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Ask a Repair Shop

philip.yurchuk.com

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Re: Ask a Repair Shop

#101

Post by mcguire »

mindcrime wrote: post #95
mcguire wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" ... another one is going to take some research. Ballpark estimate is probably 6 weeks or so to do all that. " One of these things is not like the other.

"some" research. Not talking "fundamental research" stuff (like particle physics) here. Just looking at the API's provided by a 3rd party product to see how the integration would work. That said, I did change that answer to "more like 8 weeks" after we spoke further. And that was still just a rough estimate. Anyway, regardless of how accurate that is, the point is that we don't do the "anything can be done in two wee…

I've been burned far too many times by tasks that started as, "glue this API to that API", only to discover that "that API" anything remotely like what I needed.

Re: Ask a Repair Shop

#102

Post by cr0sh »

drewg123 wrote: post #68
tormeh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the answer to the appliance problem is to just buy Miele. I'm not really a huge fan, because you do pay a lot for the brand and they're not always as technologically advanced as, for example, Siemens, but you do get a long warranty and high quality.

We have a fancy Miele dishswasher in our current house, which was installed by the previous owners. This is the most unreliable dishwasher I've ever seen. It fails at least once per year, with a new thing every time. There is only one repair shop in our area that will service Miele, and they are backed up weeks sometimes. Our old house had a cheap, builder-grade GE dishwasher. We lived there for 10 years, and it neve…

> Our old house had a cheap, builder-grade GE dishwasher. We lived there for 10 years, and it never failed.

The fewer bells-and-whistles, the longer it will last.

We bought our house - pre-owned, built in 1973. We wanted block construction (not stick frame, chicken wire, styrofoam and stucco), copper plumbing and wiring, and no HOA (because I want to be able to wrench on my cars out front while having a beer, and leave them up on jackstands temporarily as needed, without some busybody measuring the height of my lawn). We decided to (mostly) buy pre-owned appliances while we were at it.

So we got this "package" of a washer, dryer and refrigerator from a local used appliance store. Nothing fancy about any of it. Of all of them, the washer died first after about 12 years (started to leak, probably could've been repaired, but it had already been repaired once before). The dryer is still running strong (15 years), the fridge works fine, but the water and ice-maker no longer work (not really worth repairing either, since we didn't use them much). Our washer at the time we bought a "builder special" - same with the range. The washer died about a year back (14 years) - can't recall why. But we were re-doing our kitchen, so we decided "why not" and got a new one (also got a new sink - hand-hammered copper, and I have no clue how much it cost because my wife paid for it).

The range is still going strong, although we've had to replace the heating element in the oven. That's about 15 years old too. We'll probably keep repairing it, because it is dead simple to do, plus it has actual electric burners (not that flat-top junk), which is something you can't seem to find any more, even at the budget end (when we bought it, it was the budget end itself, and the only one that had that feature).

If I really had my way, I'd get my wife a restored O'Keefe-Merritt Grillevator, but our neighborhood doesn't have gas, and to get it run is so expensive (nearest line is about a quarter-mile away at the end of our block), it'd be cheaper to move.

Re: Ask a Repair Shop

#103

Post by Moru »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #90
Moru wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only have three medias to choose from. Dsl, cable and fiber. No idea how many companies to choose from on each of them though. You plug in your computer to the wall outlet and get a list of offers in the browser, sorted on price, contract time (3 month all of them). Click a button to choose and off you go surfing. Pretty ok for a socialist country :) Plenty of space if you feel like moving.

What country? And is the scenario you described available everywhere in the country? I'm imagining that the cities must manage whatever infrastructure there is that connects your wall outlets to the various ISPs – is that right?

Sweden.

Most houses connected to the central heating system has also access to fiber. The selection of ISP is more or less the same way but in smaller villages a phone call is usually needed but this is slowly moving in the same direction as the cities. Dsl can be chosen pretty freely everywhere there still are copper networks but they are shutting down that in the less populated areas. Still might have access to fiber though even if the village only have 30 houses.

Either the powercompany, citywide housing company or the state takes care of the fiber network. Dsl is some former state owned company taking care of I believe. Havent had to use dsl the last 20 years so not so sure how it works there now.

Re: Ask a Repair Shop

#105

Post by thehardsphere »

taneq wrote: post #55
_puk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wait for the signature? I thought it was always "in the bag, last couple of redlines to get sorted, but that'll be sorted by the end of the week, no worries." But yeah, 2 weeks to implement, then it sits there whilst they sort out some overlooked complication

Wait for the signature ? Ha. Ahahaha. That's the best case. On some tasks, they wait until two weeks after the due date before telling the team about the feature. (One contract job I did a while back, the first thing the client asked me for some was some documentation. The forwarded email trail explaining exactly what documentation also contained an email sent two weeks prior, apologising for the delay and saying 'th…

I had this happen also with a particular customer once. They were a large financial institution who bought our product to replace their previous software package that had been way past EOL.

Because they already had software to do this task, my boss assumed that determining the custom requirements for them would be very straightforward, and would only take a week or two. We ended up spending the next 3 months in very tedious conference calls preparing requirements documentation that their obnoxious internal processes required.

Just when we finished that, the customer came back and said, "That's great. Government-Alphabet-Agency gave us a hard deadline to switch to the new system in three weeks." By that point the scope of the project expanded to about 3 months of work.

We still managed to ship something for their deadline, somehow, and we're still providing maintainence for that, oddly enough.

Re: Ask a Repair Shop

#106

Post by falsedan »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #58
timcederman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting to me is that for all my appliances in my house (different brands), I've been able to repair each of them (microwave, air conditioner, washer, dryer, dishwasher, and wine fridge) on my own, using some basic instructions on the internet and a part that at most has cost $50. I believe we're in a golden age for self-repair (particularly with YouTube videos), but I keep hearing about how everything is…

Couple of recent attempted fixes: Food mixer - resin washer instead of metal, without tools to machine a purpose fit washer is irrepairable. TV - 4 years old, needed new main board, nothing at less than 50% cost of a brand new (better) TV. No parts from named manufacturer (re-badged). Kettle - plastic in switch, clearly a weak point, suspect it was designed in, double thickness and the kettle would probably go foreve…

> TV - 4 years old, needed new main board

The whole board was trashed? The PSU on my previous TV failed (due to capacitor plague); I ordered a complete part replacement kit from eBay for like 10 bucks and swapped the bad caps using a wood burner as a soldering iron.

Did you check for broken/for parts listings for the same TV? At 4 years old, I'd expect a lot of 2nd-hand supply.

Re: Ask a Repair Shop

#107

Post by falsedan »

cr0sh wrote: post #102
drewg123 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a fancy Miele dishswasher in our current house, which was installed by the previous owners. This is the most unreliable dishwasher I've ever seen. It fails at least once per year, with a new thing every time. There is only one repair shop in our area that will service Miele, and they are backed up weeks sometimes. Our old house had a cheap, builder-grade GE dishwasher. We lived there for 10 years, and it neve…

> Our old house had a cheap, builder-grade GE dishwasher. We lived there for 10 years, and it never failed. The fewer bells-and-whistles, the longer it will last. We bought our house - pre-owned, built in 1973. We wanted block construction (not stick frame, chicken wire, styrofoam and stucco), copper plumbing and wiring, and no HOA (because I want to be able to wrench on my cars out front while having a beer, and lea…

> that flat-top junk

Recently we had to stay in a series of short-term lets: every flat-top electric range was hot garbage. Turning on the elements for more than 10 minutes caused the electronic controls to flake out & not recognise fingerpresses, so we couldn't turn off a burner without disconnecting the whole unit from mains.

Re: Ask a Repair Shop

#108

Post by inthewoods »

The_DaveG wrote: post #70
inthewoods wrote: post #45

My experience is the opposite. Spoke with two system integrators regarding an implementation of a marketing automation tool. In both cases, the proposed lead on the project made statements that I knew were incorrect regarding the software. We also had a challenging requirement that was not part of any out-of-the-box solution and was told by both that it wasn't possible with one of the vendors we were considering. Sim…

A lot of SI's are married to a particular software platform, and it's been that way for a long time. We all know the big player who owns 70-80% of the market, and most people will implement via them (or that's at least what they make most of their money off of). Some of us (I work for an SI) actually find the correct solution for the problem. We use all 4 major players, build our own stuff when appropriate, and would…

Appreciate the offer - this was a past company so I'm not in the market right now.

Re: Ask a Repair Shop

#109

Post by basseq »

inthewoods wrote: post #45

My experience is the opposite. Spoke with two system integrators regarding an implementation of a marketing automation tool. In both cases, the proposed lead on the project made statements that I knew were incorrect regarding the software. We also had a challenging requirement that was not part of any out-of-the-box solution and was told by both that it wasn't possible with one of the vendors we were considering. Sim…

Worth noting that you can hire consultants—often SIs—to help you with software selection: to answer the question of what software is best for you.

Most companies don't want to pay that cost, so ask SIs to make recommendations in their RFPs for implementation services. Not only are you going to get bias from pitching the software they're best positioned to implement, but the requirements gathering process is never as good because a) companies won't share as much during a competitive procurement and b) SIs won't invest the time to do all that work for free.

Standalone vendor analyses are another ball of wax, as SIs with true experience with all the leading products will give you great advice. You have to make sure you get the right people. And then you have to walk to the line of "objectivity": either you exclude the evaluation vendor from implementation (so SIs won't bid because they want the more lucrative SI work), or you give the evaluating SI a leg up over competition in the competitive implementation process. You also have to come to terms with some duplication of requirements gathering if you have different evaluation and implementation vendors.

The other consideration is that the "best" software is completely subjective. Software X may have more features out of the box, but has 2x support costs. Software Y may lag on a particular feature you want, but is the market leader with better integrations. This is part of proper software evaluation.

Re: Ask a Repair Shop

#110

Post by Pxtl »

ekianjo wrote: post #78
jonawesomegreen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This frustrates me to no end. I don't mind voting with my wallet and paying for more expensive things if they are better and built to last longer. However it seems a lot of things these days are just more expensive to be fashionable, to sell you a lifestyle full of expensive things that break easily and are not actually built better. I would love to be able to buy more simple, well made things.

> I would love to be able to buy more simple, well made things Problem is, if we are a minority of folks thinking this way, it won't make sense financially for manufacturers. What's happening with the buy-and-dispose generation is that nobody really cares about quality anymore - which is why the market is going in this way.

Minority or majority, to me the problem is the impossibility of determining what's quality anymore. "buy the expensive one" gets you plastic crap with more frills. "buy a trusted brand" doesnt' work when all the infinite brands - even formerly reputable ones like GE - are now just stickers for Chinese factories.
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