Minor rant thread. Post your rants o' the day here!

NickD wrote: In just the past three weeks I have (...)

Do all that stuff when the truck is 10 years old and no fasteners will come loose without using a torch and/or hammering the next size smaller socket over the head.

I did a rear bank cat in a '09 Ridgeline yesterday that required all of the above. (Doing the rear bank requires not only removal of the Y-pipe and all of the mucking around that entails, but also the right axle, which is far more difficult than it needs to be because there are fasteners you can't access without removing the thing underneath the thing you're trying to unbolt first. Franz Kafka is a Honda powertrain engineer)

Somehow still made it done in book time, by one minute. Fully two and a half hours were spent mucking about with rusted fasteners. I was hammering worn 10mm sockets over some of the cones that used to have 14mm heads...

Not sure this is a rant but, last Sunday I took my just learning to drive grandson to an empty ice covered parking lot & let him practice some skid control & braking. This afternoon I was wearing shorts & sandals. Eastern NC weather, if you don't like it just give it a day or 2 & it may be vastly different.

Ok, this is a pretty minor rant.

Most of you know about my desire to do some hydroponics/aeroponics... and duly make fun of me growing weed.

But what's really frustrating- most of the people who are posting examples of what they are doing are growing weed.

There's one company that makes a drip tower that I can copy, and a couple in Wisconsin that sells a large barrel sized thing for high pressure that I can also copy. And a few smaller sized food growers.

But other than that, it's for weed. And there are a LOT of them out there- which prevents me from researching here at work....

(I have a good idea what I will be doing, but it's still frustrating)

I'm doubling down on this rant because I'm so disgusted.

To upgrade an iPhone to a new iPhone is essentially automatic. All your "stuff" moves to the new phone easily.

To upgrade and Android phone to a new one took me 4 hours, two third-party apps, and a lot of cursing. Worst part is, there's no good reason for this.

Get your act together, Google.

Computer systems...

Just spent an few hours trying to get FTP working on an internal server. Kept telling me login error, even though I was already logged in on the server for a different program.

Called the (no)help desk- nothing.

All of a sudden, it works. What in the world.

Follow-up to yesterday afternoon's rant...

So, in the end I'm glad that the DMC wasn't drivable. The weather on the drive to Louisville was terrible- near torrential rain at a number of points and heavy rain the rest of the time. The DMC would have not been fun to have been driving in those conditions. Then again, the Patriot has its own issues... for some reason when you give it a good bit of gas to accelerate hard, it want to pull- HARD- to the right. Which is NOT a fun thing when the roads are covered in water.

Thankfully I made it there without incident- only to have to wait 45 minutes as the dancer waited for his bags and then had to deal with the airline agents when they didn't show up, only to be told that they'd been sent to Lexington instead (at this point I'm going, 'How the BERK can his BAGS get there but the couldn't get HIM there???'). As a result, there was no way we could get back to the rehearsal he was supposed to have last night, so we headed to the airport in LEX to try and get his bags.

Well, guess what? That flight won't be in for another hour- come back then. So at 10:40pm we scramble to find someplace to get some food- I'd not eaten more than a few chips since lunch- and met up with SWMBO and the show's stage manager (who we get along very well with) for a very late dinner before dashing back to the airport to try and get the bags. In the end, only one bag showed up and the other was supposed to be delivered to where he's staying today (I've not heard if that happened yet).

I didn't get back to the house until 1am, and essentially went straight to bed since (of course) I needed to be up earlier than usual this morning so I can get out early to go run the video for the rehearsals this evening. SWMBO wanted me to just call in sick so I could sleep in, but a) I have a very time-sensitive project that losing today on would put me behind schedule and b) I've already been out sick at least once this year and it's only the second week of the year.

They're calling for freezing rain tonight so I'd really like to get out ASAP and finish the job of replacing the sway bar bushings on the motorhome. Before I can do that, I need the second set of bushings to arrive. It figures that today is the day the mailman takes his dear sweet time...

wae wrote: They're calling for freezing rain tonight so I'd really like to get out ASAP and finish the job of replacing the sway bar bushings on the motorhome. Before I can do that, I need the second set of bushings to arrive. It figures that today is the day the mailman takes his dear sweet time...

I just looked at the forecast for next weekend- it's supposed to be in the mid-60s here.

Here's a minor rant in the "first world problems" vein.

I find myself driving a car. A BGN. With a turbo that is making the most GLORIOUS whoosh and chatter sounds and we're not even getting past 10 inches of vacuum driving in city traffic. I get on the onramp to the Interstate, it's the type that merges two inlets into one ramp and I have to slow down to let other traffic merge in. Car merging in ahead of me is a black Focus ST, and there's NO traffic on the Interstate...

The rant: It's not my BGN, it's my employer's, he's driving right behind me, and it is 27 degrees out and the car is on slicks and I keep getting visions of what happened to Patrick Bedard at Indy when he got into boost in something Buick powered on cold tires.

Dangit, the setup was perfect, except for those pesky details.

Turbo still makes the coolest noises, at least. (I never got into boost during the entire trip, either. Not going to chance looping a not-mine car!)

I got my schedule for next week. 6am every day I am working. I am not a morning person, I prefer evenings, but recently my boss has been hell bent on making me work early mornings.

I might also add that we have the World Series of poker in our main showroom for the next three weeks, so NO shows. It's going to be a long rest of January

The good news is that I got my sway bar bushings installed last night once the mailman finally decided to grace us with his presence.

But I figured out one of the contributing factors to why I was having so much trouble getting the brackets off the motorhome. It didn't occur to me until I was thinking back to helping pull the motor from a '91 or thereabouts S10, but in '93 the chassis would have been a left-over design from 19dicketytwo, so instead of being metric, the way the good Lord intended, all the chassis bolts are SAE. And the only SAE tools I have are the ones that accidentally came with sets of metric sockets.

Knurled wrote:

NickD wrote: In just the past three weeks I have (...)

Do all that stuff when the truck is 10 years old and no fasteners will come loose without using a torch and/or hammering the next size smaller socket over the head. I did a rear bank cat in a '09 Ridgeline yesterday that required all of the above. (Doing the rear bank requires not only removal of the Y-pipe and all of the mucking around that entails, but also the right axle, which is far more difficult than it needs to be because there are fasteners you can't access without removing the thing underneath the thing you're trying to unbolt first. Franz Kafka is a Honda powertrain engineer) Somehow still made it done in book time, by one minute. Fully two and a half hours were spent mucking about with rusted fasteners. I was hammering worn 10mm sockets over some of the cones that used to have 14mm heads...

Yeah, it was nice that they weren't old and rusty, but they were all under warranty and GM warranty pays terrrrrrrrriiiibbbllle, so I lost money on most of them (particularly the oil pump flow control solenoid). And second, that stuff shouldn't need replacing already.

wae wrote: The good news is that I got my sway bar bushings installed last night once the mailman finally decided to grace us with his presence. But I figured out one of the contributing factors to why I was having so much trouble getting the brackets off the motorhome. It didn't occur to me until I was thinking back to helping pull the motor from a '91 or thereabouts S10, but in '93 the chassis would have been a left-over design from 19dicketytwo, so instead of being metric, the way the good Lord intended, all the chassis bolts are SAE. And the only SAE tools I have are the ones that accidentally came with sets of metric sockets.

That is kinda weird if they were all SAE, since all S10s were designed in the era where GM was doing everything in metric. Heck it is an offshoot of the G-body aka "Metric Chassis".

Once you understand that everything designed after 1980 or so is metric, things make sense. Like their habit in the 80s of having stud bolts that are metric on one end and SAE on the other. The engine was designed in the 50s/60s/70s so everything that threads into the engine is SAE, but the accessories were designed in the 1980s so they have Metric fasteners.

GM continued with this crud at least through the Series II 3800s, which still were festooned with SAE everywhere.

so, I just hard to order a whole new exhaust for my Disco. I knew the front section needed replacing due to a bad cat. But the back half just broke in front of the axle last week, so I know what I am doing next week when it comes in.

On a related question. I thought cats came with an 8 year, 80,000 mile, I have no idea why when I bought my Disco at 10 years and 83,000 miles it already had one cat hacked off and replaced with a cheap aftermarket unit. It looked like it had been there a while too considering the rust on the welds and how beaten up it looked.

And yes, it is the aftermarket cat that failed and disintegrated inside. It runs ok going down the road, but loads up at low speeds and has a very lumpy labored idle.

Good news is, I spent the extra change and bought a the full stainless Maganflow system from manifold to tips, bad news is I get to replace it in winter.

Late on a Sunday night is when my 7+ year old handheld-computer-phone chooses to die. Already tried an OS-only reflash and it's still crashing constantly, I'll try a full reflash next and if it doesn't help, which I think it won't, that will confirm there's a hardware problem. I have a spare phone of this model but no time to set it up.

Knurled wrote:

wae wrote: The good news is that I got my sway bar bushings installed last night once the mailman finally decided to grace us with his presence. But I figured out one of the contributing factors to why I was having so much trouble getting the brackets off the motorhome. It didn't occur to me until I was thinking back to helping pull the motor from a '91 or thereabouts S10, but in '93 the chassis would have been a left-over design from 19dicketytwo, so instead of being metric, the way the good Lord intended, all the chassis bolts are SAE. And the only SAE tools I have are the ones that accidentally came with sets of metric sockets.

That is kinda weird if they were all SAE, since all S10s were designed in the era where GM was doing everything in metric. Heck it is an offshoot of the G-body aka "Metric Chassis". Once you understand that everything designed after 1980 or so is metric, things make sense. Like their habit in the 80s of having stud bolts that are metric on one end and SAE on the other. The engine was designed in the 50s/60s/70s so everything that threads into the *engine* is SAE, but the accessories were designed in the 1980s so *they* have Metric fasteners. GM continued with this crud at least through the Series II 3800s, which still were festooned with SAE everywhere.

One of the things that makes a 78 zephyr annoying is the fact its the bastard child foxbody and has a mix of metric and standard sizes. Digging around the toolbox for an actual standard socket is always a joy!

The fan motor in the freezer side of my refridgerator has a noisey, whingey bearing that decided to announce it's malady this evening. :/

Why does Racing Beat sell seat upholstery sets for FC convertibles, but not for coupes?

Why are the doors to work locked at 4:12,when they should be locked at 4:15? Don't look at me like a freak when I'm banging on the doors to let me in.

So, SWMBO's non-profit's show was Saturday. Thank the stars that everything by and large went off well, and it was the best-attended of the shows to date- which was a VERY badly needed boost to SWMBO's confidence in all of this which had been taking a beating over the last month. Only significant thing to go wrong that will matter down the line? There was an issue with the battery on the GoPro I was using the record the show such that it died sometime during the second act. It was running through the first and I was checking it between acts so had it fixed for the third- but the second had the two pieces she most wanted recordings of. At the moment we don't know if it died after the act finished and while I was making my way up to the catwalk to check the camera, if it died right after I checked it before the act, or somewhere in between.

With the show Saturday evening, it would have been REALLY FORKING NICE to have been able to relax and decompress yesterday- but no. SWMBO's dad and stepmom, both of whom she's had a very up and down relationship with over the years, had come down to watch the show (the first one they'd come to see, including when she had been a professional dancer herself...). Their flight home wasn't until today, so we of course met up with them for brunch and spent the rest of the day until rather late taking them around and doing things and keeping them entertained.

All told, it went very well- but it was in its own way almost as exhausting as the show stuff. I badly needed some time to myself to decompress and recharge, but instead was chauffeuring everyone around and having to be sociable, further draining my already tapped-out social batteries. It's kind of sad that I was almost looking forward to coming in to work today since I know that I'll spend pretty much the entire day off in my somewhat isolated cubicle working on things by myself and will have to deal very little with other people (and those who I will have to deal with are primarily introverts like me who tend to avoid unnecessary small-talk).

I'm looking forward to the fact it's supposed to be very unseasonably warm for the next week as it means I can spend some quality time out in the garage.

So, as I think I've mentioned in the past I'm something of a Tea Snob™, and as a result make my tea from loose-leaf tea instead of bags. I also try and support local businesses as much as I can, which means trying to shop at the local tea shop as much as I can. But it often seems like they're actively TRYING to encourage me to get my tea from either the large, national chain store in the mall or (as is far easier) from Amazon.

Case in point: I had an appointment across town over lunch, and since I was going to be going by the tea shop decided that I would stop and refill the main tea I drink since I'm a week or so from running out. Find a spot, park, and walk over to the shop- and they're closed. No sign on the door that say the hours (it's turned around, presumably because they haven't updated the physical sign), so I pull up Facebook and find that they're now closed on Monday. They were ALREADY only open until 5pm on weekdays and a few hours on Saturdays- how the berk are people with normal 9-5 jobs (they don't open until 10) supposed to get there and buy anything?

So, thanks Amazon Prime! I'll have a new package of my favorite tea here Wednesday!

JamesMcD wrote: Why does Racing Beat sell seat upholstery sets for FC convertibles, but not for coupes?

Coupes sold out a long time ago and the only remaining stock is for verts?

I spent all day working on completing tasks to get the motorhome ready to take down to Daytona next week. I got a ton of things done and made lots of progress. I didn't actually manage to finish anything so I can't check anything off my to-do list, so it seems like the day was a waste.

Keep trying to convince myself that a diesel Colorado should be my next truck.

Fits like it was made for me. Nice interior, everything w/ in reach. Cloth/ leatherette seats are surprisingly OK and there's a luxury package w/ heated leather seats for the win. LT or Z71 would work fine but.... the box is too damn small. E36 M3, the full size 6.5' box is a compromise at times, it's a truck... C'mon man.

I got the stomach virus my wife and daughter had. PukenE36 M3s and cramps and fever and...