750 cafe project

[Bopi]

by the way, what did you wrap your wires with. It doesn't look like tape.

[beergood]

Yup, I just didn't have the time to take to trace everything yesterday.

And sorry, but spaghetti westerns were filmed in Spain, but with an Italian director and Italian money.

[beergood]

It's a plastic cable organizer. Then wrapped some of that in tape. One of the things that I hate about wrapping the wires in tape is the sticky residue that it leaves.

[Bopi]

I stand corrected. I'll never look at clint the same.

By plastic cable organizer , you mean the the stuff with the split along the length .

[Mike_H]

Wow, Deja, vu. That wire harness picture is the same as the mess I had in my house, rewrapping mine.

I had the same type of problems with a PO though. When I picked up my bike, the starter button was a momentary contact grafted to the handlebar clamp. I think this was in response to the "clutch in" switch getting out of adjustment, and the PO hacked into the harness, instead of spending 2 minutes adjusting the clutch...Dolt.

[beergood]

Yup, that's the stuff. It has a decent overlap, so it provided good coverage, but I should be able to get to individual wires pretty quickly, should I need to. Like now.

In college I used to have what I called "Western Sundays", which were days I new in advance that I would be tremendously hung over. I would prepare by renting about 5 westerns in advance, and spend the whole day in bed drinking water and watching movies.

I considered it a form of alternate American history.

[beergood]

Oh, and I think the organizer is a lot more flexible than the tightly wound tape. It threaded through everything really easy.

We'll see how durable this stuff is. I am just expirimenting, but I use this stuff at work a lot and it seems to hold up pretty well.

[Bopi]

The old west as we know it from the movies only lasted about 30-40 years.
post civil war. Just a blink of the eye from a historical perspective.

[beergood]

Maybe I'll start a western movie thread with recommendations, stories, and avoidance warnings.

Thanks to byrdman76 for the tip on the LED all in one units. I was thinking that I would have to do the whole shebang from scratch. I've worked with LEDs before, and wasn't worried about it, but for a whole prefab unit for about 2 bucks, you can't beat that. I picked them up last night. Should be going in some time soon.

Side Note: Radio Shack dropped their moronic policy of requiring your name/contact info for even small purchases. Supposedly it was never an actuall requirement, but the sales people were told to use strong arm tactics to get it. I haven't been there for a while because I got into it with a counter dude that told me he absolutely needed it for me to purchase a universal adapter with cash. I heard that some radio shacks were using our "war on terror" as an excuse. I'm sorry, but I can't sell you a watch battery and some resisters without tracking information. You could be building a bomb.

[Bopi]

Spaghetti, ironically, was invented in China

Marco..........




Unfortunately i know little about leds and seldom go to radio shack.
Best Buys, well thats a different story. They're not as concerned with national security.

So Al Gore wins an oscar hmmmm...........Reagan never did...........

[beergood]

Spaghetti, ironically, was invented in China

Marco..........

it is indeed a fascinating world we live in, and it is getting more integrated all the time

Unfortunately i know little about leds and seldom go to radio shack.
Best Buys, well thats a different story. They're not as concerned with national security.

nor are they terribly concerned with value/quality

So Al Gore wins an oscar hmmmm...........Reagan never did...........

Has Al ever had to work with a monkey? (I was going to work a Gipper/Tipper joke in, but to be honest, I don't have the time)

[Bopi]

No Al never has but Clint did several times.

Quality , Best buys makes state of the art electronic appliances available to the masses. Thats where I got my Panasonic big screen. It also runs on gas.

[beergood]

The Any Which Way movies are some of my favorites.

Do you work for Best Buy? I hope I wasn't being offensive, but I have had some questionable customer service there. I will admit that I am quite happy with my Sony stuff(credit for that goes to Sony, not Best Buy) I bought ways back, but I (and plenty of friends and clients) have had them push products based on criteria other than what is best for the consumer, and just downright bad customer service at other times. And that extended warranty is almost like asking you if you consent to be molested/robbed.

Of course, Best Buy doesn't have the market cornered on these practices. They are the SOP of the big box electronic store.

A few years ago I needed to pick up some printer cables for a client, and I was in a hurry. I hit the local Circuit City, which normally I avoid like a psycho ex-girlfriend. When I brought my cables up to the checkout, the cashier was on her phone throughout the entire transaction, and never spoke to me other than to tell me my total. I worked customer service at smaller stores throughout high school and college, and we had customer service drummed into us, so I am pretty sensitive to it. I don't expect to be treated like the King of Siam by a checkout girl, but I think I do deserve her attention while I am spending close to $100 on three cables.

Anyway, one of the cables didn't work (no fault of he store), so I stopped to return it on my way home. I decided that I was going to say something to the manager about my earlier experience. Now, this is actually really out of character for me, but I had had a bad day and was still pretty peeved about the poor service. I wasn't going to give enough information specific information to get the girl in trouble, unless she does this all the time and the manager knows about it. I just wanted an apology and an assurance that he would give his staff a lecture on customer service. Or something like that at least.

I went up to the return counter with my receipt and bad cable in hand. It turns out the store manager was working the counter. He was on the phone. He put his hand over the receiver and asked what I wanted, I told him that I wanted to return a cable. He took my receipt and cable and processed my return without ever speaking to me again. He spent the entire time on the phone with his wife, talking about the vacation they had planned for the next month. I never ended up complaining because I didn't see the point.

Not all employees at big box stores are like this, but I think that more are than aren't. It is a you need us more than we need you mentality. The only time I received some genuine interest at a best buy was when I was there looking at cameras. And the guy that asked wasn't a best buy employee, but a camera company rep.

I am a pretty knowledgeable techie, and before I do anything I do plenty of research about what I want. To me the big box stores are a necessary evil that I have to deal with to get okay prices and a view of the actual product (as opposed to the internet). Occasionally I will let the sales guy try to hustle me, while I hold my cards close to my chest. It is sad how often they try to sell you a product that clearly isn't the best for what I want, but is the best for them to sell.

Of course, there are the guys that are the exceptions to these rules. When I meet one, I always wonder where they used to work to pick up good customer service skills.

[Mike_H]

You know whats fun? Asking the sales reps questions you already know the answer too, and trying to catch them in a lie, or general lack of knowledge. Works in Home Depot, or other home improvement stores. Great fun, but it bugs my wife.

[beergood]

I do IT consultanting (yes, I am a 'consultant', not as bad as a lawyer, but close). Basically, my business partner and I handle networks for smaller to medium size companies that find having in house IT too expensive.

This means that we have to be a pair of Jack-of-all-trades. Unfortunately, this also means that we have to do office cabling from time to time. It's alright money, but tedious. So we spend a fair amount of time in Home Depot and Lowes. The Home Depot in my neighborhood is a dire place. Dingy, dusty and the help isn't exactly helpful. A while back we were buying stuff for a job, and my coworker (when we started off in business together we would often refer to each other as partners, then one day I realized that some people were getting the impression that we were partners, if you get what I mean), anyway, he asks a woman in the electrical department where the cable labels were (you know, the little tape labels that say 'a', 'b', etc. so that you can organize cable ends). Usually we know that department front to back, but they had done some 'reorganizing'. She informed us that the don't carry anything like that. We assured her that they used to. She kind of rolled her eyes and made a 'whatever' face, and assured us again that they didn't have anything like that.

So we had to look for ourselves. After finding them about 3 minutes later. Kevin approached the woman to show her that they in fact did have them. Instead of an apology, she offered this by way of explanation: 'I didn't know what you were talking about'.

Nice.

They have since opened a Lowes about a quarter mile away. When it was opened, it was clean, organized and well staffed. Two years later, and it still is. Some people hope that they drive the Depot out of business, but I don't. What would Gallant be without Goofus right there as an example of what not to do.

I would prefer to use a smaller family hardware store for much of my needs, but I live near the Detroit border, and most of those have long since disappeared or aren't open when I need them. It seems to be the American way to sacrifice quality and care for convenience, and I am just as guilty as the next guy.