This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service
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Notes -
I have a friend who believes in the power of astrological interpretation, and does so because of extensive personal experience as a practitioner and (at least allegedly) from alternate history / alternate cosmology reasons. This person is, obviously, not part of the Rationalist / Neo-Enlightenment movement; but does at least seem to me to be perfectly intelligent (this person, along with their spouse (who I suspect is humoring them as I've never heard a word positive or negative on the spouse) have homeschooled their children to great effect, including the eldest well on track to get into college early by good test scores).
The astrologer was not offended at my suggestion that the Barnum Effect could be clouding their mind more than they realize, and actually asked what it would take to resolve my skepticism. We are now mildly adversarial co-experimentors, but unfortunately neither of us is credentialed in statistics or sociology. (I have an undergraduate math minor including 200-level Statistics, but that's about it.)
Our current experiment design is: I'll round up around 50-100 people not known to the astrologer; then the astrologer will do a “reading” (directed to look for any amount of high-confidence information on any topic about the subject's life between birth and up to 1 year in the future) on the “birth chart” of each (anonymized) subject; then the astrologer will work another experimenter to break each of these “readings” up into a set of atomic, itemized claims; finally, I'll give each subject a shuffled list of their own claims mixed in with the claims from 2 random strangers' “readings” (1 of which is constrained to be from a stranger who is within 15% of the subject's own age, 1 of which is constrained to be from a stranger who is not to be within 15% of the subject's own age) and ask them to rank each on a Likert scale.
If there's no clear separations between any of the rating groups, I'll offer my condolences. If there's a clear separation between the “own” ratings and “control non-cohort” ratings but not “own” and “control cohort”, I'll offer an "I told you so". And if there's a clear separation between the “own” ratings and “control cohort” ratings, I'll start entering counterfactual universes.
Is there anything else we should consider before doing this? We can get help from a statistician after the hard part's done, but if our statistician says "goddamnit, you should go back in time and make this adjustment to the way you ran the experiment" I'm trying to receive that message now.
EDIT: my friend believes that astrology predicts much, much more than the lives of individuals, so I'd considered just suggesting they open a Polymarket account (pre-registering the specific account ID to avoid selection cheese) and start killing it on there for 2 years. But, obviously, even if that might raise eyebrows, it could never rule out the possibility that my friend is a perfectly mundane “Superforecaster” simply laundering their abilities through astrological charts, because this astrologer claims there is a large skill-based component to astrological interpretation.
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Hydro's HVAC for homeowners- tinker tuesday seems like a good place to start posting things you know well which might be helpful. So here goes:
-Repairs homeowners can and probably should do themselves off of youtube:
Capacitors, to start with. If the fan on your outside unit runs, but the AC is blowing warm, there's an 80-90% chance it's the capacitor. You can get capacitors on Amazon for about 10% of what a company will charge you, so it's worth trying that before calling someone. Capacitors on hand for a year or two probably won't go bad, although ten years in your garage might. It's possible to test a capacitor but the tool to do it with costs significantly more than a capacitor itself- if you're a homeowner with one or two units, buying a digital multimeter that reads microfarads isn't really worth it. You need a capacitor with the same microfarad rating(this is sometimes abbreviated UF because the scientific symbol for micro looks like a U, and it's clear enough in context to not worry about it), and a volt rating at least that of the voltage on the circuit- for a residential AC system in the US, that's 240 or better. Yes, capacitors rated for three hundred or six hundred or whatever will work.
You can also replace thermostats yourself easily- but I would recommend changing the batteries and testing the unit by jumping the circuit out first. There's a universal color code for what thermostat wire controls what. If you have a tiny screwdriver you can just move the wire of the color you want to test over to the same spot as red, and if it still doesn't come on, you have a deeper problem. If it comes on, it's a thermostat issue(change the batteries before you buy a new one).
If the inside unit comes on, but nothing on the condenser does, either you need a new thermostat wire(depends on your comfort running wires) or a new contactor. If you're comfortable changing an outlet you can change a contactor- you might need to go to multiple home depots, or visit an AC supply house(they'll sell to homeowners but they won't accept returns unless you have a wholesale account), but just flip the breaker, take a picture, and redo the wiring. They're usually obviously damaged when they're bad.
Homeowners probably don't need to be messing with freon. For one, it's unlikely to save you much money when you take into account economies of scale, tool costs, etc. Most of the time, when I have to work on something internal maintenance guys couldn't fix, it's overcharged- motteizeans might be smarter overall, but they have more field-specific knowledge and experience.
-Maintenance
You should change the air filters whenever they get dirty. There is no rule of thumb for this, if you clean endlessly or if you are a cat hoarder who chainsmokes inside will change the answer. Hypoallergenic filters choke the unit out from working right, and dollar store translucent filters don't do anything- use a happy medium of filters. Likewise you should keep the drain off the evaporator clear; pour bleach down it once or twice a year and blow it out or use a snake if there's an issue. It's a gravity drain that ties into a sink(usually a bathroom sink), works just like anything else that drains to a p-trap. You should also clean the outside of your condenser unit; make sure you can see through the condenser coil with a flashlight. Most homeowners can just use a hose. If it was on a restaurant roof next to a vent hood on the other hand...
Speaking of condensers, keep dogs from peeing on them. If you have male dogs and you're getting a new unit, make them elevate the condenser off the ground somehow. If you're stuck with what you've got, you're probably going to need some kind of fencing.
-Dealing with contractors
If you live in the USA there is no reliable way to get a residential service tech who isn't paid on commission, unless you happen to know about the company. Smaller companies are less likely all other things being equal, but even with a one man show you should always get a second opinion when an HVAC contractor tells you to change your unit. The rumors you've heard about private equity buyouts and techs with sales quotas are 100% true and it's getting worse. HVAC guys that don't want to be primarily salesmen get out of residential as quickly as possible- residential techs get paid a pittance per hour and have an awful seasonal variation, if they don't like a commission structure they leave-, and the economic case for bosses is overwhelming. A residential company makes fifty-sixty percent profit on AC changeouts, even after accounting for labor, toolcosts, trucks, etc- and the tickets are big. You do not need a new system because of a change in freon regulations. I assume no motteizean is that gullible but you don't. You can also top up a 410a system with R32, although lots of companies don't want to do this. If you have an older air conditioner and it runs off R22, ask about using MO99 before scrapping the whole thing- it works 90% as well in the same system. Again, lots of companies don't want to do this, and if they're competently run they have more work than they can do.
If your compressor is out see about getting a compressor changed under warranty. Compressors have special extended warranties that last longer than the rest of the unit, although you'll still need to pay for labor. This will annoy the company doing it though, because the profit margin isn't very good. You might get marginally better service if you're white and visibly MAGA and/or have a large family(assuming you pay the bills yourself), sob stories and displays of Christianity will be assumed to be fake.
Lots of motteizeans are engineers. Engineers are notorious for trying to diagnose their AC themselves and concluding the board isn't sending power to the blower motor. This is because there's a safety switch on the unit's access panel to cut power to the blower if it's off- every brand is a bit different but you should be able to find it once you know to look.
If you make a diagnosis on a major component you probably won't be able to order parts yourself- supplyhouses will happily sell capacitors, small electrical switches, etc for cash and claim it's for 'general mechanical' or 'goes on an air compressor', but they're less willing to do so on a big ticket item. Manufacturers will never sell to a homeowner. Most service companies will insist on diagnosing these items themselves rather than just ordering them for you- this is partly moneygrubbing, but mostly because they have to deal with the lowest common denominator.
Some people want to put a commercial air conditioner on their house. Just stop; it won't fit on a residential building, you're going to need to redo at least one outside wall to make it work, and you're probably going to have to run three phase power to it, and it just goes on and on. You can totally use commercial fridges/freezers in your house, they're just probably not exactly what you're looking for. When it comes to bigger units than recommended for your house this is probably going to mess up your humidity, but system sizing runs off guidelines not hard and fast rules. It is often worth paying for a better brand, it is rarely worth paying for higher efficiency.
-If your son/nephew wants to go into the trade
First it's a lot of driving. A clean and existent driving record is absolutely required for employment- and most entry level jobs will drug test besides(jobs asking for experience might not). Women very rarely make it, and those who do are either a) butch lesbians or b) lying about being HVAC techs. This is partly due to sexism but mostly due to the intense physical and time demands of entry level HVAC jobs. You really do have to pay your dues to get a good job in this field; expect to make a mild premium over working at mcdonalds, with worse hours, for your first year at a minimum. If you have health problems you also won't make it. You will note that I did not say probably; the physical demands are very front loaded.
Bosses are computer illiterate, so if you apply online you need to call someone at the office to followup. There's an EPA license for handling refrigerant- you have to take the multiple choice exam in person(either through some industry connected company or through community college), but self-studying for it is fine. The official study guide is pretty easy to get. I assume there's a private version and a bunch of youtube videos that do a perfectly fine job of covering the material. It's not a hard test. Depending on your state there might also be a registration requirement with a state regulatory board- in most states this is just a certification that you have paid the fee. Both are things a boss will expect you to show up with on the first day, alongside a drivers license, steel toed boots, and an ability to work. A past record of holding down a job, especially but not necessarily one with tools, will help. It's probably better to go to tech school after having worked at least a little bit, but lots of guys start by going to school and then get a job, so whatever. Different companies have different ideas about what's a 'good' tech school, my two cents is make sure they have a good lab and then pick the cheapest unless you know somebody in the industry locally. If your boss likes you he'll give you time off to go to school, but it probably won't be paid.
HVAC bosses are generally able to not be racist. Lots of their subordinates are not. If a young man is black/hispanic/asian he'll face extra barriers- but plenty succeed despite them. There's enough of a shortage of HVAC techs that existing workers don't particularly want to block out new applicants, though.
I'll add a few things that may be too obvious to an expert to mention, but I've found necessary to learn :
Before doing anything involving mains electric, grab an AC tester, and use it on a known live wire to check the battery. These don't detect DC or stored capacitance, but they're really essential for DIYers who might find reason to distrust whoever labelled their circuit breakers. Taking 110v hurts like a mother, taking 220v can lay you on your ass or cause long-term damage, and there aren't no stinking GFCIs here. AC work is the least likely space to zap you, but you really want to get in this habit before you're standing in a bathroom replacing a vent fan.
Disable power to the outdoor unit (usually will have a nearby pull-breaker, but pre-00s units might only have the breaker at your main panel) and discharge the capacitor (even a known bad capacitor) before doing anything to the outdoor unit that gets near the wiring, especially anything that involves touching the capacitor. The Proper way to do it involves a tool with a 1k+ ohm resistor and an LED, but the normal way is to just use an insulated-handled screwdriver and touch every lead to every other lead, which isn't healthy for bigger caps but you're probably gonna replace it anyway. Again, you don't want to take 110v, even 'only' for the short period it takes for the cap to discharge across you.
In many residential units, the capacitor is also used to start the outdoor unit fan: if there's an audible buzzing sound and the fan either isn't working or only works sporadically, 90% odds it's the capacitor, other 10% is the fan... if you get to it soon. If you wait too long, it's both. Guess which one is more expensive and annoying to replace. Those caps will have usually have multiple leads and multiple ratings (eg, 40/10 or 35/5), which means that they run both the fan motor and the compressor motor. Take a picture before removing any leads in general, but especially with these double-check you've got them wired with the right leads on the right rated ends. These seem to be less common in newer residential units?
You can go with a much higher voltage rating for a capacitor without much trouble (>100% over will probably have shit ESR, and it probably still doesn't matter), but avoid large difference (>25% over) in capacitance if you can avoid it, screws with motor efficiency(? power factor?). Either might not be a problem, since caps are only rated +/- 25% anyway, but if it is an issue it'll be subtle. Don't go under on either. You can get customizable ones, but they don't make sense unless you're working for someone renting out a ton of apartments/houses (and I'd argue not even then). Good to know in case someone else working on your house used one, though.
A lot of older (early 90s, sometimes early 00s) indoor units will drain directly outdoors rather than into an actual drain. This is technically against code in most of the US now (not for made-up reasons, esp if you have cats, the 'water' ends up heavily contaminated with ammonia), but however it's set up, make sure to pipe the whole thing out all the way to a major drain pipe and/or the dirt.
Basement units will often have a condensation pump, usually at the end of some PVC (rarely, aquarium silicon tube) coming from your indoor unit. When clogged or where the motor's near-dead it makes a hilariously bad sound. Sometimes can clean em out and reuse, but they're <100 USD at a big box store and <50 USD from online, and if they start to go bad you're probably on the end of a bathtub graph. As above, use an AC tester when replacing them to make sure you turned the power off on the right spot before disconnecting live wires -- I've seen stupid installs where these were on entirely different breakers than the indoor unit proper (and one awful install that was running it on two live phases, wtf).
I've been told to use vinegar for keeping muck out of condensate lines and pumps. Dunno if that's a regional thing, or superstition about ammonia, or just bad advice, but it does seem to work reasonably. Also helps a ton for sump pumps. You can get specialized tabs for these so you have to look at them less, but I dunno if they're worth it outside of rooftop units.
A lot of outdoor units are obnoxiously far from any hose spigots. If that's you and you don't want to buy three hundred feet of hose, there's three options: foaming coil cleaner with a bucket, or simple green and a pump sprayer. Some people will recommend soft brushes, but I've been very hesitant because the fins are so fragile. Don't use a pressure washer on your outdoor unit. No, not even if it's got a 'gentle' setting. Yes, professional shops have battery-powered sprayers that are usable for this safely; they're like 300+ USD and you're not going to use them enough to justify it.
If you buy a used home, check the indoor unit (evaporator) coils. They should be behind a filter and thus need maintenance a lot less often, but especially if you ever had smokers in the house, they get gummed up bad, and a surprising number of people just remove filters and run without them for weeks at a time. Vacuum the intake side, spray with an indoor-safe evap cleaner on both sides of the coils. If it's cooler months already, even if the evap cleaner says it's 'AC-safe', spray gently with water: it's intended to get washed off by condensate, and you don't want to have the stuff sit for six months. This side has thicker fins, so I'm pretty comfortable brushing them with a soft (eg, workbench) brush.
If your indoor unit is getting cool temperatures, but individual rooms are not, check first if you've got dust buildup in vents, any disconnects or gaps in vent connections, and then consider a booster fan. It's stupid, but especially for attics or big houses they're surprisingly useful.
If you're trying to get a garage, trailer, or recently reno'd attic air conditioners, and you're planning to stay with it for a while, look at mini-splits. They're more upfront cost and the install is much more obnoxious compared to the typical window unit (eg, you may need a licensed electrician for the final electrical hookup), but they're amazingly effective and much more useful in winter months. Not always the right option, but worth evaluating. Don't even bother with those stupid on-wheels mini-fridge-style units unless you have absolutely no other option, they're terrible.
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End my life now. I actually finished with all the refactoring work.... but managed to nuke my project folder, of course without pushing the feature branch either to Github ot to my private server. I just hope things will go faster now that I know exactly what I need to do.
How have you been doing @Southkraut?
RIP. We've all been there.
On a smaller scale, I recently wrote several pages of documentation at work - in Confluence. Having gotten entirely used to the auto-save features of modern text editing software, I thought nothing of just shutting down my machine at end of day. Come next day, it was of course all gone.
Relatively well. It took a lot of effort just to make the time, but I managed to sit down for a solid hour on Sunday, in the course of which I managed to get a lot of debugging and refactoring done. Fixed a few bugs that way and consequently improved my control over the engine. Learned some new C++ tricks. Feels good. Physics is still doing inexplicable nonsense, but I'm reducing the number of ways in which it does so.
I could swear Confluence does autosave as well... welp, one more thing to keep an eye on.
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It shouldn't be gone, it should be saved as a draft. Have you looked in your 'recently worked on' and/or clicked Edit on the page you were modifying?
I clicked edit for sure, but found nothing. Didn't check anything else though - never even knew of "recently worked on"!
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