Saturday, August 31, 2019

If You're A Certain Kind Of Stupid, This Post Is For You



If you see this face in the mirror every morning, pay attention.



















Apparently, the genetic coding for intelligence, reading comprehension, and humility are all on the same gene, and separate from the one that grants facility with tools.

I say this must be so, because of the two screeds deposited in response to yesterday's autobiographical essay, which posters evidently think they have one thing down, but they've apparently come up short on some other chromosomes.

For the twenty soopergeniuses out there who thought what two posters took the time to write, the following:

Nota bene:

I don't live in Hooterville, nor have a shop (nor room for one). Not even a garage.
I nonetheless have quite an assortment of hand and power tools, great facility with both, and zero days lost due to accident at my own hand. Ever. (The fact that so few of those who do such work for a living can say the same is what earns me mine. Think about that.)

If the point of yesterday's description got by you, a few more salient points for the reading impaired:

My troubles yesterday (other than too much stuff for the space I possess) were wholly and solely the result of Fortune 500 companies (who should damned well know better) either substituting cheap-ass parts for spec quality hardware, or not bothering to include it at all.
And with 50 year old wiring doing what 50 year old wiring does, unassisted.

Unassisted, BTW, being the exact same way I diagnosed and repaired my electrical problem, despite not working in that field, nor having consulted anything written on the subject for some couple of decades.

In my time, I have dug holes; filled holes; filled sandbags; dug foundations; dug wells; trenched irrigation; milked cows; slopped hogs; wrangled steers; worked on horseback and helped smiths shoe the critters; slaughtered rabbits; fed chickens; picked fruit; plowed fields; planted crops and gardens; post-holed; shifted rocks by hand; poured concrete; strung some miles of fencing: wood, chain link, and barbed wire; repaired same; demo'ed houses; built houses; de-roofed and roofed them; painted them inside and out; remodeled; built additions; built furniture; felled trees; chopped them into firewood by hand; landscaped; brush-whacked acreage; welded; shade-tree mechanic'ed; built, torn apart, and rebuilt bicycles; performed emergency repairs on cars and powerboats; restored actual tanks and half tracks; maintained trucks, howitzers, and actual haze gray men-o'-war; and even constructed and torn down entire villages, to beyond code, even though they were coming down in a couple of months. Some of this was for pay, some of it wasn't. I don't feel any inadequacy when it comes to hard work, hot days, blisters, sore muscles, or using any tool known to man. If I won the lottery, I'd be buying machine tools large enough to need bolting down, and heavy equipment big enough to pick them up, not Ferraris and such. My next appliance, likely as not, will be a blacksmith forge. My man-card is well-punched, and like Quigley and Army .44s, just because I don't like doing something every day doesn't mean I don't know how to do it.


Confuse that reality at your peril.

There are plenty of wrench-benders who could get Ph.Ds. And plenty of Ph.Ds. who can drop a transmission and rebuild it, should they choose to do so. Like Mike Rowe, I have nothing but respect for people, paid or not, who can and do perform dirty, hard, and/or dangerous work, and do so with professionalism and skill. College degrees mean little if you don't have the brains and ability to put them to use.

I've had my share of greasy fingernails, and I chose to work in a licensed profession where there's more poop, puke, and blood than grease and dirt, because it's indoors, it pays much better, and it's air-conditioned. Which helps the layer of sweat I work in pretty much non-stop 12 hours a day.

But if you missed the above parts of the previous essay, and all you bring to the discussion is a knee-jerk excuse to trot out your low-IQ Working Class Hero autobiographical moment, to be the hero of your own story, or try playing city mouse/country mouse bullshit games, rather than reading and grasping what I wrote, save yourself the electrons, and leave off beating the molecules of that particular deceased equine critter.
The horse never did you any harm.

You, like the other two knuckleheads, will only embarrass yourselves.

And I've really got better things to do than hang signs on jackasses.
That's what their braying is for.

So please: don't be one. Life's too short for that sh*t.

15 comments:

  1. Ahh fuck em Aesop bunch of whiny pissants....You know what I do and I would gladly stand shoulder to shoulder with you to accomplish any task we put our minds too...

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  2. Actually, I was kind of happy not to have to explain to you that I had electrocuted myself or burned the house down.

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  3. Aesop,

    Another tip for you (I left the last ones in the previous post re. surge etc).

    I love me some A/C. It is one of attributes of civilized men. If I break a sweat it needs to be worth it, not while sipping.

    3 best things you can do for your central air:

    1. Clean/Keep Clean the indoor and outdoor coils:

    Indoor Coil: Nu-Calgon 416808

    Outdoor Coil: Nu-Calgon 4291-08 (use a "bleach sprayer" such as Smith 190285 for this)

    2. Install a good capacitor from the only U.S. made company: AmRad Engineering

    3. install a solid state contactor: Emerson 49P11-843

    Keep on keeping on.

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    Replies
    1. And AVOID COMPLICATED DIGITAL CONTROLS!!! Simple engineering is more reliable. And reliability is one of the hallmarks of a robust design.

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  4. Well said sir! I guess some folks don’t get their full daily fill of being assholes in person and have to spread their joy online as well.

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  5. When you were listing the things you have done over the years, I half expected to see it end with "specialization is for insects". ;)

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  6. Tom Lester (Eb) was no dummy in real life. Came back home to Mississippi and spoke to our HS FCA Chapter, among others. But he is the true embodiment of DUMB on TV. He wanter to go to MIT until he admitted he had no HS diploma. BTW, not that MIT...it was Middle Indiana Tonsorial. He was also considering the University of Crump at Lake Agnes (UCLA).

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  7. I remember the MENSA genius and computer nerd (back before everybody did it) who rewired his Panhead HD, which was an electrically simple machine. Turning the lights on caused the engine to quit.
    Like many others before me I have learned how to decide if it's worth fucking with myself or paying somebody who knows how to do it. I notice that with the infirmities of advancing age just about everything is worth paying somebody else to do.
    I built a '41 Indian in my living room, but now it's worth paying the local HD shoppe for things I used to do myself.
    All things considered, I would rather have a vehicle I can work on even if I prefer not to.
    _revjen45

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  8. Geez, Aesop. Love ya man, but I think you took FarmDad's comment totally wrong. Don't get me wrong--love to see you dismantle idiots like tfat, but I think you missed the mark with this guy.

    Decaf, maybe? ;-)

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  9. @Anonymous,
    So Farm.Dad explained. I responded.
    http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2019/08/four-trips.html?showComment=1567354416074#c785735777274494735

    I repeat, nuance doesn't translate well in print, especially when attempted tersely.

    Idiot #1's comments, however, are inexplicable, and the response to that remains the same.
    Oh, and I'm already on decaf.

    If they invent a blend that blocks stupid people from flinging their diaper spackle on a whim, I'm in the market, as a public service.

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  10. Okay, I had to laugh, both at this post and the previous one.

    I don't know of anyone, professional or amateur, in the fixit field that hasn't had an issue with tools or supplies. I had a windshield replacement "professional" that forgot his heat gun and had to borrow mine to make the windshied gasket flexible enough to make it fit the glass and channel. Makes you wonder, sometimes.

    I'm both a registered nurse (civilian and military), former air traffic controller, and former army helicopter mechanic, not to mention restoration professional on my own house built in 1917. Now I just maintain what I have on 11 acres and a house to match that.

    Aesop, I think you did the average job, maybe bette that average. My know-nothing former brother-in-law paid over to $800.00 for his brakes on his 1988 BMW, my cost was less than $650.00 to install larger brakes, discs, and pads.

    We won't talk too much about the nimrod, standing next to me at the BMW parts counter that bought an $18.00 incandescent headlight that I could have bought for $6.00 at any parts store.

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  11. Loved that line. Have used variations of it myself since I heard it.

    Have to see what happens in November a year from no Hard to see much past that.

    I am sure in CA you are much nearer the epicenter of what will be happening.

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  12. So, Aesop, after having read all three posts, and all the comments, it's on the edge of amazing how some commenters will try to gain parity or to advise you on what you need no advice on.

    I would recommend that the people who comment to gain acceptance or demonstrate their knowledge on a topic you are giving detail on follow George True's advice, about being one click away, but that would be a wasted recommendation, since they would most likely tell me to f off.

    I have Porter-Cable and B&D, among other various brands, fwiw.

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  13. Quigley Down Under is one of those movies that, whenever it is on, I will just watch it.

    It would play pretty well on that new television.

    I'm still embarrassed by the scars on my forearm from where the solder dripped while I was sweating some overhead pipe for the fiftieth time because I didn't know the trick of putting a wad of bread to stop the drips from screwing up the joint.

    Bolt down machine tools. I like that idea. Which would be first? Me? I'd like a computer controlled plasma cutter table.

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