Minor things that bother you

[1995hoo]

the mesh liner means no need for underwear.

You're an adult now.  If you don't want to wear underwear, then don't wear underwear.

I find going totally commando uncomfortable.

[jeffandnicole]

Heh. I'm hot enough that I've thought about wearing swim trunks around the house because the mesh liner means no need for underwear.

You don't have to wear anything. Just keep the blinds shut.

[gonealookin]

Trying to sleep downstairs where it's coolest would be tricky (there is a couch and a recliner down there).

Few houses at Tahoe, and I'm sure in most mountain communities, were originally built with air conditioning, although I see people installing the units on the outside of the house all the time (our HOA is OK with that subject to neighbor consent).

Many homes including mine are "upside down" compared to the usual layout, with the living room and kitchen on the upper floor and the bedrooms below.  It works pretty well both summer and winter.  In the summer, the few days that get quite warm, just sleep with the windows open and you're usually pulling a blanket on about 3 a.m.  In the winter, the heat goes to where you spend most of your time and you can always add an extra blanket or two at night.

[1995hoo]

I've slept better than I thought I would the past two nights. That's not to say I've slept "well," of course. But I didn't have a horrible time of it (unlike my wife, who is a very light sleeper anyway).

Have any of you ever used a portable evaporative cooler? Home Depot sells them and the prices are reasonable. Of course I know they would not make it feel like AC would. But I'm wondering whether they are a reasonable option to augment the various fans we have running. Evaporative cooling has traditionally been popular in the Southwest (the hotels at the Grand Canyon have it instead of AC, for example), and that's part of what gives me pause—I figure the results in the dry desert climate might well be very different from a humid July on the East Coast.


Edited to add: I looked at the portable AC units where you run a tube to the window, but there's no realistic way to fit one in the master bedroom with the way we have the room set up. Hence why I'm long at other ideas (that might be cheaper, too).

[JayhawkCO]

Have any of you ever used a portable evaporative cooler?

Not in my house, but this is a fairly common "accessory" in developing world hotel rooms. The place I've seen them most frequently honestly is in airport waiting areas in small airports.

[Scott5114]

Have any of you ever used a portable evaporative cooler? Home Depot sells them and the prices are reasonable. Of course I know they would not make it feel like AC would. But I'm wondering whether they are a reasonable option to augment the various fans we have running. Evaporative cooling has traditionally been popular in the Southwest (the hotels at the Grand Canyon have it instead of AC, for example), and that's part of what gives me pause—I figure the results in the dry desert climate might well be very different from a humid July on the East Coast.

Evaporative cooling works because of a quirk of physics where water needs to have the energy of water at 212°F to exist as a vapor, but the air is sucking up liquid water at much lower temperatures, and basically sacrificing some of its own heat to do so. The faster the water evaporates, the greater the cooling effect.

(AC works by pulling the same trick mechanically, by forcing a fluid to repeatedly evaporate and condense  through pressure. By controlling on which side of a wall this happens, you can force the fluid to carry heat from cold areas and release it in hot areas. Run the same contraption in reverse and you have a heat pump.)

So you will not notice very much effect at all if you try to use one in a humid environment, because water evaporates much slower there. It may, in fact, make things worse because you're essentially running a humidifier. It works fine in the desert because you're basically raising the relative humidity from something like 5% to something more like 35%, which is still comfortable.

(Right after I moved to Las Vegas I spilled a little bit of a drink on the kitchen floor. The towels hadn't been unpacked yet, so I had to spend a few minutes rummaging through boxes to find them. By the time I found a towel and returned to the kitchen, I was quite surprised to find that there was nothing left to towel up.)

[Max Rockatansky]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

[1995hoo]

Thank you to both of you. Especially Scott for the detailed explanation. That is very helpful. Some of those units are quite inexpensive, which suggests they're probably not much use in the long run, but the idea of trying something for three or four days that costs less than $100 had a potential appeal that I'm sure anyone can understand. Sounds like it probably makes more sense just to get some of those cooling towels at the sporting goods store. I could use those things anyway even when the AC is working because I get so sweaty from mundane things like vacuuming and mowing the lawn.

[Rothman]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

They're used all over Florida and I haven't heard people complain about them...

[Max Rockatansky]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

They're used all over Florida and I haven't heard people complain about them...

Didn't work so great for me on Cudjoe Key.  I could get the one in the main room to hover at 85-87F in the main room sustainably but rarely any lower.

[Rothman]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

They're used all over Florida and I haven't heard people complain about them...

Didn't work so great for me on Cudjoe Key.  I could get the one in the main room to hover at 85-87F in the main room sustainably but rarely any lower.

Congrats on being the first.

[freebrickproductions]

Sure, but at least with a printed book, you could tell your teacher that it was wrong, and if they were any good they'd work it out themselves and correct your grade. These days, if the questions are randomized, who knows if there's even any way to prove what the questions you got were.

TBQH, I could probably report it to the professor and Pearson, given how consistent the issue was I could easily document it before the semester ends. However, given that most of the people seeing this issue are probably broke and overworked college students, and the amount of documentation it would probably require (at the very least screenshots and the student completely working-out the problems on paper to show how the program was wrong), I could see why it's been able to fly under the radar.

When I was doing my class on surveying, the professor discarded the online Pearson homework halfway through because it had way too many errors.

I griped with my sister about it last night and she just remarked, "Well, it's Pearson..."

[kkt]

the mesh liner means no need for underwear.

You're an adult now.  If you don't want to wear underwear, then don't wear underwear.

I find going totally commando uncomfortable.

Again, you're an adult and can make your own decisions about your underwear.

[Scott5114]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

They're used all over Florida and I haven't heard people complain about them...

You have far more confidence in Floridians' understanding of physics than I do.

[kphoger]

I just did one of those I'm not a robot things that Meta makes me do sometimes.  I had to click on all the squares with a stoplight in them.  One of the squares had part of a visor but no signal aspect.  There's no way to know what they think the right answer is there...

[Dirt Roads]

The more dry the air is the better a swamp cooler will work.  They work great out here in my semi-arid area but probably not so great out east.

They're used all over Florida and I haven't heard people complain about them...

You have far more confidence in Floridians' understanding of physics than I do.

Evaporative coolers are used extensively in large outdoor settings such as amusement parks.  Folks here in the Southeast have a totally different concept of what to use them for, as they work very well for spreading fine water mist all over the exposed skin, which helps calm the perspiration process (and thusly gives a cooling-like sensation).  That sensation would probably agitate folks in the Southwest that use evaporative coolers for so-called air conditioning purposes.

I'm old school, so it seems weird that all the little kids at the beach are carrying around a water squirt bottle with a spritzer fan pointed right at their face.  However, they've certainly got a pretty good understanding of the physics behind using a swamp cooler in the Southeast.

[Scott5114]

A mister like the one you're describing works because you are spraying water cooler than 98.6° onto the skin. Water takes a lot of energy to heat up, so it can absorb a lot of heat from the skin. But evaporative coolers are trying to get the water into the air, not onto your skin.

Evaporative coolers are on the way out in Nevada because they use so much water. Most water used in Southern Nevada can be recaptured through the sewer system and treated to be pumped back into Lake Mead, which subtracts it from Nevada's water usage. Evaporated water cannot be pumped back into the lake, of course. So heavy users of evaporative coolers are being convinced to convert to air conditioning.

[kphoger]

A mister like the one you're describing works because you are spraying water cooler than 98.6° onto the skin. Water takes a lot of energy to heat up, so it can absorb a lot of heat from the skin.

The evaporation of 98.6° water on your skin will still cool you off.  If that weren't the case, then there would be no reason for people to sweat.

[CtrlAltDel]

TBQH, I could probably report it to the professor and Pearson, given how consistent the issue was I could easily document it before the semester ends. However, given that most of the people seeing this issue are probably broke and overworked college students, and the amount of documentation it would probably require (at the very least screenshots and the student completely working-out the problems on paper to show how the program was wrong), I could see why it's been able to fly under the radar.

If I were you, I would most definitely tell the professor of your course about this. As a professor myself, although not of anything mathy, this is definitely something I would want to know. I haven't used Pearson specifically, but it is almost certainly possible to look into your submission and see what happened.

If you're worried about rocking the boat, your professor is likely to be amenable to what you have to say partly since they also like when things work well and partly because you are pretty much guaranteed to win any grade dispute involving correct answers marked wrong. You also need not provide an elaborate explanation, either. Just give the problem, and then state your answer and the answer the computer gave. And if it turns out you were if fact wrong about some small detail, you won't be any more in the future.

As far as the publishing company goes, they won't care unless the issue is reported by multiple professors who seem aggravated enough to switch to a new company, so I wouldn't concern myself with that at all.

[vdeane]

The fact that my landlord doesn't give a shit about water leaks unless the water is actively and continuously dripping.  I've just had the same leak cause damage on my ceiling three times in the past two months, but because it only happens once in a while and has never yet broken through into my unit (sometimes even while they're in the middle of repairs!), they won't do anything more than a cosmetic fix, even though it smells very musty and I've been getting headaches and the like.  Meanwhile, my upstairs neighbor had black mold on his toilet (which is right above my leak, as it happens - someone who is smarter than my landlord might even assume that this is related!), and all they did was clean it up, never investigate why it was there and fix any leaks.  I'm sick of living in a construction zone, so from now on I'm not reporting water leaks unless it's so obvious even a gorilla could figure it out.

Meanwhile, they heavily restrict (and summarily ignore) written communication - they only way to get even half measures out of them is to call or talk in person, which leaves no record.  They're basically slumlords with very shady business practices (they even auto-enrolled me and billed me for renter's insurance even though I already have renter's insurance).  It's a shame; this complex was actually somewhat decent before they bought it last year when my old landlord retired (although he's also the one who let the plumbing rot, so he wasn't perfect).

[gonealookin]

Wow, is that a dumb response to tenants' reports of water damage issues.  In our HOA, aside from the very rare fire, the biggest insurance claims by far are for water damage.

Edit:  Regarding the communication, if there's an e-mail option, I would write the complaint in that format and save those.  Doesn't matter if they ignore it; you have a record that you reported the issue, which defends you against being sued for failure to report a significant problem.

[kphoger]

Regarding the communication, if there's an e-mail option, I would write the complaint in that format and save those.  Doesn't matter if they ignore it; you have a record that you reported the issue, which defends you against being sued for failure to report a significant problem.

Certified letters too, which come with proof of delivery.

[Scott5114]

Certified letters too, which come with proof of delivery.

Assuming USPS can manage to actually deliver them. My minor thing that bothers me is waking up to two complaining customers who haven't gotten their items, but I know for a fact that USPS has them. One was sent from Las Vegas, one was sent from the Chicago area, and both made it out of their respective metro areas before vanishing into the ether with no further updates.

[Scott5114]

The fact that my landlord doesn't give a shit about water leaks unless the water is actively and continuously dripping.  I've just had the same leak cause damage on my ceiling three times in the past two months, but because it only happens once in a while and has never yet broken through into my unit (sometimes even while they're in the middle of repairs!), they won't do anything more than a cosmetic fix, even though it smells very musty and I've been getting headaches and the like.  Meanwhile, my upstairs neighbor had black mold on his toilet (which is right above my leak, as it happens - someone who is smarter than my landlord might even assume that this is related!), and all they did was clean it up, never investigate why it was there and fix any leaks.  I'm sick of living in a construction zone, so from now on I'm not reporting water leaks unless it's so obvious even a gorilla could figure it out.

Meanwhile, they heavily restrict (and summarily ignore) written communication - they only way to get even half measures out of them is to call or talk in person, which leaves no record.  They're basically slumlords with very shady business practices (they even auto-enrolled me and billed me for renter's insurance even though I already have renter's insurance).  It's a shame; this complex was actually somewhat decent before they bought it last year when my old landlord retired (although he's also the one who let the plumbing rot, so he wasn't perfect).

You might check your state and local tenancy laws to see if they afford you any relief. In Nevada we have NRS 118A, which allows you to do things like withhold rent "if the landlord fails to comply with the rental agreement or his or her obligation to maintain the dwelling unit in a habitable condition", or paying to have the work done yourself and then deducting that off the cost of your rent. I would think black mold being seen in the building, along with you having headaches, would be more than enough to justify invoking NRS 118A, so hopefully it would be enough to invoke whatever the NY equivalent is.