1st Gen. Lunch Table - General Discussion

Good for you! My cousin did engineering school I believe and he is living the life in Hawaii now. I’m super proud and envious of his experience.

 

Thanks! I love it but it's a lot of work. Like, a LOT of work. I'm probably spending 25-30 hours a week on both of my architecture classes. I really hope it pays off.

I'm also super proud and envious of my buddies who chose the trade/technical route. Most of them are still at the apprentice/trainee level, but they're home at 5 every night.

 

It will pay off! But most work weeks are 50+ hours a week or more in the field, get ready for that.
I was doing 70-80hr weeks(half of that drive time) before I settled down into “paradise” working on a campus.

 

You can start a business with your buddies designing/building homes and other stuff once you’re all licensed professionals.

 

Lock it down!!!

 

There’s a huge need for housing, especially starter homes.

 

Out here, even just a general contractor license(doing it legal, which isn’t hard) you can make a ton of money

 

That made me chuckle.

 

The owner of the landscaping company I work for told me that he’d permanently hire me if I got a landscape architecture degree. Seriously tempting.

 

Got an email today from SE Toyota 25% off parts and free shipping over $75.

 

I went to the Anderson site and it didn't have a 4x4 selection for a (edit, 4.7 with 4wd) 2000, entered my VIN instead and it brought it up as a 2wd

 

I took a semester off 1.5 years into getting my AA, and backdoored my way into being an engineer a few years later. It paid off handsomely.

I'm not sure if it's reasonable to do what I did though. The Dot-Com Bubble really was a perfect storm for a shitload of people now in their 40s/50s/60s.

 

College wouldnt have helped me because i wasnt interested in electronicals.


i'm running my fridge off 12v off the aux battery instead of 113v through the inverter. Am i doing a disservice? Fridge says 14.6 through the inverter, and 12.0-12.6 through the 12v plug (off aux battery or truck 12v). Wires arent getting hot and i'm keeping it running with 2 gallons of room temp water inside.

 

Any time you run something from an inverter there is always going to be power loss, they aren't 100% efficient. If your engine is running and you don't have a huge draw on your battery otherwise, the power loss won't be a concern. But if you're running off a 12v battery without a charging source for the battery, definitely use the 12v, otherwise you're wasting energy.

No matter what, your fridge compressor always runs off of 12V. If you plug your fridge into an inverter or a 110V wall outlet, you're running through an AC to DC converter and getting DC power.

12V is the nominal (average) voltage across the discharge curve. Your battery reads closer to 13v when it is fully charged, and the voltage will drop as it's discharged.

When going through an inverter, the inverter is still discharging the battery of course, but the voltage the fridge's AC to DC converter provides is constant. To put it another way, the AC to DC converter is still providing voltage at the top of the discharge curve, while the battery is discharging. Your fridge will read 14.6 volts, but the battery will read 12.3 volts, or whatever it has discharged to. Eventually the battery will be discharged and the inverter will be shut off.

 

Thats what i thought. About wasting energy through the inverter. Like i said, the 20ga wires arent getting hot, it only pulls 60w on max and 45w on eco. Its been choochin for an hour and the fridge side is down to 50*, display says 28*, set to -4*

 

Would someone explain the logic of why inner tie rods are 3x cheaper than outer tie rod ends? It used to be they were almost twice as much for aftermarket ones like Moog. Has quality tanked now?

The last set of Moog cost me $59 ($20 off) each 6-7 years back. OEM price? About the same at around $95.

 

Supply & demand. The oil change/inspection places sell & install outers. Only the keen need inners (and my wear was at 140k bone stock, all inner.

 

I may have to cut down on the coffee. $50 recharge per month at Dunkin Donuts for work and another $34/month on two 1 lb bags of gourmet coffee for home. That’s almost 1/2 my monthly food bill.

 

Did you write that backwards? Outer tie rods are substantially less than inners from Toyota. I bought Moog inners for that reason.

 

I get gourmet shit for free. Perks of a barista wife. That’s actually a lot of our Xmas gifts, especially for teachers or the mail man. We just give everyone an elbow

 

yall don't just buy a coffee pot and your own beans? Lol


My new thing is coffee protein. I get both things I want in a single drink.

 

For sure, I’m a French press snob, I weigh and grind my own beans

 

I do use a pot….with my gourmet beans.

Dunkin’ Donuts is just for convenience since work coffee is only one step up from instant coffee with powdered milk.

To top it off, I only have maybe 3 DDs within a 10 mile radius I get coffee which is 90% off the time consistently decent. The other 20 DDs in the area serve horribly overdone coffee you couldn’t pay me to drink.

It’s a complex process getting good coffee.

If you want cheap good coffee, you’ll need to take up the art of roasting your own.

 

I’m always disappointed whenever I drink anyone’s coffee. I make jet fuel that you can smell a few hours later, like omg what did I drink…….. oh yeah…..

 

I’d suggest at least stepping up to Folgers over Maxwell House. You can thank me later.

 

Yeah, my bean grinder has 32 settings. I have 2 different brewers plus a french press, a pour-over, and (gasp) a Keurig for a quick fix emergency (mostly for the wife and visiters. Not gonna waste my beans on peasants who think burnt Starbucks and DD is real coffee. ). I buy whole bean Guatemala Huehuetenango roasted med dark. Gotta have my coffee.

 

I French press, but no snobbery. I mostly boil some water and throw it in my 1L press with 4x heaping scoops of a dark roast. Im a junkie and I need my fix without any extra steps.