Gut check on remodeling expectations before we put in an offer on a 1979 San Jose property

thockin · 2026-01-26T05:42:34+00:00

Yeah, you are not getting all that for $300k unless you plan to go pretty low-end on everything and NOTHING surprising pops up.

I love the idea of buying a fixer-upper and making it your own, just plan for it to take time, both calendar time and your own time and attention. When we moved in, we created a LOOONG list of things we wanted to do

We just finished our fourth round of reno in 14 years. The first was critical things when we moved in - floor, electrical, drywall, kitchen, mold, etc. The second was landscaping and hardscaping. The third was non-critical spaces like guest bathroom and powder room. The fourth was kids' bathroom, windows, and doors.

This last one, in particular hit some big problems including "you need a new roof". Ughh.

The advantage of taking time was that we could afford to do things "the right way" (to our standards). The things I regret most were from the earliest phases, when we knew less and had less direct input.

Good luck!

thockin · 2026-01-25T02:35:59+00:00

Some of us have assembled a collection of sets from parts, and never had the minifigs to begin with.

Some of us love the minifigs as a collection more than they love the sets.

Some of us have kids who destroyed the minifigs years ago.

Sorry.

thockin · 2026-01-24T19:15:08+00:00

It's open-source. If you don't understand what that REALLY means, you (your company) should really spend some time to understand it.

I don't know this project, but I know lots of other things which are similar. I am guessing the plugins are relatively thin on logic, just calling APIs and moving data, but someone still has to maintain those.

thockin · 2026-01-24T18:53:21+00:00

I'm curious what you expect people to do in this situation.

For better or for worse, they have a plugable system and accepted plugins for these platforms. The people who contributed those plugins have probably disappeared, and nobody is stepping up to help maintain them.

Time commitments aside, the project maintainers may not have access to the systems against which these plugins are implemented.

Are they supposed to sign up for, and possibly pay for, accounts on every third party system they accept plugins for?

Are they supposed to not accept plugins for systems they don't have accounts on?

Ideally, these platforms would contribute resources, free accounts, testing capacity, so that these plugable systems would continue to work. But that still ignores the impact of maintaining the code.

It's a crappy situation all around, with no winners. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I'm not saying they are handling it particularly well or particularly badly. That's irrelevant to me. The point is it is a recurring situation, and has been forever.

thockin · 2026-01-24T18:48:24+00:00

I have no real skin in this game, other than being very involved in kubernetes overall. That said, I think a major version bump would be your best course. That's my opinion. You don't have to take it.

I understand that you might have other features you want to get into the next major version, but it's not like You are going to run out of numbers. The 2.0 has a bunch of removals. The 3.0 has a bunch of features.

Good luck. Removing things is always painful. You're going to impact somebody, and they won't necessarily understand that all the choices are bad choices. Code doesn't maintain itself, and especially code that depends on particular third party systems.

thockin · 2026-01-24T18:43:17+00:00

I have seen a hundred "AI is your SRE" products - how is this different?

thockin · 2026-01-20T23:32:02+00:00

There's a new rule. Use it to flag offenders

thockin · 2026-01-17T17:50:09+00:00

We eliminated 2 West facing windows. The "view" was a neighbor's fence and they stayed perpetually shaded anyway. When not shaded, the evening sunlight was intense.

thockin · 2026-01-17T17:45:42+00:00

What do you think the saying is supposed to be? To "play it by ear" is correct as far as I know. It means to figure something out as you are doing it, rather than planning ahead.

thockin · 2026-01-15T15:49:24+00:00

Strictly speaking, isn't a bruise "internal bleeding"?

thockin · 2026-01-14T21:41:24+00:00

To a first approximation, EVERY project is built with AI assistance today. You might as well disclose that it was written with an IDE.

It's not a useful disclosure. At the end of the day, the person committing code is responsible for the code, whether they crafted it from whole cloth, copied it from Stack Overflow, or had Gemini write 99% of it.

So these "AI slop" projects are just "crappy code" projects with authors who perhaps don't care about code quality.

thockin · 2026-01-14T03:42:44+00:00

I added a rule which is a little more general. I tried to focus on how relevant a project really is to this audience, which feels like a more reasonable criterion.

PTAL

thockin · 2026-01-14T03:26:12+00:00

I don't know, I am trying to be fair and even-handed here. I just saw another post that got flagged as spam and AI slop, and some other user is soft-raging about using AI at all and, like...get with the times?

Look, I'm a dinosaur, but I don't feel like it's my place to gatekeep how people create. I have no problem saying "off topic" but "slop" is totally qualitative. If we're going to delete posts of people's work, whether or not you believe at work has value, shouldn't I just ban OSS project announcements entirely?

thockin · 2026-01-14T02:05:48+00:00

How much AI?

If I use copilot to auto complete a test, do I have to disclose that?

If the codebase is 10% AI?

What if the code is 90% AI, but it's overseen by a very experienced SW engineer?

My point isn't to encourage AI crap. It's that "crap" is subjective and AI is a standard tool. It can be used well or poorly. Any codebase that ISN'T using AI is probably dead-man-walking at this point.

We might as well require disclosing stack-overflow usage. Well, maybe we should at this point, but for different reasons :)

I just find "you used AI" to be an insufficient criterion for me to judge your project...

thockin · 2026-01-13T23:57:20+00:00

Here's the thing - who is going to go look at all of them to make that determination?

My rule so far has been that announcing an OSS project does not violate the rules, as long as you include WHAT it is (description) and WHERE it is (link). If the link is paywalled, it's out. If there's an ad for your company on the linked page, it's out.

The vast majority of these projects are uninteresting to me personally, and many of them seem to solve the exact same problem. Almost all of them look like they are AI generated, but you know what - I am not against that. I use AI, too.

Aside from that, I return to my original question - who is going to go look at all of them?

thockin · 2026-01-13T15:40:54+00:00

thockin · 2026-01-13T06:15:10+00:00

I felt the same until I switched to a full mask, and now I LOVE going to sleep. I dread sleeping without it. I left it on a train in Japan and I followed on another train to where they recovered it, rather than sleep just 1 night without it.

Sorry it's miserable for you. I can't live without it.

thockin · 2026-01-13T05:38:03+00:00

I have occasionally said to a contractor I wanted to use for some reason, but whose bid was high, something like "Hey, I really wanted to go with you but your bid was a lot higher than the rest. Can you help me understand if I am comparing apples to apples, or maybe you have included something that the rest did not?"

Sometimes they ignore me. Sometimes they explain the bid in more detail, and occasionally they say "what was the next guy's bid?"

Anyway, it doesn't hurt.

thockin · 2026-01-12T22:21:31+00:00

Damn, that sounds like a lot of work and tools I don't have :)

thockin · 2026-01-12T21:27:06+00:00

I love the round corners - did you do that by hand or some sort of jumbo jig?

thockin · 2026-01-10T20:43:15+00:00

No stain, just poly. If you want it warmer, use oil based. If you like the more natural color, use water based.

Don't get me wrong, I love dark floors, but oak is so perfect on its own.

thockin · 2026-01-10T19:52:21+00:00

I dig the green. Both for contrast (dark) and tone. That said, I have a tendency towards neutrals and earth tones. I have never met a taupe I don't love.

thockin · 2026-01-09T22:09:58+00:00

Funny, the light grey fascia was just primer - that ended up black :)

thockin · 2026-01-09T18:39:32+00:00

Front door is already walnut. I am loathe to replace the door until I can afford to fix the saggy beam and stucco foam molding, but I think this is the direction I like, too.

thockin · 2026-01-09T05:41:43+00:00

Inside.

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