PSA: Don't Use Graphite (or WD-40) to Lubricate Door Locks and Especially not Hinges

I've bought a couple of houses where the prior homeowner used graphite to lubricate door locks, and even worse, the hinges. Graphite does have valid dry lubricating properties, but is a messy black powder that gets over everything. Think pencil shavings, except all lead, no wood, or ground up charcoal. Like was toilet seat rings, this seems to be a home maintenance practice that everybody learns when young, and never un-learns. It's horrible.

I did a little research on alternatives. Unlike toilet seat rings, the alternative is not so obvious, but I think they exist. For hinges, some kind of viscous, lithium or teflon grease is probably best. For locks, there is a lot of debate, but probably the same.

In any case, DO NOT use WD-40! In fact, here is a bonus PSA: ratchet back your WD-40 use in general. It is not primarily a lubricant, it is primarily a solvent. It has short-term lubricating properties as a secondary effect, but there are many better choices, as this comprehensive article in Popular Mechanics shows. Talk about a habit that nobody un-learns!

Silicon Valley Isn't the Only Town in the Game

UPDATE: 03/05/16 This WSJ article says SV is experiencing loss of residents.

It has long seemed ridiculous to me that infotech is so over-concentrated in Silicon Valley - San Francisco. Those areas have gone from outrageously expensive to insanely expensive. Terrible places, even for elite tech workers, to try to afford to raise a family. And lots of drawbacks for employers--high rents, high salaries, job-hopping. I know, I know, there are the crucial benefits of concentration and proximity to venture capital. Still.

So I was heartened by this NPR report, featuring an ex-SVer, saying similar things:

"[Jerry Davis'] advice for young people: Forget the Bay Area.

'You spend a whole lot of your time on freeways. It's expensive, it's annoying. The weather is beautiful, but basically the Bay Area has turned into Los Angeles,' Davis says. 'All the things that people hate about LA are now true of the Bay Area.' "

And the home prices are worse. The median price in Silicon Valley now tops $1 million. In Detroit, it's $38,000.

That's appealing to Aaron Mason, a 36-year-old San Franciscan. "Having a yard, having a garden, starting a family, those kinds of things," says Mason, imagining a possible move to Michigan.

Davis praises Detroit as an alternative. Myself, I like Minneapolis-St. Paul and Bloomington, IN. But most important is for the idea of other locations for infotech innovation to take hold.

Media: Nix the Glitz

Opening theme songs in TV and radio shows are such a tiresome waste of time. Now that I consume all such content via DVR or Podcast, I always skip over them. I suspect most people do the same, or would like to but just not quite enough to go to the effort of fiddling with the controls on their device. Why does anyone think this empty content is a good use of time?

I even use a compression setting on Podcast Addict to compress the time between NPR stories. I really don't care who the reporter is, where they are reporting from, and I have always hated the precious interlude music.

The most extreme version of this is all the inane pre-game hype before sporting events. From a purely commercial perspective, this form of empty content does make better sense than the useless intro filler. But I don't really understand why viewers would tolerate it, most particularly in the DVR age. If you are a superfan who wants lots of backstory, etc, , fine, but superfans aren't going to learn anything useful from the hype-rich, content-deficient pregame garbage. The internet is what they need.

So although I called out NPR in my extreme example, they actually score pretty high in this regard. The NPR ethos in general is to find important and fascinating stories, ply their master storyteller skills, and let the story tell and sell itself. No hype required.

Wax Toilet Rings Should Be Banned

We recently had our bathroom floors tiled, which of course entails removal and re-seating of the toilet bowl. This is a tedious but relatively low-skill job, so it was irritating, though unsurprising, that the Home Depot tiling subcontractor would not do it, as an add-on service.

So anyway, I found myself undertaking this chore for the first time since I was 16 and helped my Dad do it. Although I hadn't done it myself, I had talked with others who had done it, so I was aware that the standard for sealing the seat to the sewer pipe remained the wax ring. The messy, sloppy, unforgiving wax ring, loathed by millions of happless homeowners for at least a century.

The wax ring has major disadvantages:

• Messy to put on
• Infinitely messier to replace
• Necessary to replace, every time you remove the toilet
• Unforgiving, so if you in any way goof up, you have to: A) clean up the wax, again; B) go out and buy another wax ring; C) repeat.
• Can be a problem if the height difference of the new floor is too great.

It has two advantages

• Cheap
• Well-known, so easy default

So while buying supplies at Home Depot, I tossed 2 wax rings in my cart, mentally cursing them for their poxiness. Then I stopped. I thought "there has just got to have been some improvement in the last 30 years." And Lo, down the aisle I found this.

Twice the cost, but so much better. In addition to alleviating the mess, it has more advantages, which I think ultimately pay for the difference:

• Holds the bolts nicely in place.
• That, plus the fact that it is forgiving, means that you may be able to do the job without a helper. 
• Re-usable means if you have to move the toilet in the future, you don't have to buy a new seal.
• The ease of the remove-replace cycle brings another, subtle advantage. Most homeowners avoid removing the toilet, if possible. That means the tedious, aesthetically imperfect technique of painting around it. No longer necessary, if moving it is quick, easy and neat.

I really think wax seals should be banned by code.