It’s a brand name. They are made by punching holes to make the basic shape, and then the blade edges are acid etched to wicked sharpness. They had a patent on the etching process they use to produce them, s as nd for quite some time, there was nothing close to as good. (They cut, traditional graters mostly tear. Regular graters are superior for producing large pieces of grated cheese, but for making super fine shavings, the microplane wins)
The original use of the tool was as a wood rasp, but the alternative kitchen use out did that very quickly. There are now some clones, have not used them.
I’ve only ever managed slight cuts on a microplane. a mandoline will take a finger tip off, all the way to the bone. (so will a knife, so not really that scary, just have to pay attention. And use the pusher.
Put up the tree today, and then put the art on the walls… spent all afternoon with my dad putting pictures in their places. It’s anything but trivial to have a series of 3 paintings with 2 hangers each in a straight and equidistant line on the wall so they match the 2 images on the other wall. Felt almost like some Advent of Code problem. Then in the middle of the afternoon the flushing mechanism of the new toilet gave up and the plumber will be here tomorrow… 7:30 am which is exactly my normal wakeup time on a workday, not on what is supposed to be vacation. And of course I have to be up before then to let them in.
It’s storming outside… sadly just rain. We were going to meet our friends at the Weihnachtsmarkt. But I am not sure I want to leave the house … even if it means I get Glühwein.
Tomorrow will be even busier than today. Besides the plumber, the electrician will be in, as will be the engineer who made the plans for the electrician and our cleaner. Christmas grocery shopping has yet to be done and also we have to find a time to hand the rest of the apartment keys to our new tenants…
Come Saturday I will spend all day sleeping is my guess.
How come that some people insist Christmas is the quiet time of the year? It is the busiest of them all.
Still need to wrap the presents for the kids.
While pulling on socks this morning, shivering in our freezing bedroom, something spasmed in my back and I had to lie down. Crippling back pain all day.
Warmth helps. Lots of it. We have these. They help a lot. Wear one for a day and see if it helps. I am sure there’s stuff like that to be had in Japan.
Sounds a bit what we call Hexenschuss. If warmth alone doesn’t help… you know what to do. (Hint: it starts with “see” and ends with “doctor”)
I’ve had so much back-pain throughout my working life… it sucks.
Yoga really helps and knowing all the right physio tricks.
And less stress. And sitting right. And lifting stuff carefully.
So, last night, we got the kids to bed around 9 and started the Christmas Eve prep. That is, of course, finish wrapping the last of the gifts, put out all the presents (as our children cannot be trusted not to open everything the moment they can), and set up the stockings and gifts from Santa. Finished up close to midnight, just in time to hear some pounding on the wall. Our older child was awake and asking to go sleep on the couch (currently covered in stockings and gifts), so I told him Santa only comes once everyone is asleep on their beds. He seems to accept that and rolls over.
20ish minutes later, more pounding. My wife takes care of it as I clean up for bed. After that, I am putting away the last of our things and more pounding. He tries to push his way out of the door, but again I convinced him to lay down.
Long story shortened a tiny bit, I did not get to sleep until 2:40, and he had to have been similar. And then the kids were up a bit before 5. Let them play with toys from Santa and their stockings, but managed to keep them off the wrapped gifts until 7.
Update: got a plumber out to look at the water heater. He said it looked good and wasn’t too old, was able to get the pilot light going, but it would not stay lit. Tried cleaning the thermocouple and it lit for a moment, but it went out again and recommended replacing it. Quoted $835 for that.
We had looked it up, and that work averaged $80-150, so basically said, “Hell no,” because it was so overpriced. The guy agreed with me and mentioned the company had some extravagant pricing for some things, and gave me a quick rundown of how to change it myself. I was planning to do that anyway using YouTube videos, but appreciated it.
So $122ish for what was essentially a diagnostic, then $13 for the thermocouple (and seriously, what BS sci-fi naming is that?), and over the course of 30 minutes (using my sonic screwdriver and hydrospanners) replaced it and BAM, working water heater!
put that company on the list to never call again. That’s “you have no hot water, and we know it “ extortion pricing. glad the tech is honest, even if his employer isn’t.
thermocouples are pretty sci-fi. They make electricity when you stick them in a flame! how cool is that?
Talking of water heaters and sleazy plumbers, a number of years ago, when we still lived in a co-op, I got a call in the middle of the night from the board president. A pipe had sprung a leak, he’d called a plumber who had turned the water off to the building and wanted $3000 for doing so. I went down to see what was going on, and discovered the plumber wasn’t who we called, but someone else (which I didn’t think much of, because we used a pretty small company, and pooling emergency calls off hours isn’t unusual). I told him, “ sends us a bill. We called them, we’ll pay them. They can pay you.” he said he’d call the police if we didn’t pay him. I said “No, I’ll call them myself.” he left in a hurrry at that point. In the morning, I called the company we used, and they had no record of us calling them. they came out, fixed the actual problem, turned the water on, told us what else needed to get done at a later date (and not at emergency rates). A few days later, they called me and told me their answering service was calling the other guy for things that sound like an easy to fix emergency. They’d taken care of it, he said. He didn’t say how, but I got the impression that dark alleys and pipe wrenches were probably involved.
Actually, it was worse than that, as the plumber showed me the page he generates the quotes from. It doesn’t really drill down to details at all. It was just “Water Heater - minor repair” or something like that, with the price. Then there was major repair, which was something like $1300, and replacement which was in the $3k range. So literally their people just load up a page, tap a button, and there’s the quotes.
I hate flat rate pricing on service calls. It’s always a rip off for the customer. The price has to be high enough for the company to make money on all jobs (or almost all), including the ones where everything goes wrong, which means on the vast majority of them, where no much goes wrong, they make ou like a bandit. Time and material means you only pay for the actual work and parts, which is going to be less. supposedly, people prefer to know the price upfront, even if they are getting ripped off. I don’t believe that, but I am sure I could write a survey that would show it.
(For reference, the last water heater I installed (for a relative) took about an hour. They’d already bought it and had it handy, along with some supplies. But it was pretty much plug and play. Mine required changing the pipes and the gas line, and some flue work, and was about as hard as a like for like replacement could be, for one not in a low crawl space. It still took less than four hours, and I soldered copper pipes. (A pro would have pressed them which is much faster, but requires expensive tools). Maybe 750 in parts, so that’s a labor rate of around 500/hr.)
