Harbor Freight Reviews

Gotta love it when the ends of threads have nothing to do with the original post.

FWIW, my opinion of Harbor Freight is the same as it is for Walmart.....

BUY AMERICAN!!!

Reply to
Steve
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I'll add a little to the tons of "reviews". I bought a Multi-Tool from HF and have used it several times. It worked as good at the $400 real-deal but only cost $35 plus shipping and yes, I have used a MultiMaster. I'm very satisfied. Maybe the professional that uses it 8 hours a day will wear it out, but for the average homeowner, it is a great tool. It gets into places nothing else can. I actually used is about an hour ago to notch out a 1x10. Yes, I could have sawed a couple of slots and then, break off the piece, but this tool does a nice clean cut.

Reply to
Art Todesco

Yeah, most everything.

But the IT types started working on the problem as much as ten years in advance as many things that happen now culminate many years in the future: mortgages, time deposits, warranties, etc.

Some things that start now, end up a week or two hence: pay periods, for example.

Reply to
HeyBub

The nervous types thought that the Social Security Administration would begin printing checks again, for folks that were already dead.

Reply to
Oren

It's much like playing the teleppone game. We did this at a party when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old. I'd sure love to know what the message was when it started. But, at the end of the dozen or so kids, the message was "Jeanette has ketchup in her ears." Oh, Jeanette was the birthday girl.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Oh, little things - like compounding interest on loads, CDs, mortgages, etc

Reply to
CaveLamb

Today I used several HF tool tips in my Dremel tool. Helping a friend do brake work. The grinder tip was OK, the wire bush wheel sure was helpful.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Do you suck a homophica, or blow it? Does someone make a homophica which is three inches longer?

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

I like HF I buy tools all the time, I bought a utility trailer from them once.

Reply to
Airport Shuttle

There was a 106 year-old woman who got a summoned for truancy. ...not exactly Y2K, but the same principle.

Reply to
krw

Was that Dimmie's mommy?

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

The one on California's Hiway 91 was charging $10.95 yesterday at 4:00pm

Gunner

I am the Sword of my Family and the Shield of my Nation. If sent, I will crush everything you have built, burn everything you love, and kill every one of you. (Hebrew quote)

Reply to
Gunner Asch

Instead of any particular item causing grief, it's HF's pricing games that have left a bitter aftertaste. I'll show up like a naive schoolboy with my coupon in hand only to discover that a week later the item(s) will be priced less, or priced the same but then eligible for the 20% coupon. But since returning a week later would be a special 120 mile drive, about $30 in fuel, it becomes a choice between getting ripped a little, alot, or leaving empty handed. HF has become a place where I hate the store but am okay with the merchandise.

m
Reply to
Fake ID

I know that concept. The item I bought last week, is now ten bucks less. That's irritating. Like the 3 galon compressor I thought was good at $40 down from $70, and then next week it's $30.

On the other hand, I've caught good prices on tools. The 20% coupons help.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

As others have said, as of 1990 nearly everything would have failed in

2000. The percentage of programs which do not use dates in any way is small. In 1970, Y2K was not even on the perceptual horizon for most programmers, including me. (I wrote my first program in 1966, full time starting in 1971.) A few businesses which project decades into the future (such as life insurance) were mostly OK because they were dealing with 21st century dates even in 1960.

In many cases, the errors would have been trivial, such as printing

1900 instead of 2000 on a report. Even those errors needed to be corrected, though -- most programmers would not dream of releasing a program into production which printed incorrect dates. If nothing else, the result is that the users lose confidence in the program.

In a pretty good percentage of cases, programs would obviously crash or give incorrect results in very serious situations.

The majority of cases, though, were the ones where analysis was required even to determine what would happen and what fix was needed. The actual fixes in most cases were much simpler than the analysis. Software errors can ramify in complex and unexpected ways, so it was essential to be thorough in the analysis.

So, your car would still have run -- the microcontroller there was not date-dependent. Traffic signals might have worked, but many vary their patterns on weekends -- they might have gotten the day of the week wrong, or the software might have crashed and left all the lights blinking. The Internet would have stayed up, but most web sites would have gone down. And this is before we even start talking about banking, all business systems (including point of sale), etc. Even industrial control systems, airplane control systems, medical device controllers, etc had the potential to fail -- many of these embedded systems would have been OK, but nobody could tell until they were analyzed. Again, Y2K just wasn't in the field of view when much of this was written.

Realize that in general, even a minor error in a computer program can make the entire program fail. It's as though omitting one nail from a rafter might make an entire building collapse. Digital systems are far more sensitive in this respect. Thus even minor date-related errors had to be found and fixed because they had the potential to bring down the entire edifice.

So, people who say "January 1, 2000 wasn't a big deal, why did we spend all that money" are wrong. January 1, 2000 wasn't a big deal

*because* we spent all that money. Without the remediation effort, the human world, the first world anyway, would pretty much have come to a stop that day.

Edward

Reply to
Edward Reid

Correct.

Nonsense. *What* software? Think mechanical timers.

Correct.

Absolute nonsense.

More nonsense. Nearly every bank in the world that didn't already know about the Y2K problem became aware of it no later than the first business day of 1970; that is, the first time they tried to write a 30-year mortgage that terminated after 1999.

Maybe.

Garbage. Aircraft control systems are no more date-aware than car computers are. The only thing the system cares about is how much time has elapsed since power-up. I used to work with that stuff back in the 80s when I worked for the Navy; the systems don't even know what time of day it is, let alone what the date is. They don't care. There's no need to know. Elapsed time is the *only* thing they're concerned with.

Only in the sense that someone is capable of *imagining* ways in which they could fail. The simple fact is that *no* device that was not date-aware had

*any* potential at all for failure.

You're doing nothing more than regurgitating some of the less ridiculous scare stories that circulated in the y2k newsgroup in 1998 and 1999. The *more* ridiculous ones included the notion that common kitchen appliances such as microwave ovens and toasters would cease to function after 31 Dec 1999. No, I'm not making that up.

Yes, and in most cases, the analysis consisted of asking "Does this device know what day it is? Do we have to set the date as part of its startup procedure?" If the answer is no -- as it is in the overwhelming majority of cases -- then it won't be afffected.

Only if you write brittle, poorly constructed programs.

Oh, bullshit, it would not have.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Very well stated.

Bravo!!

Gunner

I am the Sword of my Family and the Shield of my Nation. If sent, I will crush everything you have built, burn everything you love, and kill every one of you. (Hebrew quote)

Reply to
Gunner Asch

Edward Reid wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I suppose I should just stop now and call for references. Your opinion piece, being devoid of said references, is nothing more then that - your opinion.

With all due respect, you do not know what you are talking about. I was there. I was researching and documenting and in some cases fixing Y2K "problems". And it was grossly over-stated and over-hyped.

Yes, there would have been some failures. And some would have been rather dramatic, but "nearly everything would have failed" is simply not true and demonstrates your lack of understanding of what was really going on back then. And your final statement about the human world coming to a stop...pulleeaasseee...

I was there. I researched and documented the Y2K compliance of computer systems, big and small. And yes it was a problem, but no it wasn't anywhere near as big of a problem as the public was led to believe.

And why are we rehashing this now anyhow? It's ancient history, at least until the year 2100 rolls around. Then we are going to go through the same thing all over again LOL.

Reply to
Zootal

Too funny. Sitting on the floor next to me this very second mocking me is the 3 gallon compressor I bought a bit over a week ago. Forevermore when I look at it I'll think "$8".

When poked through the pile of HF spam I noticed that the online version of this weekend's sale ad included items not in the printed version. One of them is a cylindrical tank 3 gallon oilless compressor which includes hose and tire chuck, $40. Double D'Oh!

In August I rescheduled the errands in order to get that famous multitool for $24. So, an occasional win. Had there been adequate notice this time around it's likely that sitting next to me this very second would also be a sliding compound miter saw.

m
Reply to
Fake ID

WE? I don't think that I would care, at close to 150 years old.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

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