Mike Holmes on Homes is currently my favorite guy and my favorite show.
His plumber on the show is amazing and introduced me to a new system being used in construction called a Plumbing Manifold.
This is a system that runs independent PEX (plastic) lines for hot and cold to each location you need water.
The manifolds cost around $200 and the PEX pipe is around $40 for 100 foot section.
This system is superior to, and cheaper than, traditional fixed copper or PVC pipe.
There are only two connection on the system, the connection at the manifold and the connection at the outlet. The outlet could be an outside water spigot with just cold water, or a sink, bathtub, toilet, etc. This guarantees that there could only be two points of failure, or leaks, in the system for each line. As opposed to multiple points of failure being possible with fixed piping that must have several joins and bends.
The PEX pipe also will not rust or corrode.
Whenever my wife and I build our own house, or if we ever remodel a home, I have got to have one of these!
Moreover, while it’s not recommended for most homeowners, I’m fairly confident I could run all of the PEX lines myself to the correct locations and save money to pay a professional plumber just to do the complicated work. Just like I recommend running your own networking and TV cables and letting a licensed electrician do the connections.
Save you money all over the board.
Finally, I desperately want a tankless water heater as well!
I love 37 Signals. No only because they have some amazing products like Basecamp, Backpack and Campfire, but also because their blog is awesome!
Anyone who knows me, also knows that I’m not a fan of Mark Suckerberg (Zuckerberg) owner and founder of Facebook.
No little brat is going to diss Google and say he’s going to replace them.
So my hat is off to 37 Signals again for junk punching Zuck in his man business regarding the absurd idea that his company could be worth $33 billion dollars
Here is the article reposted in all it’s glory:
Facebook is an amazing success as a social network. Anyone who can get 500 million people to connect, share photos, and click on little cows in Farmville deserves major kudos.
But the bullshit monopoly-money evaluation merry-go-round has to stop. It’s getting beyond ridiculous and when even serious publications like Forbes jump on for a ride. It’s time to take deep breath and take a look at reality.
Minority investment evaluations aren’t real
Facebook is now supposedly worth $33,000,000,000, but that number is entirely based on what star-struck minority investors have paid for a tiny slice of the company.The company has supposedly taken just under a billion dollars in venture capital and small secondary-market sales of stock. So the actual money that has changed hands is just 3% of the total evaluation of the company!
In other words, the evaluation is resting on the flawed assumption that Facebook could actually ever get 33 times as much money to change hands if they wanted to. There’s just no way, no how that’s happening right now. If it could, they’d IPO tomorrow.
So the Facebook evaluation based on minority investments is in my mind a complete joke in the sense that there was $33,000,000,000 dollars on the table. Irrational investor exuberance indeed.
You’re only worth something if you can make money to keep
If you boil it down to what evaluations really should be about, discounted future cash flow, it gets completely bizarro-world funny. The rumor is that Facebook will be generating a billion dollars in revenue. That’s certainly real money, right?Wrong. Real money is what’s left over after you pay your expenses. If the supposed billion dollars Facebook is allegedly pulling in this year was happening at anywhere a decent margin, they wouldn’t have needed a series E round of $120 million from Elevation Partners just three months ago.
But let’s be charitable. Let’s imagine that Facebook miraculously made $200 million this year — a 20% margin. (I don’t think that’s true, otherwise why take another $120 million from Elevation Partners, but hey, let your imagination roam). That would put Facebook’s P/E at some 165.
That’s about 7.5 times as much as Google, the golden cash cow of the internet world. Would you seriously think that Facebook is 7.5 times as good or as promising a business as Google? Get outta here.
No outrageous profits after seven years and half a billion users
Oh, well, but maybe Facebook just needs to mature, you say. If we give them just a few more years, the profit fairy might drop by and sprinkle her billions all over Facebook and its shareholders. I call fat chance.Facebook has been around for seven years. It has 500 million users. If you can’t figure out how to make money off half a billion people in seven years, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re unlikely to ever do.
Now this was all fun and games until somebody promised the Newark schools $100 million in stock based on the fantasy evaluation of his under-profiting company. But now it’s real. They’re selling the skin before they shot the bear or peeing their pants to get to the hut or whatever you want to call it. It’s just not good, alright?
Techi.com published a great story about Google’s Fiber lines getting SHOT down!
Google’s currently working on an underground path for the previously-aerial fiber connected to its data center in the Dalles, Oregon. But why? What could possibly necessitate an expensive move underground? Birds? Weather?
According to Google, it’s hunters.
In a conference in Australia last week, Google’s network engineering manager Vijay Gill let fly with the reasonably bizarre tidbit.
“Every November when hunting season starts,” explained Gill, “invariably we know that the fiber will be shot down, so much so that we are now building an underground path.”
So dudes with guns are actually firing on Google’s hardware. For giggles and shits, no less.
” …because they’re bored, they try to shoot at the insulators,” continued Gill. “I have yet to see them actually hit the insulator, but they regularly shoot down the fiber.”
And Google’s finally had enough, taking their fibers underground. And just as well – repairing the aerial fibers hasn’t always been easy. Once, after an avalanche, it was impossible to send the typical repair vehicle, so instead, Google, opted to send men on skis. As if I’m not making this up.
“These guys had to cross country ski for three days,” said Gill, “[They] had to go in and fix the fiber while facing gun shots! The internet is more dangerous than you realize.”
And how, Gill. Yeah, good call on that underground business.
Anyone remember SkiFree? I’m suddenly reminded of SkiFree. They should remake that. With guns.
The official Google blog just announced a cool new place to discover everything new that Google is doing.
One place to find everything new from Google
If it seems to you like every day Google releases a new product or feature, well, it seems like that to us too. The central place we tell you about most of these is through the official Google Blog Network, where you’ll find more than 100 blogs covering all kinds of products, policy issues, technical projects and much more.
But if you want to keep up just with what’s new (or even just what Google does besides search), you’ll want to know about Google New. A few of us had a 20 percent project idea: create a single destination called Google New where people could find the latest product and feature launches from Google. It’s designed to pull in just those posts from various blogs. We hope it helps you find something useful you’ve never tried before.
This thing is sick!
I’ll take the super sized version attached to my car!
Very powerful music video by the Christian Rock band Fireflight, titled “This of For Those Who Wait.”
At first I thought this video was going to be a huge letdown.
I mean seriously, hitting an armoured knight in the face with a watermelon.
And then it happened…
I am dying laughing!
Thank you so much @tferriss!
Google announced it’s new primary search initiative called Google Instant.
Now, in instant-enabled browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 
not only will Google auto suggest as you type, but it will also automatically start loading the search page. Watch the video below for more information.
If you’re a website owner, then read on below this video.
Google Webmaster Central’s blog also published the effects Google Instant will have on Analytics.
Website impressions are going to increase, but this will only mean that your results showed up momentarily in the listing.
No longer does this mean your organic search result will sit on a page while a user scrolls.
Your listing might appear for a millisecond while a user continues typing and narrowing their search.
Google Instant is already working on Chrome for me, and will definitely make searching faster.
Only time will tell how it affects website owners and content creators.
Website Magazine Chimes in about Google Instant
I hate advertising.
But I love advertisements.
Super clever. Super cool. Super, I wanna do it!
