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

Dead_Sled said:

Don't tell me "it's up to you if you want to come" if you're going to tear up when I say I'm going to stay home.

It's 50f and sunny out, and I spent 3.5 hours driving one way to sit on a couch and watch football games (which I couldn't care less about).  A 6 hour visit ends up costing me almost 2 days of my vacation.

I'm about to go get the emergency flask from the car.

I feel this one.  "You HAVE to come!", then you get there and you're ignored the entire time and you wonder why you even made an attempt.  It's even worse when they don't understand that you work "non-traditional" hours and don't get a ton of PTO to take around all the paid holidays they're used to.

Instead of rain, I think some kind of Potion of Forgetfulness is falling from the sky, and everybody that failed their saving throw forgot how to drive.

RevRico said:

Got in the truck today to send off my mystery gift, turned the key and absolutely nothing but the theft light. berkeley, fine. Get the charger, pot it on, and it pegs on full charge. But it also locked the truck, with my keys and phone inside.

AAA comes, pops me open. I check and replace my negative terminal which looked loose. Truck locks again. Ok I have my keys this time. Nope, ignition key doesn't work in either door. 

Hop on Amazon, see "free one day shipping" on a lockout set, decide to go to pep boys first for another terminal extension, and decide to get my fob battery changed because it wasn't doing anything with the battery hooked up either. While I'm waiting I get back on Amazon to order a lockout kit, and now the soonest delivery available on the dozen different ones I tried in my cart is Saturday. 

Shop my grm mystery gift is going to be late getting out, as it's locked in my truck. 

 

And the new key fob battery doesn't do anything

 

Double exit. And neither did all new battery terminals with solid connections.

How do I troubleshoot something I can't open?

Check the engine to chassis ground.

Brett_Murphy said:

Instead of rain, I think some kind of Potion of Forgetfulness is falling from the sky, and everybody that failed their saving throw forgot how to drive.

Double the points for the D&D reference. Everybody threw a 1 on a critical save, huh?

In reply to FuzzWuzzy :

Um, just because you won't be there on Christmas/Christmas Eve doesn't mean they can't make an effort to get together AFTER and exchange presents/spend time together.

What a bunch of shiny happy people.  You aren't one, so take care of YOUR family first and let them own their inability to see past their wants.

Hooked up the trailer to go get two cars from the insurance auction.  Checked the pressures in the trailer tires and one was really low and I've was a little low.  Put some air in the really low one and decided "what the hay, let's top off the sightly low one.  I'm talking about 4 lbs low if that.  When I pulled the chuck off the stem, the innards shot across the parking lot.  Total loss of the valve stem.  So now, instead of being up here to load the first car at noon, it's 1530 and I'm waiting on the loader...  Guess the Honda will need to wait until tomorrow am.

I have absolutely no power whatever.

I wish I wasn't so broke all the time, I turn around twice and the credit cards have another $1000 on them, but I don't want my wife to go back to work full time since it would physically and mentally wreck her, plus the daycare costs would almost eat up the gains from her fulltime employment.

I won't get into the politics of the current state of affairs, even though I'm 6 tequila shots in for the night, but something has to change for the better and soon.  Or, I need to sign off of this life and hope the survivor benefits sets the wife and kids up ok for the short term while things settle out.

At this point, nothing gives me much pleasure in life, except spending time with the kids.  I don't know what else to do, except love them as best as I can and put as much money as possible towards our debts.  I'm 42 and I have really young kids, so I should take better care of myself, but I just can't be bothered.  Maybe we'll get lucky and one of the grandparents will leave us something when they eventually and unfortunately pass.  In the meantime, I feel guilty at how little time they spend with my parents compared to hers, let alone how bad my own health is and continues to be.

At least the lithophane lamp 3D print I'm working on for the wife's present is going pretty well so far.  I hope I can finish it before we leave Christmas morning for Arizona....

In reply to Stefan :

I even closed out my reply with, "If you'd like, we can get together another time when she isn't sick." No response.

berkeley 'em.


Switching gears, I wish I didn't understand the, "Do what you want/You don't have to come" trap. I fell for it constantly when I was younger and never heard the end of it. I still deal with the fallout of that.

Stefan said:

At this point, nothing gives me much pleasure in life, except spending time with the kids.  I don't know what else to do, except love them as best as I can and put as much money as possible towards our debts.  I'm 42 and I have really young kids, so I should take better care of myself, but I just can't be bothered.  Maybe we'll get lucky and one of the grandparents will leave us something when they eventually and unfortunately pass.  In the meantime, I feel guilty at how little time they spend with my parents compared to hers, let alone how bad my own health is and continues to be.

That's all you really can do, dude. I've picked up flipping junkyard parts to fund anything I wanna do to keep debt and impulse buys to a minimum.

Depending on just how young your kids are, you might not even be that old depending on your area. My wife and I assumed we were an average age of a kid entering kindergarten (29 and 30), but when we started meeting the parents, we quickly realized we were the youngest ones there. The majority of them are mid 30s to early 40s.

Have we ranted about knock-off parts in in the last twenty minutes? No?

Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places when looking for quality parts for my little S2000 non-build, but I'm close to giving up on searching for used parts. Outside some very specialised parts (like Spoon brake calipers) it seems to be almost impossible to find the high quality aftermarket parts if you're looking for used. The amount of knock off parts compared to the real thing is just staggering, and that's before we're getting to stuff like "It's genuine, honest, the bodyshop lost the manufacturer's tag". I guess you're also selling bridges?

At this rate I'll have to delay a bunch of the plans and save up for buying new instead of used and have them overnighted from Japan, at least for stuff that's not close enough for me to inspect in person. Which is most of it.

Doesn't seem to be that much of an issue with a/c 911 parts yet but I'm getting paranoid about those, too.

Sick for Christmas . . . again.  Running on about 5 hours of sleep in the last 3 days, throat hurts, body aches, coughing up crapola  and with a nice head to toe rash for good measure.  Periodic fever spikes to remind me when the drugs are wearing off. 

It hurts where the sleeves of my shirt are touching my arm. 

In reply to Stefan :

Dude, we struggled in younger years.

It took me 35 years of working and saving and barely getting by to become an overnight success.  
 

Keep at it a small amount at a time. 

Last summer I had fun running at the private race track's weeknight time attack series. Partially because of the simple rules. They just broke everyone down by tire treadwear (sub-200, 200-300, 300+) and let you rip. It was simple, it was fun, and I wasn't hideously outgunned like I am at autocross. Now this year, you get classed by weight divided by horsepower divided by a number assigned by tires, then rounded down. My 2500lbs, 245whp and Rival S tires gives me a 1.72, which puts me in Class 1. The fastest damn class. Against the track record holder in an E92 M3 with 305-square slicks, gutted, caged, huge wing and splitter. Awesome. Another racing series where I immediately go to the bottom of the heap. And they want helmets with Snell SA2015 or newer (mine is a 2010 which is still SCCA legal). And are talking about doing broomstick tests, which I fail. So even after I buy a race seat that sits me low enough and buy a new helmet just to race with them, I still get my ass kicked.

NickD said:

Last summer I had fun running at the private race track's weeknight time attack series. Partially because of the simple rules. They just broke everyone down by tire treadwear (sub-200, 200-300, 300+) and let you rip. It was simple, it was fun, and I wasn't hideously outgunned like I am at autocross. Now this year, you get classed by weight divided by horsepower divided by a number assigned by tires, then rounded down. My 2500lbs, 245whp and Rival S tires gives me a 1.72, which puts me in Class 1. The fastest damn class. Against the track record holder in an E92 M3 with 305-square slicks, gutted, caged, huge wing and splitter. Awesome. Another racing series where I immediately go to the bottom of the heap. And they want helmets with Snell SA2015 or newer (mine is a 2010 which is still SCCA legal). And are talking about doing broomstick tests, which I fail. So even after I buy a race seat that sits me low enough and buy a new helmet just to race with them, I still get my ass kicked.

Sounds like they need to split the classes into "aero" and not. Or just run more slippery tyres to drop you down a class

mad_machine said:

NickD said:

Last summer I had fun running at the private race track's weeknight time attack series. Partially because of the simple rules. They just broke everyone down by tire treadwear (sub-200, 200-300, 300+) and let you rip. It was simple, it was fun, and I wasn't hideously outgunned like I am at autocross. Now this year, you get classed by weight divided by horsepower divided by a number assigned by tires, then rounded down. My 2500lbs, 245whp and Rival S tires gives me a 1.72, which puts me in Class 1. The fastest damn class. Against the track record holder in an E92 M3 with 305-square slicks, gutted, caged, huge wing and splitter. Awesome. Another racing series where I immediately go to the bottom of the heap. And they want helmets with Snell SA2015 or newer (mine is a 2010 which is still SCCA legal). And are talking about doing broomstick tests, which I fail. So even after I buy a race seat that sits me low enough and buy a new helmet just to race with them, I still get my ass kicked.

Sounds like they need to split the classes into "aero" and not. Or just run more slippery tyres to drop you down a class

To me, its just a case of people fiddling with what isn't broken. Last year, the sub-200 headwear class was the E92 with 2 drivers and a 911 GT3 RS on slicks with 2 drivers, and they ran in the 1:08-1:12 range. The 200tw class had a ton (by which I mean 6 or 7) of cars all in the 1:15-1:20 spread. I ran 1:17 near the end and could hold my own. Now, under the new rules, I have to run in C1 with the 1:08 capable car. And I stepped up to a slightly wider tire and will have better coilovers but that's not going to take 9 seconds off my time. Hell, last place in the class was in the 1:12s, and I'm not even going to be that fast

The new set of really sharp knives is great until you slice your finger open cutting sausage.

In reply to EvanB :

A knife isn’t really yours until it makes you bleed...

We had one single rule for today child, and as usual, you don't berkeleying listen. So berkeleying sick of this never listening bullE36 M3. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to" doesn't work when you knowingly and actively refuse to listen. To anyone. About anything. Ever.

I live about  1/4 of a mile from the water and marshes that separate the Barrier islands from the mainland here in NJ. It's both Christmas Day and Duck hunting season.. I can plainly hear dozens of shotguns going off every few minutes as the hunters are out there trying to bag a few birds. Really? On Christmas day? Great way to ruin the spirit of the thing.

In reply to mad_machine :

Maybe that is their Christmas tradition and something that strengthens their bond as a family.  I go drag racing on New Year's Day, who's to judge?

Maybe I'm too much of a libbie lib, but if y'aint hurtin' nobody, and if it's makin' your life more bearable, then rock on.

--

Today's rant:  I have a deep desire to build a 4.125" bore Ford 8.2 block motor with Kaase Cleveland heads, and this is something I could actually do financially now... and I am mature enough to realize I have no use for something like that and no vehicle I could put something like that in,

So, apparently, last night after I went to bed my wife ate ice cream.  She knows ice cream makes her sick and gives her migraines.  She wakes up this morning, you guessed it, sick and with a migraine.  So she's back in bed.  In less than 2 hours we need to be on the road for a 400 mile drive...  fantastic.

First the good news: The base flu symptoms are getting better.  Now the bad part, it appears to have generally "moved south".  My gut is creaking like an old wood hull sailing ship.  The lifeguards have put up the "shart warning" flag.  

Almost everyone uses a computer today. It's past the point where ERROR -800F35678 is acceptable. Adding the friendly message on top of it makes it worse.

Next time I'm sick, I should try telling my boss, "I couldn't work today because of an error. Maybe try later? Sorry it didn't work out. -0xFEDCBA98"

If you're going to give up drinking, that's great but you need to freaking tell people about that!  Just had to do a whole three-person gift switcheroo to accommodate someone who I found out an hour ago decided to go dry.