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PainterofCrap posted:on a floppy disc
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Dec 22, 2023 09:55
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PainterofCrap posted:I'm more worried about survivors getting my passwords, which are on an encrypted WORD document on a floppy disc, and one thumb drive. No one knows the password to open the WORD document but me, it's not written down anywhere. Print them out on paper. That will survive better than the USB drive and disc and is easier for survivors to access. I do this and then rotate the paper yearly into a safety deposit box that also has my will, passport, titles, etc inside. It's my mom's box so I'll also have access to her stuff if/when she passes away. Cracking a password protected Word, or any Office document is also trivially easy so if I was misunderstanding your comment and you don't want survivors to get your passwords, consider using a password management app like KeePass instead. Sirotan fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Dec 22, 2023 |
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Dec 22, 2023 13:34
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PainterofCrap posted:I'm more worried about survivors getting my passwords, which are on an encrypted WORD document on a floppy disc, and one thumb drive. No one knows the password to open the WORD document but me, it's not written down anywhere.  jesus christ, darkest poo poo I've read on the forums in months!In all seriousness, you should look at https://keepass.info for not-Google / Apple password management. One of the nice features is that it allows you to generate a printout of all the credentials in cleartext which you can then put in a safe or w/e. At the end of the day cleartext in sealed envelope in safe should be sufficient for your heirs to get access to things you want them to.
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Dec 22, 2023 13:35
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Seriously, though, all of this is a very solved problem. If you want a "fire proof" safe by all means, get it. Note the scare quotes, though, those things are generally OK for keeping your poo poo OK if it's a minor house fire but if the fucker burns to the slab you're going to open it and find a bunch of ash. For anything truly important you need off site storage. Maybe that's a county will depository, maybe that's the family lawyer, maybe it's a safe deposit box that you have a family member on (and all the other family members KNOW they're on). I'm on my parents', my sister's on mine, pretty sure my wife's on her parents' as well. Basically the old "here, there, and somewhere else" adage for data backup works for crap like wills etc. too. What a "fire proof" safe/lockbox is good for are all those documents that you actually have to keep on hand but are a mild pain in the rear end if they get destroyed. Passports and the like. They're also handy because it's a single place to go get all your poo poo if you need to leave town in a hurry, say for a hurricane evacuation. I know more than a few people who keep a pouch of poo poo like copies of birth certificates, marriage licenses, passports, prescriptions and other medical info, etc. inside their lockbox with the idea being that if they need to evacuate it's all right there to just scoop and move.
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Dec 22, 2023 15:00
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Cyrano4747 posted:....right there to just scoop and move. Yah this is good. My problem is apparently I'm getting old and it takes me an hour to remember where I can find the drat safe combos. If there is ever an actual emergency, we're probably hosed! I had no idea there might be a county will registry/depository, I've gotta check that out.
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Dec 22, 2023 16:03
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Baddog posted:Yah this is good. My problem is apparently I'm getting old and it takes me an hour to remember where I can find the drat safe combos. If there is ever an actual emergency, we're probably hosed! Well, this is one of those good news/bad news things with those little residential fire resistant security boxes. The majority of them are small enough and portable enough to just pick up. A good few even have handles specifically for that purpose. Some have an option to secure to a wall or something, but frankly if you're in that territory you're probably better off getting an actual small safe that you can properly bolt to the floor.* Either way, the little portable ones are good in that if you need to gently caress off in a hurry you can just toss it in the trunk and worry about figuring out the combo** later. On the other hand, their looks kinda scream "valuable poo poo inside" and a lot of people store grandma's jewelry in them too. So if someone breaks into your house and sees it, you can drat well bet it's walking out the door. This is a pain in the rear end if it's full of personal info, but generally not catastrophic. It's an easy identity theft starter kit, though. Generally my recommendation is that if you want to use one to make obscurity part of the security - stick it someplace without much other valuable stuff, and cover it up. Out of sight at the back of a top shelf in a cabinet full of cleaning supplies, for example, not at the back of your bedroom closet. Most of the time if someone breaks into your house they're in and out as fast as they can manage with the most valuable stuff they can spot, so if it isn't an obvious target it could very well get overlooked. *so all of these residential security containers that get marketed as "safes" are a giant mess of compromises and are generally only good at keeping idiots and kids out of your stuff, and keeping away the sort of criminal who wants to be in your house less than ten minutes. None of them will stand up to power tools or even a particularly large pry bar. The key is to secure them someplace that it is extremely awkward to get into with tools. Think the corner of a narrow closet between two studs where you can't really get purchase with a prybar to leverage it enough to rip out the anchors, at least not without taking down some dry wall. Again, you're not trying to stop the crew from Heat, you're trying to slow down the meth head with a crowbar long enough that they say gently caress it and grab your xbox and TV instead. **or just hit it with a crowbar. Seriously, the locks on these things aren't great. They're fine for keeping honest people honest or making sure a kid having a delinquent moment doesn't get in, but anyone who's willing to take tools to them will be in pretty quickly. I've personally crowbared the Sentry Safe ones open, if you've got them anchored well enough to put some real force on them it's a matter of seconds.
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Dec 22, 2023 16:19
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Residency Evil posted:My house has an indirect heating water tank as part of a boiler system for radiant heating in our house. I just took a look at our water heater because my wife wants to see if we can get the shower water hotter. Someone likely set it that high because they were running out of hot water. By keeping it that hot and mixing it down you're essentially increasing the size of the water tank. Perhaps your hot water demands are a lot less than that. Set it to 120 (for reasons already stated) and see how it goes. You can bump it up if you need more water.
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Dec 22, 2023 16:57
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skybolt_1 posted:
 When my Mom used to say that, "getting old is not for wimps," I used to think it was about the physical changes to your own body. It's some of that, but it's mostly your growing irrelevance in popular/day-to-day culture ("What is this? It's not real music!"), and dissolving of the close social structure around you as your generation ages out. You'd be surprised at what you can get used to as you age, and still maintain a positive & humorous outlook on the future.  I'm in my 60s, and am on the administration of my third estate. Death creates issues that most folks don't think of (and normally wouldn't) during the course of a happy healthy life. Once you hit your late fifties/early sixties, it becomes inevitable as friends and family pass on. I've also dealt with death (and more particularly, the legal consequences for the survivors), through my career as an insurance investigator/adjuster. I had a fun time getting Facebook to deactivate my mother's accounts (she created three as dementia took hold) because no one knew the passwords (the first clue that she was developing serious dementia was her constantly forgetting passwords and calling me to reset them) FWIW this is what I have now: all of my passwords, accessible from a single password. It'll remain air-gapped, because I am a paranoid boomer that does not like keeping my personal poo poo on someone else's server ("the Cloud"). I should make a hard copy, although I update my passwords regularly, so it keeps changing - so I haven't. Password musical chairs for my heirs! Although when I went into heart surgery in 2012, with a fair chance of not surviving the procedure, I did leave a printout of everything (along with who to contact at HR, the 401(k), bank account info, death benefits, the aforementioned Will) in a packet for my wife...which (excepting the Will of course) was later burned in the woodstove. I do recommend getting all that together, because boy howdy is it ever a pain in the rear end to have accounts & poo poo popping up for a year or two after someone dies. They sell (death?) books in which you can put it all together. Mine's partially filled out, but if I was a cat burglar I'd grab that poo poo immediately. Like I said: paranoid. PainterofCrap fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Dec 22, 2023 |
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Dec 22, 2023 18:37
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MarcusSA posted:This might not help you but that’s why my dad put me on the lockboxes so I can still access them. Careful - you might have access rights, but those can disappear when the account holder does (ie: dies). Banks are overly cautious (ie: go into lockdown mode) when someone dies to stop a relative from draining the accounts before the court approved executor has taken over.
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Dec 22, 2023 18:40
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unknown posted:Careful - you might have access rights, but those can disappear when the account holder does (ie: dies). Banks are overly cautious (ie: go into lockdown mode) when someone dies to stop a relative from draining the accounts before the court approved executor has taken over. Twenty-five years ago, when she was in her early 60s, My mom posted copies of her Will all over the house, and tacked up instructions in a difficult-to-access tiny closet on where her safety deposit boxes were, and how to get into them immediately & empty them before (legal) word of her death got out.
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Dec 22, 2023 18:49
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unknown posted:Careful - you might have access rights, but those can disappear when the account holder does (ie: dies). Banks are overly cautious (ie: go into lockdown mode) when someone dies to stop a relative from draining the accounts before the court approved executor has taken over.  Honestly I didn’t look into it but he claimed he did and it wouldn’t be a problem but I can see what you are saying. I think he also added me to the accounts as well but who knows because his financial stuff is a drat mess that only he understands. It’s just he and I thought so that might make things easier to some extent?
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Dec 22, 2023 18:53
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The government figures out you are dead *fast*, and the life insurance companies and brokerages aren't far behind. Banks don't seem to care so much (I guess your mileage may vary though). Don't be in a rush to tell them, you need a place to deposit checks with as little hassle as possible, for much longer than you think you would!
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Dec 22, 2023 18:55
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skybolt_1 posted:
yeah gotta make sure my kids inherit my Something Awful posting history
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Dec 22, 2023 19:18
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Baddog posted:Yah this is good. My problem is apparently I'm getting old and it takes me an hour to remember where I can find the drat safe combos. If there is ever an actual emergency, we're probably hosed! Maybe a safe isn't right for you. I mentioned using a firebag earlier, it's basically made for documents and you can just take it and go
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Dec 22, 2023 19:19
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if anyone has good tips for this discussion, we have an estate planning thread which would be happy for the content: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3989734
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Dec 22, 2023 19:20
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MarcusSA posted:
Joint/Dual bank account holders are a different thing - those don't get locked (one the dead person's access does) because legally the other holder is allowed to access it (as it's also technically theirs as well).
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Dec 22, 2023 20:31
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Johnny Truant posted:I can definitely report back the brand/model tonight - is that something I can reasonably fix myself? And by tonight, I mean 3 days later   I also found the manual so that should at least set me up to flush the fucker, but hopefully this is an easy $60 repair/upgrade type?
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Dec 22, 2023 22:30
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Johnny Truant posted:And by tonight, I mean 3 days later I was talking about your shower mixer valve. I doubt there is anything wrong with your water heater.
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Dec 22, 2023 22:35
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Motronic posted:I was talking about your shower mixer valve. I doubt there is anything wrong with your water heater. Loooooool shows you how much I know about plumbing stuff. Well now that you've educated me on some of these terms I can hopefully research how to do the actual fix, thanks! I forget if it was this thread or the home zone one where I asked about low voltage smoke detector wiring, but I finally pulled the sucker off its janky fixture and it is for sure not low voltage  Time to play the "which breaker affects these wires" game so I can cap them off...
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Dec 22, 2023 22:49
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Johnny Truant posted:And by tonight, I mean 3 days later Unless you have crazy crap in your water, flushing it probably won't help with your issue. However, you should get in the habit of doing it yearly to avoid problems in the future.
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Dec 23, 2023 01:08
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PainterofCrap posted:
I was referring to the use of a floppy disk in the YooL 2023, not the inevitable end that comes for us all. Also the reason I recommend and use keepass is because it is open source, portable, airgappable. Not in another cloud. I am, like yourself, paranoid.
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Dec 23, 2023 01:51
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devicenull posted:Unless you have crazy crap in your water, flushing it probably won't help with your issue. However, you should get in the habit of doing it yearly to avoid problems in the future. Totally, I was reading up on routine flushing recently and just connected the two ideas haha.
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Dec 23, 2023 15:39
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I got all my heirs info stored on a C64 datacette.
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Dec 23, 2023 16:01
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So I have been trying to do some initial research on a garage addition, property setbacks and everything to check the viability of all this. I think there's about 20' between the edge of my current garage and the edge of the setback requirements. I could put in a very wide third car garage and/or workshop/home office/goon cave Anyways, The assessors map is marginally useful but only barely. Of note my street is listed as 52' wide and a nearby street is 60' wide. But no monuments. From the highest point on my property I can see three iron things in the street that read "monument" almost certainly used in surveying the area in the late 1960s Anyways some "Internet advice" says there is a legal description of the property on the deed, so I go look and the deed just says "land is described as follows, lot X of accessors map Y filled January 1970" the accessors map available online is dated March 1970 I measured with a laser range finder+Google Earth both came within a couple inches of each other, about 38' and 45' vs the accessors map which says 52 and 60 respectively. I'm guessing my "yard" includes non trivial amounts of "unmaintained" city right of way... Something like 7' maybe more TL;DR 1) where can I find the legal definition of my property, ideally in relation to one or more of these monument markers in the street 2) how much is a suburban land survey in California these days And yeah I know the answer to 1 is "get a survey" but I'd like to have a high degree of confidence before I (or looking to see if I even should) spend $800-1000 on an official survey
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Dec 27, 2023 03:55
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Yeah, you do need a survey and you'll be lucky if you can find one for $1000. I had to have a new one done when we built a garage here in Wisconsin a couple years ago and it was $1400 unless I could wait six weeks and then it was $800 with another firm. I needed it the next week for permitting so I did what I had to do.
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Dec 27, 2023 04:03
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The county here tracks the legal description of properties, they have a property info site where you can put in an address and get that. Though mine's not that useful as it references lot numbers of an addition done in the 1890s.
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Dec 27, 2023 04:21
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Hadlock posted:So I have been trying to do some initial research on a garage addition, property setbacks and everything to check the viability of all this. I think there's about 20' between the edge of my current garage and the edge of the setback requirements. I could put in a very wide third car garage and/or workshop/home office/goon cave Your legal description is probably correct - you need to cross check the subdivision plat map for the lot drawings. It sounds like you're doing that but I'm not exactly sure if thats what you mean from the assessor map? If you go on the county recorder site and look up your property, you might be able to find the original plat map on there. You should also be able to use the GIS map to get to the maps, I assume that's what you're talking about from the assessor map? If not look that up for your (unofficial) lot lines overlaid onto a satellite map. I will say I have no idea what the monuments would be, as I'm not a Californian. I've seen official surveyor posts driven in the ground in the Midwest north woods, but you'd never be able to see 3 near each other like you're describing.
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Dec 27, 2023 05:32
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Maybe the iron spikes are deep in the ground - I can't seem to find anything on the surface. Yeah the thing in the street looks like a smaller version of an iron sewer cover, about 8" diameter similar in size/shape to a water main valve cover. The only difference is it says MONUMENT with concentric circles, and underneath is what looks like a piece of rebar about 12" below street level. They're about 200' apart, two on my street and one in the middle of the road at the nearest cross street. The assessor map says how long the lines are, what the radius of the rounded lines are, and the compass bearings are, but there's no reference point to measure everything off of to see where my property is in relation to the road. I have no idea if the road MONUMENT is in the center of the "road" or what. IRL the mounument is on the other side of the center line from me. Or maybe it's unrelated to any property lines and my house is on top of an (undisclosed) Indian graveyard.  My main concern is the width of the road on the assessors map is actually significantly wider than the physical road curb to curb, and also wider than the road + sidewalks on both sides. The "southern" most corner of my house is ~33 ft from the curb, but if my property line is actually 7' "north" of the curb then, accounting for the 15' setback requirement the southwest wall could only be ~10 ft instead of 16 ft which makes a pretty big difference for estimating construction and permitting costs, ~425 sq ft vs 675. Above 500 sq ft I can apply for a formal california junior ADU permit which would allow me to build a permitted mother in law suite thing. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Dec 27, 2023 |
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Dec 27, 2023 06:27
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I'm not following the confusion here. The assessor's map is almost certainly accurate. ROW doesn't have to be actively maintained to be ROW / a lot line. There's roads near me with 80' wide ROWs and only the center 50' is actually either paved or maintained shoulder, but not a single landowner adjacent has built anything more than a mailbox inside that 80' ROW (and even those are on the extreme edge). The lot line is the lot line. The only time the lot line changes because of a road is when they buy/eminent domain a slice of your parcel to make the ROW even wider.
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Dec 27, 2023 06:37
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Yeah I was trying to figure out where my lot line is. I am a corner lot and up until today I was under the impression that the ROW ended either at the asphalt or the sidewalk but only in the last couple of hours did I realize about 8' of "my property" is technically city ROW. The ROW is a lot wider than I imagined. I have no delusions about trying to build on a ROW though. I also just measured from the neighbor's fence line as a very rough reference point and it seems to match up with everything so I guess I have less buildable space than I thought I did.
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Dec 27, 2023 06:55
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Hadlock posted:Yeah I was trying to figure out where my lot line is. I am a corner lot and up until today I was under the impression that the ROW ended either at the asphalt or the sidewalk but only in the last couple of hours did I realize about 8' of "my property" is technically city ROW. The ROW is a lot wider than I imagined. I have no delusions about trying to build on a ROW though. Might be worth heading down to your county's offices, they probably have a map room or could have one of their engineers email you a copy of whatever they've got. I bet they'd be happy to help get you pointed on the right direction
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Dec 27, 2023 07:07
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No, it all makes sense now. I have mostly been looking at country plots where the county road (or planned future road) is a true ROW on your land, and/or the land butts right up against the road, with a utility ROW or something To my untrained eye this looked like a janky-rear end bad data being fed into google maps. Surely since the sidewalk wasn't 15 feet wide, I thought, the property line must extend to the curb or the road, and Google Maps was Just Wrong and rendering weird white space between my property line and the road  Turns out the google maps property line rendering is correct within a couple inches based on google earth and I was very wrong about how ROW works in our neighborhood. I was expecting the sidewalk to neatly meet with the property line or something like it does in san francisco. This also explains why most/all of my neighbor's retaining walls are offset from the road by an arbitrary distance from the sidewalk. edit: also there's this guy, who has built a freakin' compound a couple streets over, that is a 24" masonry wall that goes right up to the sidewalk  but his property line is set back quite a ways from the sidewalk, so I'm guessing that has been grandfathered in as an allowed yet unpermitted improvement 
Hadlock fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Dec 27, 2023 |
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Dec 27, 2023 07:20
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 dammit Gary! 
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Dec 27, 2023 13:51
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Also, what is everyone else's big year end annual maintenance checklist? I've got:
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Dec 27, 2023 16:51
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I try to space out a lot of my routine stuff, because having a big list makes me feel too overwhelmed and anxious. Plus, it then just feels like a big chore. But I know that sort of thing works for a lot of people too. Regardless, here's some of my routine stuff that I do that I didn't see on Shifty Pony's list: 1. Clean dryer vent. At a minimum clean at both ends, but I bought a cheap tool for it at a big box store that is a series of long semi flexible rods that connect to a brush and then socket into my drill. Lets me snake it through the entire length to get it nice and clean. I do this 2x a year. 2. Defrost freezers. Helps that I have 2 fridges and a full freezer so I can move things around, but I've done it in the past with an ice chest and some ice. 1x a year 3. Clean and vacuum underside and back of fridges and freezers. Usually done when defrosting. 1x a year, but I want to try to do it 2 or 3 times going forward. 4. Grease door hinges, door locks, and garage door tracks. White lithium works well, but can look messy of you don't clean up. There are some clear versions that are sold and marked for these applications that work well, but typically cost a bit more. 1x a year. 5. Replace air filter in cars. You can get the filters for 10 bucks and install easily if you can work a screwdriver. Aside from the direct benefits, it lets you know if anything who services your vehicle is shady if they try to upsell you on reloading the filters since you know they are fresh. 1x a year. 6. Replace wiper blades. Again, they can be snapped on pretty easily with universal kits. I used to use Michelin from Costco and replace every 6 months. I recently spent more for some silicone ones and have been really impressed. They've been installed over a year now, surviving Wisconsin winters, and still look and work well. Lots of seasonal stuff for winterizing and maintaining power tools and lawn machinery too, but that stuff is sort of a different type of routine than the intent with this stuff.
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Dec 27, 2023 17:16
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 I might deep the clean dryer vents every 5 years and vacuum behind the fridge every 10, and I thought that was ahead of the curve lol Will be changing the furnace filter, taking down the Christmas decorations, and preventing my children from killing each other
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Dec 27, 2023 18:22
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I have to detach and clean the most inconveniently placed dryer vent booster fan. Also steam clean the shower before I finally decide if I need to hire someone to re-grout it. (Please god, no.)
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Dec 27, 2023 20:36
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QuarkJets posted:
I guess for context, I just moved into my first house after years of renting, so I'm probably hyper active on this stuff. I can't recall the statistics, but the amount of fires due to lint in the dryer vents was shockingly high and it isn't that much of a pain for me; maybe 30 minutes of effort. Cleaning the fridge coils was another one where after learning how significantly it can impact the longevity of the fridge.
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Dec 27, 2023 23:34
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Just bitching: I'm "resurfacing" my dock. I was quoted >$20K by two contractors and the total DIY was like $3K so guess who is someones future gary. I've now made it to the bottom half of the nail box so 500+ nails (at almost $0.25/stainless nail!), 6 sistered joists and one total joist replacement that a bat jumped out of. That joist was so rotted that I was able to simply rip most of it off the boards it was previously nailed to. The bat was literal flying mouse thing not like, a baseball bat was wedged under my dock by the previous gary. My hands hurt. CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 00:13
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Obligatory: You either DIY a hero or live long enough to become the Gary.
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Dec 28, 2023 00:16
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