Recent content by ericm979

Yea if your insurance is through a large corp they have power. We thought that since the insurance was the same, from the same insurer, that when I retired and we went onto insurance from the marketplace, it'd be the same. Not even close! Some doctors won't even accept insurance that's not...

I haven't had time to work on it. Until we move my time there will be during short trips with lots of other things competing for my time.

I had exactly the same thing happen. After being told that everyone involved was in the network.

On a societal level, the US spends twice as much of it's GDP on health care as the next most expensive rich country, yet has worse overall outcomes than any other rich country. We're also the only one where hundreds of thousands of people go bankrupt due to medical bills every year. But the...

I did that for a while when the GP I was with went with them. At one point they greatly raised the price, which I already thought was high, and I decided it was not worth it. The advantage was that I could get plenty of time with the Dr to go over my issues. More than the usual rushed 15...

My understanding is that the iHMT doesn't have a full lockup like modern torque converter automatic transmissions in cars do. HSTs are most efficient when pumping small amounts of oil, which is normally when barely moving. IHMT makes it so that most efficient range matches speed of normal use.

Maybe you could cut and weld the shift lever into a better position.

Sometimes the valves just aren't very good when asked to flow small amounts. My Branson backhoe was like that. Moving the boom jerks the tractor around. When curling the bucket the travel is so fast that it bangs into the stop and ejects most of the material. I added adjustable flow controls...

When we sold our last house nearly 30 years ago our broker did that. We got a higher price than we'd expected, and the house was not anything special. The buyer contacted us a couple times and left phone messages that sounded like he was mad he'd over payed. We didn't call back. He probably...

It it is damaged beyond use the threaded inserts (not a helicoil) work pretty well.

Some compact tractors offer front mount PTO setups for driving implements like snow blowers. And some flail mower companies make front mounted mowers. There's also mowers like the Lane Shark and similar that run off a normal CUT's hydraulic system and mount on the SSQA on the loader. They are...

In college I worked in a restaurant for a while (in the back not the front). My wife worked in food service as a teen. We both know that servers get paid from tips. It's a hard job and they're not making a lot. So unless they really suck, we tip pretty well. It'd be great if servers got paid a...

Renewable diesel made my Branson run noticeably better. It starts easier and runs cleaner when cold. Less smell out of the DPF too. It's a continual low temp regen system and I can't get the DPF clogged data from the data recorder so I can't tell how much better it is for the DPF. But it runs so...

The blade bolt has a tab that fits into a slot in the blade carrier. It's not that large and could get rounded off, which would allow the bolt to turn. You could grind or cut flats on the head of the bolt using an angle grinder to give the pipe wrench a better grip. Then maybe the larger impact...

I grew up in the far eastern part of the SF bay area, almost the central valley. It gets hot there. Many 90+ degree days every summer. There was at least one 112 degree day when I was a teen. My dad got fed up after that and chiseled a hole in the stucco wall to mount a window A/C unit. In...