Comment by dec0dedab0de

My mother fell and broke her shoulder a few years ago because she heard a ding on her ipad and was rushing back to check it. In 1999, it would have only been the telephone giving her alerts.

I almost mentioned that too, but I thought I was going to expose myself for being bad at maintaining my house.

Going down the same line of thought, how many people are attempting DIY repairs that they never would have before because of youtube and other resources? I know that I have done way more work on my home than my parents or grandparents ever did.

I'm over 65 and I'm fabbing a ladder to permanently install on my high-aspect roof at the moment (out of iron. drilling, cutting, bending, welding, threading rods, oh my!). I'll get to install it myself, too. Every few years I get out a credit card and rent a 40' (overkill!) Z-lift for a week, it's much better than working on ladders for anything major, like repairing / replacing fascia or installing wire cloth over the gutters: America, gotta love it. And there's no OSHA inspector to worry about when you're the property owner as well as equipment operator.

I view it as exercise. If people don't need me to prep their data or fix their internet plumbing, I have other things to do (and it's possible someone will see the work and I get a side gig, it's happened before).

Ironically yesterday I was stapling wire cloth at the top of the stairs on the wooden deck because it gets slippery.

It is hard to find good handy help. They "repaired" a gutter by nailing it to the crown moulding, which is not structural (resulting in the failure of the fascia, but I digress); repaired copper supply lines with plastic; didn't tighten a slip ring on a sewer trap in the crawlspace. We just had a new roof put on, and overall they did a competent job but there is one leak, coming from a problem we explicitly paid them to solve, and getting that fixed is going real slow. The guy responsible for that aspect is obviously not a native english speaker; OTOH we prevailed on them to install some overhangs, and the carpenter worked with us and allowed us to paint the decking / sheathing / soffit which would be exposed before it was installed. During one of my burnouts I worked as an estimator for a high-end wood flooring company; literally over half of our competition was illegal, unlicensed, and sometimes part of an acknowledged criminal enterprise (not totally throwing shades at people who aren't from here, we had five crews and the Italian and the former Russian physicist (beautiful inlay work!) crew leads were class acts). But I digress.

I've done crazy shit my whole life, my dad died scuba diving at 52 (cause of death was inconclusive) but his brother lived into his 90s. A couple of years ago my father-in-law died after a fall; he was taking photographs in a park. Somehow when he fell he broke his neck; could have been a stroke, but he never really stabilized enough to find out, was dead within a week. He was in his 80s.