This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3779 for Thursday the 26th of January 2023.
Today's show is entitled, just because you can do a thing.
It is hosted by Tre and is about three minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, just because you can do a thing does that mean you should.
Hello Hacker Public Radio fans, this is Tre and I'm throwing this recording together
for several reasons.
One, the queue of shows is a bismally sparse.
There are far more openings for shows in the next few weeks than there are shows posted.
And too, this show is a pitiful excuse for why I haven't posted any shows recently.
If you like what you hear on Hacker Public Radio, please express your gratitude by recording
your own show.
If it doesn't need to be long or sound professional or anything, introduce yourself and share
something you find interesting.
If you do not like any or all of what you hear on Hacker Public Radio, then it is the perfect
opportunity for you to take a few moments and record a short or long podcast of your
own, which fills the gap of what you feel is needed on HPR.
All right, enough preliminaries.
A long time ago at an undisclosed university far, far away.
I took my first class about ethics.
One of the things I remember most was the question of, just because you can do a thing, does
that mean you should do the thing?
This was applied to many different scenarios.
From nation states, building weapons of mass destruction to authoring computer viruses and
even to saying what you're thinking at any given moment.
It should quickly become obvious that you should not always do a thing simply because
you can do it.
And today, I would like to relate that to DIY home improvement projects, especially as
we work our way up in years.
For regular listeners, you may recall my series, everything you always wanted to know about
pecks recorded and shared in May through July of 2022.
These are episodes 36-04, 36-14, 36-24, and 36-34.
In this series, I recounted the process of re-plumbing my home using pecks with helpful
advice for anyone else who wants to try it.
But I did not realize that the time I was doing the project was the toll that doing so much
work overhead by myself was taking on my old shoulder joints.
It was only one straw, but a rather significant one, which eventually broke the camel's
back, or in my case, resulted in several severe tears in my rotator cuff and bicep tendon.
Therapy was marginally effective and surgery was eventually required to put things back together
the way they belonged.
My effort to save money and do the project myself because I could, helped lead to significantly
more expenses and more than a year of recovery.
I'm not sharing this for sympathy, but rather because I learned something important.
Now that I'm getting older, as I decide which projects I should do myself and which I should
pay professionals to do, it is important to factor in the potential impact on my body,
my mind, and those around me, even if all goes well.
Just because you can do a thing does not necessarily mean you should do that thing.
Unless the thing is recording a podcast for HPR, that is something you can and should
do.
You have been listening to hacker public radio as hacker public radio does work.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR in this night like yourself, if you ever thought
of recording a podcast, click on our contributally to find out how easy it means.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by an onsthost.com, the internet archive and our
Sync.net, on this otherwise status, today's show is released on our creative comments, attribution for pointo international license.