My goal for today was to get the sink in the kitchen installed. The shutoff valves in there were crap and didn’t work well at all, so it was a mess having the faucet/dishwasher off for so long. I went to Home Depot during lunch to peruse the shutoff valve selection, and didn’t really know what I was doing. The guy told me they didn’t have what I needed and I’d have to go to some special plumbing store. I stopped by the condo after work and cut the cabinets up some more so the sink would fit. I couldn’t get ahold of Mike, so I didn’t have anyone to help me lift the sink into position, so I cut some toekicks, then inspected the shutoff valves. I made another trip to Home Depot knowing the sizes I needed. They said they were out of stock of what I needed for the dishwasher hookup, but I bought one valve for the cold water. I went to the other Home Depot in Tempe, and they had a terrible limited selection. I went to Lowes, and their selection was crap. Sitting in Lowes lamenting over the inability to buy the parts I needed, I finally stumbled upon a T connector that would get everything to work if I went back to Home Depot and got another shutoff valve. So, I made a total of 5 visits to home improvement stores and I had what I needed. Exciting! I went back and hooked everything up, and it was leaky. Finally, we resorted to getting my dad to come over and take a look. We fiddled around and replaced compression rings and teflon taped and tightened, and the leaks are minimal. It does still seem to be leaking a bit. We’ll see how it is after a day. Anyway, my conclusion is, plumbing is something that is far from perfected despite how long it has been developed. Keeping water under pressure from leaking is really a pretty tall order.