As an adult, I never expect someone will get something I want or that I can really figure out what someone else wants. It's not like when we were kids. You generally have your own money to get what you want now or the items are too expensive to be a gift anyway. The gift giving is just supposed to be something fun to do, not necessarily the content of the gifts themselves.
I wonder if maybe you could set up some sort of white elephant exchange some time in the future? I've wanted to do something like that with my family, but my mom doesn't seem to be entirely on board. If you have enough people, it's fun to do and then you don't really have to worry about what someone may or may not like.
The fact that you were so distressed that you had to leave the room is a bit concerning to hear though tbh. Feels very entitled.
Hi. You seem knowledgeable so I hope you don't mind if I ask a couple of questions.
I purchased a new electric water heater a little over 1 year ago. The temp by default was set bizarrely low to me...I think like 120-125F. The water was simply lukewarm to me and I read online that the temp it was set to was not high enough to kill certain pathogens, so I turned it up a bunch. I think initially I decided to go with 150F but then turned it down to 145F after a while. The heater also encourages you to turn down the temp to a crazy low level if you know you will be away for a while...I decided to never use such a feature because I am not interested in breeding pathogens.
Anyway, after only a little over one year, one of the heating elements failed in it. Luckily, the company agreed that this would be covered under warranty. A tech came out and replaced it for me and showed me how corroded the component looked.
I asked him why it failed so prematurely and he gave two reasons for me.
Yearly maintenance had not yet been performed which supposedly caused excessive sediment buildup. I didn't like this answer because it's not like I had been running it for 5 years when this happened. It was only 1.5 years old. I have never heard of a water heater failing for not following the exact one yearly maintenance schedule to the exact date. This sounded odd to me... especially since I've lived in apartment complexes who fail to do any maintenance on them for years and this doesn't occur. Does this theory make sense?
The temp was set too high. When the tech arrived, he said 145F was way too hot which I thought was bizarre to me. He set the temp to 140F and said it should prob be ok now. I don't get how a difference in only 5 degrees would cause such a catastrophy premature failure of the heating element. Are some modern water heaters just build like shit and not actually meant to be run at temps that destroy pathogens?
Do you think there's anything else I can do to prevent component failure like that? I'm not sure if maybe I have hard water and if that might have contributed? If I do, how would I fix that? Thanks!