evilgenius wrote:Back when my dad was young, he ran the river with a friend from Aspen to Lake Mead. There was no Lake Powell back then. They picked up a couple of other guys at Lee's Ferry, before they entered the Canyon. They did it on a surplus WWII pontoon bridge boat. The things that generation could do, by just throwing some things into the back of a car, amazing.
Yup. My dad, a mechanical engineer and WWII vet born in '25, built a house in Detroit one year, while working for IBM. Just as a goof. I got to see it during a side trip from a family reunion in Detroit in about '85. It was ugly, but it looked sound and had a family living in it a couple decades after it was built.
I was amazed. Even for a mechanical engineer -- no schooling or courses or formal education at all in architecture or home building -- he just built a house of his own design in his spare time. (He contracted out part of the work, like the foundation, but still...).
When clearing the trees to make room for a yard from the lot, he and some buddies got an old car engine to drive a big chain saw. They cooled it with water from a 55 gallon drum full of water. It would go from cool to boiling within 5 minutes, since no radiator being used (showing how much work a car radiator does re cooling, BTW). Just grab cheap things and make them work, vs. hiring experts...
When things broke around our house for 4 decades, he fixed LOTS of them, including making parts himself. Everything he did like that, to my knowledge (I live in that house now) still works great, EXCEPT for the electrical boxes he fashioned out of balsa wood. My electrician went NUTS when he saw those and we replaced them with proper steel boxes. (Hint: a primary reason for electrical boxes is to contain fires if something goes wrong at wire junctions. Balsa wood is the OPPOSITE of the material good to use for that).
ONE generation later, when there's mechanical work of any consequence to do for ANYTHING, I call a specialist for help. Period. Once cars went to fuel injection and platinum spark plugs, etc, my useful mechanical skills became pretty much irrelevant for getting useful things done of any consequence.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.