Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

There's been a discussion on an email group in my neighborhood about hiring a contractor to replace windows and sliding glass doors. One neighbor, "Chu", asked for recommendations. A few businesses were suggested, including one that my spouse and I hired years ago for some window repairs. We didn't give this recommendation, though we do consider the contractor an knowledgeable and fair professional. Many people in our neighborhood have hired them for window repairs, as they've been in business in our community for decades.

Chu wrote back to the group that the contractor had come through with a $33k bid that she thought was too high. Moreover, they didn't itemize the cost proposal to identify specific materials and units of labor.  At first the amount of $33k struck me as large, too— our bill for window repairs years ago was more like $1,000— but then I saw Chu's description of the work she wants done. She's asking for 13 windows and 2 sliding glass doors to be replaced. ...Not just repaired, like fixing a pane of glass (which is what we did year ago) but replacing the whole window/door 15x.

A few of our neighbors pointed out that, yes, this project will be costly. The contractor has to cut into the exterior wall in numerous places, remove the old windows/doors, set the new casements in, then not only patch them up to the interior walls but seal them to the exterior, redoing the stucco and exterior paint.

Chu is upset that the contractor didn't provide a price breakdown and hasn't responded to her request to provide one.

I gotta say at this point, I understand where the contractor is coming from in kind of ghosting her request. For one, quotes can take time to prepare. I know in my company, there's a process around it. And when a prospective customer starts requesting multiple quotes, it triggers concern that the customer is aggressively looking for ways to argue for discounts and/or shrink the size of their order but still get the favorably unit pricing entailed in a bigger order.

Also, in any business situation, you've got to understand the market dynamic. Are the vendors hurting for work, or are they all booked up? If the vendors have staff idling for lack of work, they'll respond quickly to inquiries (they're not busy with other projects!) and they'll lead with discounts or offer them quickly to secure a deal. OTOH, when there's more demand than supply, the vendors hold the cards. They don't need to return calls lickedy-split. They don't need to write multiple quotes for choosy buyers or entertain bargain-seekers.

I believe that right now, in terms of home renovations contracting, we are facing an under-supply relative to demand. There are only so many contractors, especially good contractors. And a lot of people want to hire them. In this area there's almost always a supply-demand imbalance for skilled contractors that favors the contractors. It's a high-cost-of-living area, and people want home improvements. In addition, with home sales slow because of high interest rates the past few years, more people are paying to renovate where they live instead of moving.

I absolutely don't fault Chu for wanting to shop for 1-2 competing offers. She absolutely should. But given the first company she called is well reputed and known to be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if the other offers either come in higher or would entail cutting corners that spell trouble a few years down the road. (If you cheap out on exterior sealing you get leaks, with inside-the-wall damage!) I hope she sees that quality work isn't always compatible with getting the lowest price, and that contractors who are busy because they're good aren't going to bargain down their price.

Alaska Travelog #11
Asea in Kenai Fjords NP - Sun, 16 Jun 2024, 11am

I've got to hand it to him— our cruise captain MacGyvered a fix for the engine problem that was hobbling the ship. It turned out seaweed had gotten into the coolant intake pipe and made it past the filter. The ship's engines use sea water as coolant. Seaweed got wrapped around the impeller, which is like a rapidly spinning gear cog that pulls water through the pipe, causing it to overheat and start to break down. This further caused too little cool water to reach the engines, causing them to start to overheat. There were replacement impeller wheels aboard the ship— the first mate explained that carrying a variety of replacement parts for hot-swaps at sea is standard when I expressed surprise— but the captain also had to improvise tools to pull the seaweed out of the long supply pipe. Well, long story short, we were under way again about an hour after the problem first appeared.

The captain pushed on ahead to Spire Cove to help make up for lost time. Normally he might have gone slower looking for aquatic wildlife, but we'd already seen a lot. There was a bald eagle right at the marina and playful otters just outside that. Then we saw humpback whales, too. The video I tried capturing of them didn't turn out well. But hey, I was talking about Spire Cove....


Link: watch video on YouTube

Spire Cove is interesting for the tall, rocky spires jutting up from the sea. This is a situation where the morning's foggy weather was both good and bad. It was bad because it foiled long-distance views and muted out the colors around us. Those colors would've been striking in the sun, especially with all those wildflowers and trees improbably growing atop the spires. The good side of the fog was that it created a certain aura of mystery around the spires.

Will the fog lift by the time we get to the glaciers? I certainly hope so, because that's a place where long-distance views absolutely will count, and I want to see the glaciers. For me that's the number-one reason to spend the time and money on this cruise.

The crew says that this fog is a convective fog. It's caused by warm air over cold water. Yesterday was an extremely warm day for Alaska— we enjoyed 74° highs up in Anchorage! So now this is like our punishment for having such a nice day yesterday. 😧

Today we're in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. We arrived late last night. This morning we slept in a bit then around 10 drove over to visit with my sister at her house a few miles away.



It was just me, Hawk and my sister B. for a while at the house. B.'s daughter was going to a friend's party in a town park, and her husband was dropping her off.

B. gave us a quick tour of their home. They've lived there for several years, though it's our first time visiting.

It's an old home, over 100 years old. It was one of the first two houses in town, she explained. The one next door was originally the general store, and this house was built by the station master for the train station when the railroad came through. The home is small but has been added onto a few times over its history. That much is obvious from the front room, where the floor is sunken because there's no foundation beneath it— "They enclosed the front porch," I suggested— plus the whole second floor seems added on as the stairway is steep and crooked. Oh, and speaking of crooked, there pretty much isn't a plumb line anywhere in the house. Every window frame is crooked. Many of the doors don't close. Some of the walls are visibly leaning. None of the floors are level. And I don't just mean slightly off level; you can see where the floors dip and rise by inches across the width of a room!

While hanging out at the house we felt a sudden shake in the floor accompanied by a loud "THUNK!" sound.

"Whoa, was that an earthquake?" I asked. "In Wisconsin??"

"I think something exploded!" my sister responded. "We need to leave the house!"

"No, it's not an explosion," I assured her. "With an explosion there'd be more sounds and smoke and fire." (Yes, I know, I'm so reassuring. 🤣)

"I felt the floor under me drop one or two inches," Hawk noted.

The three of us agreed whatever it was, it came from underneath the house. "My guess is a support beam cracked," I suggested. We agreed to go down to the basement to check.

"I'm still scared of an explosion," B. said as we peered into the darkness down the steep stairs that looked like a set from the opening scenes of The Wizard of Oz.

"If something exploded down there, we'd see light from the fire and smoke coming out," I helpfully reassured her again.

Downstairs I found something similar to what I had guessed 30 seconds earlier. A metal support jack that was supporting a floor joist had rusted out and fallen over. The loss of the support created the sudden drop in the floor we felt. The "THUNK!" sound was a combination of the wood beams settling and the 6' tall steel jack hitting the concrete floor.

B. is fortunate that she and her family are renting— so it's not their problem to fix, it's the landlord's. Furthermore, they're lucky the landlord lives next door— and is an engineer. She called him on her cell phone. He came over a minute later, walking through the hedge in the back yard. And once he saw the busted support jack he was like, "Yeah, I've got a spare." I figured his house needs them, too. He probably bought a three-pack last time he needed one. 😅

Monday was a day without a car. Well, so were Saturday and Sunday and part of Friday. I didn't notice us temporarily being a one-car family over the weekend since we did mostly take it easy. On Monday, though, it hit me when I made (solo) plans to go out for lunch, walked down the stairs, and realized... there's no car in the garage!

The car was in a garage, just not ours. It was at the shop... where it had been for 10 days while the insurance company dragged its corporate feet. Actually, counting the weekend and Monday it was up to 13 days.

Solo lunch wasn't hard. I simply changed my plans to walk out to a restaurant 0.6 miles away. And while I was eating I got good news: my car was ready to pick up. (some_other_dave  gave me a ride later in the day to get it.) While that was good news it also pissed me off again because it put back into sharp relief how much foot-dragging the insurance company had done. They caused my car to sit, unusable, for nearly two weeks. Once they gave the green light to go forward the shop fixed it in half a day.

Money-wise, at least insurance agreed to pay for the repairs, less a $500 deductible. The damage, which was caused by a road hazard, is officially recorded as "Driver hit stationary object," though. That's gonna jack my rates for the next few years. 😡

This week I received the replacement parts I ordered for my 10 year old electric shaver. They're a pair of blades (there are two inside the shaver) and a cutting screen.



Removing the worn parts and snapping these in took less than a minute. I tried the shaver out after that and it cuts much closer now. One or two passes leaves the skin on my face smooth. Previously I had to shave over the same area 4-5 times.

The shaver even sounds sharper. 😅 The blades make a higher pitched sound as if they're moving faster... possibly because there's less friction with the screen.



So far I'm glad I spent the ~$50 to refresh this shaver. $50 is a big fraction of the original $75 I paid to buy the shaver 10 years ago... though a smaller fraction of the $125-150 it would cost to replace today. It's a good case of repair vs. replace.

As parts for this older shaver become harder to find and more expensive I wondered if I should buy ahead with a second and even a third parts kit. I decided against that. I figure by the time my need for the next parts kit comes around in a few years, the shaver's battery might be kaput (unable to hold a charge very long) or some of the plastic switchgear might be broken. At that point I'd have to buy a new shaver anyway.

Yesterday afternoon I replaced two tires on our convertible. They'd burst when Hawk hit a bad pothole while driving on I-880 Monday. The tires are run-flats so she got to work and back home okay, but by Monday night the front tire especially looked low enough that we agreed not to drive the car further. That meant I got to stay home for lunch for a few days. It also meant when our replacement tires were ready on Friday I called AAA for a tow.



The local tow service AAA contracts out to in this area is awesome. The drivers are always courteous and skilled, and they arrive fast. I didn't care so much about waiting 10 minutes vs. 45 on Friday evening because I was home, but that difference is huge when you're sitting in a parking lot or on the side of a road.

Well, getting two tires replaced was relatively drama free... other than all the time it took. And it definitely wasn't cost free. Two tires with all the associated fees and taxes set us back over $650.

Not even three months after getting a new MacBook Air laptop the computer is now in the shop for repairs. Actually I could've taken it over a month ago— that's how soon after purchase the problem appeared— but I delayed as the problem wasn't severe enough to overcome my procrastination in dealing with it. What's the problem? The screen is covered with thin, gray horizontal lines stretching all the was across. There's also a fat, dark vertical stripe near the right edge. Apparently it's a bad connection between the display and the graphics card, and it's not uncommon in the new M2-powered MacBook Airs.

I put off starting the repair process for weeks primarily because I feel like dealing with the morass of suck that modern customer service is. Like, how many times was I going to have to say, "Yes, it's plugged in! That's why I'm saying there are stripes all over the screen instead of saying, 'Duh, everything's covered in black!'" I didn't have the energy for that. My anticipation was unfounded, though, as Apple customer service was its usual way-better-than-average self. To wit:

1. When I called phone support yesterday, my wait time was less than 2 minutes.


2. A phone support agent quickly acknowledge the problem is a hardware problem and that it would be covered under warranty.


3. The agent booked me an in-store appointment for today to have the computer sent to a repair center. I also had the alternative of waiting for prepaid shipping materials to be sent.


4. At the store today I did have to wait for about 30 minutes— but that was because I was early for my appointment, and the store was very busy.


5. The in-store agent quickly confirmed the problem is a hardware problem and started the process to send the computer off for repair.


6. They'll overnight it both ways to/from the repair center; I may get it back as soon as Wednesday next week.

For now I'm back on my older computer. Yes, it's the one that's now almost 7 years old. I'm glad I still have it & that it works!

I'm taking a quick pause from my series about our Olympic National Park trip last weekend to update on an issue from a few weeks ago. Recall that earlier this summer I dropped one of my camera lenses and it broke. I sent it in for repairs 3½ weeks ago. Today I called them back to check status. I was surprised I hadn't heard from them. I know from delivery tracking they received my lens 17 days ago. Why hadn't they emailed or called me with even a confirmation of receipt?

The good news was the agent on the phone quickly confirmed they had my lens and had already diagnosed it. They were waiting for my authorization to proceed. With them not emailing or calling me for going on 3 weeks I was concerned they'd lost it. The not-so-good news is when I pressed about why they never bothered to contact me, the agent hemmed and hawed about how a) sometimes their computer "glitches" when trying to send email, and b) with Coronavirus there aren't enough people in the shop to check up on these things. 🙄

Whatever. At least now we can move forward.

More good news/bad news: The bill for repairs and return shipping will be $323. Actually that's both good news and bad news. It's good news because it could have been worse. If the lens were unrepairable buying a new one would cost $1,000. Even buying a used one would cost more than this repair. A quick check on eBay shows auctions ranging from $400 to over $700. But it's also bad news because $323 is still a lot of money. And while $323 is less than the cost of a new lens, what I get for it is not a new lens. I get back a 7 year old, previous-gen lens that's been broken and repaired.

Inland Empire Travelog #11
Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho - Sat, 15 May 2021. 6pm.

On our way to our fifth and final waterfall trek of the day today we caught a flat tire. We were driving up a remote forest service road about 10 miles out from the shores of Lake Pend Oreille when POP! A rock on the gravel road punctured our left front tire.

For a moment I wasn't sure if anything had happened, but then the Hsss... Hsss... Hsss sound told me we'd likely caught a flat. The tire pressure alert light came on a few seconds later as I was already looking for a wide enough, flat enough spot on the remote, dirt-and-gravel road to replace the tire.



For a lot of people nowadays a flat tire is a case of, "Uh-oh, better call for help!" I did consider the possibility of needing to call for help... as a worst case scenario. And it would need to be a worst case, as out here we were 10 miles of primitive road away from cell reception and hadn't seen other people for at least the past 5 miles. We would need to be self-rescuing princes and princesses.

Fortunately it wasn't more than 100 yards or so to a flat, wide spot on the trail. We pulled the spare and tools from the trunk and I got to work.



When raising a car on a jack it's important to block the wheels so they don't roll. Otherwise the car could pivot off the jack and cause damage and injury! Now, wheel chocks aren't a thing cars come with. Owners manuals advise blocking the wheel with a handy loose brick, but if you're not the kind of person who has loose bricks hanging around (really, who does?!?!) you have to improvise.

We improvised with my hiking boots!

With the boots in place plus the hand brake set I got to work on jacking the car.



Fortunately this car's tools were in good condition, if a bit undersized for the weight of the vehicle. The spare was a temporary tire, though, a "50/50" — as in designed for up to 50 miles of use at speeds not exceeding 50 mph. Also as in, 50/50 are your chances of getting back safely. 😨

Getting back safely was the main thing on my mind. This road had already claimed one regular tire on the way up. Would we be able to get back down without further mishap? Would the skinny, barely treaded 50/50 tire handle safely the gravel road? It was 10 miles back to the nearest paved road and fringes of cell phone reception.

Well, from the fact I'm writing this, you can tell the answer is Yes, we did get back safely. 😅 The tire made it back down the gravel road.

We're now at the shores of Lake Pend Oreille, on the phone with the car rental company's emergency roadside assistance. We're on hold. "Wait times are over 15 minutes," the robot informs us. 😠

We don't expect the rental company to send a tow truck out to us, BTW. We're just checking with them for instructions on how to proceed. Including, particularly, where is the nearest depot or repair shop we can go to. With that 50/50 spare already getting us down the mountain we don't necessarily have a lot of runway left!

Keep reading: How far can we push our luck with 50/50?

After transmission problems developed in our Nissan Xterra on a trip several days ago I dreaded how much it would cost to fix. Even a simple fix would start at a few hundred dollars, and significant transmission trouble could easily run a few thousand. I doubted it was significant trouble, but still.... With the recent mud-in-the-sensors problem and now this, I worried it was the start of a series of expensive repairs. The car's almost 10 years old and at 103,000 miles so it's not necessarily worth keeping through multiple costly repairs.

Before even making a service appointment with the mechanic, though, I decided to do a bit of research online to educate myself on what the problem could be. I found a few chat boards where people discussed having the exact same symptoms, and one of them had a link to an extremely useful YouTube video on how to DIY the repair. ...DIY being Do It Yourself, as opposed to the equally valid Damage It Yourself.

I decided to DIY and see which "D" I ended up with. Here's my helpful YouTube video!


TL;DW: It seems to be working now, and all I needed were common household tools and a few minutes of effort.