On Monday, March 8, 2021 at 11:43:22 AM UTC-5, Leon wrote:
On 3/7/2021 6:38 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 7 Mar 2021 10:19:06 -0600, Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet wrote:

On 3/6/2021 8:45 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Mar 2021 16:36:56 -0500, Michael Trew
wrote:

On 3/6/2021 2:31 PM, DerbyDad03 wrote:
Since I'm sprucing up the bathroom, I figured I might as well get a nice new
supply line for the toilet.

Remember when a half gallon of ice cream suddenly shrunk to 1.75 qts and even 1.5 qts for some brands? Apparently the plumbing industry took notice.

Here's my old 12" supply line compared to the new 12" supply line.

https://i.imgur.com/QYEh8I9.jpg

Guess how much more supply line I need to tighten up the connection?

Same as the 2"X4" studs in 100+ year old homes, as compared to the
1.5"X3.5" "2X4" lumber of today.

Well, there is a reason for that but...

Economics. A old friend had an old home that he was doing some
modifications on. His wall studs were OAK 2x4, actual size. He had to
take that into consideration when cutting nailing AND matching up wall
thickness.

From what I understand, the lumber, now, starts at 2x4 and shrinks and
gets milled to 1.5 x 3.5.



Perhaps a better example would be plywood.

Economics.

Well, yes, but the shrinkage started out to be the rough cut and
planed size. Then they downsized the rough cut to get the same size
after planeing. I think _then_ they dropped it to what it is now.

Comparisons could go on. A prime example being our local daily paper,
which I sometimes wonder why I still subscribe to. It's at least 1/3 of
the size that it was 20 years ago, even printed on shorter broadsheet
paper; yet the price is over 3 times higher.

With 1% the "news" and 10x the advertising. I don't think we've taken
a newspaper in 40 years. At times they've littered our front yard
with them. It was nearly impossible to get it stopped (counted as
"circulation").

We moved into a new neighborhood 10 years ago and my dad moved in with
us about 6 months later. He still insisted in taking the paper but he
was the only one that I know of in the neighborhood that did so. I have
not seen a newspaper in years.

We get the paper delivered on weekends. SWMBO reads it in the recliner while
having her coffee. "You want me to heat that up for you?" "Yes, please." Gawd,
she's got it so good! ;-)

She reads it mainly for the local news and feature items. She cuts out articles
that she thinks I might be interested in. e.g. She was on unemployment for about
a month when Covid first hit. She found an article on doing taxes that mentioned
unemployment benefits. Cut it out, left it on my desk. That type of thing.

She often finds things to do around town and movies that she/we might be interested
in. Keeps her happy which keeps me happy.

The delivery comes with a interesting situation. Does the elderly gentleman that delivers
the paper at 3 AM do it because he has to or because he wants to? Does the fact that
he is so bowlegged that it takes him upwards of 2 minutes to shuffle his way from his
car to my front door and back a problem for him or just a way of life? At any hint of
inclement weather he climbs the 2 steps of my stoop and puts the paper inside the
storm door just like I did when I was a teenager. Sometimes it's not even needed, so I'm
guessing he does it because he wants to.