There are a large number of unscented aftershaves out there as well as other products options like an alum block.

When I’m finished shaving my routine is:

• alum block
• aftershave balm
• cologne

I have aftershaves and colognes that compliment each other or are the same scent for both. I also have an unscented balm for colognes I couldn’t find a good compliment to.

Scents I use are ones I like because I’m wearing it for me, not others.

Likely he hadn’t opened his credit card to that kind of spend on another continent, or he had an Amex which tends to work poorly in many different places in Europe.

You’re wrong. The card reader was not working, the ATM had too low of a limit and the bank was closed. When they brought in a new card reader he was able to pay.

I’m also sure he could’ve gotten an invoice as well but likely just wanted it sorted out directly.

If you can’t pay the tax directly you have 10 days to make payment but the item is held until that payment is made. Since it was bound for an auction that wouldn’t work in this case. Not to mention payment was attempted and the issue was on the side of the customs office.

You really don’t, though. I was not complaining, I was sharing an opinion that you seem to have taken very personally. It’s not my job to police who shops at Costco, you seem to think it is yours. I can only imagine how exhausting it is being you, worried about what everyone else is doing and who’s breaking the rules.

I do not care if Costco stops people from using memberships that aren’t theirs except in the context of my experience shopping there. If the measures they take make my experience worse, then I will no longer take my business there.

There’s no point continuing on with you, it’s clear that you feel your perspective is the only one that’s valid. I don’t bang my head against a brick wall for the same reason I’m done engaging with you, it’s a fruitless endeavor only serves to give me a bad experience.

You’re only saying that because they’re insulating you from the effect of this happening. If Costco had to raise rates because people were sharing memberships and members didn’t want that enforced, you’d complain about that too.

I would not. If the new rates meant I’d pay more for a membership than I’d save over the course of a year I’d just not renew.

Again, it’s odd to me that you’re complaining about them protecting the very benefits that you’re paying for which others are not.

They are not protecting my benefits, they are protecting their revenue stream. I’m not sure why you and so many others don’t understand that companies don’t exist to provide something** for you**. They exist to extract a profit from you.

The gym analogy isn’t a false equivalence.

We’ll have to agree to disagree on this and probably the whole situation in general because you’ve just re-stated the same points as in your first reply to me. You may not like my reasoning but it’s not wrong. The only reason I have a Costco membership is because it is currently cheaper for me to get a few items there than it is to get them elsewhere, but just barely. When it’s no longer financially beneficial to me to have a membership, or if they create a shopping experience so unpleasant that it outweighs the nominal savings we get from shopping there we will end our membership.

If that time ever comes and if the family members who have memberships now still do, then I’ll just have them buy for me or I’ll go as a “guest”. The only difference is the inconvenience of not being able to go whenever it’s convenient for me or waiting until we absolutely need something, because I’d have to go on someone else’s schedule.

Just because you can’t understand a logical cost/benefit rationale doesn’t make it wrong. I’m not under the same illusion as you seem to be that Costco, or any business or corporation, has my best interests at heart. This is ultimately about their revenue stream; you can tell yourself otherwise but you’re a fool if you think that’s not a driving factor.

I’m not against them enforcing it, just that their enforcement makes my experience worse. I’m not negatively impacted by this problem they’re trying to fix until their fixes make my experience worse.

I also think it’s naive to believe there’s no financial motivation and they’re only doing it because it’s unfair to their paying members.

Your gym analogy is also a false equivalence. The Costco membership gets you their product guarantee/return policy and the opportunity to purchase things at a cheaper price than elsewhere. Joe Schmo letting his neighbor use his membership doesn’t hurt me in any way, it only hurts Costco.

What I’m saying is actually similar to what has happened, and is happening, in media regarding DRM and various attempts to secure content.

While I agree that I wouldn’t move to Sam’s on ethical grounds I don’t like Costco’s approach on this.

We pay for our membership. Adding hassle or making it less convenient as paying members just pushes me towards cancelling and using someone else’s membership instead.

I’m in the minority for sure though because we only use Costco for a handful of things on a pretty regular cadence (sparkling water, pet food, paper products etc.). We probably just slightly save more than the membership cost in a year.

I fully support Costco protecting their business model but at the end of the day it’s a subscription service and adding barriers to access will push us away.

We all know it’ll never fully go under

No, it likely won’t, and part of that is also because of who’s invested in the company’s success. Just another example of “too big to fail”.

Just like Amazon who is a cloud computing company with a side hustle in e-tail or Google which is an ad company with a side hustle in tech.

In general most people don’t really understand this about big companies.

You got it. My first was a pretty basic sedan that I upgraded to from my old retired police Crown Vic. My current car was a two year old lease return in the top trim level available and ~15k miles.

Certified pre-owned lease returns! I’m on my second and they’ve both been great cars for $22k or under.

That said, a big contributor is the amount financed. When we’ve bought new cars we paid $7k up front for mine and $5k for my wife’s plus our trade ins. Many, if not most, people can’t afford to do that so they have huge monthly payments even before interest.

I live in MN and every fall when we’re done in our yard I’ll turn off the water in the house for the lines that go to the outdoor faucets attached to the house.

Then I’ll open those faucets outside to let the water drain.

Inside the house on the water line itself is a bleeder valve I’ll open to help the line drain.

Once drained I close the drain valve and the bleeder valve and put an insulating cover on the spigot.

I get that everybody has their own preference but BIFL is more about quality of materials, durability, reputation of the company etc.

I’ve had wusthof handles break on me and they are a pain to replace.

How so? You just send it to Wusthof and they replace or repair it. Seems pretty BIFL

Another issue with wusthof is that the bolsters on their chef knives are way too large.

My Wusthof Ikons have no more bolster than my brothers Japanese set. I assume you’re talking about the Classic line of Wusthof?

You raise issues based on your preference but that doesn’t impact them being BIFL. They’re well made, hold an edge and Wusthof stands behind them 100%.

I dropped my utility knife once and it bent the tip. I shipped it to Wusthof and they took care of it, only cost me shipping. I also had a knife block that split, for that they wanted a picture, then they shipped me a replacement and asked me to destroy the old one. I used it in a campfire. Seems pretty BIFL to me.

Japanese knives are great if that’s your preference but that excludes a lot of other BIFL knives worth considering.

Wusthof in particular should be on the list as well as Global. In general kitchen knives are more forgiving in the BIFL category because a lot of it is just properly caring for what you have.

Why do you redirect the conversation rather than answering the question directly and specifically both here and in their other reply to you?

Do you have an agenda to both sides every comment critical of conservatives?

That’s the only way this makes sense to me. I’m just curious what’s going on here.

Edit: I don’t have a stake in this but you don’t actually answer the question, instead you attack the other user. You both need to actually read and understand what’s going on in this case, the whole thing is frivolous and clickbait you both swallowed.

God, I hope the wrench has access to less of the network than the employee.
It’s an IoT device.
You never trust IoT.

Hahahahahaha!!! Does solarwinds123 sound familiar?

Best practice ≠ real world application. Based on my 10+ years in IT I’d be very unsurprised to find that the networked wrench has greater access than the person.

Sorry, I assumed the context was obvious, but it’s hard to hack a person standing there turning a wrench.

What’s easier to hack? That person standing there turning a wrench or a network connected wrench? Especially considering the points you made; the wrench turner probably has access to less than the network connected wrench.

Human error caused the issue in the first place, why are we assuming a human will always find and fix the problem on a second pass?

I’m not sure why you should trust a piece of technology to be infallible.

I mean, if a networked tool can be hacked then should it be trusted to be accurate? How do you know it hasn’t been hacked and maliciously modified to report correct torque even when wrong?

Didn’t GM just suspend sales of their new cars without CarPlay because their new system had software issues? Trust a company trying to save money to skimp on the implementation costs of any technology they put in place too.

Hard to hack a person. Sounds like sacrificing security to save a buck if that’s the only reason, especially considering you’re not just paying for a tool when you network it.

Why not have a two stage torque process?

I know aerospace ≠ automotive but many years ago I worked in a shop and any time the wheels came off a vehicle the mechanic/tech torqued the lug nuts to spec, then a second person independently verified and re-torqued the lug nuts.

It seems like adding a network connection and all that goes with it also introduces additional points of failure, no?

Yep, all the time and good things always come after.

My father told me many many years ago that I always had to learn lessons the hard way. What he meant was that I have to make the mistake to learn from it, and I thought it was profound.

Took a long time for me to learn that’s what life is. You try, fail, and try again. You learn from it and succeed, and in the end does it really count as a failure? All the good things in my life have come out of all the bad.