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

RevRico said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Surely in the edit room they are all separate tracks though. Just skip the combining step.

That could work, I'm sure a lot of directors would cry murder at the loss of control over the viewer experience though.

I already knew this, but holy crap I'm out of shape...

30 minutes on the tread mill followed by 15 on the elliptical has just about killed me.

The first part of 2020 might just be a little pain filled. I knew I hated making resolutions. 

Toyman01 said:

I already knew this, but holy crap I'm out of shape...

30 minutes on the tread mill followed by 15 on the elliptical has just about killed me.

The first part of 2020 might just be a little pain filled. I knew I hated making resolutions. 

Getting in shape is simple. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other. What it isn't is easy. 
 

stick with it; the benefits in the future far outweigh the pain now...

I have had this acsii shrug guy as my forum name for long enough now that I mistakenly think people are quoting me when they stick it at the end of a sentence.  Maybe I should change it.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Nah, keep it. 

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Should you keep it?? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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PLUMBING. Once again, the very bane of my existence crops up with a "minor problem" The toilet in my wife's bathroom (full disclosure here... we have a "main bathroom" and a half bath off our bedroom. That is "her" bathroom. Safest for all concerned that way :)

Anyway, one of the boys was cleaning her toilet last night and the flush handle fell off. no big deal for the moment, they pushed it back on, and asked me to look at it today. 

This morning, I'm off work and she reminds me to look at it. When I get in the room, the toilet lid is off and the flush handle is in two pieces. 

No big deal, I think - I'm 3 minutes from the hardware store. I'll pick up a good, quality flush handle that matches the faucet and have it together before she gets home. 

HA! 

The old handle does come apart and I'm able to retrieve the chain to hook up th o the new one. So far, so good. This task alone is complicated by the fact that there;'s an over-the-toilet cabinet that was basically built around the toilet and you can barely get your forearm between the bottom shelf and the tank (with the lid off)

So now all I have to do is undo the nut holding the remnants of the 19-year old flush handle assembly, and it should be a piece of cake to install the new one. 

HA HA...!

Nope, the nut won't budge. It's metal, (but as I found out later, cheap cheap pot metal threaded in the middle and bent into a hexagon around the outside). I'm sure by manufacturing it this way they saved some fraction of a penny. It won't turn. And I can't be sure whether it's left-hand or right-hand threads. Bigger pliers, vise grips, when it turns, it starts to turn the piece that goes through the tank and is on the outside. On the plus side, this quality flush handle was undersized enough that it spun without stressing/cracking the porcelan,

I tried using a chisel on the nut (with the tight space and visibility, I couldn't be certain it wasn't plastic. Worth a shot. But NO. Hey - I didn't break the tank and send a coiuple of gallons of water across the floor into our bedroom!

Finally got out the Dremel and a diamond cutoff wheel. I was thinking I could take some chunks off the front side pot metal and push it through. After t cuts in the front, all of the metal spun pretty freely in the tank's flusher hole. and the metal was getting pretty hot.  I suppose that was one way to apply heat to the loint! After reattaching the vise grips to the nut inside, I was able to spin the outside piece and tighten.... oops, threads are going the other way! and eventually unscrew the thing. 

WIN! 

After one minor hiccup with a screw that's NOT meant to be removed, the new handle is installed without further incident and works perfectly! There's an hour and a half of mi life gone, and all I have is this minor sense of accomplishment. 

Sigh. 

Over the last 2 weeks of being away from work I've thought of and forgotten dozens of minor rants. Thankfully for the most part the holidays went smoothly so none of them were major enough to remember- other than the most recent simply because of proximity.

For the first time, we were able to spend New Year's out at our cabin. We should have been able to last year, but as has been well documented, that didn't happen. The minor rant is that The Dancer mistakenly thought I had this whole week off as well when in reality I only had New Year's Day off and had used vacation for the 30th & 31st. As such she'd planned to stay out at the cabin until this morning- which was an idea I agreed with, but since I had to be back at work today it meant getting up far earlier than usual for a night at the cabin (but about normal time for me for a work day...) and driving the hour home and then turning around and hopping in to the Infiniti and driving the 15 minutes in to work. Getting back to real life after a vacation always sucks...

Also, I forgot to put my multifocal glasses I normally use at work back in my work bag, so have had to use my old reading glasses here instead.

Greg Smith said:
This task alone is complicated by the fact that there;'s an over-the-toilet cabinet that was basically built around the toilet and you can barely get your forearm between the bottom shelf and the tank (with the lid off)

No sir, I don't like it. I never understand people that build things around toilets making access worse. You KNOW it'll need worked on, that access is critical to doing so, but you do it anyway. This isn't a ship or airplane where every square inch counts.

And that is my minor rant o' the day.

Today.  Drizzling, misty rain.  I'm driving on an Interstate in a very busy area in Houston.  Merging lady tries to jump two lanes at once and I need to hit the brakes to avoid being hit.  Then she is driving quite a bit slower than traffic.  So I  change lanes to the left, speed up, and start to pass her. 

NOOOO, she starts changing lanes again right into my path.  I have headlights and fog lights on, Nissan Frontier pickup truck.  No cloak of invisibility either.  But she is coming right at me.  I hit the brakes again and barely missed being struck on the right front fender.  She suddenly realizes she almost hit someone since I was leaning on the horn for a full 5 seconds while this was happening.  She goes back into her original lane.   I take advantage and floor it to get far away from the crazy person.   As I pass I see her tapping out a text message.  Did I mention that conditions were low visibility in a misty rain with lots of spray from traffic in the air?     This is now illegal in Texas as of 1/1/2020 by the way.  Laws like that are what you get when people are too stupid to use common sense.   

I don't think I'm the genius that others tend to think I am when it comes to my job...but why is it that I'm the one that constantly needs to pick up the slack? Not only for coworkers, but technicians that should know as much/more than me?

I do understand why my last supervisor was so damn knowledgeable, now. The people he worked with knew berkeley all.

This job isn't even hard. It just requires....thinking things through.

FuzzWuzzy said:

I don't think I'm the genius that others tend to think I am when it comes to my job...but why is it that I'm the one that constantly needs to pick up the slack? Not only for coworkers, but technicians that should know as much/more than me?

I do understand why my last supervisor was so damn knowledgeable, now. The people he worked with knew berkeley all.

This job isn't even hard. It just requires....thinking things through.

This is DW's corporate life in a nutshell.

She's the "computer expert" in a lab of 90+ scientists.  She has no IT or computer training whatsoever.  It's not in her job description.  But somehow she's the one everyone comes crying to when their E36 M3 doesn't work because they can't be bothered to learn how to use their daily tools, or pay attention to simple instructions, or think more than 2 days into the future.

Home Depot's website search function sucks the sweat off a dead man's ass. 

In reply to jharry3 :

We almost need a major rant thread for stuff like this. Such behavior is legitimately life-threatening. And Tesla thinks marketing adaptive cruise control as autopilot is a good idea???

In reply to Recon1342 :

We just returned from a week in SoCal... saw no less than 4 Teslas blazing down the freeway in the fast lane at 80+ mph with the driver either texting or playing on a tablet.

Recon1342 said:

Toyman01 said:

I already knew this, but holy crap I'm out of shape...

30 minutes on the tread mill followed by 15 on the elliptical has just about killed me.

The first part of 2020 might just be a little pain filled. I knew I hated making resolutions. 

Getting in shape is simple. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other. What it isn't is easy. 
 

stick with it; the benefits in the future far outweigh the pain now...

I wish I could find time to work out. I need to get into some sort of pattern to stick with it, but my work schedule changes so much from day to day and week to week that I can never get into a groove. At one point I was riding my bicycle 100+ miles a week, now I barely have time to get on it.

In reply to Rodan :

It's my firm conviction that all these "driver aids" like traction control, stability control, and adaptive cruise control are actually hindering the driving ability of the population-at-large. Well-executed, these things will indeed make driving safer, if the driver also does their part. Unfortunately, the tendency is for joe public to let the technology take over and do the job for them, instead of "assisting" them. 
 

*walks off while muttering and shaking head*

In reply to jharry3 :

You had the perfect opportunity to put her in the wall and missed it. 

I've thought about creating a website called dumb drivers or something and riding around videoing the stupidity on the roads. 6 cameras should give me full coverage and cameras are cheap now. Maybe shame would help.

In reply to Toyman01 :

Yeeting backwards into a Jersey barrier from a PIT maneuver you just induced will definitely help them adjust the attitude. 

Its fun car friday. 

I actually have a running and driving fun car for a change.

Its pouring like piss out of a boot. No point in takiing it over the daily.

My wife is sick. This is not fun for her at all. But also not for me. 

That is obviously enough to be a minor rant in and of itself. But I've got an even minor-er one: I love my wife, and the list of things that she does that annoy me is very small. One of them though is how "dramatic" (in quotes because I'm not her, maybe for her it is always bad) she is when she's sick or ailing. I've been with her for 11-12 years. I've driven her to the hospital for appendicitis, helped her recover through 3 surgeries, nursed her whenever she's sick whether it is mononucleosis or the common cold. The whimpering and complaining is the same for a common cold as it is for mono as it is for appendicitis. And you'd think she's dying each time. Really, really annoying there hon. I also don't understand that in general - if you're sick, go to bed and stay there. 

I have a nice, new office inside a nice, new machine shop inside a nice, new university building.

The rant?

I'm standing outside the nice, new building in 30* weather because the fire alarm is going off.

Again.

This is becoming a weekly ordeal. Can't we fix something this simple?!?

In reply to SaltyDog :

Well..  have you considered not setting fires in your nice new office?

In reply to wae :

But I really like my coffee brewed over an open fire!