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

eastsideTim said:

In reply to stanger_missle :

55 mile a day commute in FL?  I’d go looking for an estate sale Buick or a Toyota Avalon.  Might as well be comfortable.

There is a local dude that sells retired CVPIs for around $2k. The temptation is strong

I’m actually delivery driver too, but for a soda company. I take great pride in my work, which has lead me to being the go to   guy at work that can get any route done. 

That being said I see guys all time cutting corners doing half ass work and it pisses me off.

In reply to Knurled. :

Having slow vehicles is part of the issue. Its frustrating to try and squirt by the left lane zombies with only 150hp in the Kia and 170hp in the Transit Connect. The van weighs about 1000lbs more than the Kia and is quite a bit slower. The awful 6F35 does it no favors either.

In reply to Antihero :

The road noise in the Kia is pretty bad, so I have to turn the radio up pretty far to overcome the noise. Couple that with the combination of a numb clutch and terrible throttle mapping, I have to turn the radio down to hear the engine because I still stall the damn thing after driving it for 10 months.

The van is all road noise all the time because well, its an uninsulated cargo van. I should of laid down some soundproofing when I had the interior out but I got lazy. A good stereo system is part of the plan but I have to address the lack of insulation issue first. I want to completely cover the floor and the sides and ceiling in the rear with 80mil foil backed underlayment and then cover that with 170mil foam insulation with judicial application of spray foam in the small cavities. I understand it will never be Rolls Royce quiet but anything is better than it is now.

Now to just find the motivation to do all of that in my stupid hot garage here in Florida .

Also, I'm too dumb to figure out how to multi-quote so sorry about all of the individual replies.

For the second time while on vacation, my Nook has decided to not let me read books. And because the internet connection systems sucks, I can’t connect to the very free internet here at my hotel. 

Add that to the fact I can read free library books, I’m done with this machine. 

I’ll get a kindle when we get home. 

In reply to alfadriver :

You've reaffirmed my appreciation of traditional books. 

In reply to alfadriver :

The kindel is the ticket. It syncs with my phone so even it the table pukes, I can pick up where I left off on my phone. Zero stupidity. There is an enormous amount of bloatware on the Fire tablets Amazon sells. I would recommend buying a tablet of your choice and downloading the app. 

Edit: Never mind it looks like this is a deal that is no longer available. Lenovo had one for about $60 that works perfectly. 

Appleseed said:

In reply to alfadriver :

You've reaffirmed my appreciation of traditional books. 

This is actually where the kindle (and the nook should) shines. I’ll pump through 4-5 books on vacation, I don’t always have room for them. Especially if I’m flying. 

Appleseed said:

In reply to alfadriver :

You've reaffirmed my appreciation of traditional books. 

Books written thousands of years ago still work just fine.

In reply to Knurled. :

Except when they don't. I used to have 1000s of books. Bookcases and boxes full of them. I buy 2-4 a week and I started when I was 16. Not anymore. Anything that wasn't a first addition, or of sentimental value was donated to the library or given to my kids. There are fewer than 100 left. Starting about 5 years ago, 99% of my reading is done on a tablet or my phone. There are 175 books on my phone at the moment so I'm still buying about 3 books a week. The advantage is I carry them everywhere with me. If you see me staring at my phone, I'm not going to be on facebook or even on here, I'll be reading. It is wonderful. 

stanger_missle said:

Knurled. said:

In reply to stanger_missle :

The best thing to do is to do nothing.  Let the temptation pass.  Because as soon as you commit to something, something more awesome will come up.

 

Also?  165k on a '15?  Damn.  Whoever had that drove the hell out of it.  Knurled-approved!

What?! You're not being a very good enabler! I have something else waiting until Monday that is an equally bad idea

No, I meant that I approve of driving the snot out of a fun car instead of rubbing it with a diaper and never taking it for fear of dreaded Depreciation.

Knurled. said:

Appleseed said:

In reply to alfadriver :

You've reaffirmed my appreciation of traditional books. 

Books written thousands of years ago still work just fine.

 

My books don't take batteries.

Toyman01 said:

In reply to Knurled. :

Except when they don't. I used to have 1000s of books. Bookcases and boxes full of them. I buy 2-4 a week and I started when I was 16. Not anymore. Anything that wasn't a first addition, or of sentimental value was donated to the library or given to my kids. There are fewer than 100 left. Starting about 5 years ago, 99% of my reading is done on a tablet or my phone. There are 175 books on my phone at the moment so I'm still buying about 3 books a week. The advantage is I carry them everywhere with me. If you see me staring at my phone, I'm not going to be on facebook or even on here, I'll be reading. It is wonderful. 

I'm sort of heading down this path. I have.....a lot of books. I've never tried to count them but I have attics and storage places filled with them.

My Amazon fire has about 30 books on it right now and a few won't ever be printed....and they are great.

I like the Aldiko app for Android. Good book and pdf viewer, no ads. I have about 500 books on my phone, duplicated on my tablet. I don't know if there's a way to link between devices, but I'm usually reading different books on different devices anyway.

Kindle paper white I think it's called is great as a standalone though. No tablet bloatware, week plus out of a battery, works with my local library app, just costs more than a fire tablet.

As far as work is concerned, I had a 4-day weekend (normal weekend plus our 10/80 split Friday off and took vacation time Thursday). In reality I had almost no time to do anything I wanted to do over that time.

Pretty much the whole day Thursday and Friday was spent out at the cabin.

Saturday I had to spend about half the day at an event for my wife's non-profit that she couldn't attend due to having to teach and run rehearsals; the evening was mostly spent fighting with trying to get the DVDs for her July show to compile properly... there is Jack Shirt for higher-end, as in 'you can build your own custom menus and don't have to use our cheesy generic menus that look like a 5-year-old designed them', DVD authoring software for the Mac. I miss using Scenarist.

Sunday I had to spend at a charity walk (again, for the Dancer's non-profit), then more fighting with the DVD (this time more successfully), and THEN we found out that the POS contractor is going to be out of town until late this week and thus wouldn't be able to have the upstairs vanity he was supposed to be building for the cabin finished before the plumber hopes to get his final inspection done on Thursday- so I had to quickly come up with a workable solution and then drive the hour out to the cabin, spend 2 hours building and installing the vanity (essentially a shelf build out of a leftover live-edge stair tread), and then driving and hour back.

To top things off, she's been sick (allergies, and possibly a sinus infection) all weekend AND the dog's surgical incision (that the vet has decided just has to heal as an 'open wound' because they can't get it to stay closed with sutures/staples) has been kind of messy the last few days so we're hoping there isn't something wrong with it when I take him in later today for his semi-weekly checkup and cold laser treatment. 

Oh, and if the plumber decides he can't handle cutting the holes for the sink and faucet in the upstairs vanity, I'll have to drive back out there tonight and take care of that. 

Only potential bright spot in all of this is that if things go remotely well this week, the cabin will have all utilities in and inspections done so we can finally actually stay there overnight...

Both the Red Team AND the Blue Team suck.  People who paint themselves all red or all blue and scream that their color is the best color ALSO suck.

That thinking is what caused this mess.

I'm doing a water pump on a Cadillac DTS. 'Nuff said.

In reply to NickD :

I got 15 hours of work last week.  Sounds like you'll get that in one day.

In reply to Knurled. :

It may take 15 hours, but that labpr rate for DTS Northstar water pump is only 4.5 hours. And I'm now pretty certain this isn't going to fix the overheating issue.

In reply to NickD :

It's Audi Duty time over here.

Lost oil pressure on the highway.  Has oil pressure now.

Cut the filter open, no debris.  No carbon chunks, either.  My next step is pulling the oil pan.  I actually am hoping to find chunks of chain guide littering the pan...

In reply to Knurled. :

Yuck.

The DTS overheats at idle. Coolant fans work, system is full, system builds pressure, coolant seems clean and the block and crossover aren't gunned up. Tried a thermostat, no dice. Thought maybe the water pump impeller was broke but got it out and its fine. Maybe the radiator is plugged up. I know its not head gaskets, because Northstars with a BHG smoke like a freight train

In reply to NickD :

If that was in my shop, I'd be bitching about the Matco thermal imager that I wanted to buy in August, that was actually in the catalog by accident, that I preordered and still isn't in yet.

Should make any heat related issues awesome to diagnose.

NickD said:

In reply to Knurled. :

Yuck.

The DTS overheats at idle. Coolant fans work, system is full, system builds pressure, coolant seems clean and the block and crossover aren't gunned up. Tried a thermostat, no dice. Thought maybe the water pump impeller was broke but got it out and its fine. Maybe the radiator is plugged up. I know its not head gaskets, because Northstars with a BHG smoke like a freight train

I had a 4.7 Dakota that drove me nuts for quite some time.  Not so much overheat at idle, although it would.  20 or 30 minutes on the highway, and it starts creeping up.  Rad never got hot.  Pulled and flushed rad, installed a new thermostat, inspected the impeller on the water pump, looked for collapsing hoses, blah, blah, blah.

Turns out, if the heater core is plugged enough that the coolant coming back cools completely, the thermostat won't open.  The Germans involved in drawing the 4.7 thought it might be ever so keen to ramp temp up a bit in the winter, so the thermostat is heated by coolant returning from the heater core.  Plug the heater core, no coolant circulation.  No coolant circulation through the heater, no coolant through the rad.

Am I the only one who thinks school pictures are highly overrated and way overpriced??