All Forum Posts by: Matt R.

Many years ago, I had a job selling appliance parts, and the parts book listed a package of citric acid crystals for cleaning dishwashers.  You put it in the dishwasher detergent cup, instead of soap, and then ran a normal cycle with no dishes loaded.  Our service guys advised us (and we told customers) that Tang powdered drink mix would do the same job for less money, and every grocery store has it.  I've never had a dishwasher that was crusty enough to try it myself, though.

GE's information on using citric acid to clean out a dishwasher is here .

Just to pile on a little... Go to http://homicide.kansascity.com/ and check out 2012, 2013, and 2014.  (The 2015 data is incomplete).  This data was compiled by the local newspaper (KC Star) and has all of the homicides across the area for each of those years.  Compare those three years and you will see the pattern of where people do and don't get shot in Kansas City.

I agree with what @Chris Dawson said.  Knob Noster is tiny - population about 2,700.  It doesn't even have a Wal-Mart!  :D  It's only there because of Whiteman AFB.  I'm sure it has better and worse areas, but I'm not sure that the concepts of A/B/C/D apply the same as they would in Kansas City or somewhere bigger.

If you're dead set on small towns east of Kansas City, I'd look at Warrensburg.  It is bigger (about 19,900), and has more than one thing going on (University of Central Missouri, the Gates/Hawker/Enersys plant).  Maybe also Sedalia, population about 21,100.

@Account Closed @Patrick Liska @Cory Patterson @Matthew Paul @Jeff M.

Thanks for the replies!

I called the seller on this house and found out I was 90 minutes before an offer deadline, so I didn't put in an offer just then.  If I find that they are taking offers again, I'll go look at the interior.  (Based on the price history, I think the house has probably gone through at least one cycle of "we got offers, we didn't like any of them, so list it again".)

At least now I know not to be super scared of the problem with the I-beam.  If I get inside, I will be sure to look closely at what the inside of the basement looks like.

Matt R.

For a couple of houses I've been looking at, in the suburbs of Kansas City, the price drops seem to be on roughly a 4 to 6 week schedule.  One is in pretty good shape and they want about $100k currently; the other needs rehab and they want about $65k currently.  Each drop seems to be roughly 5% of the price.  They are listed through different Realtors.

If there are other houses for sale in the area, look them up on Zillow.  If you scroll down some, there will be a price history for the listing, with dates.

I am not a Realtor, but based on some marketing reports I've seen from one, I have the idea that the MLS has the ability to report on average days on market in an area, and give you price history as well. Maybe log in and push all the buttons and see what happens. :D

Most printers can't print all the way to the edge of a normal 8.5"x11" piece of paper.  The margin varies from printer to printer, but it's usually around 1/4" or so. Sometimes it's different for the long edges vs. the short edges, too.

The way most envelope feeders that I've seen work is that one long edge of the envelope goes in the same place that one long edge of a normal 8.5x11 piece of paper would go.  If you're trying to print something really close to that long edge, you might be exceeding the limits of the printer, and you're getting a poorly-worded error message.

One possible fix is to turn things around 180 degrees in the software - pick the other long edge of the envelope as the "top".  That way, nearly everything should print on what would be the "middle" of a normal piece of paper, which should be within the limits of the printer.

Another possible fix is to just lie to the printer and tell it that it's printing a normal 8.5x11 piece of paper.  Put a normal piece of paper in with an outline of your envelope drawn on it by hand, and run a couple of test prints until you get all the text where you want it.  Then switch over to the envelopes.

Hello all!

I looked at a house recently, here in the Kansas City area, and noticed something on the outside basement wall.  Some of the concrete has fallen away, and the ends of the I-beam (that holds up the joists in the basement) are visible from outside the house.  Is this bad?

I haven't been able to look inside the house yet; I may do that early next week.  I didn't notice any other big cracks in the parts of the basement walls I could see, but most of them are below grade and I can't see them from the outside of the house.  I was just wondering if this is a "run away screaming" kind of thing or not.  :)

More background: The house was built in about 1972.  The basement is roughly 50 feet by 25 feet - two-car garage in one half, living area in other half.  The house is on the side of a hill - not on the top, but not in a low spot, either.  I don't know how long it's been like this; it's been at least long enough for somebody to repaint the outside of the basement wall, and paint over the cracked concrete and the end of the I-beam.  However, this may have been done in the past few months, as the house was being prepped to sell.

Here is a picture, in case that helps.  I just showed the detail for one end of the I-beam, but both ends of the I-beam are visible through their respective foundation walls.  There are also three steel columns supporting the I-beam, spaced fairly evenly throughout the basement.

Thanks!

Matt R.

Something that seems to drive this here in Kansas City is that even though living downtown or near downtown is fashionable again, the KC, MO schools are not real great.  Younger people get out of college and rent an apartment in the city, close to the bars, restaurants, concert venues, etc.  They may even stay in that apartment when the first kid is born, but by the time the kid is school age, they have to move out to the suburbs for better schools - unless their income is so good that they can afford private school.  I suspect there is a similar pattern in many other cities.

Argument against: It may just be that the D/FW area has a reasonable concentration of companies that still hire engineers.  Off the top of my head, you still have places like TI and Raytheon.  American and Southwest probably have some engineers kicking around, too... oil-and-gas is more of a Houston thing but there's a little of it in Dallas as well.  In the recent past, you had Nortel (RIP), and on the WABAC machine, Tandy.

Arguments for: I agree with many that have been brought up in this thread - liking to solve puzzles and follow procedures, bigger salary means more money to spend on RE investing, having to go into management to make the really big bucks, having to relearn everything frequently, a bias against older engineers.

I think another thing that affects software people, more than than ee/mech-e/civil/chemical, is outhousing and H1B.  Lots of PHBs think that outhoused software development is better than having direct-hire employees; you can write vague specs, claim the developers didn't meet the spec, stiff them on the payment, and still get a product anyway.  Also, you only have to pay for them when you need them; when you're done, you just kick them to the curb.  When they want to start a new software project, they think it only takes 30 seconds for the next outhousing firm to come up to speed, so they don't worry about it.  H1B is more complicated, but once they've convinced the Feds that absolutely nobody in the United States knows how to write a C# program, then for three years, they can pay somebody two-thirds of the money; he takes that deal and shows up every day because he will be *deported* in 30 days if he quits!

You can only see that pattern so many times as a software person before you decide to do something different. In other words, I think the 15-year timeframe you noticed might be how long it takes for engineers to notice that while *engineering* is fun, a whole lot of companies have no idea how to *manage* engineering very well.

Another piece of the puzzle is that a lot of engineering for consumer products doesn't happen in the US anymore.  In 1980, TV sets, stereos, VCRs, and PCs were still designed and built in the US.  Through the 80s and 90s, the manufacturing went to Mexico, but the engineering stayed in the US, and then both manufacturing and engineering went to China.  The people from the early part of this process are probably long retired, but there are probably still some guys in the US that had to do something different when their job was shipped to People's Shining Electronics Factory #37.

Oops, I ranted again.  *adjusts onion on belt*  :)

A while back, I was thinking of buying a car wash that was pretty close to my house.  I found the message board at Auto Care Forum to be a pretty good source of information; they have one that's specifically for buying or building a car wash.  (I ended up not buying the wash, partly because of some things I learned on that forum.)

I am not affiliated with that site.