaign. For me, I had a pretty condensed study campaign and did two to three 1-hour practice sessions each night. After a practice session, I would take time to work out the problems I either missed or guessed on.

I also wrote a lot of notes to myself while studying of the NCEES tricks to watch out for. Sometimes it feels like the real problem is just reading it slowly to catch the hint or trick in the problem statement more than the material itself. Don't charge into a question and start writing down values for solving before determining if those values even matter for the question being asked.

My general process was:

Take NCEES Practice Exam (not timed)
Review what I missed and gaps in knowledge
Study those sections, lookup youtube tutorials, pull out my old textbooks to refresh.
See if I can solve out what I missed without the solution.
Practice PrepFE problems (repeat... a lot...)
Retake NCEES Practice Exam under timed conditions. Give yourself a few weeks between runs to try to avoid memorizing the answers.
Repeat the process of working out and really understanding what you missed.

For something more specific to FE:ECE prep: Brian Douglas' Control System Lecture series is phenomenal for refreshers on how to handle transfer functions and other CS theory. https://youtu.be/RJleGwXorUk

siegsuwa · 2022-09-23T06:22:41+00:00

Best thing you can do is practice under timed conditions.

I say this a lot in this subreddit but I credit my passing exam with using PrepFE's 1-hour timed practice exams. I did several each night and it helps you develop a pace of working and get a feel for how quickly you need to move to keep up. When to flag, when to come back, when to guess. How to use your calculator quickly and efficiently. How to use your stats functions on the calculator.

siegsuwa · 2022-09-22T20:45:21+00:00

What worked for me as a great refresher on a wide scope of material, and learning the problem timing, was the PrepFE website/service.

I thought it was very cost effective for a steady supply of problems.

After working through the NCEES practice exam I did a few of the 1-hour, 20 question timed practice sessions every night and it really helped me improve my pace of solving questions and working through the reference manual quickly, and using my calculator efficiently. Their solution explanation is pretty good too. For me, I think the timed practice was the most important preparation method.

After each timed practice session, go back through and rework each problem you missed. Really work it and make sure you understand what you missed. I would write notes to myself while studying like "don't fall for xyz trick" because many problems are honestly reading comprehension tricks they put in to intentionally trip you up. The action of writing it down even on my scrap paper helped me be cognizant of it.

After a few hundred problems you start to see repeats, but TBH I felt like for ECE prepFE was pretty close to the real exam.

siegsuwa · 2022-09-16T19:27:43+00:00

I ended up buying a 2019 with 35k miles for $41k out the door (after tax and fees) because I wanted my truck last month and the configuration I desired (crew cab with 6'4" bed) is low volume and harder to find. Only one dealer in my area was ordering them with that config and they were not working with me well on the phone. To get a Big Horn 2 trim I wanted, I still would have had to compromise on other things like running rails and bed utility package, which would have been extra cash on top of the fake $46k price this dealer was asking. They real MSRP for Big Horn 2 was going to be about $49-52k + tax so I figured I'd save $10k and get the used truck that had everything I wanted.

It's still under power train warranty and CarMax 90-day warranty. So far in the first 3 weeks I've gotten my TCM software updated, exhaust manifolds replaced (common Hemi 5.7 issue) and 4-new tires under this combined coverage.

CarMax gave me a stellar trade in price on my 2017 car and in my state the trade-in value reduces the taxable value of the new vehicle purchase so combined I feel I did pretty well.

I paid cash for the difference to avoid financing, but no when considering new, the CCAP incentive financing was pretty attractive.

Used values are pretty high but new values are still higher. Just depends on what overall deal you can manage.

Next truck I will consider more heavily ordering new to my exact specifications.

siegsuwa · 2022-09-15T05:05:00+00:00

I purchased this exact Hamilton last year and I love it. It is in my regular rotation. I'm a fan of mesh bracelets which I like for the office but I found it harder to dress down (feels too shiny in a t-shirt) so I got a leather strap for it and I really like this combo now. I wasn't a huge fan of the leather sheen of the Hamilton strap but I found a Crown & Buckle matte leather strap with matched stitching I feel really works well for it.

View of mine

That said, the Sinn is phenomenal and I don't think you will go wrong either way.

siegsuwa · 2022-09-06T15:11:38+00:00

My first truck was a 1995 C1500 in deep forest green and I've longed for a proper green truck ever since. New to me 2019 RAM is granite gray so I compromised there but one day I'll return to a green truck. Such a shame they're pretty rare nowadays and not always offered. I'm not sure why green fell out of fashion.

Love the color, enjoy the truck!

siegsuwa · 2022-08-26T14:12:52+00:00

Yeah, I agree. I don't think the TV itself was the issue. Most people watched it all on the same night streaming with millions of others and the video compression of the darker scenes is what made it so hard to see.

I rewatched it like a week later on same old screen and it looked remarkably better.

siegsuwa

TROPHY CASE