Merry Christmas!

[pilvikki]

i was on some gut acid tamer for years, yet still occasionally woke up to my ribs being on fire. then i read that you're not supposed to use them for more than 2 weeks.

wtf?

so i quit them - and lo and behold, things have gotten better since!

then there was the anxiety issue; had a nasty case of it until a doc finally put me on Paxil. no more anxiety, but instead....



dilemma. tried half, still in stun mode. went to a quarter and YA-HOOO! success. they are only made in 20s, yet i needed 5. that's just stupid. luckily i've managed to wean myself off them altogether now.

phew

[yogi]

My problem is chronic. If I stop the antacids the reflux eats away at the lining of my esophagus. The (lower dosage) stuff they sell in the stores does come with a warning to be done with it in 14 days. However, my doctor OK-ed a steady diet of the stuff, which is better than not having an esophagus.

[Kellemora]

One of the OTC meds the doc has me on comes in 600mg via brand name for like 14 bucks.
I get it off the super discount shelf at 400mg for 88 cents.
Actually, when they have them on the shelf, there are two meds in the 88 cent bin I stock up on.
The second one replaces a script that used to cost 4 bucks with insurance, 56 bucks without, and now discontinued.
Glad I found an alternative I can take for only 88 cents, hi hi.

With the drugs the doc has me on, there is so many I cannot take. Most of the cheaper versions are blended with something I cannot have, so finding unblended is sometimes like looking for a needle in a haystack.

[yogi]

I have a suspicion that if you contacted the manufacture(s) of the drugs you need, they would be able to point you in the right direction. They might even sell to you direct. You are also very fortunate to have a super discount drug store in your neighborhood. Nothing in any of the drug stores around here costs less than a dollar.

[Kellemora]

The 88 cent items slots are usually empty, but if you check each time you are in the store, sometimes they are filled. Trouble is, when they do fill them, folks like me grab about 6 packages, but I always make sure to leave at least 2 in the slot, so sometimes I only get 2 myself.

[yogi]

I've not seen it around here yet, but up north when there is a super saving sale, they place a limit on how many you can buy. That's being fair to everybody. I just returned from a trip to the grocery and two of the items I went for had empty slots on the shelf. One was on sale but the other not. They have a huge problem keeping their shelves stocked at Dierbergs. The only alternative seems to be to pick a day and visit all six of the stores so that you can get everything you're looking for.

[Kellemora]

Of all the stores, both mom n pop and chain stores, it seems the only two incapable of keeping stock on their shelves is Kroger and WalMart. The mom n pop stores seem to always have at least a couple of what I went in for. But the nice thing about mom n pop stores is they will keep in stock what I buy on a regular basis, if it is a normally stocked item. If not, they will usually order it for me and in many cases charge me less if I buy several.
This is a great deal for me, because what WalMart sells for $4.88, my local grocer usually only charges me $3.50 when I buy in bulk special orders from them. Their normal shelf price is only $3.75 to $4.00, always less than WalMart. It sorta works like this. When WalMart cuts their price down to between $3.98 and $4.18, our local mom n pop store cuts theirs down to only $3.75.
And no they are not going broke doing so. In fact, they keep expanding into larger and larger stores.
I like them better when they were a much smaller store, because they did have to raise all their prices a little to cover the larger overhead of a bigger store. They recently took over a store that was once Food City, when Food City moved out of our county.
The only drawback to the mom n pop stores is they don't have access to some of the products the bigger chains carry, unless it happens to be an overflow of a certain product and they pick it up from a secondary distributor.

[yogi]

The chain stores all have different distributors. There is some overlap for the most popular national brands, but not all stores stock the same national brands. What bugs me the most is that the same chain store in different locations will keep different stock on their shelves. I was looking for a brand of soap called Lava one day and could not find it at Dierbergs. They had dozens of off the wall brands, but no Lava. OK, it's not all that popular so I forgave them. I stopped at Schnooks on the way home and voila. You would think I'd be a happy camper, but the next time I went after Lava soap I knew not to go to Dierbergs. I went to Schnooks, but not the same one as the first time. They don't handle it. So, each store has a different buyer and the items on the shelves are there at the whim of the buyer Du Jour.

I've not yet found a mom and pop shop like the ones I grew up with in Chicago. There is a small independent market nearby that has great meat but limited stock otherwise. They don't handle Genoa salami, whole milk mozzarella cheese, and only keep small containers of whipping cream in very limited quantities. Fresh baked breads are delivered (from St Louis) on Fridays only. They wont special order unless I buy a whole salami, for example. I just don't eat enough of it to justify the cost, and besides they only have the rye bread to put it on every Friday. They do make bodacious sandwiches to order however. Some new people took ownership recently and replaced most of the canned goods with beer, wine, and liquor. Of course they don't have the Marsala or Chianti or even the vermouth I cook with, but you can get all the beer you can put in the back of your pickup any day of the week. So much for mom and pop stores.

[Kellemora]

I use Lava hand soap after working on something that gets my hands super dirty.
Most of the big box hardware stores have it, as well as pharmacies.
As you've found out, not so much the grocery stores anymore.
Walmart does have it, but not in the grocery section, it is usually in the automotive area right beside Goop.

As far as Schnucks or Dierbergs goes, if they don't have it in their local warehouses, the stores won't have it.
There are only certain products they can buy from local vendors for their individual stores.
Even then, they often need permission from the home office first.

Before Schnucks got so big, like right after they bought out Bettendorfs, I was friends with several of the Schnucks family members, even after they bought Mr. O's mansion, we still crossed paths quite often. Back then, if I wanted something, I would just mention it and suddenly our local Schnucks had it in stock. For a while anyhow before dropping it, since I didn't buy enough for them to warrant tying up their shelf space.

[yogi]

This is my third winter in O'Fallon. My heart and soul never left Roselle, Illinois, but my body and my brain are perfectly happy in my current situation. There's probably some complex psychological explanation for all this, but that doesn't change the bottom line. This place is different. LOL

I spent many decades meandering the neighborhoods up north before I attained the status I had there. The lifestyle in my surroundings became part of my own expectations. When we decided to relocate I knew up front life would be different. There is no Chrystina's (Polish) Deli here and people look at me as if I were crazy when I inquire about lox and bagels. Thus, when Dierbergs can't find it within their purview to keep Lava soap on their shelves, I get the feeling my life has been downgraded. Well, it has been. The cost of living here is down 20% from the most expensive county in the USA. So, why would I expect to have access to what I had back there in the frozen tundra? These folks would have the identical problem if they moved up north. Then again, nobody here is crazy enough to make such a move.

[Kellemora]

Try moving down here. It IS a whole different world. Nothing available back home is available down here.
The only thing going for it is the temp is usually ten degrees warmer than in St. Loo.
Taxes are a lot higher than they were in Creve Coeur too, but without any benefits like we had back home.

Living a lifetime back home, I knew where to go for anything I wanted or needed, with good service and low prices.
I still have to order things from back home, because it just isn't down here anywhere.

[yogi]

Certainly part of the problem with relocating some distance from your home has to do with a lack of familiarity of products and services. I'm still learning where things are here in and around O'Fallon but the process is long and drawn out. The reason for that is I don't have many needs. When I do need something it may not be easy to find or available. Thus, I too, buy things from places I shopped up north.

When I bought the Pixel 3 XL from the Google store, it was my understanding that it could only be obtained form them or from Verizon. Since I didn't want to deal with Verizon, I chose the Google store. It was Cyber Monday when I ordered it and thus got $100 in free merchandise with the phone. They told me that was in addition to the "free" home center I should put in my cart. Well, the home center is Google's version of Alexa, so I never took them up on the free offer. But, I did order a $45 charger that can be used in the car. They dilly dallied with the delivery dates but about ten days later the Pixel finally arrived. It was shipped from a suburb adjacent to the village in which I live. Coincident? I think not. It was more like irony.

[Kellemora]

I lost a couple of major deals and things that took years to establish back home.
One example: I had a lifetime contract with Electro Battery for a new battery every two years for only 26 bucks, regardless of what the current selling price of batteries climbed up to. It didn't matter if I changed vehicles or had more than one vehicle. If my name was on the title, the contract was good.
Some of the deals I had elsewhere died along with the owners, or if the store went out of business.
Most of these deals came about through you scratch my back I'll scratch your back type of things.
From the end of 1968 through mid-1982 I got a free dinner for two every month at Flaming Pit restaurant.
Well sorta free, I supplied them with flowers, greens, and a bow for 24 bud vases each week.
In the beginning, we also supplied 48 cut-glass bud vases, 24 at our place to fill for next week, when we would deliver 24 and pick up the 24 empties. When the place changed managers, he gave away the bud vases they had on hand, so after that, we just delivered the arrangement tied with a bow and they had to put them in the bud vases themselves.
Plus the car dealer incentives such as tire rotations, oil changes, etc.
But like I said earlier, we just don't have the types of stores down here we had back home.
I really miss some of the neat places to eat I found back home too! Nothing like them down here anywhere.

[yogi]

There is only one deal I regret not having here which I did have up north. It involved the tires on my car. I favored a Goodyear shop because I trusted the brand more than the others. One time I went there for service and they suggested I fill the tires with nitrogen. Why nitrogen, I asked. The theory was that they preserved the tire better than plain old air and were not as prone to random leaks. That last item is what caught my attention because that is why I was there that day. Well, I might have been the victim of a scam because I payed something like $69 for a lifetime supply of nitrogen. The clincher in the deal was free tire rotations for life as well. When I took the car to a regular auto mechanic one day, he checked the tire pressure. They were all normal and he didn't have to top them off, but I asked if he has nitrogen should I want it. He laughed and told me that was a scam; it does nothing for the tires. In any case, it's damn near impossible to find Goodyear tires down here in O'Fallon. They can be ordered, but there are no shops specializing in such things. And, certainly, none of the tire stores that do have nitrogen will honor the Goodyear contract I have.

[Kellemora]

I used nitrogen in all of our truck tires, trailer tires, and even in my own cars tires.
Also in things like hand trucks, lawn carts, and my lawn mower tires.

It's not a scam, and the reason to use nitrogen is simple. Nitrogen don't migrate through the rubber like air does.
Tire pressure remains the same summer and winter, and on long road trips, the tires pressure doesn't increase while driving.

Since I moved down here, nitrogen for tires isn't available, so I had to revert to having inner tubes installed on my lawn cart, and hand trucks. Without the inner tubes, every time I went to use a hand truck, the tires were flat. Same with my garden cart, which is only used a couple of times a year.

I never had to pay extra at the trailer shop to have nitrogen used in the trailers, but they did charge me five bucks to do my own car. The truck shop didn't charge us for nitrogen in the truck tires, it's all they used.

FWIW: We used Goodyear tires on almost all of our trucks after Cooper Tires started making their tires from too hard a rubber. If we bought a new vehicle or truck and it came with Michelin tires, we had them replaced before accepting delivery of the vehicle. We didn't care what they did with the tires they took off, and I'm sure some poor mechanic thought he got a deal by getting them for free, until he wrecked his car because of those deadly tires.

[yogi]

I find it hard to believe that tires filled with nitrogen will not increase in pressure when they get hot from driving on the road. It's a gas after all and expands like any other gas when the heat gets turned up. As far as osmosis into the rubber goes, that's very believable. I've had nearly no problems maintaining tire pressure since I've been using the nitrogen. They charged me $7 (I think) to put nitrogen in two tires here in town. Since they don't handle Goodyear, I had Cooper tires installed in their place. So far, I've not had to use the ejection seat to avoid a skidding catastrophe. LOL Truth is I don't see any difference in performance between the Coopers and the Goodyears. Then again, I've only had them for about a year.

[Kellemora]

A number of years ago, I switched to Uniroyal in order to get softer rubber tires.
But now that the price of tires, even the soft ones, has climbed so high, I'm running a little harder rubber than I like.

Compressed air has moisture in it, while nitrogen does not, this alone causes pressure changes with temperature.
The air we breath is something like 28% oxygen, other than a few contaminants, the rest is nitrogen.
But using nothing but nitrogen in a tire makes it last longer, and tread wear is reduced, simply because there is not so much fluctuation in pressure due to temperature.
Nitrogen is important to race car drivers who's tires don't last very long as it is.
They consider it a safety feature, and a way to prolong tire life.

I may have told you this already. A friend of mine had Michelin tires on his car, and I had either Cooper or Uniroyal at the time. I challenged him to a test which we conducted in the Venture Parking lot at night after they closed and the parking lot was empty, but while the parking lot lights were still on.
The light poles were color coded to help folks find their cars.
We started at the far end of the parking and had to stay side by side as we sped up to around 60 mph.
When we got to the second to last set of light poles, we were to see how fast we could stop.
My car with the softer tires stopped before I reached the last light pole.
His car not only slid past the last light pole, it continued to slide until he hit the dirt bank, not hard enough to do any damage. But the point was, he skidded more than twice as far as I did.
The light standards were down the center of the parking spaces, so from the light standard where we were supposed to start stopping, you had the length of a car, the width of the drive, the length of a car to the next light standard, the length of a car to the next drive, the width of the drive, and the length of a car up to the embankment.
That's one heck of a long way to slide, nearly 50 feet beyond where I stopped.

I've been hit in the drivers side door TWICE, while sitting at red lights, as cars made a right hand turn off the road onto the side street. In both cases, the cars who slid into me while making the turn, they had Michelin tires.
Also in both cases, part of my agreement with them for repair costs was they had to change the Michelin tires to a safer brand tire. If they would do this, we wouldn't get the insurance companies involved which would cause their rates to go up.

[yogi]

You make my tired old brain try to recall my high school physics lessons. It's not such a bad thing but it happened so long aga that I can't remember all the details.

Regarding hot air, I do recall that the atoms of the gasses are spaced further apart as the ambient temperature increases. This would cause an increase of pressure inside a closed container such as a tire. It's just a natural property of gases to expand in this fashion and it doesn't matter which gas we are talking about; oxygen, nitrogen, or a mix of both will all react to temperature increases. I don't think all gasses expand at the same rate, and thus nitrogen might be more stable than oxygen, although they are next to each other in the periodic table. The reaction of rubber under pressure probably is different depending upon which gas we are talking about, thus the seal of the rubber against the rim could be affected by which gas is contained in the tire. So, maybe less leaks with nitrogen, but the actual sealing is accomplished by a solution they put on the rim before mounting the tire. The gas doesn't have that much of an effect. If the pressure is stable, then that certainly would affect tire wear.

You have mentioned before the impromptu experiment you executed with Michelin vs Cooper/Uniroyal. As was the case the first time I read it, I wondered again how much confidence to place in the test results. As you describe it, the test was not very scientific. You did not mention any effort to make the vehicles identical in every pertinent detail and isolate the tires as being the only difference. The drivers and the pavement differences also would affect the results. Having said all that, I will agree that you demonstrated there is a difference between the two tires. I'd guess it has to do with the coefficient of friction more than anything else. Safe bet.

There are standards for safety which all tire manufacturers must meet. I realize the standards could be changed for the right price, but a product with obvious safety problems would be taken off the market quickly enough by a few ambitious lawyers seeking punitive damages from the offender. Your personal experiences with tires and drive trains cannot be discounted. What you observed is true and factual, but it doesn't apply to enough people to justify banning Michelin from the American market. Whatever the benefits of a harder rubber tire are, they outweigh the risks. Plus, people are not stupid. If hard rubber and front wheel drives are imminently dangerous, nobody would buy them. I'm thinking Pinto here.

[Kellemora]

His tires were only a few months old, while mine were close to two years old, so he had the advantage on me there.
My car was a 66 Impala, he had a 67 GTO I think, so as far as car weight goes, we were close to the same.
We were on a flat, wet, blacktop parking lot, but it had stopped raining.
There was no puddling of water on the parking lot.
I did this same thing a few years later in a 68 Camaro against a Mustang, the Mustang only slid about twenty feet further than I did, but his tires were also wider than mine and a whole lot newer.
Regardless of the tread pattern, it's a proven fact that the harder the Durometer rating of a tire, the less friction grip it has to the road surface.

Plain Air vs Nitrogen, as I said, Nitrogen is dry, but I think the nitrogen molecule is also larger, which is why it does not permeate through the rubber.
As far as increasing pressure in a tire as it heats up, I can assume that if you filled your tires with air from a Scuba Tank, then the air would also be dry in this case, and probably no different than using nitrogen, as far as expansion goes.

Race cars all use the softest rubber tires they can safely use, and also use Nitrogen in them. Must be some reason!

People don't really know much about cars. They buy based on advertising and color of the car.
Virtually no drivers out on the road have any racing experience, nor learned how to handle a car on a lake of ice.
They don't really know what their car will do, how it will react, or what to do to overcome an out of control situation.

Living in Illinois, I'm sure you know quite well how to drive in snow or on ice.
You would also know what happens when you lose traction.
Think for a moment about trying to climb a small hill that is covered in ice.
What happens in a rear wheel drive car when trying to climb that hill.
What happens in a front wheel drive car when trying to climb that hill.
That simple test alone should be proof enough of why front wheel drive vehicles are deadly.

[yogi]

One of the first automobiles to hit the American market with front wheel drive was the Ford Fiesta. It was actually imported from the UK and reworked to meet American safety and pollution standards. I ordered a shop manual for it and it came from England. If you don't recall, the Ford Fiesta was a subcompact, meaning it was the smallest street legal car you could buy at the time. I believe the tires were 12" - or whatever the smallest rim size possible was at the time. So, I had this very light weight car with tiny tires while I lived inside the city limits of Chicago. I don't know what brand the tires were, but I'm thinking Firestone. I know I didn't like them at the time.

It was 1967 and the largest snowfall ever recorded for Chicago hit while I was at work. This was the storm that shut down the entire city of Chicago for the first time in its history. They let us out about an hour early due to the snow and when I got to where my car was parked, the depth of the snow was up to the level of the hood. I had to borrow a snow shovel to dig out or walk more than 8 miles in a blizzard to get home. The parking lot was not plowed but it was cleared enough for me to drive this bug, with front wheel drive, out of the lot leaving all those rear wheel drive cars standing in the lot for several days. No, it wasn't easy for me to get out, but the fact of the matter is my front wheel drive was among the only ones that did get home that day. It was nearly a 4 hour trip to go the 8 miles, but it was the trip of a lifetime. I'll never forget it.

I can't argue the benefits or faults of the tires on the Fiesta, but you will have a hard time convincing me that front wheel drive is inferior to rear wheels.

Soft rubber and nitrogen at the race track makes for optimal racing tires. Then again, what is the life expectancy of racing tires? Is it even 1000 miles? LOL

And I quote from the ultimate source

Heat causes the molecules to move faster, (heat energy is converted to kinetic energy ) which means that the volume of a gas increases more than the volume of a solid or liquid. However, gases that are contained in a fixed volume cannot expand - and so increases in temperature result in increases in pressure.

My point here is that the humidity in the air is insignificant when it comes to it's effect on increasing tire pressure.

And, something I was not sure about:

Gas pressure is due to the molecules colliding with the walls of the container. ... An increase in temperature increases the speed in which the gas molecules move. All gases at a given temperature have the same average kinetic energy.

Apparently all gas expands at the same rate. Doesn't matter if it's nitrogen or oxygen or Xenon.

In principle I would agree that hard rubber will slide over asphalt before soft rubber does the same. It has to do with that coefficient of friction I referred to earlier. Your experiment may not have been scientifically accurate, but it does confirm the laws of physics associated with friction. Physics and science aside, you take your life into your own hands when you drive down the road in an automobile. It makes a hella lot of sense to drive a vehicle in which you feel safe and comfortable no matter what the justification for your feelings. People warned me about the light weight and small size of the Fiesta. They said it was unsafe. Well, I'm here to tell you that I never had a crash in it nor do I recall ever losing control. I can't say the same for the larger cars I've owned.