One Tenth Of A Sausage
Christopher Snowdon attempts to feed himself for a day while abiding by the Lancet’s latest nutritional guidelines:
There’s breakfast, and lunch, and a lovely chicken dinner.
Readers are advised that Mr Snowdon is seen handling a dangerous quantity of bacon.
The only “specialist equipment” I have for my newer car is a fault code reader
Me too! I have an OBD II reader I paid $15 for and free software for my phone to read the codes.
You’re right, I sure don’t miss gapping spark plugs with a feeler gauge and making sure the plug wires are making the right connection with the plugs and the distibutor. I know all about a straight six. That’s what my current car has. I do miss having more than a couple inches of room to manoeuvre though.
I did have to borrow special tools when I changed the wheel bearings. Buying them was cost prohibitive.
Farnsworth, you shouldn’t need to fiddle with Weber’s, they’re a fixed jet design. Maybe remove and clean them out from time to time. I had many years back a 4 cylinder car with 2 x twin throat downdraft Weber’s, and it was damned hard to tell without a lot of trial an error if a misfire was electrical or a partially blocked jet. FYI, an Alfa Sud Sprint Veloce, the engine could be a little temperamental at times, but wasn’t half as bad as the tendency of the body to develop hole-through rust spots due to the rubbish contaminated steel used for the panels.
This fart-discrimination article seems like it should have come from Everyday Feminism rather than the site I found it on.
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/05/the-fart-gap-why-red-pillers-think-that-women-should-never-fart-or-fart-shame-their-flatulent-men/
Either way, it’s a gas. Maybe the title sunk it on EF. They’d have wanted to call it “12 Ways To Support Trans-farters Of Color” or something like that.
Why did England keep rationing so long after the war? That seems whacked.
In any case, how are diabetics supposed to fare under this regime? Meat is both tasty and zero carb, while eating a lot of beans, rice, and such seem the opposite of what the doctor ordered.
I’m happy to fix chainsaws, mowers etc. I’m replacing the deck on my house, and I recently fixed the ceiling in my kid’s bedroom. I consider fixing things a standard part of manliness. But at fuel injected modern cars I draw the line.
I’m always a bit suspicious of “you don’t need specialised equipment”, because people who have all the correct tools forget that most people don’t. I would have a choice of doing my car in the dark of my garage, or outside — or paying to install excessive lighting of my garage. And oddly, I don’t have a welder or air compressor, nor room to store such things. I can’t jack my car off the ground even, except one wheel at a time, and that’s not safe to crawl under and I can’t see anything. I don’t really even have room in my garage to fix the car, and I have a reasonably large one for a city dweller.
People who like doing this stuff forget that for most people it is a chore. They don’t mind spending their weekends doing it. For me it simply isn’t cost effective, because I don’t consider my time spent as free. If I “save” a hundred dollars replacing my brakes myself, I have lost out badly — because I simply couldn’t do it where I live without a great deal of unpleasantness. Better hope I don’t need unexpected parts or make a mistake, because getting to work is going to be tricky.
Saying I could do something — while omitting that I would need a large, well-ventilated, well-lit garage, with a proper jack and electrical sockets in order to make it even remotely pleasant — isn’t convincing. I could indeed. I shan’t.
@Bill
@Spiny Norman
Iraqi casualties is between 1.5 million and 1.7 million. When I ask someone citing that ridiculous figure “where are all the mass graves?”, I’m typically subjected to a stream of insults.
I like to ask “Where are all the wounded?”. Combat casualties tend to give you 2-3 seriously injured for every 1 dead, along with 4-5 lightly injured. So 1 million dead should give you, say, 2 million people with missing arms, or in wheelchairs, or with otherwise visible injuries. In a country whose 2003 population was 25 million, that means one in ten. A 30-second clip of an Iraqi souk is enough to disprove that, usually given as a background to some vacant talking head on CNN.
David, my comment linking to Derek Lowe…
Freed.
… my almost daily driver has dual Webers.
I always liked you, Muldoon. Know I know why.
Why did England keep rationing so long after the war? That seems whacked.
Short answer? Because socialism, that’s why.
Longer answer: Britain’s post-war socialist Labour government with Clement Attlee as Prime Minister is often spoken of in reverential terms by the left, but in reality it created a nightmarish situation with fuel and clothing being rationed in addition to food until the mid 1950s, when rationing was ended by the Conservative government of Churchill and his successor Anthony Eden. Many of the shortages were down to the power of the trades unions, where the dock workers (the ports were nationalised) were often on strike as they knew they could effectively hold the country to ransom. Solidarity, eh? The 1945-54 period should serve as yet another warning from history- even in a liberal democracy, a socialist government’s command economy just won’t work. It was a time of great hardship for Britain. My maternal grandmother became a statistic- she died from influenza at the age of 42 during the terrible winter of 1947, when my mother was ten years old. Mum always maintained that the privations and indignities inflicted by food and fuel rationing played a part in her mother’s demise.
“Now I know why”. Aaarrgghh.
Why did England keep rationing so long after the war? That seems whacked.
It was.
It’s largely because the Labour government, elected in 1945, decide to spend the money on setting up the NHS rather than rebuilding Britain’s infrastructure and industries which had been either badly damaged or over-stressed and neglected during the war.
Unfortunately, when Labour were booted out in 1950, Churchill’s administration, instead of changing course,continued Labours policies.
Should’ve refreshed before posting, but yeah, basically what Lancastrian said.
Farnsworth, you shouldn’t need to fiddle with Weber’s, they’re a fixed jet design.
Nope, here you can find all the jets, chokes (venturis), and whatever else you need or want to tune or rebuild a Weber. Granted, it is slightly easier to change the jets on a sidedraft than a downdraft, but you can get those too.
I’m always a bit suspicious of “you don’t need specialised equipment”…
A jack, jack stands, and an LED trouble light are hardly specialized equipment, having used such a set up and ordinary hand tools (I did have to borrow an engine hoist) in my garage and driveway to take the old car apart down to bare metal when I rebuilt it, the Germans not having discovered rustproofing at the time the thing was made. The other advantage of doing something yourself, is you know it was done right
If you don’t want to do something, or don’t have the room to do it, that is fine, I too had the misfortune of having had to live in a big city with no garage (and was hassled by the cops who thought I was trying to steal something when changing the air filter and plugs while parked on the street), but I would imagine if you had to fix something, you would at least try, unlike young Ian would would call the auto club to check his tire pressure.
Bingo. If you enjoy doing that task, then it is free. Insofar as you learn something from it that you can apply elsewhere, well you’ve at least gained something. For the most part, I hire out these sorts of tasks, the sorts that I don’t have equipment for or don’t particularly care or like to do. Once in a while I’ll take one on because I’m curious but mostly because I have the time to dig myself out of any difficulty. When you don’t have the proper equipment handy for the inevitable exception, a 30 minute job can turn into an entire morning shot. Heh…once went to change the air filter/cleaner on my wife’s car. Dropped the stupid wing nut such that it landed on a bracket on the undercarriage just barely out of arm’s reach. Took 30-40 minutes of futzing around to find and retrieve the damn thing. Not that I have pros do something that simple. Then there’s the storage of all that special equipment that I accumulate over time such that when it comes time to use that thing again, I forgot that I had one. Or was at my parents house. Or in my case, my vacation home. Or I thought I sold it at a garage sale…or did I?
I value my time into any project that has no hobby appeal to me at my imaginary “overtime pay” rate. If I can hire a pro for less, factoring in of course the cost of the hassle of finding decent and reliable help, I do so without a second thought.
For some reason, this came to mind. A similarity of attitude, perhaps.
I immediately thought of this Madam.
I know how to replace shingles, but I don’t want to, I have because “…of the hassle of finding decent and reliable help”.
This, however, is the issue, and if clods like Ian get too numerous, there will be a market for professional can openers because this crop of humans can’t be bothered to do things vaguely mechanical. Not wanting to do something is different than never wanting ever to be able to do something yourself because it involves something other than a “smart”phone.
Wait for the landlord, as Ian suggests, to call a plumber to fix a drippy faucet, or take five minutes to change the damn washer yourself. For the supremely lazy and disinterested millenial, Amazon will deliver the washers to your door.
If you don’t want to fix your car don’t. There’s no shame in that. But it was originally suggested that it’s not cost effective to fix today’s cars because they require specialized equipment and that’s just not true.
Because of the internet and services like Amazon, there are huge inefficiencies in car parts prices. You can literally source parts around the world and avoid punishing duties and taxes. Your local garage is simply not going to take the time to source the best price. They will buy from a set group of reliable providers that will charge the garage full pop for the part.
In my post above I mentioned a fuel pump. The garage was going to charge me $565 for that part. I sourced the exact same part for $65. The fuel filter was going to cost $169, I bought it for $47. Then there’s the labour charge. I was quoted 4 hours to change the fuel filter. It took me 45 minutes and required nothing more than a socket set and a screwdriver.
People like to think their time is money. And it may be as far as your job goes, but none of us have people lined up to write us checks to pay our opportunity costs for the rest of the things we do with our time. So like I said there’s no shame in outsourcing a task to a professional, that’s your choice but it’s a myth that today’s cars require specialized equipment to be worked on cost effectively.
Wait for the landlord, as Ian suggests, to call a plumber to fix a drippy faucet
Heh…so this happened, years ago I was in the hardware store picking up some things for fixit stuff when I passed by the plumbing section and for some reason I was sure I had a minor plumbing thing to fix but couldn’t recall wtf it was. So rather than go home and have to turn right around, I constipated on it and constipated on it and then it hit me. It was the damn aerator on a sink in the bathroom AT MY JOB that had been missing for weeks. Dozens of guys in and out through that bathroom using that sink for weeks, not to mention the cleaning staff and probably building maintenance as well. So I dish out the $3.18 for one and screw it on myself that Monday. It’s true, we don’t all wear capes.
“Constipated … and constipated …”?
David, now we know what happened in the WC last week. Our long national nightmare is over.
“Meat” Petter Stordalen, billionaire husband of Gunhild Stordalen the person who funded the EAT-Lancet study.
What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas: