Another thing I’ve learned as a homeowner is how hard it is to repair anything these days. Our home was renovated in the early 2000s, but it’s still a lucky break if you can find a replacement part. We needed some replacement stone tiles for the kitchen and found a spot that sold the same ones. I called and they had the last batch available before they were discontinued forever. Similarly, the J hook broke on a garage door opener. The manufacturer was defunct, but luckily a local shop had one sitting around in the back they would sell us for $30. So basically the death of business continuity means that you almost always have to replace instead of repairing.
Oh yeah. This happened to me. LED light system over the counter, one of three mini fixtures burns out. Transformer box and other two lights are fine. Do you think it was possible to find one replacement fixture? For want of what would be a $5 light with exactly the right specs and socket, I needed to rip it out and get a new system.
The old one was a Home Depot store brand unit. Of course they don't still carry it (possibly nobody makes it anymore) and the Home Depot people can't answer questions at the level of detail of "Do you carry any LED puck lights with this exact socket/plug?"
Our home had a roughly similar situation with our 3 year old smart furnace. The control console was always a bit funky, but one day the furnace stopped running due to some sort of software foul up. The repairman said it would be a few weeks before a replacement console would arrive, but luckily it was spring and not too cold out. My wife went ballistic and we “temporarily” replaced it with the simplest, dumb thermostat available. Nearly a year later the replacement console hasn’t shown up , but we don’t want it anyway. Moral of the story: you can have a great system, but that doesn’t help you if you can’t turn it on and off reliably.
This has happened with my parents' minivan. It has electronically controlled seats that fold down. The software gets messed up and it costs a lot of money to have them do something to it to make it work again. The old mechanical folding seats that you just folded by brute force - if they broke, you might be able to fix it because you could identify what had actually gone wrong. Software problems that spill over into the real world are alienating. They turn simple products into black boxes.
Another thing I’ve learned as a homeowner is how hard it is to repair anything these days. Our home was renovated in the early 2000s, but it’s still a lucky break if you can find a replacement part. We needed some replacement stone tiles for the kitchen and found a spot that sold the same ones. I called and they had the last batch available before they were discontinued forever. Similarly, the J hook broke on a garage door opener. The manufacturer was defunct, but luckily a local shop had one sitting around in the back they would sell us for $30. So basically the death of business continuity means that you almost always have to replace instead of repairing.
Oh yeah. This happened to me. LED light system over the counter, one of three mini fixtures burns out. Transformer box and other two lights are fine. Do you think it was possible to find one replacement fixture? For want of what would be a $5 light with exactly the right specs and socket, I needed to rip it out and get a new system.
The old one was a Home Depot store brand unit. Of course they don't still carry it (possibly nobody makes it anymore) and the Home Depot people can't answer questions at the level of detail of "Do you carry any LED puck lights with this exact socket/plug?"
Our home had a roughly similar situation with our 3 year old smart furnace. The control console was always a bit funky, but one day the furnace stopped running due to some sort of software foul up. The repairman said it would be a few weeks before a replacement console would arrive, but luckily it was spring and not too cold out. My wife went ballistic and we “temporarily” replaced it with the simplest, dumb thermostat available. Nearly a year later the replacement console hasn’t shown up , but we don’t want it anyway. Moral of the story: you can have a great system, but that doesn’t help you if you can’t turn it on and off reliably.
This has happened with my parents' minivan. It has electronically controlled seats that fold down. The software gets messed up and it costs a lot of money to have them do something to it to make it work again. The old mechanical folding seats that you just folded by brute force - if they broke, you might be able to fix it because you could identify what had actually gone wrong. Software problems that spill over into the real world are alienating. They turn simple products into black boxes.