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Escaping High School

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Re: Escaping High School

#81

Post by ye-olde-sysrq »

joenot443 wrote: post #69
lotsofpulp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A family member just paid $500 for someone to come replace a $35 capacitor on their central AC compressor, after I explained how they could do it themselves in 5 minutes.

I think the vast majority of people go their entire lives without doing any kind of circuit level repair work. It's just not a skill most folks acquire. I can't think of anyone in my extended family who could replace a capacitor, half of them wouldn't even know what that means.

It's also kind of dangerous though, there's a reason these people need to be certified. Dealing with a 5V breadboard? Yeah I'm game. Disassembling the housing of something to figure out which part needs to be greased or came loose? Yeah sure. My computer science training has prepared me to think outside the box and solve novel problems.

But if it's got 240V mains going through it, I'm not going to touch it. I like how my EKG currently looks and want it to stay that way. Why are humans made out of such a conductive material again? My CS degree didn't do anything to help me here beyond my biology class giving me an appreciation for how much meat-circuitry my body has that relies on fractions of a single volt to operate my vital organs.

Re: Escaping High School

#82

Post by tsss »

joenot443 wrote: post #69
lotsofpulp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A family member just paid $500 for someone to come replace a $35 capacitor on their central AC compressor, after I explained how they could do it themselves in 5 minutes.

I think the vast majority of people go their entire lives without doing any kind of circuit level repair work. It's just not a skill most folks acquire. I can't think of anyone in my extended family who could replace a capacitor, half of them wouldn't even know what that means.

Well, the hard part is finding that capacitor. I try to repair almost everything and very rarely it is possible to find the damaged component without extremely specialized skills. The best you can hope for is that someone else has done the work for you and posted it in a forum. Even then it is often the power supply that goes first and those parts are dangerous to work with.

Re: Escaping High School

#83

Post by lotsofpulp »

ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #81
joenot443 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the vast majority of people go their entire lives without doing any kind of circuit level repair work. It's just not a skill most folks acquire. I can't think of anyone in my extended family who could replace a capacitor, half of them wouldn't even know what that means.

It's also kind of dangerous though, there's a reason these people need to be certified. Dealing with a 5V breadboard? Yeah I'm game. Disassembling the housing of something to figure out which part needs to be greased or came loose? Yeah sure. My computer science training has prepared me to think outside the box and solve novel problems. But if it's got 240V mains going through it, I'm not going to touch it. I like ho…

This specific repair scenario is not dangerous. It is such a common failure with a cheap fix that it’s simply worth killing the circuit, unplugging the old one, plugging in a new one, turning the power back on, and seeing if it works.

Worst case scenario, you have a new capacitor. Best case scenario, you save hundreds of dollars.

Here’s a video. You can even skip all the diagnostic tests, as all you care about is replacing the capacitor. If that doesn’t work, call an expert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWH38Rg1iMI&pp=ygUeUmVwbGFja...

https://www.homedepot.com/c/ah/ac-capacitor-replacement/9ba6...

Re: Escaping High School

#84

Post by lotsofpulp »

tsss wrote: post #82
joenot443 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the vast majority of people go their entire lives without doing any kind of circuit level repair work. It's just not a skill most folks acquire. I can't think of anyone in my extended family who could replace a capacitor, half of them wouldn't even know what that means.

Well, the hard part is finding that capacitor. I try to repair almost everything and very rarely it is possible to find the damaged component without extremely specialized skills. The best you can hope for is that someone else has done the work for you and posted it in a forum. Even then it is often the power supply that goes first and those parts are dangerous to work with.

It is not hard to find, and requires no special skills. Every residential AC compressor has a removable cover where the capacitor is mounted. No soldering required either, just connecting and disconnecting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWH38Rg1iMI&pp=ygUeUmVwbGFja...

Home Depot has a tutorial too:

https://www.homedepot.com/c/ah/ac-capacitor-replacement/9ba6...

Re: Escaping High School

#85

Post by jabroni_salad »

Something that bugs me today is the way music education was handled at my school, and probably other schools.

I got to a pretty good technical competence with my trumpet but at the end of the day I could only play what was on the sheets. Maybe some of that is my bad, but I switched to keys after highschool and when I show up to jam, most wind players seem like musical cripples without a lead sheet, and my fakesheets of just chord sequences and important hits are not sufficient for them.

Part of it is just the nature of the Program (wind band is a highly synchronized large group activity and you cant have too much screwing around), but I also think the nature of a wind instrument where you have limited endurance and can only play one note at a time is stunting without proper instruction. Despite having great sense of rhythm and phrasing, I don't think I really understood music until I started getting chord shapes into my hands on the piano and could noodle without worrying about spending my limited endurance.

edited to add: And to be clear I do think the music programs are Good and Valuable. It's an excellent group activity and kids will work on something for months for the big concert. I did not have any other single school project with that kind of runtime and that's a valuable experience on its own.

tldr if your kid likes music dont let them settle for just wind band. Get them a guitar or a piano too. But it's fine to just like the band for what it is, too.

Re: Escaping High School

#86

Post by compiler-guy »

hardware2win wrote: post #67
compiler-guy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tests have their own sets of problems too. A single, high stakes, high pressure test to determine everything is just as absurd as grades, and tends to bias for those who have time and money to prep. I prefer wholistic evaluations. You are more than both your test scores and your grades and your school and your demographics. But if you put them all together one can get a decent picture.

While tests arent perfect, then they are at least fair, transparent and almost bias free unlike other methods. >tends to bias for those who have time and money to prep. Hmm? So you have time to do various stuff for grades, but dont have time to prepare for exam? It feels like copy pasted argument from discussions about exams in general, not when comparing them with grades like we do. >But if you put them all together…

In general, exams measure peak performance. Grades measure sustained performance.

The literature is quite extensive that although standardized tests have substantial predictive power as to college performance, adding grades and other factors is substantially better. Eg https://news.uchicago.edu/story/test-scores-dont-stack-gpas-... and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/

You assert without evidence that testing is unbiased. This is widely disputed. You will find some literature taking the opposite view, of course, but given that the debate rages among professional researchers, a plain assertion doesnt carry all that much weight.

http://m.portlandobserver.com/news/2020/jan/14/college-admis... https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED537716.pdf

Cheating on college entrance exams is rampant in China and other countries. This is another downside of high stakes exams.

As far as a wholistic view, I think including attributes such as grit, leadership, and talent across many areas such as writing, the various arts and many other fields is useful.

Re: Escaping High School

#87

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

BirAdam wrote: post #9

Personally, I’ve always felt that schooling is a waste of time, money, and resources. The default model of civilization is that children are absent from life. This means that kids are missing out on seeing adults interact, so they mature more slowly, and it also means that their life experiences are limited to what happens in a building. Importantly, after 18 years, people in the USA leave school in debt and are no b…

Isn't this how we end up with a lineage of uneducated blacksmiths? I am from a rural town focused on oil and gas and some agriculture. There were no software developers were I was from and the internet was only dial-up before I left. A lack of schooling would see me in a O&G work camp right now because I would have been exposed to nothing else.

Re: Escaping High School

#88

Post by rjsw »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #85

Something that bugs me today is the way music education was handled at my school, and probably other schools. I got to a pretty good technical competence with my trumpet but at the end of the day I could only play what was on the sheets. Maybe some of that is my bad, but I switched to keys after highschool and when I show up to jam, most wind players seem like musical cripples without a lead sheet, and my fakesheets…

My experience playing the clarinet was the same as yours.

Re: Escaping High School

#89

Post by stcroixx »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #85

Something that bugs me today is the way music education was handled at my school, and probably other schools. I got to a pretty good technical competence with my trumpet but at the end of the day I could only play what was on the sheets. Maybe some of that is my bad, but I switched to keys after highschool and when I show up to jam, most wind players seem like musical cripples without a lead sheet, and my fakesheets…

Music education got cut entirely in the East Bay public school district my kids attended. Had to move out of state.

Re: Escaping High School

#90

Post by nancyhn »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #87
BirAdam wrote: post #9

Personally, I’ve always felt that schooling is a waste of time, money, and resources. The default model of civilization is that children are absent from life. This means that kids are missing out on seeing adults interact, so they mature more slowly, and it also means that their life experiences are limited to what happens in a building. Importantly, after 18 years, people in the USA leave school in debt and are no b…

Isn't this how we end up with a lineage of uneducated blacksmiths? I am from a rural town focused on oil and gas and some agriculture. There were no software developers were I was from and the internet was only dial-up before I left. A lack of schooling would see me in a O&G work camp right now because I would have been exposed to nothing else.

Anyone who is interested in programming will learn about it regardless. It's especially easy today with things like Google and Youtube.
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