Ignorance is Expensive!

For many, ignorance is bliss, until they get the bill.

A lot of people in America tend to view "actually knowing something" as something only lowly tradespeople do.  You know how to make a latte with a leaf in the foam - you can work for Starbucks at minimum wage.  But as a customer - who can't even boil water without setting the stove on fire - you are better than that!  No messy getting your hands dirty!

And so on down the line.  The car mechanic is considered "beneath" the office worker, who knows little more than how to attend meetings and watch powerpoint presentations (the making of which, of course, is beneath them - some underling handles that!).   How their smart phone works is a mystery - but hey, they can afford to upgrade to the latest and greatest every two years with a "bundled" plan, right?

It seems we have a nation of rich idiots - or people who think they are rich, but are just middle-class folks with a bad attitude - narcissism.  And maybe this comes from insecurity.  Let's face it, there are a lot of people who are paid a lot of money to work at "jobs" where they really are unnecessary to the operation of the company.

But in the long run, ignorance is not strength, nor is it very profitable.  The less you know about a subject, the worse off you are in the marketplace.  And this is true for all levels of income and social status.  For the very poor, it means being very much poorer.  For the middle-class, it means sliding down the economic ladder while surrounded by bling.  Even for the very, very rich, it often means a trip to bankruptcy court, as they fail to appreciate that "a lot of money" can disappear quickly when spent very fast.

It's easy to pick on the poor for signing up for ignorant deals like payday loans or buy-here-pay-here used cars or rent-to-own furniture or rent-to-own bling rims or whatever shitty deal they are pushing on the poor this week.  Lottery tickets, for example.  Poor people, by and large, are not very smart people, but worse yet, are poorly educated in poor schools.  You look at States with poor educational levels and you see more people in poverty.  And yes, some forces in the world want to see things this way - after all, you can't sell a payday loan to someone who understands compound interest, can you?   Teaching that would be worse than Critical Race Theory!   Actually, if you think about it, they are related.   Onerous debt instruments have been used to exploit minorities since the dawn of our country.

But the middle-class has no such excuse, right?  After all, they are smarter, go to better schools, and are better educated - right?  Maybe they were, but something has changed.  When I grew up, my parents were always quick to point out raw deals and scams, as they had been educated about these things, perhaps first in school, and then in the school of hard knocks.  Their primary education was surviving the Great Depression - they knew firsthand how it could all go away in a heartbeat.  They were skeptical of anything that sounded too-good-to-be-true.

Today?  Not so much.  I get e-mails (or used to) from people telling me that leasing a car is a swell deal - you get more car for the money!   And perhaps most of those comments were from shills for the leasing industry.  We didn't have "influencers" so much in 1960, except perhaps for people on television.  And back then, they didn't promote as many raw deals, other than smoking, perhaps.

But it strikes me that ignorance is a very expensive hobby these days - particularly in a world dominated by technology.  In America as well as most of the Western world (and even in developing nations) you have to own at least some technology to even survive.  It may sound dramatic, but it is very hard to get a job without a cell phone these days.  You need a call-back number, an e-mail address, a number you can be texted to, and maybe even an "app" to download for the job application.  Some jobs even require (or prefer) if you use your personal cell phone for work.

This is why we have the so-called "Obamaphone" and why you see "homeless" people texting.  Without the "luxury" of a cell phone, they can't get a job, apply for government benefits, or communicate with anyone.

We are a nation of 330 million people and 276 million cars - or more than one car for each driving-age person in America.  We are also a nation of 390 million guns - not that everyone needs or has a gun (indeed, gun ownership per capita has declined since I was a kid) but that some folks feel the need to own several of them or even dozens.   But getting back to cars, it is essential to own some sort of car in many parts of the country, to get to work, to get to the store - to get anywhere.  Our society is structured so that people live miles apart, and miles apart from work or shopping.

Our homes have become more complex as well.  A typical American home - even for someone living "at the poverty line" has a refrigerator, a microwave, a stove, air conditioning, a hot water heater - as well as other appliances.  And all of these things have gotten more complex (and expensive) over time as technology improves.

If you don't understand how these things work, you are perpetually at a disadvantage when it comes time to buy anew or have something repaired - or even know if it is worth repairing.  If you can't figure out how to keep viruses off your phone or your computer, you will end up spending a lot of time and money at "the genius bar" - that is, if you are ignorant enough to pay 10x the money for an Apple product so you can have "peace of mind."

Peace of mind - the ultimate scam.  You can't sell it, you can't buy it - but every merchant offers it.  "Buy this extended warranty and have peace of mind!" - and insure the least likely time for any component to fail.  It illustrates how we are afraid of our own technology because we don't understand it.  We buy complex tech and then live in fear of it breaking.  Maybe a better idea is to not buy technology you can't afford to walk away from, if it breaks bad down the road.  Less may be more.

The problem, of course, is that technology keeps getting more complex, and we as humans stop learning at some point.  We bought an a "Class-C" motorhome in the late 1990's and went on a trip. We stopped for gas and after we left, the "check engine" light came on. It seemed the RV wasn't running right so I stopped at an auto parts store and replaced the spark plugs and wires and distributor cap (why, I am still not sure).  The "check engine" light was still on.  What gives?

I figured it out the next time we stopped for gas - I had forgotten to put the gas cap back on!   Turns out that vehicles made after 1995 or so have a sensor that detects leaks in the evaporative emissions system (itself a technology instituted in 1973 or so) that recycles gas fumes from the gas tank.   Leave the gas cap off, and the system thinks there is one helluva leak!

That was then.  At least I wasn't the only one to fall into this tech trap.   I read online, sob stories from people who paid hundreds of dollars to have their car towed to the dealer, fearing major engine damage, only to be told their gas cap was loose!  It wasn't like this was announced in the papers or anything - the learning curve was steep - and expensive!

Years later, they have a separate light in some cars (or a message) telling you to "check gas cap" or there are instructions on the fuel filler door about the possibility of the CE light going off if the gas cap isn't tightened.  I tend to run mine three clicks to be sure.  The F150 has a capless system - you just jam the nozzle in the hole and pump.   It took a lot of pissed-off people to enact these changes.

I went back to school, so to speak and got a OBD-II code reader (and today, laptop interface) and tried to learn about emissions systems and devices.  There was a lot to learn - I had to ditch my carburetor-era education and embrace the future.  And no one likes change.  But I realized that a lot of this fancy new tech was actually better than the old school designs.  More reliable and more efficient and longer-lasting - provided you knew how these things worked and didn't try to apply old-school tools and techniques to modern technology.

Of course, it could be worse.  I recall the guy at Carrier who bought a new Monte Carlo and when it wouldn't start one day, went under the hood and started tearing out wires, convinced that "all this pollution control stuff" was causing the problem.   Of course, at that point, the car would not run at all, and it had to be towed to the dealer for repair - at his expense, even though it was still under warranty.

Ignorance isn't bliss - it is pain, most of the time.  And it gets expensive - fast.

The Pellet Gun Incident(s)

When your parents get older, they may enter a second childhood. Sadly, this means they have to enter a second adolescence first!

In my previous posting, I posited that it wasn't such a bad idea to gently misdirect your parents away from conspiracy theory videos and towards knitting videos.  Grandmas should be knitting sweaters for the grand-babies - not making Molotov cocktails in the garage for the insurrection.

And I have some experience with this.  My parents, as they aged, started to lose their minds - as we all do as we get older.  Perhaps that is one reason why old people should not be running the government.  Neither should young people, for that matter - they tend to pine for impractical pie-in-the-sky ideas like "guaranteed annual income" without thinking of the obvious consequences.  There is a reason the Constitution requires the minimum age for Presidents to be 35.

And as I look back, my peak years, in terms of earning power and cognitive ability, were in the 30's and 40's.  This blog is a diary of my slowly deteriorating cognition.  Within a decade, I will be writing single-word essays such as "Covfefe."

Toward the end, both of my parents regressed into childhood - acting like grade-school kids and eventually as infants - unable to care for themselves and soiling their diapers.  It is the inevitable decline we must all face, unless you are lucky, like my neighbor who just took a nap one day and never woke up.

But before they entered their second childhood, they entered their second adolescence.  When I was a teenager, they were in their 50's and boy-howdy did they get as randy as teens - they both had girlfriends!   Their behavior became more irrational - they started drinking a lot and dressing funny. "I'm just trying to express myself!" they claimed - even as they were dressing just like the rest of the AARP set.  Fortunately, they didn't go Goth.

When they moved to Maryland, my Dad bought a pellet gun.  Ostensibly, this was to shoot at squirrels and raccoons who were raiding their sun-seared vegetable garden.  My neighbors are going through this phase right now - thinking it would be cute to plant some tomatoes and peppers.  The deer ate the plants right down to the nub, so they are investing hundreds of dollars on screens and nets and deer repellant to grow $5 worth of tomatoes.   And when they are ripe, the racoons will gnaw through the netting and take one bite out of each tomato.

I know this, as I tried to grow a vegetable garden in New York, with similar results.  I think we got a pepper out of it.  We saw juicy tomatoes almost ripe on the vine once.  "We'll pick those tomorrow!" we said.  The next day we went out and it was like they never existed.  Growing a vegetable garden requires a lot of work and patience and a lot of equipment to keep out the critters, who for some reason are very persistent.  I guess they don't like starving for some reason.  Funny thing, that.

Anyway, they plugged a squirrel or two, and maybe a bird - which is probably illegal.  But one day, the guy who sold them the property showed up and started digging on the edge of the property.  The guy had bought about 30 acres of land and divided it up into six, five-acre lots.  He sold them all, so he had no real interest in the property anymore, particularly from a legal standpoint.  But he had made a "right of way" for the property owners so the landlocked lot owners could launch a boat or watch the sunset.  And he was upset that my parents had planted some plants along the right-of-way, although he was no longer a property owner and was in fact, trespassing.

Well, an argument ensued and from what I can tell, Dad started whacking the guy with his shovel ("He started it!" he said - remember what I said about reverting to teenagers?) and then Mom comes out waving the pellet gun, which was a realistic looking thing that from a distance looked much like a real gun.  The Police were called and everyone was arrested and suddenly I'm now the Dad having to bail out my teenage children and appear before the judge promising that it was just senile indiscretion and that they deserve a second chance.  The roles, they have been reversed.

But it didn't end there.   I told Dad to get rid of the pellet gun - throw it in the bay before they got into more trouble.  But he decided to keep it for "protection" which is idiotic as you'd be hard-pressed to kill or subdue someone with a pellet gun unless maybe you shot them in the eye and got lucky and it penetrated their brain.  Even then, not likely - I have a friend who shot himself in the head with a .357 Magnum and he's still breathing, albeit with one less eye.  Amazing what surgeons can do these days.  Our medical care exceeds that of any other major country in one area - treatment of gunshot wounds.  Take that, socialist medicine!

His theory was, if someone broke into the house, he would wave the pellet gun around, and like on television, the perpetrator would cower in acquiescence until the Police arrived and took him into custody.  Dom-Dum!  They've been watching too many episodes of Law and Order.  The reality of "self protection" is that even if you have a real gun, there is a good chance that the wired meth-head who is coming through your bedroom window will take it from you and shoot you with it.  In self-defense, there is draw, aim, and shoot - and shoot to kill.  There is no margin for error, either.   You hesitate, you are dead.  You make a mistake,  you kill an innocent person - such as a family member.

It is hard enough with a real gun.  With a pellet gun?  You are going to have your ass handed to you on a platter.

Anyway, their place was out in the country and the locals had been hunting for deer there for over a century.  So they wandered onto the property with their deer rifles, looking for food.  Granted, you are not supposed to hunt within X yards of a domicile (500 yards?) so they were not only trespassing, but breaking the law.   But the completely wrong thing to do was to confront them, waving around a pellet gun aimed at their head.

As I explained to my parents (sigh), if the hunters decided they were "in fear of imminent death or great bodily harm" they could have shot my parents dead and faced no consequences whatsoever.  Not even charged!  It is self-defense, period.  It doesn't matter if the gun wasn't real, so long as they thought it was real and realistically believed they were about to be shot with it - which was a reasonable belief at the time.

Hell, even if they were charged with manslaughter, who cares?  You're still dead.  I mean, I guess I could have tried to sue these flat-broke watermen for wrongful death, but even then, I would probably lose even under a "preponderance of the evidence" standard.   Pellet guns are just trouble, period.

I suppose even if they knew it was a pellet gun it might be justifiable homicide.  Some of these guns, powered by CO2 cartridges, can really fling a .22-sized pellet with considerable velocity, particularly at close range.  Someone says they are going to shoot you with a pellet gun - or even a taser - don't you have the right to say, "I don't think so!" and neutralize the threat?  Remember, the standard for self-defense is "fear of imminent death or great bodily harm."   I don't think the law requires you to be a punching bag or a pin-cushion.

Now recently - and in the not-so-distant past - there have been incidents where people have been shot and killed for waving around pellet guns.  There was one in Canada, as I recall, recently, where someone was walking around with an air rifle and ended up getting shot by a cop.  In another celebrated case, a young boy was pointing a pellet gun - with the orange tip removed - at people and was shot by responding officers.

And in both cases - as well as others - people online piled on about how "It was just a pellet gun, man!" and that the shooting was unjustified.  And maybe it was - maybe not.  I wasn't there - and neither were they.   Kids with guns kill people.  Someone carrying a rifle down a city street is up to no good, particularly in gun-shy Canada (I suppose in Texas, it is an everyday occurrence).

And many of these guns are frighteningly realistic - such as the BB gun shown above, which looks like an automatic pistol.  If you wave one of these around or point it at someone, and they have a real gun, you can pretty much expect to be shot - whether the person is a policeman or not.  The police aren't going to say, "May I see that weapon for a moment?  I need to determine whether it is a real gun or not, so I can decide whether lethal force is authorized and necessary."

By the way, this all goes the same for replica weapons as well.

We are so quick to judge in this country - and start a torch-and-pitchfork parade.   A vet tells a customer that it will cost $10,000 to heal their dog, which they cannot afford.  The owner surrenders the dog to the vet, who then heals him.  The former owner now wants the dog back - such a crime!  Such a click-bait story ideal for a Sinclair television station to publish.  The real story is more nuanced - but that doesn't get reported until days later.  Meanwhile, the vet is getting daily death threats, likely from teenagers on the Internet.

You point a pellet gun at someone and threaten them with it, that's assault, and like my parents, you will end up in jail.  By the way, that wasn't the first time for my Mom, who decided that since she was in "First Class" she could smoke on an airplane.  She got to meet some FBI agents when they landed.  Such fun.  Fortunately that was before 9/11 or she would really have been in the shits.  But again, second childhood or more precisely, second adolescence.

If you point a pellet gun at someone holding a real gun, whether they are a police officer or a hunter or an ordinary citizen or even a burglar, the consequences are more dire by a factor of 1000.  You will likely end up dead and the shooter will not even be charged (except maybe the burglar, but hey, you're still dead, eh?).

I am not sure what a legitimate reason for owning a pellet gun is.  I guess you could target practice with it and plink old tin cans for fun.  Make sure your neighbor's house isn't downrange, of course.   You could shoot squirrels or Iguanas, but the latter are very hard to kill.  It is legal to shoot these in Florida now, but I recall an "outrage" story a few years back when a dead Iguana was x-rayed and found to have a dozen pellets in him, along with a .22 caliber bullet which finished the job.  You can shoot an Iguana with a pellet gun and he will just look at you and say, "That all you got?"   Don't ask me how I know.  It wasn't my pellet gun.

Shooting songbirds is, of course, illegal, and could get you into a ton of trouble.

Many parents buy BB guns and pellet guns for their kids, convinced they are "safe" for children and adolescents.   Of course, you can still shoot your eye out with it, or a friend's eye.  I remember in Kindergarten (!!) a kid named "Dirk" who used to eat paste and put crayons in his ears.  I was invited to his house once and he had a BB gun (!!) and we went up to his killer treehouse and he plinked at squirrels.  He was kind of spoiled rotten and the elevator didn't go all the way to the top with him, I'm afraid.  When I got home, I excitedly told my parents about the BB gun, which was a mistake, as I was never allowed to go to Dirk's house again.  Probably for the best - I still have both eyes.

Another friend of mine, who was kind of goofy - I wrote about him before, throwing rocks at streetlights - he thought it would be a swell idea to shoot his pellet gun at passing cars.  And in another brilliant move, he decided (at age 15) to do this right in front of my house.  Needless to say, he blew out someone's side window and the State Police were called.   He ran away and wasn't charged and my parents were pissed off to be sure.  Of course, the motorist was terrified - a side window suddenly exploding - he thought he was being shot at with a gun, which of course, he was - a pellet gun.

So pellet guns and BB guns for kids and adolescents is probably a bad idea as well.  That little kid in Chicago got shot playing with a realistic BB gun in the park, pointing it at people.   For some reason, people are quick to blame the Police but no one bothers to ask why a 10-year-old has a pellet gun in the first place, and has so little training as to go around pointing it at people.  Then again, my friend did just as stupid at thing, five years older, shooting at parked cars.

Sadly, it points to an utter lack of proper firearms training.  Giving a kid a BB gun or a pellet gun without some supervision and training is a recipe for disaster.  And if someone isn't responsible - as my friend wasn't  and as my parents weren't - it is a bad idea for them to have a gun of any sort.

But overall, I think pellet guns are a bad idea.  At the very least, if you are going to get one, make sure it is bright orange and labeled "pellet gun" in inch-high letters.  But even then, there may still be trouble.

Deprogramming Your Quanonsense Relatives?

Is it possible to deprogram someone from a cult by reprogramming them to something else?  Maybe.

A person online posted a technique to "deprogram" their parents from Qanonsense.  How did they do this?  Well, as you might expect, the parents, being old and not very bright (hence following Qanonsense) were always stepping in the dogshit with  their phones and computer - loading viruses or useless toolbars, bloatware, and other add-ons, until the computer or phone slows to a crawl.

So the son or daughter goes in and cleans things out and notices that their search history has links to lots of Qanonsense sites.  They delete the search history and cookies (so those sites don't come up as suggestions on Google) and clear all their cookies, and then unsubscribe from the newsletters and YouTube channels, and then enter all the URLs for Qanonsense sites into their router's "blocked sites" list.  Now, when Mom or Dad goes on the computer, Google doesn't auto-fill with suggestions to Qanonsense sites.  YouTube doesn't show Qanonsense as the first five hits.  And Qanonsense newsletters don't appear in their inbox.

Similarly, on Facebook, the son or daughter has hit "dislike" on any Qanonsense postings and "unfriended" any Qanonsense believers.   When Mom or Dad go on Facebook, the first thing they see are postings from their loving children and relatives, not horrible misinformation and hate-speech memes from Qanonsense followers or anti-vaxxers or whatever.

On the phone, they delete text messages from Qanonsense sources and block their numbers (and also type "STOP" to unsubscribe, if that is an option).

But that's not enough.  The parents have been trained on Qanonsense, and as my knitting experiment posting showed,  the system will revert back to bad habits in a short period of time, unless you can "train" the algoritm on something else.   You are, in effect, training two neural networks - the Google AI and your parents' brains.

Oh, you believe in "free will" and all of that?  Hahahahahahahahahh..  Sorry.  It doesn't really exist.  We are all influenced by our environment, including other people, whether they are in-person or online or on television.  And for some reason, people find it easier to be influenced by an electronic avatar than by someone in-person, even their own child (particularly their own child - what the heck do they know!).

So you have to re-program the cult member with new data.  You can't just cut ties to the old cult - it will find its way back into their brain, one way or another.

So, subscribe Mom and Dad to bird-watching channels.  Maybe Dad would like to watch videos of old muscle cars.  Get them on a mailing list for a cruise line - maybe they'll go.  It is a better waste of money that Qanonsense, for sure.  And yes, knitting or needlepoint channels and subscriptions are also a good idea.  Whatever hobbies or interests you can think of - cars, model airplanes, cooking, gardening, travel, whatever.   Make sure you sign them up on Facebook, YouTube, e-mail subscriptions, and text messages as well.

It wouldn't hurt to throw in some physical media as well.  Sign them up for subscriptions to hobby magazines and the like.  Southern Home or Better Homes and Gardens.  Maybe it would encourage them to get off the Internet and paint the family room.  Cooking magazines are also a good idea.  Instead of being glued to the TeeVee and Tucker Carlson, they might decide to make a gourmet meal.

You are only limited by your own imagination - the idea is to put other things in front of them to make them realize there is more to life than obsessing about conspiracy theories and politics.  The worst thing you could do is to try to steer their political beliefs by subscribing them to left-leaning websites or channels debunking Qanonsense.  That would just tip your hand in the matter and also further entrench their crazy ideas.   Head-on attacks rarely work - but flanking maneuvers are effective almost every time.

Then hand them back their phones and pads and laptops and tell them you cleaned up all those nasty viruses and bloatware for them.   Then watch the fun begin.

Would this idea work?  Beats me.  The author claims it would, provided the subjects were not aware they were being manipulated (not hard to do, as they were not aware they were being manipulated by Qanonsense!).  Oftentimes, making a good example is all it takes to turn people around.  It is easy to hate on the gays when they are "other people" wearing weird costumes in a gay pride parade in the gay ghetto.  You can demonize them - make them less-than-human.  But when they are your next-door neighbor, maybe things might be different. It is much harder to hate on a minority when you actually know some.

Gentle persuasion works better than a head-on attack.  When you attack someone's beliefs, they think you are attacking them and they shut down and entrench themselves further.

Some have critiqued the proposed idea on the grounds that it is unfair manipulation -  basically using the same propaganda techniques as the Qanonsense, Anti-Vaxxers, and Flat-Earthers use.   Perhaps, but all's fair in love and war, as they say, and if you really love your parents, maybe misdirecting them isn't such a bad idea.   After all, the people harming their minds have no qualms about manipulating them, do they?

Of course, this idea appeared on the Internet, so whether it really happened or is just someone's wet dream is hard to know - people make up stuff on the Internet all the time.  Sometimes they do it just to see if people are dumb enough to go along with it.  The Flat-Earth thing I think started out as a joke.  And the "birds aren't real" was a joke but apparently it is so over-the-top there are a few true believers.

I don't think it is evil to steer someone away from hatred and conspiracy theories and extreme politics and toward knitting.  In fact, the world would be a better place for it.  No one ever died or went to jail from knitting, as far as I know!

Gotta Get It!

People tell you that you have to have certain things.  Do you?

Walking around our island, we have a chance to talk with each other and discuss things.  And one thing that puzzles us is how people feel they need to buy certain things due to peer pressure.  I'll give you an example.

When we moved to the island, we met a few people and we had them over for drinks.  Someone said, "You have to go to Sears and get these TV snack tables - they are handy when you have company over!" And everyone nodded in agreement.  When I went to their houses they all had the exact same set of TV snack trays from Sears - in sort of an oak stain, with a stand.

So, off to Sears we went - they were still in business at the time - and we found the exact same set of snack trays and bought them because that was what one did.  And they were pretty useful I guess, but looking back we wonder why we were so easily influenced.  What's more, when we go to estate sales on the island, we see these sets of TV snack trays for sale and nod our heads - the relics of an earlier era, as slowly the "old guard" is moving off the island, often feet-first, and the new blood has no idea about TV snack trays and Sears is no more!

It gets weirder.  A house sold down the street for about $600,000 in original condition.  That means original kitchen and appliances from 1970 - yes, 30 years old (take that! Weibull curve!).  In the garage was a "red bug" GEM electric car which used to be rented on the island (they rent golf carts now, as they are cheaper and more reliable).   The folks who lived there barely visited the island more than once every other month and stayed for maybe a few days, if that.  But they "had to have" a "buggy" because that is what one does.

It is funny, but like the snack trays, so many people have gone out and bought golf carts or NEVs, often spending $10,000 or more on these and then never using them.  The GEM electric down the street was sold for a thousand dollars or so - it had dead batteries and needed work just from sitting for so long.  Once the batteries went dead, the owner stopped using it, and it just cluttered up the garage.  And the GEM guy wanted $2000 for new batteries!  (They are $600 a set at the wholesale club and take about a half-hour to install yourself).

But that is typical - we see dozens of friends with golf carts who never use them.  Meanwhile, we drive our $300 ratted-out "buggy" about everywhere.   Many folks get nervous that "the batteries will go dead" so they stop using them.   And heterosexual men have this phobia about replacing batteries in their cars - or golf carts - so the "batteries going dead" deal becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  You have to replace them about every five years in golf carts.  Fortunately, newer carts have lithium-ion batteries that will last a decade or more - perhaps far more.

Most every couple on the island has two cars as well.  Why two cars?  "Well that one is hers, and this one is mine!" they say.  Then they ask us whose car the hamster "belongs" to - and get mystified when we say it is both of ours.  Again, a normative cue - you have to have your own car, your own cell phone, your own computer and today, your own television.  No one wants to do things together anymore, even ride in a car that seats nine people.

What I have learned - the hard way - over time is that while cars are fun and all, they are a huge hole in your budget.  Having an extra car is really pointless, particularly in retirement, particularly when you both go to the same places together, particularly when you already own a golf cart as well, particularly when you never leave the island but once a week at best.

Then again, driving all over hell's half-acre is another normative cue.  We knew a couple (the folks who told us to buy the snack trays, actually) who left the island once a day, driving 30 miles round-trip into town to "run errands" - go shopping, buy groceries, buy liquor, stop at a restaurant, and so on and so forth. They complained their credit card debt was creeping up but could not figure out why.  And the darn car kept breaking down, too!  I wonder why?

We try to plan our town trips a week in advance - making lists of places to go and what to buy.  Often, we figure out it is easier and cheaper to order online, as the prices are better, selection better, and the cost of driving into town is more than shipping costs - if there even are any.  But our friends were conditioned, though years of long habit, of driving into town every day for jobs, for shopping, for socialization.  It was a habit they could not break.

I was fortunate that two decades before "work from home" became a thing, I was working from home.  And initially, I used to drive to the Patent Office to file documents once a day or every other day.  But over time, I found it easier, cheaper, and more reliable to file online, as that service became available (we could file by fax before then, and did).  So I stopped leaving the house, which was weird at first, but over time I got used to it and realized it was a better deal.  I got back two hours of my life from commuting.  I could spend my "lunch hour" playing with the dog in a deserted local park, while having a sandwich that cost me little to make.  And once you're off the leash, it is darn hard to go back.

So what's the point of all of this?  Well, again, normative cues rear their ugly head.  We like to think we are unique and different, but like that oddly-dressed teenager "just trying to express themselves" they are doing so in a manner nearly identical to every other teenager.  And it doesn't end with the teenage years - we all try to "fit in" and when confronted with new surroundings, we look around to see what everyone else is doing, and copy that.

And that is how we ended up with TV snack trays.

Your Hot Water Heater And You

People think they don't need flood insurance.  They never think about their hot water heater.

How water heaters use to be cheap - you could buy one for a couple-hundred bucks at Lowe's or Home Depot.  They aren't too hard to install, although you have to know how to work with gas lines if you have a gas heater, or 220V electricity if you have an electric one.  Not for amateurs.

Like most home appliances, they have a design life of about 15 years.  After that point, one of two things (or both things) happen.  First, one or both heating elements may burn out, or corrode through and burn out, and replacing them is sort of like fixing an older washing machine - you'll spend half as much as you would buying a new one, and you'll end up buying the new one in a year or two, anyway.

The second thing is leaking.  And by leaking, I mean flooding.  We had an older gas hot water heater in our house in Virginia, and a friend noticed it was dripping water from the bottom.  "Better replace that, soon!" he said.  You see, what can happen is the bottom blows out of the tank (which is under pressure) as it slowly corrodes over time.  Most tanks are steel, and they rust.  We had one which was "glass lined" and maybe those last longer, I don't know.

We were fortunate in that the hot water heater was in the basement and if it blew out, it would just drain into the basement floor drain (but if that clogged....).   People go away on vacation, leave the main water valve on, and come back to a $1500 water bill and a flooded basement (and a flooded washer, dryer, and furnace as well!).   Homeowners insurance companies are wise to this and often require that you replace sketchy hot water heaters or make other plumbing repairs.

A neighbor just got a new homeowner's policy with a new company, as his old company doubled their rates.  They sent over a home inspector and they required that he replace the hot water heater and also one of the feed lines to a toilet that looked like it was going to burst.   Pretty smart move on their part.

But this got me to thinking - always a dangerous pastime - about our own hot water heater, which I believe to be at least 15 years old.   Maybe it is time to replace that.  We have a pretty basic electric hot water heater and so far, it isn't dripping, but I will keep an eye on it.  Home repairs, to many people, appear to be unpredictable random events.  But if you understand the life-cycle of products and components, you can figure out about when something will go South on you.

If you had a new roof put on 15 years ago and they used 15-year shingles, well, waddya expect?  If you see them curling up, or let moss or small plants grow out of them, the service life may be even less.  The Weibull curve will not be denied.  Sure, sometimes components seem to last forever - if you are lucky.  Other times, less so.  Planning on these repairs allows you to do them at a time and place of your choosing, not the plumber's.

Of course, like so much else, hot water heaters have gotten more complex with time.  They have heat-pump hot water heaters for example, which was like a small air conditioning system in reverse.  They have "instant" or "tankless" heaters which require either 100Amps of 220V service to run, or a huge propane tank.  These can be mounted outdoors, which helps alleviate the problem of hot water heaters flooding your house.

Speaking of which, our hot water heater is in the garage, so if it floods, it will not flood the house (which is 8" higher than the garage floor).  We painted our garage floor as part of our garage and laundry room makeover.  There was a huge rusty stain on the floor which I thought was due to Gradma's Chrysler blowing out its radiator.  I realized later it was likely a hot water heater meltdown - which explains the 10" tall molding along the floor all the way around the garage.  Someone cut out the rotted sheetrock and insulation and then covered it all up with this wide molding.

We do have three 6-gallon sink heaters at each bathroom sink, as it takes several minutes (and many gallons of water) to get hot water at the sinks, which are on the other end of the house from the hot water heater.  Hmmm.... maybe a tankless job isn't such a bad idea after all!  And we could mount it right outside the bathroom wall, too.  I'll have to think about that.  I would have to install a propane tank as well.  Maybe too much hassle.

We also mounted our heater in an enclosure, so I could put the hot water heater in the corner without stuff falling down behind it all the time (like socks from the washing machine).  The enclosure I bought was meant for hot water heaters in California for outdoor use.  Apparently out there, they mount them outside, under the eaves, so that if an earthquake occurs, the tank won't fall over and rip out the gas line and set fire to the house.  The same catalog that had the enclosure had tie-down straps for the tank and an automatic disconnect for the gas line as well.  Pretty slick stuff.  In a way it makes sense to put those outdoors, particularly in a mild climate like LA.

And like anything else, prices have crept up.  The cheapest hot water heater, rated at '"6 years" (!!!) is over $500.  And they now have "smart" hot water heaters with built-in leak detection, to shut off if a leak is detected!  (Why not make them of  stainless steel or some other rustproof material?).  You can spend thousands, of course, if you want to.  My neighbor spent about $1000 including installation and removal of the old water heater which seems kind of high to me, until I checked prices of hot water heaters online.  The days of the $200 heater are long gone.

The last heater I installed was in New York.  The hydronic heating system was plumbed into a hot water tank, so the "boiler" (which never actually boiled) heated water that in turn heated the hot water.   In the summer months, this meant we went through a lot of propane and also the basement was quite hot and stuffy.  I put in a regular hot water heater with bypass valves, so we could run off electric in the summer and keep the house cooler.  As I recall, that heater was about $200 or so - maybe a little more.

But those days are gone - along with cheap washers and dryers.  Don't get me wrong, I like our front-loaders ($1800 the pair, with pedestals) and LED lights are cool to the touch and save electricity, even if they cost more money.  As technology gets more complex, it gets more expensive.

Then again, flooding your house is pretty pricey, too!

UPDATE:  I learn a lot writing this blog.  They say one way to find the right answer on the Internet is to post the totally wrong answer and someone will correct you.  For some reason, it never occurred to me (or  most homeowners) to replace the anode rod  in the water heater.  I did this for all my RVs, as well as hot water heaters on my boats.  I replaced the "zincs" on the outdrives of our boats as well.  But anodes in the hot water heater?   Never thought about it!  A reader provided me with this informative link on hot water heater maintenance and failure rates.

After 17 years it may be "too late" to replace the anode on my existing heater, but you can bet I will do it on my new one.  It was one of those "Duh!" moments for me.  After all, I knew about this for the RV, why not for the house?

A sacrificial anode will dissolve slowly and thus prevent the tank itself from rusting. The are not hard to replace, but often require a 1-1/8" socket (or so) and a breaker bar to get the stuck anode out.  If you put teflon tape on the threads it **may** be easier next time.

I noted some heaters today are "smart" and will shut off if they detect a leak.  A reader notes that such valves can be installed on the aftermarket.

And of course, you can install a drip pan to drain any water leaking from the heater, although a drip pan might not handle a full-blown blowout.

Find your water shut-off and know how to use it.  Consult a plumber if necessary.  If they are never used, if you try to turn them, they may just snap off in your hand and flood the house.  If used regularly, though, they should turn easily.  We shut off our water when going away - the last thing we need is to come home to a house that has been flooded for a month or more.....and it isn't just the water bill!