Garage or Museum?

In an earlier post today I grazed an annoying topic: my failure to make full use of my tools. Some of them, like the impact driver and miter saw, are getting worn out. Others, like the welder and router, not so much.

I was thinking what a shame it was that I didn’t use the idle tools more. Then I remembered…I don’t have to wait for a situation where I have to use them. I should be coming up with projects so I have EXCUSES to use them.

So I guess I’ll get to work on that.

It’s not like there aren’t opportunities. Marv and Maynard still need some kind of permanent perch on the patio, that swings out. I need to refinish the smoke box on the Hoginator. I haven’t created a new patio cabinet for paper plates and stuff, as I hoped to. My router table project has failed to materialize; I still have a nice router (Christmas gift) in a box.

Now…I’ll need some projects that justify buying a Bobcat.

I’m doing good today. I fertilized some trees, spread mulch, went on a Roundup search-and-destroy mission, filled the hole I recently pulled a concrete slug out of, shot fungus poison all over the place, and did various other nagging tasks. I threw out a perfectly good hundred-foot hose and replaced it, simply because I couldn’t stand it any more. I got it at Costco; what a deal. It kinks when you look at it funny. Life is too short to put up with that. It’s especially irritating when the hose is really long and you have to walk across the yard to unkink it. In several places.

I think I may buy some manure.

Start Buying Them Immediately

I have bunch of yard crap to finish up today, and yard crap means tools.

A reader sent me something interesting. It was a link to one of the craziest tools I’ve ever seen. It’s a motorized comealong. Or a handheld winch. However you want to look at it. It’s called the Pullzall, and you can see it at this link.

The cordless version has endless possibilities. Of course, it costs twice as much.

I can’t believe the junk you can buy, if you just know where to look.

There are a number of tools I dream about buying, yet somehow resist. This is remarkable, in view of the expensive toys I’ve already bought.

1. Fein Multimaster. I need this tool…and I think you will agree…because the commercials are so cool. Also, it looks like it would be great for a lot of small sawing jobs that don’t seem to fit any other kind of saw. Oh, wait? Did I say “Multimaster”? No, I need the Fein Supercut. Because it costs twice as much, so it must be way better.

2. Rotozip. Again, I cite the cool commercials. And you can cut in all sorts of squiggly directions.

3. Acetylene torch. Sometimes I just want to roast and punish things that have made me mad.

4. Car lift. Every garage should be built with one of these, ready to use. Mechanics all over America would have to emigrate. Which would be a great blessing to us all. Maybe we could send them to Iran, where their dishonesty and incompetence would wreck the economy.

5. Bobcat. Do I even need to explain why I need a Bobcat? Are you going to waste my time with stupid questions like that? I sure hope not.

6. Giant drill press. I was going to buy one, but the energy crunch added a hundred bucks to the price. These are actually useful. There are a lot of things you just can’t do all that well with a drill. I was hoping I’d be able to use it to turn scrap lumber into bird toys. A typical bird toy runs fifteen bucks, and they contain about ten cents’ worth of materials. And they have a short lifespan.

7. Milling machine. The only reason I won’t buy one of these is that I’m positive I won’t take the time to learn how to use it.

8. Blasting cabinet. I would use it maybe three times a year, but on those occasions, it would rock. The alternative is to shoot sand all over the yard, and I can’t say I’m uncomfortable with that.

9. Demolition hammer. When you need a demolition hammer, it’s pretty hard to come up with anything else that will do what you want.

10. Sawstop table saw. They stop instantly when they realize they’re cutting meat, i.e., you. Sadly they cost about a million dollars. Okay, their smallest cabinet saw is almost four grand. Comparable Delta saw: around two grand. Which is still $1700 more than I paid for my table saw. If you’re rich and you use a table saw, you have to be stupid not to have a Sawstop. If you’re not rich, it makes sense to bet a few fingers on your ability to dodge.

Wow, I managed to stall until 11:22. This was well worth the effort.

More

Bosch and Dremel just launched competitors to the Multimaster. HOORAY. And Proxxon makes a little version for small jobs.

“That Pile of Laundry…it Waved at Me!”

The IDF needs a marketing man, to popularize their Paladium commando boots in the US. With the red-hot fad that would result, Israel could retire its national debt.

I am wearing IDF boots right now. I bought them a couple of years ago at Israelmilitary.com. They were a lot less expensive back then. The price has gone up by twenty bucks. I miss the strong dollar.

IDF boots are like high-top Converses, except they have a much better sole. So you get the cool and comfort of a sneaker, with a boot sole that stands up to real life.

I had to do some mulching today, and I have to poison the entire yard with granules again. I have to clean the patio and do some other crap. I’ve been wearing tennis shoes to do this kind of stuff, but crud falls in around my ankles. The higher tops on the IDF boots are much better; they deflect debris.

I bought the wrong size last time. I couldn’t remember which European size I took, so I guessed, and these are half a size too big. I corrected that today, via Ebay, where they’re considerably cheaper.

I am getting more and more eccentric, I guess. Today I hit Old Navy and bought two pairs of cargo shorts. I usually wear Ralph Lauren shorts, but a couple of weeks ago, I wore a pair to Man Camp, and Val set them on fire. I realized my life is too dangerous for $60 shorts. At least when Val is drinking Bud and doing things that involve combustion. So I have two new pairs of fairly hideous $19 shorts. I’m not sure the pockets will hold a pistol; I’ll worry about that later.

I have this awful desire to buy a pickup and dress like a mental patient for the rest of my life, except when I am forced to put on good clothes. The cargo shorts…the boots…my straw Stetson…I could be the American cousin of Fred Dagg.

Hefty Annoyance Gone

I feel like I just had a giant boil lanced. I have ejected my newly extracted concrete slug from the yard. I can’t believe how heavy it is. It took effort to roll it onto my handtruck. I’m surprised I was able to lift it out of the hole yesterday. In fact, it was hard to roll the handtruck. I had to keep the handles way down, to keep the slug from rolling off, and the weight made it hard to roll on the grass.

I was going to put it in a wheelbarrow, but I realized I would have to get it two feet off the ground in order to do that. My macho-man days are behind me; I avoid lifting whenever possible. When people make fun of me for it, I make a mental note to remind them, when I’m a healthy 65-year-old with a straight back and they’re having vertebrae fused.

Want a great lesson to teach your kids? Here it is: straining your back or a joint for one second can cause you misery for eighty years. Don’t be a fool, to save yourself the minute or two it takes to get help or the right tool. Never lift anything you don’t have to. I’ve done some dumb things. I pushed a cow off of me after it fell off a ramp. I have lifted my Moto Guzzi off its side several times. I used a pec machine which, I am pretty sure, is designed to loosen and rupture shoulder ligaments. But I am reformed. I was very careful when I lifted the slug yesterday, and if I had even suspected a problem, I would have dropped it instantly.

Back in ’05, I helped someone clean up his yard after a hurricane, and he made fun of me for asking for ear plugs. Whatever. He won’t be around in twenty years, to buy me a hearing aid to hear the TV. A single exposure to loud noise can cause permanent hearing damage. Wish I had known that when I was ten. At the gun range, I wear muffs plus silicone plugs. I wear plugs when I ride motorcycles, because of wind noise.

I have to BUY dirt to fill the hole the slug came out of. It’s about a cubic foot. Can you believe that? It never occurred to me to prepare for that. I should de-pot my Trinidad Scorpion plant and put it in there.

There is Nothing I and my Mighty Tools Cannot Do

I am the most amazing human being for miles around. I just pulled the last concrete slug out of the yard.

The truck loosened it up, so I went out there, took it by the chain, and rocked and lifted until up it came. The damned thing probably weighs about 125 pounds–it’s bigger than a huge turkey, and it’s nice and wet–so once the weight was subtracted from the tension, I was probably putting about three ounces of upward pull on it. But it worked.

I tried to drag it across the yard, but it’s so heavy, it digs into the grass. I decided to leave it, as a monument. No, but I am in need of a meal, and I don’t feel like putting the slug in the wheelbarrow right now.

The rebar and epoxy method works great. If the slug had not been in a bed with landscape timbers around it, I could have pulled it clear with the truck and kept going until it was in the trash pile.

What do I do with a huge slug with an iron handle? I’ll let the trash people worry about it.

I thank the reader who suggested soaking the ground around it. Although I’m sure that made it heavier.

Genius Never Made a Sound Like This

The Lord of the Tools has bad news.

Today I re-applied my scheme for getting the last concrete slug out of the yard. I glued a rebar loop to it, and I attached the loop to my dad’s old Explorer with a chain. And I applied tension. The slug broke loose to where I won’t have a problem getting it out. I may have to find a clever way to apply leverage, but it’s doable.

Problem: when I was done, the Explorer wouldn’t go into reverse! When I shifted, it made a hideous whiny sound.

I didn’t overtax the transmission. I wasn’t jerking or spinning my tires. I just pulled carefully until the slug moved. The truck should have been able to take it.

I think the problem is in the mechanism which switches the truck from 4WD to 2WD. I put it in 4WD Low to pull the slug, and then I shifted back to 2WD, and it went nuts. I can still use reverse in 4WD Low, but not in 2WD.

I’ve read that other people have had this problem because the dashboard switch was out of adjustment.

I am seriously bummed out. The whole point of this exercise was to save money, time, and aggravation. What if it costs a pile to fix the Explorer?

Damn it.

If only I had a johnson bar to pry that slug out. Hmm…I know where I can buy one. Yes…yes…clearly, I need a new tool. Right away. That will solve my problems.

Things are Getting DONE

It’s amazing, what I got done today. I will bore you with a list.

Hung my grandfather’s gun rack on the wall. Lots of drilling and patching. Glued the felt on the gun supports back in place.

Round-Upped every plant on the property that even looked at me funny.

Put a latch on the patio TV cabinet doors.

Mulched.

Removed a worthless oak tree.

Prepared a concrete slug for its date with the tow chain. I decided to let it cure overnight instead of trusting the epoxy packaging. I don’t want to have to glue that rebar in there a second time.

It may not sound like a lot, but it was more work than you would imagine. I also had to clean up a lot, put tools away, and so on. And I made a heavy-duty Home Depot run to prepare for all this.

Tools used:

1. Impact Driver
2. Hammer drill
3. Vise
4. Vise Grips
5. Level
6. Screwdriver
7. Shop-Vac
8. Tow chain
9. Proxxon
10. Shovel
12. Angle grinder
13. Claw hammer
14. Punch

I love having tools. Every time a problem came up, I had the right item to fix it. If you don’t have an impact driver and a hammer drill, you should qualify for handicapped parking, because you are helpless.

I want go fondle my shiny new tow chain.

I’m thrilled with the stuff I got done. These were nagging jobs I thought I’d never get around to. Sometimes I think one sign that you have problems you need to take up with God is that you can’t finish things you need to get done. You make plans, but somehow, things don’t work out. Today I got some things off my back, which had been bothering me for eons.

I feel as if some kind of blockage in my life has broken loose.

I think I’m also going to get a new cage for Marv. His cage is very nice, but he has been getting territorial about it, and I think the answer is to make the birds switch cages every day. The problem with that is that Marv’s cage is smaller than Maynard’s, so Maynard gets the shaft. His wingspan is bigger. Marv’s cage isn’t really adequate for him.

I can’t even guess what I’ll do with Marv’s cage. Ebay or Craig’s List, I suppose. I wish I knew a bird that needed a better cage. Actually, I do, but his owner would never go for it.

Some people think height is more important than square footage in a bird cage. I disagree completely. Narrow cages get dirty faster; there is less room for the poop. And wide cages let birds move around more, and you can put more toys in them.

I’m going to put together some kind of hinged perch for the patio, so these little goofs will have a proper place to hang out, instead of sitting on the back of a chair.

It was a beautiful day, and tomorrow is Sunday, so I get to relax, attend to my religious obligations, and pay a visit to Man Camp.

Not bad.

Also Wildlife

If this works, tool people will be required to make me their king for life.

I drilled holes in my concrete slug:

Here is my rebar, with my epoxy.

Here is the rebar epoxied into the holes.

Here is the fox, who came out while I was walking to the slug and just stood there.

I did NOT try to pet it. Let the neighbors deal with fox diseases. I couldn’t get a better photo. I had trouble making the camera focus. It’s humid, and the second you go outside with anything made of glass, condensation forms on it. It made it difficult to see whether the fox was in focus. And the silly thing was standing there the second I walked outside.

The epoxy label says it cures in 5 minutes, but the packaging says something about 24 hours for full strength. I think I’ll give it a yank after an hour and a half.

No Slug is Safe

I am apparently the dumbest person who ever lived. But before you start feeling superior, let me point out that all of you are pretty dumb, too. Because I asked your advice about something, and your advice was just as dumb as what I eventually did.

I had several concrete slugs in the yard. I had to get rid of them. I ended up renting a demo hammer and breaking them up so I could pull them out by hand. Boy, was that dumb. I later realized there was a better way. You drill two holes in the slug, attach a loop of rebar with epoxy, attach a chain to the loop, and pull with a hoist or a truck or something. Actually, a real man would twist a loop in the rebar with his vice and 3-foot pipe wrench, so he could attach it to the slug with one hole. I happen to know where I can borrow a 3-foot pipe wrench.

I still have one slug. Today I bought a piece of rebar and some epoxy, plus something every man needs: a tow chain. I was going to make up my own, but Home Depot had premade chains with hooks, and I didn’t want to wait three hours for someone to cut a piece of chain for me.

I just used the chain to rip out a live oak tree I didn’t like. Here, squirrels are sacred, because the local citizenry has no understanding of the evil that abides in the heart of a squirrel. Among their other misdeeds and atrocities (like cutting every single fruit off my mango tree), the squirrels plant invasive weeds and trees everywhere. Eventually there will be nothing here but live oaks, scrub oaks, jasmine vines, and happy, leering squirrels. There was a live oak in a hedge next to the house, thanks to my rodent friends. It got so big, the yard guys thought it was a shrub, and they trimmed it for a couple of years.

I wrapped my new chain around it, attached the chain to my father’s Explorer, and yanked. First one direction, then another. Now the tree resides in the trash heap. And I declare victory. BAH HA HA. Kneel before Zod.

Here’s a new reason to hate leaf blowers: they blow mulch away. I know, because I just spent half an hour replacing it. If you don’t mulch your trees, the Salvadorans go right up to them with their motorized weed whackers, and they girdle them. That may be why one of my papayas just fell over dead.

The papayas sucked anyway.

I decided to mulch my potted peppers to keep the weeds down. I hope mulch doesn’t kill pepper plants.

I have decided I need a second chain hoist. I have one in the garage, but it’s mounted on the overhead trusses, and I don’t feel like taking it down when I need it. And it’s only a half-ton job. I want a slightly bigger one I can attach to heavy objects when I need to pull things for various reasons.

Time to get up. I have steaks to freeze, guns to clean, a hasp to install…the list is pretty nasty.

I may go out and spit on that tree, just for the joy of it.

Bees Botched

The bee exterminator has made his appearance. And now there is no joy in Beeville. It’s lying in pieces in front of the dining room window.

I cannot believe the aggravation my bees have caused. A guy from another company came out, sprayed, and plugged holes. The bees laughed, and each stood up and gave him four middle fingers. One of the exterminator’s employees came out, drilled holes, explored, and gave up. Finally, the exterminator himself arrived. They drilled three holes in the living room wall and ceiling. Then he got on a ladder, with no bee gear, and ripped open the soffit with a hammer and a Sawzall. When I heard him cursing in pain, I knew he had hit paydirt.

The bees were in a four-foot-long cavity between two rafters. When he yanked the soffit boards open, they poured out like chubby kids through a hole in a fence between a fat camp and a Dairy Queen. And they were ready to dance. Unfortunately for the exterminator, everyone but him was either wearing a net or hiding in the distance. So he was everybody’s partner. I believe they nailed him three times, including one Heart-of-Darkness style sting involving a mission up his pant leg.

It may be an honor thing with bees, like when all the Indians wanted to kill Jeremiah Johnson. Maybe stinging the exterminator is like being a bee suicide bomber.

According to the exterminator and his associates, this hive was over a year old, even though I didn’t notice it until maybe six weeks ago. And some of the combs were full of honey. He tried some of it and pronounced it excellent, while an employee made futile remarks to the effect that he probably shouldn’t be eating insecticide. Another member of his crew said this area produces very good honey, and that it tastes like mangoes. Unfortunately, Coral Gables probably bans beekeeping, on grounds that it might be enjoyable and in some way resemble the behavior of people living in freedom. They ban everything they possibly can.

I guess next time, I’ll spring for a fiber optic camera thing and do the bee-hunting myself. Now that I see how it works, it doesn’t seem like a big deal.

I wish it had been possible to get them out with less sawing, but there was no way these bees were coming out, without some demolition. You can see that from the photos. Little rat bastards.

Here is the hole.

Here is the comb.

A commenter complained about me killing useful, wonderful bees, of which the world needs more. I wouldn’t worry. The exterminator says he can tell this hive sent out swarms. Eight times. He counted the queen cells. These are holes in the comb where queens are raised. When a queen comes out, she hits the road and takes half the hive with her. Bees may be in trouble in some places, but here, they are nearly impossible to kill.

I have to say, I got real satisfaction out of stepping on the ones that were crawling around on the ground, retching up bug spray. The bad news? This hive turned out to be located in a place where it couldn’t do any real harm. I could have left it in there.

The bees are dead, and I got the ants walking on their heels. Is there no one on this planet to even challenge me?

One Day These Things Will Rule the Earth

The bees have won. Just when I felt cocky about defeating the incredible ghost ants, I went outside and found that the bees in the chimney are doing very well, after numerous attempts to plug their escape holes.

I can’t believe how tough bees are. Any hippie who tells you we’re wiping out our bees needs to be punched in the mouth. Cockroaches are wimps compared to bees. I have killed maybe twenty pounds of these things, and they keep coming back. They’re like tiny Hillary Clintons with wings. And I don’t just mean the queens.

A nut who makes his living hacking up houses and removing bees has been called. This will be fun.

I should really take up beekeeping. How can I lose, with animals that refuse to die when you do your best to kill them?

Lawn Chair I Bought at the Drugstore

I think it will take at least a week for the giddiness over the new kitchen faucet to subside. This was one of those repair jobs that have effects far beyond the obvious. The old faucet worked okay, but the area under it was never dry, because the faucet was just plain worn out. And crappy to start with. It was the classic one-lever job so many homes ended up with in the Seventies and Eighties, with the little ball on top of the lever. Total garbage. And it stuck nearly straight out over the sink, so it was impossible to get a big pot under it. And washing your hands under a low faucet is a pain, if there’s anything in the sink. You have to move stuff out of the way.

The Bradys probably had one of these next to their avocado-colored refrigerator.

Whatever rot was going on because of the dripping will now be arrested. I no longer have to worry that the floor will cave in.

It’s amazing, the things that can go wrong with a house. And if you come from a white-collar family, you may have no idea what’s happening. White-collar people are often extremely ignorant about home maintenance. Houses deteriorate constantly. You have to be the immune system. And if you don’t know what happens to houses that aren’t maintained, you need to read up and find out.

My great-grandfather owned a few houses in the Depression. He let people live in them, free of charge. Why? Because empty houses fall apart. When you can’t get rent, you can at least get a certain basic level of maintenance.

I can’t believe the suffering I’ve endured because of ignorance. For example, I had no idea black ants and carpenter ants were bad, so I didn’t bother killing them. The carpenter ants ate a bunch of my physics texts, which I had kept for sentimental reasons. They also killed my tomatoes by putting aphids on them. I don’t know what mischief the black ants got up to, but I’m sure they did something bad. They’re dead now.

Cars are just like houses. It turns out you have to replace your tires every six years, even on vehicles you don’t drive. Otherwise the sidewalls crack open; I’ve seen it happen. Tires rot with age. They don’t tell you this when you buy tires, because sometimes you’re buying tires that are already two or three years old. Tires have a code on them; you can figure out how old they are. No one told me about that when I was a kid. Pretty scary, if you’re driving your children around on old tires.

Entropy is a real dirtbag. It never lets up for a second. Maybe it’s best to think of life as a treadmill instead of an easy chair.

By the way, the sucrose/boric acid syrup seems to be wiping out the ghost ants. I’m going to make some more and pour it on the exterior walls near ant nests. I guess I’m turning into one of those annoying old guys who never stops working on his house, and who irritates his neighbors by pointing out their maintenance problems. Maybe in ten years I’ll be raising the flag every morning and taking it down at night, and strolling around the yard in Bermuda shorts and black socks, with a tall boy of Milwaukee’s Best in one hand.

Actually, those guys are pretty cool compared to jaded, dysfunctional neighbors whose kids egg your house all the time.

New Faucet

I went to Home Depot and bought a new kitchen faucet; the old one was dripping into the cabinet and encouraging the ants and roaches. They had various wrenches to use on faucet parts. They had a $30 basin wrench and some weird new plastic thing for $10. I had no idea which was right, so I got both, figuring I could return the one that was most useless.

It turns out the plastic one kicks ass, so I didn’t have to open the $30 one. And man, are faucets better than they used to be. The old one had the usual crappy copper tubing on it, and it was fastened to the sink with some kind of hard crap that had set up like ceramic. The new one came with a gasket, and everything that had to be tightened could be tightened nearly all the way by hand.

I bought a couple of 30″ braided lines to put on it–the plastic wrench will hold these in place and screw them on–and I got them attached, and then I realized they were the wrong size for the wall valves. So I have to go back to Home Depot. I will have spent about $20 on a tool and some parts I banged up and could not return, but I didn’t have to hire a slackjaw and have the job done wrong AGAIN.

This job was intimidating, but in practice, it wasn’t undoable. There were no moments when I realized I was doomed or inadequate. Beyond my usual baseline sensations along those lines. I am really mad at everyone who ever worked on the kitchen. I will have to get a grip on myself and put that behind me, as a good Christian who doesn’t chase bad plumbers with a cattle prod or a horsewhip.

More

IT’S FINISHED! IT WORKS! THE WATER RUNS! THERE ARE NO LEAKS! THE ROACHES ARE SITTING IN SACKCLOTH AND ASHES!

This is glorious. It’s so nice to see a job done right, while savoring the pleasure of not paying for labor.

Dishwasher

I just installed a dishwasher. I removed the old copper inlet line. I replaced it with two braided lines connected end-to-end. I used to have maybe seven feet of extremely fragile, leaky copper. Now I have ten feet of braided stainless. If the dishwasher goes bad, I can move it around all I want, without fear of sending water spraying all over the kitchen. My question: why couldn’t the people who installed the last dishwasher have done this? Answer: because they took no pride in their work, and all they wanted was to get a signature and get back on the truck.

No one does anything right any more. And it’s not a question of skill or knowledge. Yesterday I knew virtually nothing about installing a dishwasher. Today I have an installation which is infinitely superior to what I would have gotten had I paid the delivery guys to do it.

How did we end up like this? Time and time again, I find myself in a position where I would be thrilled to pay someone to do a job, but I end up doing it myself because I can’t find anyone to do it right.

On top of that, the money people charge for services is insane. I could get rich running a business where I only charged people fifty bucks for the fifteen minutes of work an appliance installation requires. That’s because appliance stores charge over a hundred. Lawyers don’t make that kind of money. Why would I pay it to a blue-collar guy who can barely be considered skilled labor?

In case you’re wondering, it looks like Kitchenaid makes the best dishwashers these days. Braun gets higher ratings, but they have an eco-weasel “feature”: no heating element. So your dishes never get dry.

I went to Consumer Reports and saw how they raved about Kenmore. Then I read the reviews from the unfortunate people who had actually bought the machines. Oh, man. You couldn’t give me one now. But the Kitchenaid owners all seemed ecstatic. I went to J.D. Power to check, and I saw four stars by Kitchenaid, and that was enough for me.

So I guess what this means is that Consumer Reports is right in there with all the other people who do their jobs badly.

I’m glad I’m learning to do all these things for myself. I am so sick of having people tear up my home and belongings; I am so tired of having to follow up and complain until they get it right. I just don’t need the aggravation. Better to suffer with the actual work than to spend time on the phone yelling at people who don’t care. I have the sort of feeling I would have if these people were deliberately conspiring to punish me with bad work until I got the message and quit hiring them.

Do I sound crabby? Maybe just a little? Go on. You can be honest.

In other news, I heard from a TV production company today. They expressed interest in the rights to Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man. How about that? I looked them up. It’s a real company. I don’t think they’re like the vultures who appeared when I put my press release up, offering to put me on THREE TOP LITERARY WEBSITES or let me buy an infomercial from a company whose name sounds almost sort of like a famous shopping network, but not quite enough like it to justify a lawsuit.

I don’t know if it will amount to anything, but it proves I’m not the only person on earth who likes this concept. Who knows? Maybe some day you’ll see me on cable at 2 a.m., putting together a turducken.

I don’t like the idea of having my face on camera, and I am sure America and I are on the same page in that regard. But PR is the key to riches, and regular TV appearances are hard to beat. The TV-chef pantheon is full of rich people who can’t cook. Investors even buy them restaurants. Where the food is bad. And people buy it and swear it’s ambrosia.

I’m not desperate to get rich, but I would like to generate a solid income with this stuff. Maybe there is a way.

Help

Let’s say you have a dishwasher that just crapped out. And the water line to the dishwasher is copper, and because the dishwasher has crapped out before, the line has become kinked from moving the dishwasher around. And you just lost a foot of tubing because a kink turned into a hole, and you had to cut the tube, roll it back on itself, and mash it shut with Vise Grips.

What do you use to put an extension on the tubing?

Copper is clearly crap. It will cause more problems. Can I join some kind of braided tubing to it? I’d like to use about six feet, so repair people will be able to move the dishwasher all they want in the future.