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Grimas

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Posts posted by Grimas

  1. 20 minutes ago, Texzilla588 said:

    Before you move someplace to retire that you saw in a movie or some article said was a great place, try it before you buy it.

    If youve never lived in a desert like Tucson, go there and get a short term rental for a couple months. Go to Spain and rent for a few months and travel around. Talk to expats living it.

    I’ve drug my wife all over the country for my job for 40 years. She’s getting to choose the next place which is to be close to granddaughters in Oklahoma. As much time as we’ve spent there we’re looking at a variety of options to try. Partly for livin’partly to see how much our kids will use us as a babysitting service.

    Before you move someplace to retire that you saw in a movie or some article said was a great place, try it before you buy it.

    If youve never lived in a desert like Tucson, go there and get a short term rental for a couple months. Go to Spain and rent for a few months and travel around. Talk to expats living it.

    I’ve drug my wife all over the country for my job for 40 years. She’s getting to choose the next place which is to be close to granddaughters in Oklahoma. As much time as we’ve spent there we’re looking at a variety of options to try. Partly for livin’partly to see how much our kids will use us as a babysitting service.

    You can say that again!

    • Like 2
    • Haha 6
  2. 2 hours ago, billfromlaketravis said:

    I’ve used AAA towing twice within the last 8 months. There’s a short in my dash, I hope is finally fixed. 
     

    It’s $10 a month. Worth it sure, but I’ll try to fix it first before I call them. Their response times can be very poor. Weekday business hours, fast. Saturday night, 2-3 hours. Same thing applies for tow truck driver. Business hours, you’ll get a pro. Saturday night, you’re going to get a guy leaving the bar.

    OP it sounds like situation is a bit unique. I assume your kid is driving from Houston to Fayetteville. If your kid is a female, I’d fly her back and forth. Even with AAA, she could catch a sketchy driver late at night. If your son is a Young Life type with a new car, you might be OK.

    Regardless, if they’re driving back on the weekends, response time is going to be slow. I’d strongly suggest you get their car looked at/serviced every time they come home. I drove back and forth between Austin to Houston every week for about a year. I let stuff go on my 9-10 year old Civic and it turned into a brick. 

     Twin boys (HS football players) will be sharing one car that just had a full crawl-over by a mechanic, new tires, rear diff, water pump, timing chain and belts so not too worried about the car but more for peace of mind. Also have family in N. Dallas so they have that as a halfway point if needed and I don’t see them driving much other than home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

    From the Texas border across OK and Ark, it a whole bunch of nothing  - compared to Houston to Dallas or Austin to Dallas - where if you have an issue, it’s gonna be a long tow… Add ice and snow in the winter and 18 year olds… Even if it takes a while for a response, it’ll be faster than me or a relative having to drag ass up there with a flatbed to get them which is why I went ahead and bought AAA Premier…

    Flights from IAH to Bentonville are a bitch to get at decent rates and if you go via Tulsa, it’s still 2 hour drive across a bunch of nothingness.

    Don't care about the rest of the AAA benefits beyond the towing as I already have lifetime Gold at Hertz and tons of miles from Marriot and Chase…

    • Hook 'Em 1
  3. Yea, I already have a portable jumper and air compressor in their car and the campus parking offers free jumps and assistance to students if parked in a campus lot.  My concern is that there is a whole lot of nothing between Fayettnam and Dallas and the few town that are along the route don’t appear to have more than one repair shop in them (if any). Water pump blows enroute, tow it to Dallas, Tulsa or Fayetteville where I have options rather than the one-toothed mechanic in some one-stoplight town…

    I “think” they now know how to change a spare now but I wanted a backup plan for them.  (Changing a tire in the driveway where I have a 4 ton hydraulic jack and impact tools isn’t the same as on the side of the road with trucks blowing by at 80mph…) :)

    (Yea, I purchased the AAA premiere plan this morning for them and mom (no pics)). Of course, I jinxed myself as it takes 7 days to kick in and we leave on Wednesday to dump them off…)

  4. Thanks- that was my thought to get my wife as primary and one of the kids as the dependent as the wife will usually be in the car with me but might make some solo trips and one kid as the other should be in the car with the other one and as long as you are in the car, you’re covered.  I figure it better to get towed back to a larger town with some options than to be at the mercy of the one mechanic on the reservation looking to have you pay for their kids college as well…

     

  5. Searched but didn’t see a previous thread…

    kids going to school at UArk and the drive to home is about 500 miles.  Not much in terms of population once you get into Ok and Arkansas where you can get car repair if needed so was looking at getting an AAA membership for the kids as you can get a “premier” membership which will give you a 200 mile tow if needed. I already have towing coverage on my insurance and Chase card but don’t think the tow will get them more than to the nearest town.  Any thoughts on if it’s worth the membership? (I tried to get one because it says you get an additional member added to your account “for free” but when I went to sign-up, they were still charging something like $26/year for the “ free” added member…)

    thoughts?

  6. 1 hour ago, Hate said:

    I’m getting a bigger generator that is tri-fuel capable and having an electrician install a transfer switch or whatever it is called so I can plug the generator right into the house. I want to be able to have the downstairs operate normally and to have options for powering the generator. 

    My setup was the reverse - I had the upstairs unit (3 ton) set to 60 deg. and kept the downstairs on fan only since heat rises. Setting to 60 kept the compressor from cycling and taking the power spike (even though I have "soft start" switches installed on both units). Only thing I kept off in the fuse panel was the oven, dryer and pool pump as those have large impacts on power draw (and to ensure wife didn't actually try to use them and trip the fuses...)  

  7. Propane is great for those short outages and I had 5 tanks here as reserve. But instead of 4-6 hours each that I was thinking, they only lasted 2 hours each under load. Luckily, I was able to run and fill 15 gallons before the gas lines formed that kept me running for the duration. I had bought a NG conversion kit earlier but it’s still sitting in the box and hadn’t been installed (yet)…

  8. We're leaning towards west coast of Spain south of Barcelona.  Can get a 2500-3000 sq ft house with pool close to the beach for 4-500K.  Helps that I got my EU passport - thanks to grandfather being displace during WW2 - so I can get on national healthcare system and then supplement with top private for 3K a year. It's our plan B if I get laid off for some reason before medicare kicks in... (COBRA would cost me 3k a month if I had to go on it right now...) Would be looking at moving there right now if the kids would have decided to go to school in Europe...

    • Hook 'Em 1
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  9. 25 minutes ago, Bevo said:

    Did you have to google or did you know about it? I had a patient who was a geologist who told me about it. Is it widely known?

    I had to Google it when I saw the comment as I hadn't heard of any faults in the Woodlands even though I've lived here 11 years and have never noticed the faulting on the roads here like you get down in Spring Branch.  (And I'm a geologist...)

    As a side note, my structural geology professor at UT - who later became the head of the Geology Department - and her geologist husband bought a house in Austin that they didn't know was on a major fault line that caused a bunch of damage to it...

    • Hook 'Em 2
  10. 20 hours ago, Bevo said:

    There's a fault line that runs through The Woodlands. I don't know what kind of problems that would cause with buried cables.

    It's a pretty minor set of faults that are most likely due to sucking down the water table that shouldn't affect the wiring/cables. But you also wouldn't want your house or pool built on it... (Ha Ha Gordy Bunch! https://www.jw.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Woodlands-Fault-Line-Lawsuit-Dismissed.pdf)

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  11. 7 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

    here’s a failure. Entergy has like 250k people, and a crew of 1300. Centerpoint has like 2.5 million and 2500 people working. And they’ll have the same results in the same period of time? Yikes. 

    I saw somewhere that they lost something like 11 main transmission lines. Trim the damn trees…

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  12. 1 minute ago, Zeus said:

    Damn that stinks, at least you know how to work on engines and fix them. 

    I also have two generators, a loud cheap construction one that usually gets borrowed in loss of power situations is my backup to the firman. 

    YouTube videos… and I do have a 3000 watt inverter that I just had to dust off and just ran extension cables to the wifi and fridges no issue until it gets to 90 today and the wife starts really bitching…

    • Hook 'Em 1
  13. 7 hours ago, Zeus said:

    Firman is nice it should be able to constantly run as long as you have fuel. Keep it in the shade it will have less chance to overheat. You should get a 12000btu portable AC you can set in your house in a room to sleep in AC in the future as well. 
     

    If it does overheat it will probably just shut off and you have will have to wait a little. 
     

    I like running off propane in mine keeps the carburetor clean for when I ever do need to actually run it off gas. 

    My Westinghouse 12500 just crapped out…. Genny still running but not generating power…. Probably a $2.99 capacitor I can get on Amazon - next week.

    • Rage+1 3
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