Would try in Nanjing.

Yeah, not a bad idea, and much more economical than upgrading service. I would only have to free up two slots for the new 220 circuit, so a couple of tandems would do it. If my panel supports them. And if my township enforces the right version of NEC. I could hire an electrician, but it seems silly for such a simple change if I can verify the requirements myself.

(Dear electricians, I have the utmost respect for your profession, and yes, I know when to let you do the work instead of doing it myself!)

My HVAC was an upgrade, and is running off of its own meter and panel. Everything else is natural gas, except for my oven's 220 circuit that I ran myself (with permit). I'm pretty sure NEC requires a dedicated circuit for the oven, so I'd have to run a new cable from the service panel. It's still the original 1983 panel, so probably 100 to 150 amp service, and I think I'm out of capacity.

Would I pay an electrician $1500 so I can use my coffee maker? No way; I'm not that type of coffee snob. But I'm a handy person who likes to mold his house to his liking.

Goodness no! Nema 6-15 or Nema 6-20 will do quite nicely, have pretty consumer-like versions available, and don't look like giant, ugly heavy appliance hookups on my countertops.

Plugs and/or cables on most appliances are amazingly easy to change, so I won't be using a "conversion" cable or anything. I'll add the proper plug or cable for the outlet.

(Appliances' cables are Chinese, not European.)

As other child post says, it's only really important for motor loads. I currently run a couple of my US appliances on a transformer. While the food processor doesn't bat an eye at 50 Hz, I had to recalibrate the speed control on the stand mixer, and it's a bit slow.

Coming back, both the kettle and the coffee maker are resistance-only devices, and so line frequency won't matter. Yeah, the coffee maker has its solid state logic, but its power supply negates any frequency effects.

When I return home to the States from my current assignment, 220 outlets in my kitchen will be a top priority. Sure, I could buy a new kettle and a new coffee maker, but running off of 220 is so much better.

Actually, New York City has an excellent history of pre-planning. Wikipedia. While it's true it's not the 1700s, remember that the population was significantly lower then. And "New York City" as people know it wasn't even formed until the late 1800s when the four outer boroughs joined Manhattan.

But, yeah, infrastructure technology is hard to plan for.

If I have a cell phone without an FM radio, it's exactly the same as having no cell phone at all, for the purposes of the question being asked. Not having a built-in taser increases my chances of being mugged, too.

I think it's a good question, and they're both questions; no one suggested that they stop working on the project.

Why is it a good question? Why do we still read human interest stories? I think it's fascinating to know who is doing this work, and why.

My bank in China uses ActiveX, so Java would be an upgrade.

Most cars produced in 1992 would have been 100% metric, but you have a body-on-frame vehicle with a long "carryover" history, i.e., the cab and engine were new (and metric), but the chassis was a carryover, pre-metric design. Although in 1992, the sheet metal may still have been specified in mils rather than mm.

Modern chassis have since been redesigned, and it's doubtful that there's a car produced by any manufacturer in any country that's not 100% metric now.

I happen to work for a very large car company as a manufacturing engineer. No, we don't do this deliberately, and as said below, we don't not do it deliberately, either.

Our number one goal is customer satisfaction, and if you Pareto it right, the vast majority of customers don't service their cars themselves, and have no interest in doing so. They're more satisfied with fit-and-finish, safety, economy, and features that will delight them. If it were the case that 80% of our customers valued home-serviceability more than these things, then designs would shift towards these things. It's simply not possible to make every, single part easily serviceable given the demands of the modern designs.

There's not a single powertrain engineer that says, "Hey, let's put this air intake over the number 5 cylinder so that the customer will be discouraged from changing the spark plugs himself at 160,000 km." Instead it's, "Bummer that this air intake is in the way of the number 5 cylinder, but I have to route it here because the cabin air filter, goes here, the oversized washer tank goes there, and I have to figure out how to package the rest of the components, too."

And modern cars require less service. I used to have to change the points in my VW when I was a kid, every 3000 miles if I recall correctly. These days as long as you change your oil and filter every 10,000 miles, you don't really have to do anything else. Home serviceability is still possible, if inconvenient, but it's more than offset by the larger service intervals.

For other routine, at-home-typical tasks, there's not a huge barrier versus the past. Brakes, filters, oil plug, are all nearly as simple today as they were in the past. Maybe the alternator or water pump is hard to get to, but then again, you're not replacing these every 50,000 miles like in the past, either.

Oh, I get that the testing companies want to prevent discussion, and that perhaps teachers are subject to an NDA, but the children are not. Perhaps they're subject to discipline on school grounds, but off grounds there's certainly no legal basis that prevents the children from discussing the contents of a test, whether it be face to face or electronically. I would suspect that the teachers' NDA is probably really a matter of disciplinary action from the administration rather than a signed license agreement, else we'd hear about a leak now and then. Did you actually sign an NDA? Was there an alternative, or was it akin to "sign this and so your job, or you don't have a job."?

It's been a long time since I've taken a standardized test, but I don't remember ever signing a licence indicating my willingness not to divulge the contents. Given the quasi-mandatory nature of PARCC I can't imagine such a EULA having any real weight, if it exists.

Barring any mutual agreement via a license or other contract, we still have some amount of freedom of expression in the USA, and discussion of a fact, such as the contents of an exam, would fall within that right. Even verbatim copying of some of the questions would fall within the realm of fair use. One might argue that copying the entire exam is fair use, but that's probably not defined in the courts as it is for telephone books and recipes, so I won't make that argument (I will mention it for consideration, however).

The difference is that electrical, mechanical, civil engineers, et al, all have governing bodies and licensing requirements.

Except that vast majority of the working engineers in the USA aren't PE's, and aren't subject to licensing or other regulatory requirements. Some fields -- especially various civil things -- only require engineers to be overseen by a PE, but makes no requirement for engineers who perform the tasks. In most consumer fields no PE requirement exists.