If heavy duty means “lets you carry more weight in your bed and tow more” do not do it unless you actually have weight in your bed or tow a lot. To do this, the springs have a higher spring rate which makes the ride very hard unless you’re loaded.

You’ve discovered cold brew!

IMO there’s little need to buy new in the computer world unless you want to do something silly like have a snapdragon x laptop or have the disposable funds to go the gaming rig route.

My desktop is a retired business workstation, a HP Z420. I bought it for $250, installed a smaller SSD ($100 new) for the OS + apps, upgeaded to the “best” Xenon that fit the socket ($150 used), upgraded to 64 GB RAM ($107 used, yay ECC memory being dirt cheap on the used market), and a 1070TI ($225 used, purchased just before covid).

It’s more than fast enough for my needs still.

This was all about 4-5 years ago, so you could probably do even better with more modern hardware.

Hair color changes with age. My mother in law and wife were both blond when they were kids, but their hair slowly turned browner with age. They both highlight their hair to split the difference.

We have two fairly young kids. Their hair is pretty light blond on the top layers, but their bottom layers are quite a bit darker. I suspect the biggest contributing factor beyond genetics is sunlight. Both of them spend a pretty good amount of time outdoors when the weather permits.

I try to keep my writing somewhere in the middle. Easy examples include intent, which is sometimes more important than the explanation itself, as well as outlining alternative ideas/approaches and why they weren’t used.

I greatly appreciate insight into the thought process of others and try to pay it forward.

little kids

If the kids are truly little this would be an OK move from the US. However, schools in Puerto Rico teach in Spanish which would be a struggle for kids who are not fluent.

If there’s a sudden boom in prison construction in the next few years I’ll reconsider of course

You work in what now 🤨

Sarcasm aside, I am genuinely curious why you would leave this here. Is your work related to something with prisons?

Find people who care about what they’re working on and they’ll go well beyond the extra mile. As an extra motivator, make it clear the company won’t be around if they don’t succeed. I’m sure these employees have shares, but tha only really matters if the company succeeds (extra motivation!). Unfortunately, there have been a ton of green/green-adjacent automotive “startups” that have struggled to gain a foothold. See also:

• Fisker
• Faraday future
• Detroit Electric
• Elio Motors

(I’m sure many others)

I hope you get a decent answer. When we last visited 10 years ago a similar idea passed our minds.

I did some poking around at the time out of curiosity. From what I recall, a decent amount of manufacturing moved there in the 70s to claim made in America, take advantage of cheaper labor, and take advantage of some tax incentives. The incentives were phased out and manufacturing started leaving. Wikipedia .

I am not sure what their economy is like these days, but as with all moves a chunk of it is going to come down to the work you can/want to do and the jobs available, but with remote work living somewhere like Puerto Rico does seem appealing.

I suspect you’re going to have the usual island pain points (hurricanes, expensive imports, limited economy, a large swath of the economy tied to tourism) and benefits (consistent weather year round, natural beauty which PR has a ton of, beaches, interesting culture).

Again, I really hope someone with first hand experience chimes in - even if the moved in the other direction from the island to the mainland.

Keeping a woodworking hobby from devolving into tool collecting can be a trick.

This can be true of most hobbies, lol. Amusingly, three others of yours fall into that pattern.

Electronics? If only I had a bigger power supply, higher speed/more channel scope, hot air station, logic analyzer, etc. Guitars? I have friends and coworkers who play. No one only owns one guitar, pedal, amp combo. Gardening? I have quite the setup in my basement to get seeds going, but I live in zone 6 and need to compensate some for the short growing season. Cooking can also be it’s own equipment rabbit hole.

Beyond that: Cameras? Choosing which brand of body to use, sensor size, lens collection, tripods/flash/accessories. If you play a tabletop game do you really play a tabletop game or are you looking for an excuse to make and paint minis? 3D printers can be just as much about messing with the printer as actually printing things.

I think it’s important to recognize the pattern so you can consciously decide if you want to fall into it or avoid it. For some people, the collecting around the hobby is even better than doing the hobby.

Ha, this is true as does amortizing things like the coffee maker that needs replacing every 5 years, white vinegar for monthly descaling, the Stanley thermos I bought 4 years ago to bring coffee to work, etc.

Let’s say that it takes 15 minutes to brew the pot of coffee at 1,500 watts. That’s 0.375 watt hours. At $0.20/kwh that’s $0.075/pot. Yay for dumping it into a thermos once it’s brewed.

All in, even if you added an extra $0.50/day brewing at home is still way cheaper.

Stay away from espresso and super “high end” artisan beans and you can have a very solid coffee hobby for not a whole lot of $$. We do a mix of drip, French press, and cold brew. The cost per cup is basically the same for each and the equipment was not very expensive.

You got me curious, so I did the math for us.

I am a drip coffee person, drink far too much coffee (40 oz) throughout the day, and work on a fairly large corporate campus so I have easy access to hot/fresh coffee that I can purchase. Even though there are multiple branded places to get coffee from on campus, they have similar pricing.

• Small (12 oz): 4x @ $2.65/pop = $10.60/day
• Medium (16 oz): 3x @ $2.95/pop = $8.85/day
• Large (20 oz): 2x @ $3.25/pop = $6.50/day. This is obviously the cheapest choice, but will result in a cold bottom half of the cup due to drinking my coffee slowly vs pounding it

My wife and I split a pot of coffee. It takes us 3 oz of coffee beans to brew it. I can buy a 20 oz bag of the coffee beans we use for $15.29, which works out to $2.30/pot. We often stock up on the beans when they go on sale, but I don’t know what we paid for them the last time around.

So… since my wife also drinks coffee let’s say that the price spread between purchased already brewed coffee vs brewed at home coffee is between $6.50-$10.60/day. Splitting the difference = $8.85. Doing that 365 days/year = $3,120 saved.

The fact that I have coworkers who drink a similar quantity of espresso based (more $$) drinks at work is insane.

Do this over a 25 year career, invest the money monthly ($260), plan for a conservative 5% rete of return and you’ll have $162,577 - only half of which is principal.

Apply this pattern of thinking over a number of different spending categories and you’ll be way better off financially. That said, the stats on the billionaire class are eye watering and no amount of frugality will catch any of us up to them.

Factories will win this hands down, especially when you’re building large/complex items. It looks like the distinction might be “single building” vs “complex or buildings”, but VW’s Wolfsburg plant is 70 million square feet. The largest plant I’ve been to isn’t on that list, but it’s still over a half mile wide - all under a single roof.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/g2904/7-of-the-worlds-largest-manufacturing-plants/

Good luck. The company I work at has the exact same problem. Since each system tends to be owned by a different org, and the systems all meet the owning org’s needs, you’re going to be in for struggle.

Woah, those bullets. I didn’t know you could do that.

Great post too!

There is a movement to make it illegal, but the goal isn’t to feed the needy. It’s to help keep it out of landfills, incinerators, and waterways.

For example: https://www.bergmanndirect.co.uk/articles/new-food-waste-regulations-in-england

TIL, thanks!

Are you in Europe? In the US, our 120 volt mains limit the size of what can go in our normal outlets. I’ve never seen an electronic grill, unless you mean something that we would call a griddle.

Except BBQs are often against fire code so they’re not allowed 😭