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

In reply to 1kris06 :

Huh, I'm 41 and I was able to update my SYNC to V3.x and use CarPlay with my iPhone 7+

Oh wait, that's because I'm not afraid of technology and I READ the instructions and if it doesn't work (because its still human built and there's a chance stuff goes "ping" from time to time) I shrug my shoulders and focus on the act of driving and worry about it later.

When I picked up the car, the dealership actually had one of the sales people go over the system with me, but honestly I knew more than he did from researching prior to picking up the car.

That said, car company's are still struggling with technology integration and some do better than others even within car lines.

Other People have changed every plan ive made this week.

Every. Single. Plan.

Im about pissed enough to choke someone. 

In reply to Dusterbd13 :

Wife's cousin/best friend was supposed to visit us this morning.  She's notoriously late and has little regard for other people's time.  This is a known issue with her and now that we have children, its even more irritating as kids have schedules and if you deviate too much things get ugly.

So, since the wife is a people pleaser, the 2-year old is now late for her nap and generally being a PITA over every little thing and her cousin still hasn't shown up.  Wife wanted to go visit a new Asian store before it got too hot.  Nope, its 1pm and the heat is coming on strong, wife is 9 months pregnant (c-section scheduled for the 20th).  We just put the kid down for a nap before we all killed each other.  I suspect the missing cousin will arrive shortly and be completely blase about her timing, etc.  She'll hang out for too long until she realizes she's late for something else and quickly jet off to the next screwed up appointment.  Wife will be disappointed that she didn't get to run the errands she wanted to do and be cranky all evening.

Its a good thing her Husband is a pilot in the Navy so she doesn't have to work as I don't think she'd last long nearly anywhere that might hire her.

Normally I'd give her a rash of E36 M3 about it, because of what it does to my wife and therefore me and the kiddo, but she just lost her Dad a couple of months ago and its not like it matters as she hasn't changed her habits for anyone else.

My ex has been in rare form the past couple of weeks.  I swear to the FSM the only thing keeping her alive are my aversion to prison.

After yanking our son around about what school she’s gonna put him in (my opinion absolutely doesn’t matter, she ignores everything I say), now she’s bringing up some teenaged experimentation he’s done with a teenaged girl as a way to keep a tighter leash on him and keep him away from me more.  No intercourse occurred and their little experiment had already ended.   But the fact it happened on my “watch” has her up in arms.  Not sure if she remembers being 16 but teenagers WILL fool around, it’s a fact of life.  So long as i’m Not called grandpa i’m Not gonna get worked up over it.

Nothing like open-keyboard surgery on the timing and scoring laptop at 2:00a on the day before the autocross...

Had a lady in a little Cruise start lane drifting badly through curves. Like she was driving a semi. I should have known better than to get anywhere near her, but noticing the lane drifting is anecdotal.  She tried to put her fender into my door. A quick toot of the horn sent her shooting out wide (almost into oncoming traffic.) 

Boy, was she angry. She then starts driving hyper aggressive, tailgating the poor sap in front of her, and cutting back and forth  from lane to lane. Maybe she was trying to "get" me? She whips out a cell phone like she's now recording this bad horn honking man in the scary white pickup.

Or maybe she was updating FaceBalls. 

With any luck, her day is completely ruined.

I'm looking for a potential daily driver replacement and I've found something wrong with every car I've looked at.

The latest was a 2017 Golf R that had wheels that were too wide with stretched tires on it. The rocker treatments peeling off on both sides with what felt like a small buckle in the sheet metal. I wanted the dealer to remove the plastic covers so I could look at it and they were absolutely not on board. Ok, fine, I'll move on since I'm not 100% comfortable.

Looks like it may be time to just bite the bullet and go completely new.

 

Tomorrow is our third autocross of the season.  Normally by this time in the year it would be our 5th event.  That's just 3 autocrosses in about 24 weeks, or one every 8 weeks.

For EVERY DAMN EVENT this year, I have been exceptionally busy at work and/or home in the week or so prior.  And also, for EVERY DAMN EVENT, the weather has been decent the week before, and then gone to E36 M3 Friday night before the Saturday autocross.

It's pissing me off.

Oh, and DW has randomly broken out in itchy hives 3 or 4 times in the last week.  No apparent pattern of exposure; no real known changes to environment or diet.  Just a random reaction that comes on over a couple hours, stays about 8 hours, and fades away slowly.

This is going to be about as easy to diagnose as an intermittent electrical problem.

I should just learn to go to my trusted auto parts place, but they aren't on the way home since my office moved.  I needed some 0.625 tire valve stems.  Stopped a chain store that only had .453 stems on the shelf. Ask the parts counter kid and he starts by telling me I have to take the tire off the rim to change valve stems. Not 100% true but I said I understood that. He then went on to tell me I need a machine to do that. I said I understood that too. He couldn't find any .625 valve stems in stock. 

Seriously?  I kept all the plates spinning this week, got through it all, hit all the apexes, AND IT’S BERKING RAINING ON AUTOCROSS DAY?!

Duke said:

mad_machine said:

Now.. for my rant. Why is it if I see a car that is acting like a speedbump on the highway, it is inevitably a car with New York plates, white knuckle riding in the centre lane, and clinging tenaciously to the speed limit like the last lifeline in "who wants to be a millionaire."

In Delaware and Maryland, it's people from North Carolina doing that, and they're in the LEFT lane.  Count yourself lucky.

At least if they are in the left lane you can flow past them.

In the past year, I have noticed a disturbing trend in Ohio for people to drive bumper to bumper in the center lane while the right lane is completely empty.  I saw someone once almost cause an accident while doing an apparent emergency lane change to get into the center lane, out of the otherwise empty right lane.  It was like the driver said "Oh crap, I'm not in the center lane!  PANIC MODE: ENGAGE!!!"

I don't do Facebook, I am not a subscriber to Twit Drivers Monthly, so I am not privy to the reasons why.  All I can do is fume when I need to change lanes and find that I can't, and fantasize about becoming Emperor of the World so that I can do draconian things like banning cruise control so people have to actually drive their cars instead of zoning out.  (Also:  Provate ownership of anything classified as a truck, or anything diesel powered, is banned.  Being a gracious overlord, I will allow a one week grace period where you can sell the device to the nearest legitimate business or scrapyard)

In reply to Duke :

Come to Kentucky Sunday.  We’re autocrossing and the weather will be beautiful!!

Obligatory rant: stuffed the motor in the NC last night.  It was FAR more challenging than it should have been.  Pretty clearly it’s a “insert motor from underneath design”.  Grumble.

Left Gulf Shores yesterday morning at 1004 EDT and 740 miles later arrived home at 2357 EDT last night.  Two fuel stops for a total of 45 minutes not on the highway.  Overall average speed of right around 53mph, which isn't bad for a 25 year old motorhome.  But that's not the rant.  The rant is that now I've got to go unload and clean the thing after having lived in it for the last week.

Edited for follow-up rant:  While looking around the underside for a loose ground, I discovered that one of the steer tires is cording on the inside and both front tires are worn on the inside.  It'll probably be about $200 to replace that tire with mounting and balancing and all, but the real question is what caused the wear?  If it was that the airbags were completely shredded, then I've already fixed that.  If it's something else, I really don't want to kill another tire.

Took SWMBO to the grosery store for breakfast food for tomorrow morning.  Person with annoyingly bright LED headlights on a fat car / CUTESUV thing pulls directly in front of me, exits said vehicle,  and...leaves those E36 M3ty bright lights on to burn holes in my retinas. 

It was bad enough that I fired the FR-S up, and turned it around. 

If I was to forgo my belief in respecting others property, I might have kicked in those bloody lights on general principles.

In reply to Appleseed :

Probably stayed on as part of a convenience package where they turn off after a certain amount of time.

Or they just left them on because they are mouth-breathing primates with no awareness outside of their own small area.

Stefan said:

In reply to Appleseed :

Probably stayed on as part of a convenience package where they turn off after a certain amount of time.

Or they just left them on because they are mouth-breathing primates with no awareness outside of their own small area.

Cute-ute.  Probably the second one.

(Actually, probably the first one, because the automakers know that cute-ute owners have the self-awareness of a lump of putty)

They were on for the better part of 10 minutes. I kept telling myself, "They'll turn off. When are they going to turn off? Why aren't they turning off?...Man, I want to yell at the owner."  In fact I don't know how long they were on for, as once SWMBO came out, we booked out of there.

For all I know, they are still on.

In reply to Appleseed :

Vehicle running with the A/C on?  Owner inside signing some sort of anti pollution/global warming petition?

They were moving the bleachers into the Event Center at work today. This happens every week or so depending on the concert. It's a regular occurrence except for what happened during it. At the end of the stage where the roll up door is, we have four 400 amp service panels with Cam-lock connectors. One is always left on and connected as it feeds our distribution boxes up in the grid. They caught one of the cables and ripped through the rubber coating and even tore through some of the copper.

Thankfully they got the Neutral or somebody could have gotten hurt or died.

I understand that accidents happen. This was not done on purpose or done with malice but none of the "bleacher creatures" bothered to even tell anybody. I am upset that they would have left bare copper to a 400 amp service exposed, not that they hit it.

In reply to mad_machine :

Somebody needs an ass chewing till their ears bleed.

mad_machine said:

They were moving the bleachers into the Event Center at work today. This happens every week or so depending on the concert. It's a regular occurrence except for what happened during it. At the end of the stage where the roll up door is, we have four 400 amp service panels with Cam-lock connectors. One is always left on and connected as it feeds our distribution boxes up in the grid. They caught one of the cables and ripped through the rubber coating and even tore through some of the copper.

 

Thankfully they got the Neutral or somebody could have gotten hurt or died.

 

I understand that accidents happen. This was not done on purpose or done with malice but none of the "bleacher creatures" bothered to even tell anybody. I am upset that they would have left bare copper to a 400 amp service exposed, not that they hit it.

 

Holy $hit!

Sine_Qua_Non said:

mad_machine said:

They were moving the bleachers into the Event Center at work today. This happens every week or so depending on the concert. It's a regular occurrence except for what happened during it. At the end of the stage where the roll up door is, we have four 400 amp service panels with Cam-lock connectors. One is always left on and connected as it feeds our distribution boxes up in the grid. They caught one of the cables and ripped through the rubber coating and even tore through some of the copper.

 

Thankfully they got the Neutral or somebody could have gotten hurt or died.

 

I understand that accidents happen. This was not done on purpose or done with malice but none of the "bleacher creatures" bothered to even tell anybody. I am upset that they would have left bare copper to a 400 amp service exposed, not that they hit it.

 

Holy $hit!

'Next time'.  said Darwin.  'Next time'.

Appleseed said:

In reply to mad_machine :

Somebody needs an ass chewing till their ears bleed.

There are going to be talks.. I already wrote my boss (he was off today) and the Carp's lead. I take safety very seriously, especially around power.

I ordered new dining room chairs to replace the 80+ year old ones we inherited.  They are a near perfect match for the finish on our table, sturdy, and easy to assemble. But they’re just a bit taller than the old ones so my feet don’t really reach the floor. Damned short legs.