Wed Jun 05 2019 11:48:56 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Interesting. I thought Halogen didn't make the cut for "energy efficient" bulbs. I know that GU10 halogens are all over the place, as that's the standard fitting for halogen track lights, but I've never seen a GU24 halogen.

I'm thinking the government will probably eventually kill gasoline-powered cars the same way they killed incandescent light bulbs -- simply by making the energy efficiency requirements so strict that they simply cannot be met with the conventional technology.

Don't get me wrong -- I *like* the GU24 fitting. It works well, has a satisfying snap-in and snap-out, and the bulbs can be manufactured using a lot less extra material. But we live in an E26 world and no one wants to replace all of their fixtures or keep two kinds of bulbs on hand. I suppose adapters would work (the "legal" kind, that fit GU24 bulbs into E26 fixtures) but with LED bulbs available with E26 base, no one is motivated to change, so now we're stuck. 

You're right...my bad...I saw a pic of GU24 and thought it was what I had...then you mentioned GU10 and I looked up a comparison and realized that what I had was GU10.

Damn metric system.

Next chapter of the story of my lovely neighbor.  I found a waterproof version of "Great Stuff" expanding foam, and ordered two cans online (I'm sooooo jazzed that a Lowe's opened in our town this year, but they don't stock it) and shot an entire can into each of the "abandoned pipes" that were still discharging into my yard.  That seems to have taken care of most of it, but there's still a wet trench running roughly east-west along what I thought was the property boundary.

I pulled up the 2018 county GIS map and discovered that the trench is actually a few feet inside my yard, and that the pipe outfalls are even farther inside than I thought they were.  In the photo below, the tips of the red arrows are the locations of the ends of the three pipes (the rightmost one is the one I removed completely; the other two are now capped and sealed).   There's a garden supply place right up the street that sells bulk topsoil, and I'm planning on bringing some home in my new truck to fill up the ditches.  I was worried that the neighbor might get upset about me doing that to a trench running along the property line, but now I know it's so far away from the property line, that he really has no say in the matter.  If you look at the yellow line, though, you can also see that he's been landscaping a bunch of my yard as if it were his.

There might also be a fence (blocked by the trees in this photo) in the wrong place.  However, I did a bunch of reading and determined that a fence sitting there for many years does not constitute a prescriptive easement, because an easement cannot deny access to the true owner of the land.

If your property has had a survey done on it, there should be some metal rods at the corners of your property.  You should be able to find them using a metal detector.  Using some stakes you should be able to verify where everything is at ground level.  

Thu Jul 25 2019 10:18:41 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Fine, he said, it's old and they wanted a new fridge anyway,

A word of warning if you have not purchased the new refrigerator as of yet.   The government imposed energy efficient regulations on refrigerators.  While this is fine it means refrigerators have to be better insulated, better insulation means less usable space for the same size unit.  If your old unit was 19 cubic foot a new 19 cubic foot unit's size will be much larger.  You might have to purchase a 15 cubic foot unit to fit in that same space.

If you have a space for a refrigerator in the kitchen you will find you need to buy a smaller cubic foot unit to fit in that same space.  

Thu Jul 25 2019 01:58:14 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Ironically, while we were out at the hardware store buying valves and connectors, Con Ed showed up and slapped a smart meter on the house. They left a door-hanger note.

 Welcome, eventually everything will be controlled by someone else. 

LoanShark is a fantastic person, handsome and intelligent. 

*[This message last edited by LoanShark on Fri Jul 26 2019 06:45:28 AM EDT]