Fix Things, Never Force It: Lessons From Grandpa

I liked it. I was in fact not aware of the driving idea behind iFixit, and I was inspired to check it out after hearing about this guy's values and where they came from.

I don't see it as a plug but more of a validation. His grandpa raised him the right way and taught him the value of hard work, perseverance and dedication. Those are things that you need in the startup industry and yielded success in his grandchildren's work. Ifixit is already well known, so it stands to be an example rather than cheap marketing.

This article would have been a lot better without those last few paragraphs.

I second that, should have started with the plug up top. Nevertheless, I loved the article and ifixit looks neat.

This community doesn't really seem to have a culture of making smooth plugs. I see pretty brazen plugs on a regular basis.

Is a plug really that offensive when the thing that's being plugged is a 100% community commons licensed repository of repair manuals and is described as exactly that?

Not so long ago, one member of a family would work a 35 hour week, while the other would stay at home, doing chores or looking after the kids. Money was not abundant, but time was, so people would often repair their own stuff out of necessity.

These days it's common for both members of a family work 50 or 60 or 70 hours a week, making them extremely time-poor. With such limited free time, they choose not to spend it getting their hands dirty doing manual labor, and instead just pay to have it done.

(For the record, I'm 31 and thoroughly enjoy doing as much stuff myself as I possibly can. Last week I put a new alternator, starter and rear brake shoes in my older car for about 1/10th the price I was quoted, and it took me about 3 hours on a sunny Thursday evening after work. I can't wait to once again take a long hiatus from work so I'm not as time-poor as I am now)

EDIT: for anyone that wants to work on their own car, checkout the prices on http://rockauto.com - it's insanely cheap and they ship worldwide. I have no affiliation, other than being a satisfied customer.

Speaking of laying floor, I'm putting in my own wood floor (I am 25 years old), and so far all of the neighbours I have met have looked at me like I had grown a third eye in my forehead.

Yes, I am doing it myself. No, I've never done it before, but how hard can it be? I've got the Internet, and that what I can't learn online I can learn from friends or by calling family. While I already feel like my house will never be done, and I will never be quite satisfied, I am extremely happy that I get to learn all kinds of new things I wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to learn.

My grandpa, on both sides of the family, were always fixing things, building things, and engineering new solutions to problems. I hope that even-though I have become a software engineer I never lose touch with the physical side.

I think you underestimate how much of a time sink fixing the first leaky plumbing fixture can be. There are a dozen things that can go wrong, and a dozen things to think about that someone who has never done it will discover by trial and error, with each iteration requiring a trip to the hardware store. If you didn't gain such handy expertise incidentally to "helping" someone else, every such task can be a comedy of errors. The worst is if you manage to mess something up badly enough that it requires far more work and material to fix than the problem you started with.

I work an hourly programming job (not exactly the norm). I can either spend X amount of hours laminating my floor, or spend those X hours working and making money. Then I can spend a fraction of that to pay a skilled laborer to do it for me.

While not everyone has a job that's hourly, people still have a strong sense of their time's worth. Maybe working extra doesn't directly translate to X dollars at the end of the month, but it may mean you can negotiate a larger raise, or a bonus.

One thing that amazes me is how much "fix things" is a matter of attitude -- of being willing to try, and willing to try again after failure.

I didn't grow up watching anyone fix things. I didn't particularly enjoy shop class in sixth grade. But I've fixed a bunch of stuff in my house just by reading a couple of pages in an old fix-it book, a webpage, or the instructions that come with the replacement parts, and then trying.

I think it took hold so quickly because it is a self-reinforcing cycle. Picture a well-to-do father who makes good money and spends too much time at work. He elects to outsource things like laying tile and repairing his car, because he spends little enough time with his family as it is. As a result, what opportunity do his children have to learn these things? Thus, over the course of just one or two generations, you move from "valuing your time" to "completely unable to perform repairs".

It doesn't surprise me, either. My father was very much that type of father. I luckily picked up a lot of the skills on my own volition, but already I choose to pay someone else to replace my radiator when I could do it myself, even though I am yet unencumbered by family duties.

IMHO, this is part of basic parenting. When I was growing up, my parents went out of their way to make sure I could be self sufficient. They called them "chores." I learned to cook, clean, do laundry and do basic house maintenance (plumbing, sheetrock, scraping and painting). At the time, I hated every minute of it and didn't see why I would bother with any of this stuff. Now, I like that I know how to take apart a sink, replace the seals and stop the $@#$* thing from dripping. I can do it now instead of waiting days or weeks for a repairman.

Then again, I grew up in a traditional family from a rural area. Self sufficiency was highly valued there. Specialization tends to be more highly valued in urban/suburban areas.

huh. so my circle of friends is a little different; Many of them could make garage door opener; heck, many of them could make a garage door opener that was far more secure than your average house lock. Of course, I live in a fairly urban area, and almost none of these people have an actual garage to open.

How much actual work gets done? that usually depends on the personal employment situation. Both, "do I have enough work" and "how hard is the boss pressuring me to work more" - from what I've seen it's more about how much free time is available than any calculation of how much they get paid per hour. (I mean, I usually do the "how much could I be making during this hour" calculation, but I'm a /lot/ more comfortable hiring people than most of my friends.)

If anything, I think the bias is too much towards 'I will do it myself' where I am, I've seen solder/heatshrink repairs on products that literally cost $5. I mean, done by fully-employed folks. I've got prime, I'll order you another.

Considering how many of these folks are introverts, I think there is a huge untapped market for someone to buy one of those self-storage places and add outlets. Especially if it was open 24/7? man, that would be really popular with my crowd. The problem with hackerspaces is that first, they are social (which is good for other things, but not for introvert work space) and second, that you generally have little to no storage space, and certainly can't leave your project on the workbench while you have a busy week at work.

On the subject of Grandpa fixing things, my favorite grandpa quote is "Always test a wire like this" (holds hand with palm inwards, two fingers out) "and never like this" (pretends to grab wire with both left and right hands outstretched)

It's a consequence of, first, having assembly lines and later assembly lines 'staffed' by robots. Once upon a time manufactured goods were expensive and labour was cheap. Now it's the other way around. So it's cheaper to chuck most things when they break rather than try to repair them. From a maximising p.o.v it makes sense, at least until such time as there are robots that will do housecalls

My wife and I bought a fixer-upper house last year, and I've been really enjoying working on it. But I always keep in mind that kind of work is more of a hobby than a financially savvy thing to do, since I can hire someone else to work on the house at less than 1/4 of my software consulting rate!

I live down the road from that Lowes. Let me tell you, it is pretty convenient. In fact, that entire area (much more than just a Lowes and parking lot) is the old Hitachi hard drive plant - it is now being converted into a massive number of homes and shops[1], which South San Jose needs.

[1] http://www.sjdistrict2.com/index.php?option=com_content&view...

I thought wisdom came with age? I would not on their death bed would not claim to be wise.. I have worked for young and old and they all make the same mistakes.

Sticking nuts and bolts are the perfect meditation.

Pedant alert: consider a beefy breaker bar or a torque wrench for that mechanical advantage. A pipe slipped on the end of a wrench has a habit of slipping off or breaking the wrench, and possibly causing injury to mechanism, mechanic, etc.

But yeah, I'm with ya. It's amazing the satisfaction we get from doing stuff ourselves and from the "working smarter" stuff our elders can teach us, if we'll only slow down, ask, and listen with care.