I got interested in the economics of that refurb.

Looks like a new Gressel vice of roughly the same type can be bought for 550 Francs, which is just very slightly more than 550 US Dollars.

Nothing specific is said about time spent on the repair, other than getting off that one plate took "30 minutes of hammering", which is cut down to roughly 10 seconds of video. I figure that was a particularly time consuming caper to end up being the only thing shown where time spent was specifically mentioned. Some tiny bits of what we saw were roughly real-time, where all the work spent on a specific item was shown 1:1 in the video. But, lots of other stuff was probably somewhere between that 10 seconds : 30 minutes and 1:1 range.

I think a very conservative guess would be that each minute of video represented at least 30 minutes of work. So, 17 minute video x 30 = 510 minutes. Divided by 60 = 8.5 hours. As an extremely conservative estimate -- could easily be five or ten times that, particularly with lawyer-type "billable hours" consideration on what constitutes "work time".

But with that conservative estimate, he worked for (at the very least) 8.5 hours to repair something that could have been replaced for $550. Not including the new replacement smooth grips, etc. That's about $65 per hour. For extremely skilled labor.

I'm not mocking that at all -- I actually agree that it was quite satisfying to watch. But I think that just reaffirms that there must have been some real passion for the work there to decide to go through that very fiddly and skilled labor for what was likely much more than 8.5 hours rather than buying a new one and calling it a day. Not much of that kind of work ethic left these days -- and I sure as hell include myself in that!

@newtboy
@HugeJerk
Bigots-- both of you.

Both of you are a disgrace. Just because this POV is from a Conservative ---

Guess u need fact from a Liberal source.

Interesting. Talking about it openly like that seems like an honorable thing for Jay to do.

I have had a feeling for a long time that networks are way, way, way too tied to short term ratings when they make long-term decisions. Couple of examples, remember these are just my opinions:

Seinfeld is probably on the top of the list of my favorite shows I have watched during my life. However, the first season sucked. It definitely sucked in comparison to later seasons, and honestly I think that it wasn't really even good in comparison to standard TV dreck/fare that first season. It didn't get particularly good ratings, but it got picked up for a 2nd season. It then started to get better. Not extremely rapidly, but pretty quickly. It rose fast enough to get the slot after "Cheers", which introduced it to enough more of an audience that it exploded. One of the few examples of a network being nice and patient with a show that was struggling to a certain extent, and it payed off *huge*.

Lets go with Firefly specifically, but basically anything Joss Whedon has ever done fits to a certain extent. Firely comes out, and it isn't advertised very much. Fox thinks it is too cerebral and deep, it needs more things blowing up and less talky-talky. So, they cut his original pilot, rearrange episodes, and don't even provide the show with a stable timeslot, let alone a good one. It gets less than a full season to try the waters and build an audience before it is canceled. In the meantime, we've got umpteen versions of Law and Order, CSI, etc., and a very conservative guess of 2 hours of "reality" TV on in primetime per day per network. They had a show that was great and different, and at the very least could have captured a niche market of people who wanted something else beyond watching vacuous morons kick each other onto/off of "the island" etc.

It seems to me that a network that was willing to take some risks, go with their actual opinions instead of instantaneous market research ratings, and give any new show at least 1-2 seasons to catch its balance would quite possibly make for some great shows with dedicated audiences.