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[hector13]

House ownership (or rather, maintenance, or rather, why the fuck is there lead pipe in 2021) is cocking expensive.

Uh, those are illegal

Apparently not so illegal that I get it replaced at someone else’s expense.

My city is giving a grant to replace it, but the one company we got an estimate from is twice as much, and told us we need to remove a relatively small tree prior to any work, and they won’t replace the sidewalk they remove either so those two things will add hopefully less than a grand to the cost and they offer financing which is allegedly 0% but really isn’t.

Plus we just spent mucho pennies on getting gutters put on the house.

Bleurgh.

[methylatedspirit]

I bought a new phone after breaking my old one for embarrassing reasons, and I'm realizing that this thing is actually quite nice. I could totally daily-drive this. This thing's in the $100-150 price bracket, and I don't really feel like I'm missing much compared to a phone that was more than triple its price. I was expecting total dogshit, but this... this is very usable. I can't complain that much. Obviously, its performance is worse, but it's really not a dealbreaker, considering how I use phones. I don't have to change my habits. Everything I can do on the last one, I can do here.

Jeez, the low-end segment of the smartphone market really is improving. The bar of general usability (the lowest you can go in price and still get a usable device) is lowering every year. I didn't even do any research; I just filtered by lowest price and 4 GB of RAM (and used common sense), and I got a phone that I wouldn't mind using daily.

[hector13]

… after breaking my old one for embarrassing reasons…

*ahem*

[EuchreJack]

My mom is demanding I hand over half of a stimulus check that I may or may not have gotten, and if I did, I received it months ago. Her reasoning for why she's entitled to it is that she "never got hers"... except I think she did, if only because her husband got his, and as far as I know they file taxes jointly, and thus it's "theirs". The amount he got was significantly less than what I did.


I also have a very sudden toothache that popped up while I was grocery shopping. The pain distracted me from what I might have wanted to buy. I hurried home, which is about a 45 minute walk, during which I felt some movement in the affected teeth. I put some benzocaine anesthetic on it, but it isn't doing much.

I literally spend my 2nd stimulus check on my teeth.  It was like, the day I heard we were getting $600, I went to the dentist and they said I needed 3 fillings for...$599.  And of course they add taxes onto that...

… after breaking my old one for embarrassing reasons…

*ahem*

I totally did that.  The sound was going out on an important and stressful call, and it really fucked me over, so I composed myself, went outside, and smashed my phone into the pavement.  Twice.

[Vector]

I am so excited, the new place I am moving doesn't have lead paint,

freaking finally

[None]

I've been buying the same line of budget smartphone for years now, and about the only complaint I could have is that they're getting larger and larger and my old one overheated a bit and had some image burn in. Granted, it was on year three or four by that point and saw me to the far sides of the planet, so I can't fuss much.

The tablet I bought for the same amount caught a massive scratch across the screen for reasons unknown and I'm pretty miffed about that.

Don't you hate it when your home leads you on? :U

[Lord Shonus]

House ownership (or rather, maintenance, or rather, why the fuck is there lead pipe in 2021) is cocking expensive.

Uh, those are illegal

Installing new lead pipes has been illegal for a long time, but replacing the millions of existing ones is a slow process. It requires specialized machinery to do so without requiring the destruction of the street, sidewalk, and possibly the house, and only a finite amount of such equipment exists. It is also rarely a priority because existing lead pipe is quite safe if undisturbed - a layer of scale builds up on the inside that prevents contamination of the water. It is only when something (such as the acidic river water pumped into Flint) disturbs this layer that replacing the pipe goes from a "Do this when major work is already being done" situation to a "fix this NOW" one.

[voliol]

Due to various circumstances to tedious too explain, I’ve got an Windows XP wheezing away working on a ~30 hour task. It’s 15 years old and sounds like a vacuum cleaner, no overstatement made. It also happens to be in the same room as my bed.
This will be a fun night.

[hector13]

As long as the tone is relatively steady and not too loud you should be able to tune it out as white noise.

You could get some earplugs, otherwise.

[voliol]

I hope so. The tone changes maybe once every 15 minutes but you are right I can kind of filter it out after a while.

I don’t think there are any places nearby that are both open at this time (2 in the morning) and selling ear plugs, and I don’t have any at hand. I’ll make do with pillows.

[Frumple]

Get a bunch of duct tape, strap laptop to the wall outside the nearest window. Close window, sound problem no longer yours.

Trust Frumple, Frumple is a librarian. Nothing about this plan could go wrong.

[King Zultan]

Have you thought about covering it with something or just telling it to shut the hell up?

[voliol]

It’s morning now, so the worst is over. My sleep was decent, all things considered, sandwitching my head between pillows really helped. Thanks again hector (wait, I didn’t thank you before, sorry!) for the advice and moral support. As for the other advice:

I don’t dare covering it with something in case it overheats, the sound is the fan, and having it panic and turn off (or worse, break) after this long would be pretty infuriating. I’ll try swearing at it

It’s not a laptop Frumple, it’s a full-blown desktop computer needing all sorts of cables. But I’ll take your librarian advice in mind next time, when it is a laptop :p. Also it’s raining outside.

[EuchreJack]

Stuff feathers in all the exhaust ports and cover them with duct tape.  People sleep better with fire next to them, right?
Yes, I figured I better not give that "advice"

[King Zultan]

The only other thing I could think of would be to throw it out a window, but I'm assuming you wouldn't want to do that.