Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
Based on its evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.
Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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Avoid long drawn out arguments. This should be a place to relax, not to waste your time needlessly.
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Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
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Please do not spam at the top level. If you have a lot to post each day, try and post them all together in one top level comment
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Try keep things light. If you are bringing in deep stuff, try not to go overboard.
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Things that are clearly on-topic for this board should be posted as a separate post and not here (except if you are new and still getting the feel of this place)
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If you find people violating these rules, deport them rather than start a argument here.
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Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evoloving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
So that's five, that's the number of people I know personally who's appliances have crapped out within a month of having their old electrical meters replaced with smart meters, my refrigerator crapped out after three weeks. I watched a video produced by an electrical engineer explaining what an engineering masterpiece the old meters were and how the new meters are garbage in comparison beside the obvious RF concerns. So what did I Learn? I learned A: the old meters are made of Bakelite which is a high temp plastic, the new meters are not. B: the new meters arc between the contacts creating a huge fire hazard. C: the originals have spike protectors built in that the new ones do not. One thing I noticed from pictures of the Maui fire was that the smart meters were completely burned out of their electrical enclosures when no other heat related damage was present. I guess I am going to install a whole house surge arrester to help mitigate any potential further damage even though the shortcomings within the meter itself cannot be overcome. Our electric company gave us an opt out option, but that came with a new monthly $250 dollar meter reading fee, Oh joy. I'm really tired of the public being the lowest common denominator in every consideration. On the other hand they,re trying to kill us in every other conceivable way, so is it really surprising? Any other Fren's have this issue?
Possibly; we had a fridge problem and a microwave problem, but hard to distinguish between new junk issues and meter nonsense. However, for kicks and giggles, I did get a radiation meter and it showed that thing continuously puts out more than it's share of cancer rays, so we're putting a cage around it.