Author Topic: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread  (Read 18644356 times)

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80200 on: January 20, 2021, 09:18:04 pm »
The house on the blue marker is the same size as my place  :-DD

It's late, I'm tired and I've read at first "palace"   :o   :palm:   :-DD

Ah but soon I will. Once I’ve worked out that world domination thing.

More insanity on eBay. I was prepared to go to £100 on this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184617039740

Well I didn't buy that, but did buy the Dawe counter the same seller had.


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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80201 on: January 20, 2021, 10:20:16 pm »
"Why don't you buy a nice house with a yard? We did when we were 21, when dad was a plumber and I was a stay at home mom."

"Why don't you buy a nice house with a yard? We did when we were 21, when dad was a plumber and I was a stay at home mom."

Yeah full disclosure of my relationship with my father, a notable boomer...

“When your mum was a factory worker and I was on the buses we managed to buy a house. You need to get one. Your kid can’t live in that 2 bedroom place in Nottingham. She needs a garden. And you need a conservatory like us so you can invite people you don’t like over to be impressed at your apparent success. Oh and you need to get an expensive watch otherwise you’re not a real man. Don’t you own any shirts? We always wore shirts. You can’t be successful without wearing a shirt. Why are you still driving that banger - you should have bought a Jaguar or Range Rover by now. You should invest in this idea which I’ve lost £5000 on already. Why are you cooking the dinner? - you’re married! She should be ironing your shirts which you don’t own. I’m going to put classic FM on to sound intelligent but I don’t really like it.”

Thanks guys, I had a great laugh at those.

"Why don't you have a suit?  You need to buy a suit!  You need a $1,000 suit that you'll wear once before it doesn't fit anymore.  How come your little house doesn't have a dining room?  You have to have a dining room.  Where is everyone going to eat when you invite the family you don't get along with over?  Why is your house all the way down the highway down there?  Couldn't you buy a full size detached in town?  Why are you so concerned about replacing your stolen minivan?  Can't you just go to the dealership and buy a new one?  Are you poor?  You're still angry we didn't call 911 after you got hit by lightning?  It was a glancing blow, aren't you carrying a grudge a little too far?  Why are you worried about being laid off from your job?  If that happens, all you need to do is go to one of the plants in town and ask to see the shift supervisor and shake his hand firmly, and he'll hire you.  You don't get the newspaper delivered every morning?  Everyone should get the newspaper delivered every morning otherwise you can't consider yourself to be well informed.  You don't have a wired telephone in your house?  You only have your cellphone?  Why's there a news helicopter hovering over our house filming the neighbour's house?  Turn the TV on so we can find out.  Oh my, how scandalous, I guess we didn't know the neighbour very well, did we?  Can you explain why you sister keeps saying she doesn't think she'll ever be able to buy a house.  What's wrong with your brother?  We don't understand why he cut off all contact with the rest of the family."
 
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Offline cyclin_al

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80202 on: January 20, 2021, 10:34:02 pm »
Are your parents "baby boomers" like me? (Post WW2 until late 1950's or so). Most of us are still pretty aware and on top of things but there is a certain sub group of us that are dumber than a box of rocks.  :palm:

Absolutely.  The rampant sense of entitlement and the willingness combined with the economic means to throw away perfectly good cars, expensive electronics that have barely been used, the works is a pretty good clue that we're dealing with total heads in the clouds baby boomers here.  To their minds, it's still 1968, good jobs are plentiful, housing's cheap, energy's cheap, cars are cheap, everything's cheap and there's unlimited prosperity out there.  So clearly there's something wrong with everyone who's still in the workforce earning stagnant since 1980 wages and complaining that they can't afford a $1-million-plus teardown in suburban Toronto.

To be fair there are people who are dumber than a box of rocks in every generation but the out of touch and entitlement I've seen with a good cross section of baby boomers starting within immediate family is jaw dropping.  I've given it a lot of thought and the only conclusion that I've been able to come to is there's a lot of them out there that don't understand that the decades of post war prosperity are over and a lot of people have been born into a world where the music's stopped and all the chairs have already been taken.

Absolutely, exactly that generation.  Wow, a lot of discussion on this.  Yes, they certainly have a sense of entitlement since they gripe about everything and how bad the stuff is that they buy.  Take a microwave oven for example.  My parents buy a new crappy one every few years and they expect it to be perfect and last forever.  They have the money to throw away on crap over and over again.  However, they along with SWMBO's mother, came from farm families where things were kept as resources just in case (aka hoarding).  They must have learned something from their parents who went through the depression.  When the microwave quits, they toss it on the pile of microwaves on the back deck, because it just might be useful some day.

My observation is they have a certain naivety about things as well.  I suspect that in the good times, problems were relatively minor and could be quickly overshadowed.  They seem to be okay with discounting or ignoring things that might be a bit hard.  My Dad has even said that certain house problems will be left to whoever buys the house in the future.  Meanwhile, he complains about the HVAC...
It worked for employment too.  My Dad was one of those who got a job and the raises and promotions were automatic and he retired with a pension.  There was no need to think about a career.

I do not think all of that generation are dumb.  Rather, they may be lacking the coping mechanisms to deal with difficult change.  They know the decades of prosperity are over, but to understand it means to also understand their own role in it.  Hence, they go on ignoring things as I mentioned above.  No consequences on them, since their account balance is more than adequate.
 
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Offline cyclin_al

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80203 on: January 20, 2021, 10:41:33 pm »
"Why don't you buy a nice house with a yard? We did when we were 21, when dad was a plumber and I was a stay at home mom."

"Why don't you buy a nice house with a yard? We did when we were 21, when dad was a plumber and I was a stay at home mom."

Yeah full disclosure of my relationship with my father, a notable boomer...

“When your mum was a factory worker and I was on the buses we managed to buy a house. You need to get one. Your kid can’t live in that 2 bedroom place in Nottingham. She needs a garden. And you need a conservatory like us so you can invite people you don’t like over to be impressed at your apparent success. Oh and you need to get an expensive watch otherwise you’re not a real man. Don’t you own any shirts? We always wore shirts. You can’t be successful without wearing a shirt. Why are you still driving that banger - you should have bought a Jaguar or Range Rover by now. You should invest in this idea which I’ve lost £5000 on already. Why are you cooking the dinner? - you’re married! She should be ironing your shirts which you don’t own. I’m going to put classic FM on to sound intelligent but I don’t really like it.”

Thanks guys, I had a great laugh at those.

"Why don't you have a suit?  You need to buy a suit!  You need a $1,000 suit that you'll wear once before it doesn't fit anymore.  How come your little house doesn't have a dining room?  You have to have a dining room.  Where is everyone going to eat when you invite the family you don't get along with over?  Why is your house all the way down the highway down there?  Couldn't you buy a full size detached in town?  Why are you so concerned about replacing your stolen minivan?  Can't you just go to the dealership and buy a new one?  Are you poor?  You're still angry we didn't call 911 after you got hit by lightning?  It was a glancing blow, aren't you carrying a grudge a little too far?  Why are you worried about being laid off from your job?  If that happens, all you need to do is go to one of the plants in town and ask to see the shift supervisor and shake his hand firmly, and he'll hire you.  You don't get the newspaper delivered every morning?  Everyone should get the newspaper delivered every morning otherwise you can't consider yourself to be well informed.  You don't have a wired telephone in your house?  You only have your cellphone?  Why's there a news helicopter hovering over our house filming the neighbour's house?  Turn the TV on so we can find out.  Oh my, how scandalous, I guess we didn't know the neighbour very well, did we?  Can you explain why you sister keeps saying she doesn't think she'll ever be able to buy a house.  What's wrong with your brother?  We don't understand why he cut off all contact with the rest of the family."

At Christmas dinner:

Dad:  look at that nice big dividend that company X paid out to the shareholders this year.  I hope the dividend next year will be bigger.  You should get some of those stocks.
 
Me:  Ummmmm, I think I would rather focus on my mortgage instead of stocks.  By the way, company X cancelled my pension plan this year on top of freezing my salary last year.
 
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Offline faraday

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80204 on: January 20, 2021, 10:55:04 pm »
Need new HDD :(
 

Offline BU508A

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80205 on: January 20, 2021, 11:00:16 pm »
Anyway on TE I have a cunning plan.

"Just remember, we're not at home to Mr. Cockup. What aren't we Baldric?"
"We're not at home to Mr Cockup."

Later...

"Shall I prepare the guest room for Mr. Cockup my lord ?"

For those, which aren't that familiar with Blackadder (this includes myself  ;D ):

Scroll down to posting #14

and:

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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80206 on: January 20, 2021, 11:20:01 pm »
...
Yes, they certainly have a sense of entitlement since they gripe about everything and how bad the stuff is that they buy.  Take a microwave oven for example.  My parents buy a new crappy one every few years and they expect it to be perfect and last forever.  They have the money to throw away on crap over and over again.
...

There may be an objective basis there. Older appliances and other household goods were better made, had much longer design lives and were made to be repairable. They also cost significantly more as a proportion of disposable household income. My mother sold her house about 10 years ago and moved into sheltered accommodation as she was losing her sight from macular degeneration. When she did so, she was still using the same cooker, washing machine, fridge, vacuum cleaner, freezer and central heating boiler that had been purchased in the late 60s or early 70s. They were all perfectly serviceable and in everyday use. Starting in the late 1980s when I had my own permanent place for the first time I've been through several of each of those appliances - 3 boilers, three vacuum cleaners, four fridge freezers, two washing machines and so on.

The same thing applies to furniture, mum went through one sofa in that 40-50 years (bought second hand, no less), I'm on my third since 1987 and it badly needs replacing.

Older stuff was made to last, modern stuff is "value engineered" for relatively short replacement cycles.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80207 on: January 20, 2021, 11:29:50 pm »
Are your parents "baby boomers" like me? (Post WW2 until late 1950's or so). Most of us are still pretty aware and on top of things but there is a certain sub group of us that are dumber than a box of rocks.  :palm:

Absolutely.  The rampant sense of entitlement and the willingness combined with the economic means to throw away perfectly good cars, expensive electronics that have barely been used, the works is a pretty good clue that we're dealing with total heads in the clouds baby boomers here.  To their minds, it's still 1968, good jobs are plentiful, housing's cheap, energy's cheap, cars are cheap, everything's cheap and there's unlimited prosperity out there.  So clearly there's something wrong with everyone who's still in the workforce earning stagnant since 1980 wages and complaining that they can't afford a $1-million-plus teardown in suburban Toronto.

To be fair there are people who are dumber than a box of rocks in every generation but the out of touch and entitlement I've seen with a good cross section of baby boomers starting within immediate family is jaw dropping.  I've given it a lot of thought and the only conclusion that I've been able to come to is there's a lot of them out there that don't understand that the decades of post war prosperity are over and a lot of people have been born into a world where the music's stopped and all the chairs have already been taken.

Absolutely, exactly that generation.  Wow, a lot of discussion on this.  Yes, they certainly have a sense of entitlement since they gripe about everything and how bad the stuff is that they buy.  Take a microwave oven for example.  My parents buy a new crappy one every few years and they expect it to be perfect and last forever.  They have the money to throw away on crap over and over again.  However, they along with SWMBO's mother, came from farm families where things were kept as resources just in case (aka hoarding).  They must have learned something from their parents who went through the depression.  When the microwave quits, they toss it on the pile of microwaves on the back deck, because it just might be useful some day.

My observation is they have a certain naivety about things as well.  I suspect that in the good times, problems were relatively minor and could be quickly overshadowed.  They seem to be okay with discounting or ignoring things that might be a bit hard.  My Dad has even said that certain house problems will be left to whoever buys the house in the future.  Meanwhile, he complains about the HVAC...
It worked for employment too.  My Dad was one of those who got a job and the raises and promotions were automatic and he retired with a pension.  There was no need to think about a career.

I do not think all of that generation are dumb.  Rather, they may be lacking the coping mechanisms to deal with difficult change.  They know the decades of prosperity are over, but to understand it means to also understand their own role in it.  Hence, they go on ignoring things as I mentioned above.  No consequences on them, since their account balance is more than adequate.

The decades of prosperity are not over. The days of the middle-class are what is over.

There is more money and property in the US and in Canada than has ever been possible before. The problem is that the entire economy has been turned into a Pyramid scheme yet again, with the privileged few at the top and everybody else at the bottom, and nobody left in the middle to actually produce anything. Every generation of those at the top fucks up the system even more in their own interests, taking more and more from the many and giving it to fewer and fewer, and all the while they blame the poor for their own poverty; by owning all forms of media and locking out independent communication, they are actually even able to make the many believe it is their fault.

This is not a new crisis. America faced exactly this situation a century ago almost to the day; most of the privileged few are even the same families as back then. I'm sorry our/their economic sickness is pulling yours down too... but it is still the reality.

There will be another great Depression; not a matter of if, but when. And that is the only thing that will get rid of these leeches; their money having no value here. They'll retreat to other holdings overseas, while the regular everyday people like you and I will be left to fix the damage.

What the US needs is another FDR. I don't think they can be that lucky twice. And sadly, the longer they take propping up the broken system and circling the drain, the more of a drain on the entire world they become.

mnem
It's kinda like deja vu... kinda like deja vu...
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80208 on: January 20, 2021, 11:33:14 pm »
For those, which aren't that familiar with Blackadder (this includes myself  ;D ):

Well, we know what to get you for next Christmas ... the box set. (Start with series two, watch all the series to the end, then go back and watch the considerably inferior series one as a curiosity.)

Edit: Really, you must watch Blackadder.  It's one of the best things that has been on TV in my lifetime. I suspect that it would just suit your sense of humour. Watch it in English, yours is good enough that you'll get the few bits of wordplay in it (e.g. Tim McInnery playing "Captain Darling" developing a nervous tic every time Captain Blackadder says "Hello, Darling" to him. I'm sure you'll get that without me saying "Hauptmann Schatzie".)
« Last Edit: January 20, 2021, 11:53:03 pm by Cerebus »
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline BU508A

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80209 on: January 20, 2021, 11:45:58 pm »
For those, which aren't that familiar with Blackadder (this includes myself  ;D ):

Well, we know what to get you for next Christmas ... the box set. (Start with series two, watch all the series to the end, then go back and watch the considerably inferior series one as a curiosity.)

I've watched some of them but being a lazy dude I've watched them in German (yes, I know, I got a lot of dressing down from my friends in that respect.  ::) )
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Online tggzzz

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80210 on: January 20, 2021, 11:51:29 pm »
There may be an objective basis there. Older appliances and other household goods were better made, had much longer design lives and were made to be repairable. They also cost significantly more as a proportion of disposable household income. My mother sold her house about 10 years ago and moved into sheltered accommodation as she was losing her sight from macular degeneration. When she did so, she was still using the same cooker, washing machine, fridge, vacuum cleaner, freezer and central heating boiler that had been purchased in the late 60s or early 70s. They were all perfectly serviceable and in everyday use. Starting in the late 1980s when I had my own permanent place for the first time I've been through several of each of those appliances - 3 boilers, three vacuum cleaners, four fridge freezers, two washing machines and so on.

The same thing applies to furniture, mum went through one sofa in that 40-50 years (bought second hand, no less), I'm on my third since 1987 and it badly needs replacing.

Older stuff was made to last, modern stuff is "value engineered" for relatively short replacement cycles.

Yes and no: you can bias things in your favour by looking for reliable brands.

Car: 2004, serviced once every 5 years (I do oil changes)
Fridge: 1989
Freezer: 2002, second hand
Dishwasher: 1990
Washing machine: 2002??
Vacuum cleaner: on my second since 88
Boiler: one replacement since 88
Cooker: same as 88.
Microwave: just bought my second.

I use Which? as a source of reliable brands, and repair myself when necessary. Sugru prolongs dishwasher disholders :) No, I don't buy expensive stuff :)
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80211 on: January 21, 2021, 12:06:34 am »
I've watched some of them but being a lazy dude I've watched them in German (yes, I know, I got a lot of dressing down from my friends in that respect.  ::) )

See my edit above. The timing is so faultless that I just think a dub is never going to work anywhere near as well. The cast contains half the best British comic actors of my generation (and several from earlier generations, not least Peter Cook), not a dud among them. Read the scripts and they just seem flat. Hear the performances and they come to life - "Who's Queen?" is just words, said by Miranda Richardson they've become a meme.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80212 on: January 21, 2021, 12:13:25 am »
Yeah... I'm kindof at a loss here. This is English wordplay at its best. By definition, it really only works in English. Heck, half the "turn of phrase" humor is dependent on both idiom and shared memes, and even a fan of English language humor weirdo like myself only gets a fraction of it. The other half is pervy rhymes.  :-DD

mnem
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80213 on: January 21, 2021, 12:29:40 am »
There may be an objective basis there. Older appliances and other household goods were better made, had much longer design lives and were made to be repairable. They also cost significantly more as a proportion of disposable household income. My mother sold her house about 10 years ago and moved into sheltered accommodation as she was losing her sight from macular degeneration. When she did so, she was still using the same cooker, washing machine, fridge, vacuum cleaner, freezer and central heating boiler that had been purchased in the late 60s or early 70s. They were all perfectly serviceable and in everyday use. Starting in the late 1980s when I had my own permanent place for the first time I've been through several of each of those appliances - 3 boilers, three vacuum cleaners, four fridge freezers, two washing machines and so on.

The same thing applies to furniture, mum went through one sofa in that 40-50 years (bought second hand, no less), I'm on my third since 1987 and it badly needs replacing.

Older stuff was made to last, modern stuff is "value engineered" for relatively short replacement cycles.

Yes and no: you can bias things in your favour by looking for reliable brands.

Car: 2004, serviced once every 5 years (I do oil changes)
Fridge: 1989
Freezer: 2002, second hand
Dishwasher: 1990
Washing machine: 2002??
Vacuum cleaner: on my second since 88
Boiler: one replacement since 88
Cooker: same as 88.
Microwave: just bought my second.

I use Which? as a source of reliable brands, and repair myself when necessary. Sugru prolongs dishwasher disholders :) No, I don't buy expensive stuff :)

Sorry; The difference is right in what you're saying there. It wasn't unusual for a car or any major appliance to last 30 years and more back then, and they were designed with repair in mind, and you could still get parts for that 30-something-year-old whatever without having to go to a specialty parts shop.

Your 30-year-old dishwasher is an aberration, not the norm. Any refrigeration item with sealed system is good for 30 years barring acidic intervention; they invented that stuff back then, and they designed it too well; now they have to find other ways (mostly cheap, brittle plastic interiors) to force turnover.

The big difference is the design scope has been changed from decades to "slightly less than it takes to pay them off" and the ones that last longer are the oddballs; usually owned by folks who take special care of them.

mnem
 :popcorn:
« Last Edit: January 21, 2021, 01:01:08 am by mnementh »
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Offline SilverSolder

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80214 on: January 21, 2021, 01:00:57 am »
[...]
The big difference is the design scope has been changed from decades to "slightly less than it takes to pay them off" and the ones that last longer are the oddballs; usually owned by folks who take special care of them.

mnem
 :popcorn:

I wonder if that is another variable in the equation that has changed?   Perhaps there are less people that are willing/able to take special care of things today, for whatever reason?  (Maybe it's not worth the hassle compared to just chucking the thing and getting a new one?)
 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80215 on: January 21, 2021, 01:08:25 am »
I dunno. It feels more like the disposable world is more the cause than the symptom. When you start thinking of people as disposable, everything else becomes disposable too. That is a direct result of the oligarchy/corporate mindset. The only people they'll pay well are those that re-engineer themselves to be a single purpose tool explicitly for them, and those who keep their secrets. People who can actually create something new are treated as a threat.

Everybody else they try to replace with machines or make the job so that it turns a person into a machine. People who think for themselves are shunned; unemployable.

mnem
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Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80216 on: January 21, 2021, 02:52:18 am »
...
Yes, they certainly have a sense of entitlement since they gripe about everything and how bad the stuff is that they buy.  Take a microwave oven for example.  My parents buy a new crappy one every few years and they expect it to be perfect and last forever.  They have the money to throw away on crap over and over again.
...

There may be an objective basis there. Older appliances and other household goods were better made, had much longer design lives and were made to be repairable. They also cost significantly more as a proportion of disposable household income. My mother sold her house about 10 years ago and moved into sheltered accommodation as she was losing her sight from macular degeneration. When she did so, she was still using the same cooker, washing machine, fridge, vacuum cleaner, freezer and central heating boiler that had been purchased in the late 60s or early 70s. They were all perfectly serviceable and in everyday use. Starting in the late 1980s when I had my own permanent place for the first time I've been through several of each of those appliances - 3 boilers, three vacuum cleaners, four fridge freezers, two washing machines and so on.

The same thing applies to furniture, mum went through one sofa in that 40-50 years (bought second hand, no less), I'm on my third since 1987 and it badly needs replacing.

Older stuff was made to last, modern stuff is "value engineered" for relatively short replacement cycles.
Correct, and on top of that I doubt that the prices have really down that much in comparison to the savings made by value engineering. Modern business today is all about making as much money as is possible in as little time as possible. The value engineering is all part of that cycle, designed to ensure that they sell more items as well.
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Offline beanflying

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80217 on: January 21, 2021, 03:01:07 am »
Bit of a rough head but it needs a new home @med  >:D eBay auction: #265011656740

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80218 on: January 21, 2021, 03:01:16 am »
SNIP

There will be another great Depression; not a matter of if, but when. And that is the only thing that will get rid of these leeches; their money having no value here. They'll retreat to other holdings overseas, while the regular everyday people like you and I will be left to fix the damage.

What the US needs is another FDR. I don't think they can be that lucky twice. And sadly, the longer they take propping up the broken system and circling the drain, the more of a drain on the entire world they become.

mnem
It's kinda like deja vu... kinda like deja vu...
Hmm, I think the history books show that FDR taking the US into WW2 and the massive spending spree that entailed is really what ended the depression, do we really want WW3 to be a solution? 
Who let Murphy in?

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Offline med6753

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80219 on: January 21, 2021, 03:34:21 am »
Bit of a rough head but it needs a new home @med  >:D eBay auction: #265011656740



Catskill, NY is about 45 minutes away. I added it to my watch list. I may toss a bid on it Friday morning before it closes.

Thanks for the heads up.  :-+ 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80220 on: January 21, 2021, 04:05:51 am »
SNIP

There will be another great Depression; not a matter of if, but when. And that is the only thing that will get rid of these leeches; their money having no value here. They'll retreat to other holdings overseas, while the regular everyday people like you and I will be left to fix the damage.

What the US needs is another FDR. I don't think they can be that lucky twice. And sadly, the longer they take propping up the broken system and circling the drain, the more of a drain on the entire world they become.

mnem
It's kinda like deja vu... kinda like deja vu...
Hmm, I think the history books show that FDR taking the US into WW2 and the massive spending spree that entailed is really what ended the depression, do we really want WW3 to be a solution?

Oh lord... there was so much going on then besides the war; which was largely driven by global economic pressures and sanction fallout from WWI and would have happened whether it was him at the helm or not. He tapped the war production engine to turn the economy around, but that engine was already in place & running. However, there was a lot of other stuff he did too; not the least of which was stick and carrot manipulation of the state governments and even to a certain extent Congress; making it worth more to root out the corruption on a local level. What he spent feeding millions was a drop in the bucket compared to what is wasted now.

It's not like the US doesn't already have massive war production going on already; the war for oil has been going on my entire adult life. Maybe it's time to turn some of that expenditure of resources and logistical wizardry back homeward, to put people back to work rebuilding a working economy along with the nation's abused and neglected infrastructure. Yeah, now that I think of it; we could use some of Eisenhauer's pragmatism as well. :-//

mnem
*toddling off to ded*
« Last Edit: January 21, 2021, 04:17:09 am by mnementh »
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Offline vk6zgo

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80221 on: January 21, 2021, 05:49:25 am »
Are your parents "baby boomers" like me? (Post WW2 until late 1950's or so). Most of us are still pretty aware and on top of things but there is a certain sub group of us that are dumber than a box of rocks.  :palm:

Absolutely.  The rampant sense of entitlement and the willingness combined with the economic means to throw away perfectly good cars, expensive electronics that have barely been used, the works is a pretty good clue that we're dealing with total heads in the clouds baby boomers here.  To their minds, it's still 1968, good jobs are plentiful, housing's cheap, energy's cheap, cars are cheap, everything's cheap and there's unlimited prosperity out there.  So clearly there's something wrong with everyone who's still in the workforce earning stagnant since 1980 wages and complaining that they can't afford a $1-million-plus teardown in suburban Toronto.

Do you want some cheese to go with that whine?
As always with people who bring up the "bash the baby boomers" line, you fairly obviously come from a  quite affluent demograph.

Most "baby boomers" (& "war babies" like myself) are "poor as church mice", as we were subject to the same "stagnant since 1980" wages, as well as the propensity of employers to chuck older workers on the scrapheap & replace them with younger ones at lower wages.

After finally paying off the bloody millstone called a house, we haven't got a lot left, & if we don't have a nice fat superannuation nest egg, on retirement, are stuck with the Aged Pension.

"Throw away perfectly good cars, expensive electronic equipment"?
Nah! cars have to last at least 5 years, with many around 10 years .

If you are talking about consumer electronics,  most of that stuff also has to last around a decade.

Some becomes just useless crud----- who but a collector, would want a Nintendo "Wii" these days?

The requirement for long life was already there in the 1960s.
I kept my first new car for 10 years, same with my second, & only bought secondhand after that.
 
1968? Yeah, I had a good job in '68, after I had studied hard whilst working at a fairly lousy one for six years, then spending  3 years " learning the ropes" at the new one.

The pay was great after the old job, but the guys who were still doing that job weren't getting paid much more than when I left.

'68 definitely was a time when the ordinary worker was beginning to share in the prosperity, so we could start buying a few things.
They were still expensive compared to our wages, but were usually well made, & would last years, plus be fixable if they failed.

Easy to get a job?

Definitely much easier than now, but "going down to mill & asking" didn't hack it.
You had to send an application in your own handwriting stating why you should get the job.
That would get you an interview, but get this, -------there was no HR dept, so you usually talked to either your new boss to be, or their boss, people who actually knew how things worked!
Quote

To be fair there are people who are dumber than a box of rocks in every generation but the out of touch and entitlement I've seen with a good cross section of baby boomers starting within immediate family is jaw dropping.  I've given it a lot of thought and the only conclusion that I've been able to come to is there's a lot of them out there that don't understand that the decades of post war prosperity are over and a lot of people have been born into a world where the music's stopped and all the chairs have already been taken.
 
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Offline Saskia

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80222 on: January 21, 2021, 06:44:45 am »
I've (almost) always had to work hard for anything. Our pension plan is a joke, after 45 years I'll be lucky if I get 20% of my gross. It seems to me that our state run pension scheme is the master ponzi blueprint after which all the others were modelled.
What's worse, the pension is taxable, plus I have to pay about 1000/month health insurance. Which is about 40% of the pension.

And don't get me started on family. I filed a petition for "divorce from parents" which was denied. Fortunately they apparently honor that restraining order and get nowhere near me.

« Last Edit: January 21, 2021, 07:11:12 am by Saskia »
 

Offline beanflying

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80223 on: January 21, 2021, 07:23:34 am »
Volume Testing equipment  :-+ Busted my last 'borrowed' Pint Glass from the local Pub and had to actually go buy some replacement ones. GOt to a warmish 30C outside and the Beer was an appropriate 3.5C ;D

Local commercial kitchen supplier I have dealt with for over 5 years dropping them A LOT of $ wanted to sell me a box lot of 72 Commercial Pint Glasses now an EX Customer  |O Braved Bogan Central the local Kmart and dropped $12/6
Coffee, Food, R/C and electronics nerd in no particular order. Also CNC wannabe, 3D printer and Laser Cutter Junkie and just don't mention my TEA addiction....
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #80224 on: January 21, 2021, 08:07:46 am »
Quick article on “art” for all the folk who received damaged and broken stuff over the years:

https://kottke.org/21/01/fedex-shipping-damage-creates-fractured-artworks
 
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