Author Topic: FranLab is getting evicted  (Read 251222 times)

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Offline sokoloff

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #100 on: October 10, 2018, 12:59:34 pm »
Somehow from what I can see the new developer at Fran's place have no regard about this and is willing to force people into hoboism just so they can mark up a piece of land and get richer.
Until someone clearly says that this is more than "we're not renewing anyone's lease once the term runs out", I'm going to work under the assumption that that's what happening, which is a simple, clear, and fair "both sides lived up to the bargain to which they agreed" outcome. I haven't heard anything to the contrary yet.
 
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Offline schmitt trigger

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #101 on: October 10, 2018, 01:15:38 pm »


Let's say she halved the space, 1000sqft is 92sqm. Only a few more than my lab+office.
Have you seen my lab?



This clearly demonstrates, that Nature abhors vacuum.

Specifically in an electronics lab.
 

Offline schmitt trigger

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #102 on: October 10, 2018, 01:41:10 pm »


You can also get blood pressure raising stuff like someone demanding a carpenter to come in to tighten a screw on a cabinet door (for real). Electrical inspection because someone 'smelled something'.

Someone in my family was a super.. and believe me it can be super frustrating. Going to your property and you see the place is a pig sty.


I have been a small landlord for 32 years. Only two units. Everything, and I mean everything, that you have mentioned is ABSOLUTELY TRUE. It is a whore job.
On top of it, insurance and taxes have been skyrocketing faster than what I can increase the rent.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #103 on: October 10, 2018, 02:17:33 pm »
Paterson, NJ, birthplace of beat poet Allen Ginsburg, and the American labor movement, was also the

...birthplace of the industrial revolution in the US (because of easily available hydro-power from the nearby Passaic River, which Alexander Hamilton and others harnessed).

 Paterson still has a lot of huge, well-illuminated (from natural light) surviving red brick industrial buildings from that period.

I don't know the current status of the buildings (besides the fact that the area recently attained status as a national historic park) but my gut feeling is that, if one can deal with the issues of a community thats still struggling with lots of poverty, (IMHO the  best way to do that would be by providing a resource that helped interested people learn about technology!) that it would be an ideal and welcoming place for a maker renaissance, with lots of available warehouse space, and that because of that rich tradition, something like a big maker space could likely get lots of support from the local community and maybe even grants from ???.

It sounds like the kind of proposal that can sometimes get supported by grant funds in various ways.

Because it helps people learn and get their lives going in a positive direction.

I should add the caveat though that parts of Paterson are still very poor, and it has its share of urban problems.  The area near the falls however is pretty and there are still many visible remnants of a thriving industrial area.

Although the area has the classic Rust Belt feel, the huge old buildings have a lot going for them because of the habit back then of providing factories with lots of natural light. The ones that remain, (that have not already been torn down) for the most part have NOT fallen into quite the level of disrepair I've seen elsewhere.

You can check the area out using Google Earth.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2018, 02:43:09 pm by cdev »
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Offline technix

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #104 on: October 11, 2018, 06:35:26 am »
Paterson, NJ, birthplace of beat poet Allen Ginsburg, and the American labor movement, was also the

...birthplace of the industrial revolution in the US (because of easily available hydro-power from the nearby Passaic River, which Alexander Hamilton and others harnessed).

 Paterson still has a lot of huge, well-illuminated (from natural light) surviving red brick industrial buildings from that period.

I don't know the current status of the buildings (besides the fact that the area recently attained status as a national historic park) but my gut feeling is that, if one can deal with the issues of a community thats still struggling with lots of poverty, (IMHO the  best way to do that would be by providing a resource that helped interested people learn about technology!) that it would be an ideal and welcoming place for a maker renaissance, with lots of available warehouse space, and that because of that rich tradition, something like a big maker space could likely get lots of support from the local community and maybe even grants from ???.

It sounds like the kind of proposal that can sometimes get supported by grant funds in various ways.

Because it helps people learn and get their lives going in a positive direction.

I should add the caveat though that parts of Paterson are still very poor, and it has its share of urban problems.  The area near the falls however is pretty and there are still many visible remnants of a thriving industrial area.

Although the area has the classic Rust Belt feel, the huge old buildings have a lot going for them because of the habit back then of providing factories with lots of natural light. The ones that remain, (that have not already been torn down) for the most part have NOT fallen into quite the level of disrepair I've seen elsewhere.

You can check the area out using Google Earth.
This kind of reminded me that some rust belt cities might even have above average universities and other infrastructure built back in their heyday but the land price there plummeted due to the factories closing down. If Fran move there she might get easy access to materials and manufacturing services from the remaining factories, can just outright buy what remains of a closed down factory an sell whatever that is in the building to recoup some of the money, a steady source of well educated employees from the universities there, and MIT isn't far from there if she really need a star engineer on her team.
 

Online coppercone2

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #105 on: October 11, 2018, 12:05:00 pm »
but moving to NJ or a 'rust belt' state could be pretty depressing.
not quite moldova but not exactly ivy league . and NJ smells bad.

even driving through some parts of PA I was like 'damn' .

what is it, like ancient turn of the century ware houses with those slatted windows on the ceiling your supposed to open up to keep the heat down?
« Last Edit: October 11, 2018, 12:09:57 pm by coppercone2 »
 

Offline cdev

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #106 on: October 11, 2018, 12:22:59 pm »
The buildings I've seen have huge south facing windows, lots of them. This was because they were built before electricity was common, for natural light, when factories were largely powered by water. The mills were typically built right alongside major waterways. Those kinds of buildings, when renovated, are really nice.

That is, if they don't turn out to be filled with liquid mercury, as one in Hoboken, I think was. (Unusual situation which displaced an artists collective.)
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline NivagSwerdna

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #107 on: October 11, 2018, 12:50:59 pm »
Just my 2c worth...

These replies seem to miss the point of the OP's video....

Fran clearly stated that she has a money problem both with money generally and money in the short term to pay for a move.

So the real issue seems to be revenue generation... There seem to be a number of approaches to that... The most obvious being YouTube ad revenue and Patreon but also Fran has a portfolio of products, both electronic and textile, that have made money in the past.

Perhaps the solution lies more in scaling those products to make money (and possibly outsourcing manufacture to places where labour and space is cheap)?

(Cost of premises is a universal problem... e.g. London Hackspace has just had to move out from central-ish London to the wilds of NW London for similar reasons)
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #108 on: October 12, 2018, 08:33:29 am »
These replies seem to miss the point of the OP's video....
Fran clearly stated that she has a money problem both with money generally and money in the short term to pay for a move.
So the real issue seems to be revenue generation... There seem to be a number of approaches to that... The most obvious being YouTube ad revene and Patreon but also Fran has a portfolio of products, both electronic and textile, that have made money in the past.
Perhaps the solution lies more in scaling those products to make money (and possibly outsourcing manufacture to places where labour and space is cheap)?
(Cost of premises is a universal problem... e.g. London Hackspace has just had to move out from central-ish London to the wilds of NW London for similar reasons)

I think if she just did a GoFundMe to move, she'd get a fair amount.
I still think if she makes her budget and requirements public (for the space + living + how far she's willing to move) and get the crowd to work on finding a suitable place she'd find somewhere nice.

As someone who is currently searching for a bigger combined place, just assessing all the option in my current business park is hard work. There are probably dozen of nice options she hasn't even thought about.
 
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Offline schmitt trigger

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #109 on: October 12, 2018, 01:26:18 pm »
I believe that Dave has nailed it.
She has some loyal followers, and if each one donated say $20US, she would obtain a significant amount of money.
I certainly would.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #110 on: October 12, 2018, 01:59:05 pm »
If she could get some kind of grant to do education for what she does that might help (may have to be for kids though, as adult education in the US is now commercial.)

Does anybody in Philadelphia get to live in boats? (Are there stable communities of boat-dwellers anywhere?) Owning a small boat (they might be sold by a previous resident who is leaving the area, cheap) is a good way to have a cheap(er)(sometimes), semi-permanent place to live in some areas. In the not too distant past it was like that in the Bay Area, with lots of small marinas, some of which were also communities of boat dwellers.

Don't know the situation now. Back then it was somewhere in cost between living in an RV and renting. (RV's are another possibility but they can also be a trap when they are not in good shape, as can boats)

One friend I had back in the day had spent I think around $30k to buy a small piece of a much larger boat that was shared by a bunch of people and used as a home and office space. It was in Sausalito. At Gate Five. He got a small suite of rooms out of the deal. It was a pretty big boat.  Similar communities exist even on the usually insanely expensive Peninsula. (i.e Silicon Valley) At the edges of the Bay. Worth taking a trip around the edges of your local waterways to explore them on a nice weather (weekend) day and ask residents.. who will often be out enjoying the sun or working on their boats- now you know where to look. Also check out web sites for boaters. See the one below.

That seems like both potentially fun (if one makes the right choices which would seem to me to need help) and has the potential to be suitable for a semi-normal life.

At least with self-owned boats of moderate size, depending on the local environment for boat residents it may or may not have an advantage of being able to move it if your ability to tie it up in one place ends.

In SF, over the years I've had a number of friends who lived on their own, or shared boats. My mom who lived in Sausalito for a while in the 50s, before I was born, had friends who did too, back then. All sorts of artists and writers lived there back then and as far as I know, at least some still do.

Its (sometimes) less expensive than many other kinds of housing/rentals. Plus if you fix your boat up, you get the benefit of that work, not your landlord.

Flat boats, houseboats that are more for inland waterways than the ocean seem to be more appropriate for long term living. Bigger sailboats (with motors for backup) that are seaworthy are popular for living too, and there is a huge 'cruiser' community who travel and live on boats now. (Check out "Cruisers Forum" for info. The very cool boaters charting and navigation program OpenCPN is maintained by a core group of people who hang out there)

Boats aren't always cool.. they only are when they aren't holes people pour their money into - or traps for the unwary, which has always been my biggest fear (and should be Fran's)

This is where having a community of online supporters can really help. She has the best chance of finding a stable housing and work space if she's flexible in what she does next.

If only it wasn't for all that old "boat anchor" equipment it likely would be a lot easier for her. A small number of modern tools could likely replace a whole rack of old test equipment and work so much more flexibly she would never look back as far as most of it.

If in the future she finds a place to expand (not unlikely as many people get more resourceful in creative ways as we get older) she likely could rapidly accumulate a similar wealth of old test equipment quickly because of this housing and work space crunch. If someone has access to a vehicle, they often can get tech stuff for next to nothing, because its often advertised in local papers, craigslist for free, or close to it, if somebody would just come and pick it up.

« Last Edit: October 12, 2018, 02:39:33 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline sokoloff

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #111 on: October 12, 2018, 02:22:09 pm »
The weather in San Francisco is much more live-aboard friendly than in New England.
People do it (in very limited amounts) up here, but the winter conditions (cold, ice, snow) make for a "more sacrifices required" lifestyle than is true in climates without a deep winter.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #112 on: October 12, 2018, 02:48:02 pm »
Good point (about the weather) Philly is quite a bit warmer than New England (in both winter and summer) but not quite Florida either. Not by a long shot.

I live not super far from there and although the weather is getting warmer, we're not even remotely at the point yet where its sub tropical.

Still, despite our cold winters, a few of the hardiest most cold-tolerant palms are beginning to be seen around here, in actual plantings (not pots)

although they all are pretty small, and subject to die back in a real cold snap.
 
Things I have read recently are making me wonder if perhaps the potential for very rapid climate change is increasing. Thats what experts seem to be saying now.

In particular, the situation with methane clathrate - is scary, Methane ice is trapped around the world in Arctic permafrost and along the coastal areas in the Continental shelf.

A look at the phase diagram for methane will show why its hydrate is problematic.
« Last Edit: October 12, 2018, 03:08:02 pm by cdev »
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #113 on: October 12, 2018, 11:33:33 pm »
I believe that Dave has nailed it.
She has some loyal followers, and if each one donated say $20US, she would obtain a significant amount of money.
I certainly would.
My idea was to make a "no IT knowledge required" cryptocurrency miner to help her. As an American, she should have no problem accepting Bitcoin which really expands what coins would be workable - basically any coin that's profitable to mine. I vote Curecoin/Foldingcoin to get some medical research done at the same time.

I thought about giving her my latest Amazon gift card from exchanging some Swagbucks, but had to abandon the idea since the exchange is not very trustworthy and best practice is to redeem the cards ASAP. (There's exactly one thing I like about Swagbucks and that's the high mining efficiency, even though it's way down compared to what it was last year.)
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #114 on: October 13, 2018, 12:51:19 am »
Patreon video, but I'm sure will be released shortly, shows the task ahead of her in moving, and she has about 7 weeks before the building is knocked down.
She can of course "stay" until her lease is up in July  ::) how generous of them.
They aren't buying out her lease.


 

Offline maginnovision

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #115 on: October 13, 2018, 01:16:20 am »
I'm not surprised. Their permits probably don't allow them to work until all the leases were due up anyway. Typically permits aren't until done, you need a date so putting an early date in hopes you can start would be risky since it could shift your finish date. Of course in that case they can apply for new permits but why raise the costs for no reason.
 

Online TheSteve

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #116 on: October 13, 2018, 02:39:37 am »
Patreon video, but I'm sure will be released shortly, shows the task ahead of her in moving, and she has about 7 weeks before the building is knocked down.
She can of course "stay" until her lease is up in July  ::) how generous of them.
They aren't buying out her lease.

Clearly they can't actually knock the building down while she is still there. They can begin to demo the units all around her but if they really want to knock it down and start again they would need to wait until the end of her lease if she decided to stay. No way they need to do 9 months of demo work - maybe she should wait and see what happens.
VE7FM
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #117 on: October 13, 2018, 04:17:00 am »
Clearly they can't actually knock the building down while she is still there. They can begin to demo the units all around her but if they really want to knock it down and start again they would need to wait until the end of her lease if she decided to stay. No way they need to do 9 months of demo work - maybe she should wait and see what happens.

Bad idea.
They'll make her life a living hell. It's a no-win game, get out now.
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #118 on: October 13, 2018, 02:00:22 pm »
Clearly they can't actually knock the building down while she is still there. They can begin to demo the units all around her but if they really want to knock it down and start again they would need to wait until the end of her lease if she decided to stay. No way they need to do 9 months of demo work - maybe she should wait and see what happens.

Bad idea.
They'll make her life a living hell. It's a no-win game, get out now.
Exactly. The pressure to leave becomes unsurmountable, which may include recklessness (on purpose or not). I have met people that went through this, with the strategically falling debris or the inadvertent blown water or sewage pipe invading the shop (hard to know the real intentions).
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Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline modrobert

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #119 on: October 13, 2018, 03:02:07 pm »
Fran,

Snap out of that apathy and get busy with the move!

Clean out the stuff rarely used first, move it to temporary storage (or sell it) and go for something smaller than 2000 square feet, half of it will do fine. You will feel better when it's over, less boxed up junk in the lab, less shit to worry about. It's hard to feel sorry about your situation when most us make do with far less space, and less junk.

Use that insomnia for something useful instead of whining. If you need cash via Patreon or similar it's always easier by being specific, set goals where people can help with each part which also makes it less overwhelming. Looking forward to more of your videos about electronics, but no more whining, that sucks.
 

Online coppercone2

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #120 on: October 13, 2018, 03:16:30 pm »
i wanna see someone throw old vacuum tube at bull dozers
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #121 on: October 13, 2018, 06:12:35 pm »
Clearly they can't actually knock the building down while she is still there. They can begin to demo the units all around her but if they really want to knock it down and start again they would need to wait until the end of her lease if she decided to stay. No way they need to do 9 months of demo work - maybe she should wait and see what happens.
Bad idea.
They'll make her life a living hell. It's a no-win game, get out now.
I agree. However from the video I also get the impression Fran is a bit of a hoarder as well. It seems to me 75% can be thrown away because A) it isn't used and B) it is cheaper to buy when needed instead of paying for storage.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline RoGeorge

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #122 on: October 13, 2018, 06:27:21 pm »
Too many home electronics labs looks like hoarder's rooms. It might be a professional disease, or some side effects caused by too much soldering fumes.

Please don't take this as offensive. I am an electronics hoarder myself, too.
Let's look for a moment at the funny side of owning "stuff".  ^-^

« Last Edit: October 13, 2018, 06:32:12 pm by RoGeorge »
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #123 on: October 13, 2018, 06:45:50 pm »
I think it just comes with the territory. Engineers see the world differently, we know what's inside stuff, when something is broken we often see value in some of the parts contained within and think that some day we might repair the thing or harvest parts from it. I certainly do both of the above, although I also have a lot of stuff I haven't gotten around to doing anything with yet and may never.
 
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Offline G0HZU

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Re: FranLab is getting evicted
« Reply #124 on: October 13, 2018, 07:06:10 pm »
One idea would be to find something amongst all that hoarded stuff/junk that is worth $3500 and sell it. Then use this to rent a nearby 1 bed flat for 6 months. Use the existing building for 'storage' until most of the stuff is sold. Also, this gives time to find an alternative (smaller) premises. If you don't sell or dispose of all the excess in time then I guess you can leave some of the clutter behind to get demolished with the building.

Otherwise it is going to cost a lot of money to move and store that stuff and also fund somewhere to live.

« Last Edit: October 13, 2018, 07:09:33 pm by G0HZU »
 


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