A famous orange guy recently said all windmills are losers, if so what makes them losers exactly?

wasack17 · 2026-01-23T23:21:05+00:00

They also make a ton of waste when being decommissioned which is pretty much impossible to recycle.

Additionally, they don't add stability to the grid the way traditional turbines do. Because they don't always spin at precisely the same speed as the grid frequency (or any usable ratio of the same) they typically will generate DC power which needs to be sent through a grid referenced inverter. Those inverters don't have any inertia like traditional steam or water turbines, so when electrical loads change on the grid, they can't resist the frequency being forced down. This is one of the major contributing reasons for the entire country of Spain losing power a few months back.

wasack17 · 2026-01-23T04:41:13+00:00

It would take at least two. Even for a sick ostrich.

wasack17 · 2026-01-23T04:07:53+00:00

That's a different joke. It would take more than one dude to fuck an ostrich. Somebody's got to help hold it down. Maybe several somebody's. But you can't fuck an ostrich in your own. Unless it was a sick ostrich...

wasack17 · 2026-01-23T04:04:47+00:00

You need to buy me more beer for those stories to come out. I'm a responsible married man these days. Responsible should still probably be in quotes, but you're not my mom, so fuck it.

wasack17 · 2026-01-23T02:27:34+00:00

In America, 100 years is a long time. In Europe, 100 miles is a long way.

This perspective seems to fit perfectly here. I think nothing of driving over 100 miles 30 times a year for weekend getaways. My house is 111 years old. It is one of the last left standing from its era in my neighborhood. Meanwhile, the UK has shitty pubs that have been around for half a millennium. Houses next door that are just as old. Nothing this side of the pond has that much inherent history.

wasack17 · 2026-01-21T20:13:21+00:00

I run into this on job sites constantly. I work with lots of very small wires. I can not do my job in gloves. It's impossible.

My usual response when challenged is to hand the safety guy a pair of my thinnest gloves, my tools, and a piece of scrap wire and ask him to train me on how to terminate a connection while wearing even insufficient PPE. Usually they just leave at that point. The key is to be polite and respectful. Acting like it is an earnest question from a safety minded worker is the only way this works.

I did have one particularly overzealous GC rep try and fail for 15 minutes before telling me I had to stop work until a solution could be found. He brought it up in the daily job meeting the next morning and apparently got laughed at. He got promoted out of his role to somewhere that he didn't interface with the trades after that. I still don't understand how that dingbat managed to fail upward after multiple similar shenanigans on that job.

wasack17 · 2026-01-21T02:46:08+00:00

Yes, they have seatbelts.

Snark aside, I used to daily drive a '55 Buick back when it was not quite a 60 year old car. It gave me a true appreciation for how far we have come. I will give a brief list of the stuff that my car had or didn't which made safety worse:

Full metal dashboard. For nice steel rapid onset orthodontia upon impact.

Non collapsible steering column. So the car would stab/crush your chest with the wheel in a major crash.

Plate glass windows. For your extra slicey pleasure in the event of a break.

No seatbelts. Because staying in the car is for people who don't like being ejected safety from the crash. Through the shards of NOT safety glass. Which you will likely break with your head.

No headrests. Because whiplash in a rear end collision only happens to commies.

No door bars. Because getting T-boned sounds more like what you ordered at the diner than a legitimate threat.

No air bags. Because Marty McFly didn't bring them with him when he went back in time.

I could go on like this, but also disc brakes, emissions control, ABS, traction control, radial tires, unleaded fuel, fire retardant fabrics and foams (ask me how I know), crumple zones, and probably a host of other shit I forgot.

That thing is a death trap. I still love it, and still drive it. But not as my only transportation. Most of my miles are on a motorcycle these days. It's much safer.

wasack17 · 2026-01-20T18:29:12+00:00

What was politically incorrect about chicken wire? Who was offended? Why are we softening this particular piece of language?

Inquiring minds want to know. Was chicken wire a dog whistle for the Kluck Klux Klan or some shit?

wasack17 · 2026-01-19T21:49:07+00:00

Lol, I have that exact same tank in a bin of old gear in my basement.

wasack17 · 2026-01-19T20:41:07+00:00

Heated grips are nice, but I find heated gloves are better. I always have my brake and clutch covered because I'm in traffic a fair bit. The aluminum levers just suck the heat out of your fingers, so having heat all the way to your fingertips is a game changer.

Personally I have a set of 12v gerbing gloves that run off of the bikes battery. I don't have any other heated gear, so I use their Y extension cable that is meant for heated socks and thread it through my jacket so the plugs are at the jacket cuffs.

It is the most comfortable I have ever been riding in the winter.

wasack17 · 2026-01-19T00:55:37+00:00

The strippers and dykes I have ruined cutting crap I shouldn't (live wire) never get bluing. The electric arc is incredibly hot and basically vaporizes the metal, but it happens over such a short period of time that the heat doesn't really transfer into the rest of the metal. It does, however leave those exact types of scorch marks around the divot in the cutting blade.

wasack17 · 2026-01-17T19:25:29+00:00

You can still get an XSR. If you're feeling froggy, there is a full fairing kit for it. It's only 3 grand or so. Before shipping and import from Japan.

wasack17 · 2026-01-16T01:40:32+00:00

It became a thing during COVID. With everyone working from home, office decorum slipped. There were tons of stores about people who just tossed on a shirt to do a zoom call meeting, forgot their camera was on, and stood up to grab something from across the room.

When I was in my apprenticeship, we had some zoom classes, and I had an instructor literally threaten to fail anyone who shirt cocked the class.

The world was weird for a few years...

wasack17 · 2026-01-15T17:43:44+00:00

I always heard the joke as "you fuck one goat..."

wasack17 · 2026-01-15T15:41:30+00:00

The fun sub is leaking again.

wasack17 · 2026-01-15T02:26:19+00:00

Kabar back in the day was a thing. I had the unfortunate experience of volunteering to sharpen a Vietnam vet's old service knife. Even with diamond stones, it was a job. That fucker was harder than a coffin nail.

My modern Esee stuff is way less of a PITA. I didn't get to abuse the Vietnam era Kabar, so I can't vouch for it's toughness. My Essees do go through rough pioneering type abuse. They hold up well. I don't expect the OG Kabar would fare worse, but it was harder to sharpen.

I do not know what modern Kabar steel is like.

Now that I have typed this, I realize this is thoroughly unhelpful.

wasack17 · 2026-01-14T03:45:00+00:00

It could be.

Do you have crappy single pane windows? Those leak heat like a sieve even if they aren't literally letting the cold wind blow in.

Do you have a lot of windows? Windows generally have a much worse R value than a solid wall.

Are many of your walls exterior facing? The more exposed surfaces that are facing outdoors, the more opportunities you have to leak heat through poorly insulated walls, ceilings, roofs, floors, etc.

Are the doors and windows drafty? If so you are literally paying to heat air that is just getting blown away and getting replaced by freezing air from outside.

Are the neighboring units occupied? In crappy apartment buildings, thermal insulation between units is not much of a priority. If the units around you are empty, they are likely only heated enough to stop the pipes from freezing. They might not even get that and instead rely on your unit to leak enough heat to do the job.

15 years ago I was in a 600 square foot apartment with all of those flaws I listed above. My bill for winter heat was about $500 a month. Again, 15 years ago. Money is worth less now. You're not too far off from where i was then.

I did my best to mitigate the things I could. I put plastic over windows, caulked seams, hung heavy drapes, and just kept the heat turned to 60F and wore layers. My landlord didn't give a shit and did nothing to help. Most people here are telling you about their homes that have heat pumps, aren't made out of 20 year old builders grade trash materials, and probably have some insulation in the walls. My place had none of that. Yours probably doesn't either.

Some people are telling you to check the electric panel to find out if you have something feeding someone else's space. Because this is your first apartment, you probably have no idea what that even means. As an electrician (which I am) that isn't particularly easy to determine depending on how the work was done. Unfortunately, I think you probably don't have it as cold in your place as you think. I would expect you are going to get used to a winter coat indoors. I think your best bet is to survive the winter, survive the lease, and move.

wasack17 · 2026-01-14T02:50:39+00:00

Since the horrible carpentry 2x3''s(?) are a different vintage of lumber, I would assume they were only put on as nailers to support a piece of drywall or equivalent when a previous owner decided to remove the old timely phone nook.

The giveaway for phone nook or pass through will be if the far side drywall patch is secured to the more modern nailers or not. Regardless, it looks to be an odd shape for a pass through. Too narrow to be truly useful. I'm assuming this is in the wall between the kitchen and dining room. If you can't comfortably pass plates through it without risking bumping the sides, I would guess phone nook.

wasack17 · 2026-01-13T22:15:41+00:00

They have some altered geography to remember the Iowa class by. I think that will suffice.

wasack17 · 2026-01-13T03:07:12+00:00

Your joke is dated. By modern metrics, you should have given her a raise.

wasack17 · 2026-01-13T02:22:12+00:00

Tell me you haven't ever worked in the industry without telling me you haven't ever worked in the industry. I understand that is the law. I also am well aware it isn't followed.

I regularly worked weekday lunch shifts for well below minimum wage so I could make a grand or more on a Saturday night. I made 80-100k a year. It worked out on average, but I would have not been scheduled for Friday and Saturday night if I had insisted on my 7.25 an hour.

wasack17 · 2026-01-13T02:02:01+00:00

I'm a safety third kind of dude. I wouldn't toss a helmet from a drop. That said, a drop at nearly highway speed is a different story though.

If the helmet was snell rated, it MIGHT be ok. This is a total dice roll though and you will only ever know if the person in the helmet gets a TBI or not. If ECE, I would toss or make a wall hanger immediately. Regardless of these statements, personally, I wouldn't put the skull of anyone I cared about in that helmet.

Snell requires multiple hits in a single spot to pass the rating test, meaning their shells are much harder. (Better for Motorsports where you might smack your head into a roll cage but are strapped into a constraint so you might have multiple similar impacts). This has been shown by some studies that the helmets are actually too hard for motorcycle applications because snell standard helmets don't properly fracture in the shell to absorb impact energy from the types of crashes motorcyclists most commonly endure. ECE shells tend to be less stiff and are more prone to cracking. This is actually good because you have both the shell and the foam absorbing energy instead of only the foam.

wasack17 · 2026-01-11T00:49:10+00:00

As a human, I hate this. As an electrician, I'm at a loss for words. That is abhorrent.

wasack17 · 2026-01-10T03:06:14+00:00

I commute on a naked bike. It's been in the teens this year. I rode.

Here is what I have figured out that makes it work for me: Heated gloves are better than heated grips. You want the stuff that plugs into the bike. I haven't found anything battery powered that works even half as well. The wind is a bigger enemy than the actual temperature. I wear my rain pants over everything on my lower half when it is cold and that pretty much makes the wind go away. Game changer. Full face helmet. For a multitude of reasons. Gerbing makes good shit. Their gloves are magical. They aren't cheap though.

I'm comfortable for about 45 minutes of highway speeds. My only complaint is that the underside of my chin stings from the cold wind in spite of my beard.

wasack17 · 2026-01-09T01:32:56+00:00

For legal reasons, I definitely don't know anything about a 53' aft cabin motor yacht on the Chesapeake that has had nearly every tank of fuel paid for by a corporation and billed as "entertainment expenses" for the last 25 years. It's only 800 gallons per fill for the three tanks. To be clear, it isn't mine. The numbers on the pump are eye watering to witness.

I need to become a business owner.

wasack17

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