As part of “regularizing” our house, plumber needs to add vent pipe. Instead of measuring down from window to calibrate inside and outside, assumes floor is at same level. Arrow indicates where hole ended up being.
Tag: in/competence
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Uruguay, you never cease to amaze me.
Another engineering FAIL
Beyond the corner, the builders buried about 50 meters of culvert, inaccessible except from either end, eliminating the drainage ditch. I could have told them this was a bad idea. A few days later, I didn’t need to. Simply demonstrates that the private sector can match the incompetence of the public sector.
Totally irresponsible
Heading up from the beach, I saw a column of smoke rising. Before crossing the dunes, putting my shoes on, I heard men’s voices. Getting to the road, I saw a blazing, untended fire not far from one of the flammable garbage containers.
Twenty meters further, a woman backed out of her driveway, stopped by me and said ¡Que horrible! I asked her who did it. Los jardineros. But there’s nobody here, I replied. It appears that the gardeners who had been working nearby piled up the brush, lit it on fire, and left for the day.
I’ve mentioned this behavior before, but this is a little extreme.
But hey, it was time to go home.
No engineering needed
Just send out a crew with shovels and concrete, no engineering needed
It’s classic palm-to-the-forehead “the work how she is done in Uruguay” moment. You’ll recall we just went through a poorly thought-out repair on the corner nearest us, and seeing as elections are coming up, it was quickly fixed.
Here’s the main thoroughfare, the bus route, a few blocks down the same street. You’ll notice in the foreground a new strip of concrete, so people turning off won’t hit potholes immediately. Instead, they’ll go one meter before hitting potholes. Eventually, but inevitably.
You’ll notice on the other side that they made the concrete patch lower than anything surrounding it, so that it collects rainwater. As you can also see, the puddle extends into the dirt section of the road, which means the potholes will start forming with the first vehicle to drive through.
We’ll see if they’re as quick to fix this. Your guess?
.
Lo barato sale caro
It wasn’t so long ago (one week to the day, in fact), that I speculated that the road crew might have solved our chronic drainage problem. But I did harbor some concern that the plastic culvert, covered only by a thin layer of dirt, might not stand up to the weight of garbage and delivery trucks.
As I see today, I did not. It broke. Within a week.
Proving once again what everyone here knows, but none seems to understand: doing things the cheap way ends up being expensive.
Expensive assuming they fix it. With general elections in the fall, the odds are better now than after, I’m told.
If you’re not a Spanish speaker, but want to show off, it’s lo bah-RAHT-o SAH-lay CAH-ro, with crisp Rs: English, not ‘Murkan.
What is cheap ends up expensive.
Toning down my toner demands
I discovered, to my surprise (why?) that our local computer store in Atlántida could get our laser printer cartridges refilled. Prior, I’d been taking them to Tecsys, where they advised that each was good for perhaps four refills, and that the people who did the refills would not refill them if the quality wouldn’t be up to par.
The local computer store also cleaned our printer, which had stopped functioning a few days ago. So the first thing I did on arriving home was hold the “on” button for five seconds to print a test page. It didn’t look good at all: the black test bar was streaky and gray in places. So I took it back, a bit upset.
The owner offered I could return the refilled cartridge and apply the cost to a new cartridge, about USD 90, saying that was the only way to get “new” quality (even though I was sure the previous refills had printed like new). Meanwhile, he showed me that a printed page of text—unlike the printer test page—looked just fine.
At which point I realized I had paid perhaps half (USD 20) for this refill as the others at Tecsys. I’d have to dig out receipts, which I’m too lazy to do, even for you, beloved reader of my drivel. But I know I didn’t pay twenty bucks in Texas.*
So he’d given me a workable solution at a good price, even though in terms of quality I’d essentially gotten what I paid for, which was less quality than I expected. But that was perhaps also more than I needed.
I thanked him for explaining. Ya veremos. We will see.
*Huh—? That’s what you get for not clicking on links 😉
Crazy gringo burns curupay as firewood
We inherited a piece of curupay lumber when we moved here. A meter long, perhaps 2″x3″, it weighs much more than any unsuspecting person would imagine. Curupay is used for beams, and though it has about the highest heat output of any wood here, its price is such that you’d be crazy to burn it. Unless, of course, you happen to have had incompetent local aluminum door installers destroy your floor and the frame of the wooden door they removed.
The pieces have sat, undisturbed, in our carport for a very long time. I tried cutting one with our crappy little German circular saw, which basically burned its way through the board, but my new table saw zipped right through them.
This is what just one of those pieces looks like burning. I’m scared to put in more than one piece. You can feel the heat across the room. Especially nice on a cold day like today, in a typically uninsulated Uruguay house.
Won’t last long at this price!
When I asked the clerk about this, he said the oferta referred to the bulbs in the black boxes.
Then he saw the humor in it, smiled.
Did he change anything? Probably not.
Forty five, schmorty five
I called the guy who installed our Ñuke wood stove (two years ago) to clean the stove pipe. He finally showed up.
First he cleaned the stove. Then, unable to cleanly remove the bricks of the upper combustion chamber, he broke them in order to gain access to the stove pipe from the bottom. His cleaning tool: 1/2″ flexible black pipe with some wires stuck in the end.
He couldn’t get it past the second elbow. So they’ll have to clean it from the top. And replace the bricks. Some day.
I asked them why they didn’t use 45° elbows originally, which would have worked a lot better.
They were supposed to be, he replied.
As someone (was it me?) once quipped: How do you say ‘quality control’ on Latin America? – You don’t.