You can empty those? 
Wait till you replace the pads on the Jetta. Found out the hard way you need a special tool to depress the caliper piston. Never seen that on any other car before.
Did that on my '76 Chevy Truck. I used a gear/pully puller to push that piston back.
I’ve done lots of brake jobs and always used a simple C-clamp. The VW piston needs to be rotated as it is pressed in. No spin, no sit.
The special tool was about $15 and although simple, was a little tricky to use, and needed a slight modification. Undoubtably, this will be the only time it is ever used.
Same thing happened to my neighbor. He was replacing the brakes on his daughter’s Jetta, and he knocked on my door because he got stuck, and I have a GTI (same platform), and was looking for help. I didn’t have any advice, but I did have a service manual, which at least let him know that he needed a special tool.
Isn’t “special tool needed” a recurring theme with German engineering?
Yeah, I guess it is, but I got a butt-load of BMW’s and have never needed one or didn’t realize it an made do. The older ones I got are pretty nice to work on, actually.
The one I examined had a switch at the back that was one-way only. The owner had removed it when it started to chirp due, presumably, to a low battery, and throwing it made it shut up.
Every device has a deactivation button. You just need to press it hard enough.
Sometimes a special tool may be needed. Such as a hammer or a baseball bat.
It’s a problem when the ceilings are so high that you have to clinb a ladder to reach the reset button. I know people who deliberately hung their units way too low because they have high ceilings and could never reach them otherwise.
9 iron and a stepladder.
Was at a party once where a smoke alarm started beeping. The thing was about 15 feet of the ground. We thought about shooting it.
Finally found an extension ladder.
Etsy has tinkered with its software to insure you have to wade through tons of what you don’t want, to find anything.
I used to buy fabrics from Etsy, beautiful fabrics from all over the world, it was awesome. The dizzying array of choices were listed by price per yard/metre, right in the listing. But not any more. Now all the fabric is listed at prices like $2.49, when you click through it’s for a 12x12” swatch sample. So you have to click through each listing to find out the price per metre. Who’s gonna do that? There are thousands of listings! Who thought that was a good idea?
Also, I would preselect for only things that included shipping in the price, because that’s my preference. Again, they changed the listing so every vendor now has ‘may qualify for free shipping’, making it impossible to do so. And, no, no matter how much you put in your basket, you never qualify for free shipping, I tried, on several listings. Again, who thought this was a good idea?
Last week I was looking to purchase from England a small item listed at $15. When I put it in my basket it was now $20. So I asked the vendor what was up. First they said it’s shipping probably. I had to pint out that no, shipping was separate. Then they said, oh, it must be the currency exchange. I pointed out the listed was already is Can dollars. They couldn’t explain, saying it was all done by Etsy and they didn’t know. I didn’t buy.
Who’s running this company?
This is exactly what Corey Doctorow describes as “enshittification.”
Not a smoke detector, but a ceiling light… there’s a light in our stairwell, right where the stairs narrow into triangles as they turn 90 degrees. The light is a good 10 feet above it, I’m estimating. It burnt out a couple of months after we bought the house, but as we can’t figure out how to safely get to it it’s still not functional. It’s been over a decade, we are used to it.
I have a nice looking tea pot, where the lid suctions onto the loose leaf basket to pull it out when it’s steeped. Unfortunately, this lid isn’t particularly well designed or insulated, so it becomes burning hot if you leave it on, which I do, to keep the tea warm. I keep a dishcloth handy to use it but it annoys me every time.
you might try this device, to support one corner of the ladder on the stairs
Disney World has the same issue looking for their hotels. You can’t just input the days you will be staying and then get a list of all Disney’s hotels that have rooms available on those days. You have to search each one individually. I think that it remembers your group size and dates but I’m not even sure about that.
And then, the results always come up with a listing of every room type, and you have to scroll down through each room type at the hotel to see if there are rooms available. Even if there aren’t actually any rooms. And there are over 10 hotels. If there are only a few hotels with rooms available you have to do a search for each one and then scroll through the room type listing until you scroll down and find a room available.
It’s so much of a pain that when I stay at Disney World, I only check the Contemporary and if it doesn’t have any rooms I just stay at the Hilton at Disney Springs instead.
I’m not sure what Disney was thinking or if it is unintentionally stupid design. Maybe they think that it will prevent people from price shopping? At any rate, it doesn’t work on me. I stay at Disney’s properties less than I would had their website been better.
Our house has a two-story entry foyer at the front door. There is a light hanging there to illuminate the whole area. To change the bulbs, we have to perch at the top of our taller ladder, reach into this swinging thing, and change the bulb, which requires one hand to hold the bulb, one hand to keep the unit steady, and one hand to keep oneself from falling off the ladder. Or very, very careful balancing, anyway, as nobody in this house has three hands.
Needless to say, I do not attempt this (being klutzy to the point where it will likely result in my death). My husband handles the job and has since replaced all of the bulbs with LED ones which will basically never need replacing during our lifetime (we hope). I actually once started a thread here asking for hints on a more permanent solution to changing bulbs in such a fixture.
Some hotels have gone to a bathroom design where the shower (no tub) uses a stationary wall to contain the spray. My husband spent several months staying at one such. a few years back. Trouble is, at least at this place, it did not work. It became an exercise in frustration trying to aim the shower spray in just the right angle to reduce the amount that sprayed out into the main part of the bathroom through the open part at the back of the shower.
I hate this planned obsolescence.