Not too immediately. Take 3 steps back/towards the nearest exit, that’s where you want the extinguisher. Not right next to the stove that’s going to be on fire when you need to get to the extinguisher.

Keep in mind that a standard ABC extinguisher isn’t rated for grease fryers. If it’s just the fat needed to sautee something you’re good, but for an actual deep frying fire you want something in class K.

Sask also has our own network, and it seems to help things a lot. Been a while since I’ve shopped for plans, but there was a time when the big 2 charged about 25% less in Sask because they had to compete with Sasktel. They’ve also got their own MVNO now, Lum Mobile, which is the first to have a vastly different pricing structure than the other options. Buy 3 month/1 year plans up front, and the data bucket is an until you use it thing instead of being a monthly bucket. For about $450 (including all taxes/fees) I’ve got my cell service paid for the whole year, and will probably still have some data left to carry over then.

Supposedly there’s been some big discounts coming around with the newer MVNO’s, but its hard to gain traction when people are so used to just walking down to the nearest carrier store for phones/plans, and often choose an expensive monthly plan over buying their devices up front.

I always took a light jacket with lots of pockets. In line, transfer all your things to the jacket and put that through the scanner. After security transfer everything back and pack the jacket.

Looking for commercial type products and checking the website for parts/manuals can go a long way. Doesn’t always guarantee that those parts will still be available in a decade or two, but it shows the company at least making an effort to support those products. You’re paying up front though, that commercial product can be 5-10x the cost of the equivalent consumer model. Heck, sometimes people still buy those consumer models because it’s a lot easier to justify a $100-$200 price tag every, even if you expect to replace it every few years than $1000+ up front.

This is the real answer to me. Often, the premium version is still out there but people go for the budget version anyway. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. When we can furnish a whole room for what a couple pieces used to cost, that’s a win for a lot of people even if some of those items wear out prematurely. It also depends if we’re talking about a mostly mechanical and utilitarian item, vs something that relies on modern software ecosystems. Toasters haven’t changed much in 40 years, but a 10 year old cell phone is pretty much useless, possibly not working at all with current network technology. Durability is less important when an item becomes technologically obsolete anyway.

I heard there was a process for requesting additional data, but you have to actually pay for the 5 users and they’ll bump it a few TB every couple months on request. That’s from people reporting their experience with support, so it might not be totally consistent.

I kind of get it though, people hear “unlimited storage” and then don’t even make an effort to be efficient with that space, and just want to keep everything forever. There’s a real cost to that storage, and it’s higher than many think since it’s not just a single HDD like many would have sitting on their desk but a series of arrays/pools and all the related systems to ensure reliability and uptime. They probably did some calculation where 99% of users would be profitable even with their “unlimited storage” and eating it on the other 1% was a reasonable advertising cost. Over time that calculation changed and they had to update the service.

Presumably it was GSuite/Google Workspace. While they advertised unlimited storage if you paid for 5 accounts, it wasn’t really enforced so you could pay something like $20/month and get unlimited storage on G-drive. There was a daily cap on how much data can be moved, but that’s fine for hosting incremental backups like many that took advantage.

Mine guest network is Free Public WiFi. Only one person at my place has gotten the joke so far.

The other thing I didn’t think of is renting makes it a lot simpler to share accommodations. A group of 2-4 people can split the rent on a property that none of them would qualify for individually.

Agreed that the current situation parallels a lot of industries in that it’s concentrating wealth in the hands of those that are already ahead and it’s difficult for new people to become part of that system. Personally, I think the solution for any of these essential goods/services is crown corporations, which creates a standard of service that private industry has to compete with instead of being able to collude to maximize margins.

I’ve heard that the regulatory environment had a big impact on some places. Something like there were a bunch of subsidies/incentives to invest in the real estate aspect of malls. When those incentives dried up, the increased operating costs got passed on to tenants, some of which couldn’t afford the increase. Closing shops make the mall less attractive for customers, which reduces sales at the remaining shops, some of which end up closing down, and the whole thing spirals into the situation we have now.

Not for everybody, but I’ve heard reasonable advice of getting the mortgage at a longer amortization period, then making extra payments. When I was looking it was typical to be allowed to increase the payment by 10-20% or to make additional payments up to 10-20% of the initial loan amount each year without penalty. That’s enough to potentially be paying it off in under 10 years without penalty(which is often in the range of 3 months simple interest, so still worthwhile if you unexpectedly come in to some money), but also gives you the flexibility of going back to the minimum payments if your financial situation changes.

Renting does make it cheaper/simpler to change accommodations though. Think things like starting a family and wanting to scale the household up from just two people to adding children and down again when those children move out. Renting makes it simpler to move closer to work, public transportation, schools, Etc. as a persons needs change. On the other hand, there’s also a lot of financial benefits to living in your own home: grants/rebates available for homeowners, not rental properties, being able to save costs by doing your own maintenance/renovations, etc…

I’ve had a few different First Aid courses and the instructors all have slightly different reasoning. One argument for compression only is potential for passing disease mouth to mouth, the newer courses tend to teach this because sometimes people that don’t feel comfortable doing rescue breaths will fail to do CPR at all. Another is that in cases where you’ve witnessed the event, the blood is already fairly well oxygenated and if medical help has a good response time the benefits of breaths are minimal. The first is more about compression only CPR being better than nothing, breaths are still advised where the rescuer feels comfortable doing so. The second is pretty situational.

What about Credit Unions? They’re cooperatives owned by the members. Despite not having a handful of shareholders collecting profits, they’re usually not that much different than dealing with a bank. Services and rates are usually pretty comparable.

This is true in central Canada too. Heat pumps get pushed saying they put out 3 times as much heat as the energy they use, but electricity is 7x the cost of natural gas.

Canadian here, I guess offer directions to the airport so they can get a flight to British Columbia?

Even better would be if more devices used the lithium ion cylindrical cells. Higher power and energy density, while also being a standardized form factor that can be switched out as needed.

This is entirely regional though. The further you are from the equator, the more seasonal variation there is in sunlight levels, and heating/cooling loads. Around here our solar production is minimized during the season when our energy needs are maximized. We also don’t have variable rate billing, though we only get partial credit for excess generation, so battery storage will never pay for itself until something changes.

My utility gives a 50% credit on excess generation. Thing there is the utility is still the one taking responsibility for having the capacity and scalability to respond to variation in demand and production. When I was getting quotes, adding storage would have doubled the cost of the system for a day or two worth of storage. Probably would cost double again to have a system that would keep up through the winter.

This is regional, some places don’t have reduced min wage for tipped employees. Servers make the same min wage as everybody else and earn tips on top of that.

My presumption is that the desalinated water might be cheaper than tap, but would still require further processing to be considered potable, which would raise the price on par or above conventionally sourced tap water. I imagine there’s a lot of costal areas though with ready access to saltwater and minimal access to freshwater where it’s worthwhile.