One more rant, and I'll leave this until the darkness creeps in around the edges again, and I come back to it.
This is a phone shot out my truck's windshield, back on April 23, 2014 (the third day of "spring" that year, or rather the 113th of January):
The winter of 2013/14 was particularly harsh. The picture below is what we contended with on a daily basis that year, but this is what every January and February are like. Encased in that block of ice is a disconnect switch for a unit-- we have to shut that off in order to work on something. My son decided he'd rather not take the business over during that winter, and went to work for Caterpillar. I couldn't blame him-- he spent the entire winter on one roof or another.
Back to the disconnect-- what do you suppose the likelihood is of:
- Being able to turn this thing off without breaking it.
- Being able to turn this thing back on without breaking it.
- The customer wanting to pay for the time it takes to simply turn the thing off and back on, assuming we could do it without shattering a $250 disconnect into pieces.
For 20 years, we've been blessed to be able to escape to Mexico for a week or two in Jan./Feb. Last year, we had a blizzard back here while we were down there-- which would have been awesome, except that my recently widowed mother lives in a house right next door to me, and I didn't think to arrange snow-blowing for her. She was snowbound for 3 days. I was not the favorite son (even though I'm the only son).
I've spent 54 winters in the Midwest, and two glorious Januaries in Papua New Guniea.
I gave at the office-- I'm over winter.