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

Mr_Asa said:

In reply to Mndsm :

You aren't doing it for free, the payout is that your relationship will get better and less strained, yeah?

I'm not sure that's the case. We're talking about actively using my $$$ and potentially my truck to bring a bunch of useless crap to someone I don't like who is living with someone I like even less, in a place I don't really want to go back to. (though there's good tacos in Hagerstown MD. ) 

Oh, what's that?  You don't ever do an upgrade check so I'm on version 8 when the newest is version 11?  Well, that's annoying.  Fine, let's download and install the new version.

Doop dee doop dee doop, okay, all installed, let's open the project I was working on and....  What was that motherberkeleyer?  You just don't open the files saved in old versions anymore?  And instead of being able to convert or export/import your solution is "just run the old version if you need to work with that type of file"?  Oh, you're just an shiny happy person aren't you?

In reply to Mndsm :

I'll take a primanti bros sammich....

Dental pain out of town... phuck you, especially when I wanted to get on the hot dog hall of fame wall.... 

Bollocks. 

In reply to slefain :

Part of me says you're a total pain in the ass for the politicians in your city.

That same part of me says good.

It must be a shock to people in a position where they are expected to be accountable suddenly being held accountable. Berk em.

slefain said:

Part of me REALLY wants to chalk this up as just a stupid mistake. But part of me wants to know what they don't want me to see.

Remind me about where you live again? I want to make sure I never move there.

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

Hate to say it, but the bullE36 M3 that happens in selfain's town happens in EVERY town.

Appleseed said:

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

Hate to say it, but the bullE36 M3 that happens in selfain's town happens in EVERY town.

Yup, it probably does. I'm just the one who makes sure to be an absolute thorn in their side whenever there are shenanigans. Eventually someone will speak up and say "hey, maybe we shouldn't do that because it is wrong" is my hope.

If a half dozen refugee Polish mechanics were to show up in Saskatoon, I could place them all immediately.

I'm a small shop.  At one point, four and a half positions.  Now, three.  My best guy is tired of pulling wrenches and figuring out which potentiometer in that Volvo convertible top is out of range, and has taken a shop facilitator, I guess, position at a big bodyshop in town.  I'd hired an 18 year old a few days before he gave his notice, so I guess that's good, but in ten years  he will be half trained up...

So, since there are exactly zero techs looking for work, I'm going to have to hike my 62 year old ass back into the shop, and try to find somebody smart enough to answer a telephone, not piss off too many people, and show up for 40 hours a week.  Best'o'luck with that...

Mike Rowe knows what's going on.

https://www.mikeroweworks.org/

In reply to Antihero :

Sounds like you and I are living similar lives right now, except I'm not helping any widows out. 

Also - I agree about the writing it down part. I now understand why people journal. I've never had a desire to until recently. There is something to be said about writing out how you feel. It helps. I've written things out in this thread and decided not to post because it's a little too personal. But even still, I feel better to get it out of my head and onto "paper". 

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

The flip side of that, and my rant. I'm about to retire and there's never been a better time to find work, and the pay has never been better. 
Now is the time to cash in just as I'm cashing out

I need to renew my CCW, the motorhome and the wife's car are both a bit overdue for renewal, and I need to get my eldest to the bank to get her checking account established.  That's all out in the same general vicinity, so I cleared my morning to be able to do that.  Now that I have a date on the calendar to get the Merc into the shop for the recalls and settlement work, I need to get that insured and registered as well, so I figured I might as well wrap that together with this trip.  Step one was to get the Merc back on the insurance.  And that's where my morning began to get a bit frustrating.

First of all, the well-intentioned morons that run our state legislature decided a while back that people driving without insurance is a Bad Thing.  I agree with them.  But then the story gets stupid.  In order to prevent that, they decided that if you drop the insurance on the vehicle they will cancel your registration.  No matter that I am not putting any single other person at risk or infringing on anyone's rights whatsoever to have an uninsured vehicle parked inside my shop.  And when that wasn't enough, they also decided that when you come in to register a vehicle, you have to show that the policy effective date is no fewer than 45 days ago.  Since I'm adding a car to my existing policy, I typically just get a document that says this VIN is now covered and the policy itself has been in effect since August of last year.  But that doesn't work.  Because even though today's date is on the document that says the vehicle is added, the "effective date" is too far in the past.  

The rationale for that?  "Well," they patronizingly told me, "how do we know that you didn't cancel that policy since last year?".

As though a policy that is only 45 days old can't be canceled???  Like I said:  Well-intentioned morons.

So I go to add the car this morning.  And the insurance company doesn't open until 9am.  Sigh.  Okay, I'll try their online vehicle add process. 

Oh, you'll get back to me in 1-3 business days with my new coverage?  Eff that.

So I wait till 9 and call them.  They say there's a greater than 10 minute wait time and they can do the whole thing via text message.

Okay, cool, do that.

"Thank you for your text! A specialist will be in touch within one business day. Hrs (PST): Mon-Fri 7a to 5p"

No, motherberkeleyer, I need this done right berkeleying now.

So I call back.  Once I re-navigate their stupid IVR system they tell me again that the hold time will be more than 10 minutes.  I say that's fine and I will wait.  And *immediately* a human being picks up.  She is lovely, helpful, personable, competant, and all-around fabulous to work with.  And 10 minutes later I have the document that I need in my email.

Way to use technology to speed things up, people.

Peabody said:

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

The flip side of that, and my rant. I'm about to retire and there's never been a better time to find work, and the pay has never been better. 
Now is the time to cash in just as I'm cashing out

And, when you were buying your house 30+ years ago, interest rates were double digits.  Once you had some cash to save for retirement, interest rates were at historical lows...

Streetwiseguy said:

Peabody said:

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

The flip side of that, and my rant. I'm about to retire and there's never been a better time to find work, and the pay has never been better. 
Now is the time to cash in just as I'm cashing out

And, when you were buying your house 30+ years ago, interest rates were double digits.  Once you had some cash to save for retirement, interest rates were at historical lows...

I'm sure lots of people today would jump at the chance to buy a house at '90s prices with double-digit interest rates. Or maybe stretch the down-payment a bit and buy it outright?

The day care has sent multiple emails saying don't exit out the entrance. There is a big do not enter sign there too yet everyday someone is doing it. 

You know, I know there was a time when I enjoyed fireworks... I distinctly remember having a great time playing with them as a child, and enjoying going out to watch massive fireworks displays choreographed to music. 

Now, I hear the whistle of the neighborhood kids shooting off their first bottle rockets of the year and go, "Berk, is it that time of year again?" and wait for The Dog to come up to the office, realize that they're just as loud up here, and then scurry down to the basement to make a nest in the back of our closet to hide like he does from storms.

And a side-'berk you' to Amazon today too- knowing this was coming and having seen lots of commercials for the calming chews for dogs to help with this we ordered a package from Amazon that was supposed to arrive yesterday. I checked up on it and see that the delivery date for them had changed to July 5th. Yeah, that's going to be helpful, thanks. So yesterday when I had to drive halfway across town to put up a yard sign for The Dancer's nonprofit after I finish work I had to make a detour in the opposite direction to get them from PetSmart instead.

GameboyRMH said:

Streetwiseguy said:

Peabody said:

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

The flip side of that, and my rant. I'm about to retire and there's never been a better time to find work, and the pay has never been better. 
Now is the time to cash in just as I'm cashing out

And, when you were buying your house 30+ years ago, interest rates were double digits.  Once you had some cash to save for retirement, interest rates were at historical lows...

I'm sure lots of people today would jump at the chance to buy a house at '90s prices with double-digit interest rates. Or maybe stretch the down-payment a bit and buy it outright?

I'm not going to do the math, but a $90,000 house at 15% over 25 years is probably very, very close to a $300,000 house at 2.5% over the same period.  Did you know that you could get a 100 year mortgage in Tokyo in the early 80"s?

But, wait until that $300,000 house mortgage hits double digits if you want to see some excitement.

(I'm not doing the math because I know someone here will do it for me... They won't be able to resist.)

I wish this would stop. It's an expensive piece of electronics that will break, greatly reduce the functionality of the vehicle overall,  and it isn't like you can just go into your local junkyard and get another one.
 

wae said:

Way to use technology to speed things up, people.

 

Bold of you to imagine that any technology that leads to an agent is supposed to speed things up. It's supposed to save the company money by increasing efficiencies, reducing internal headcount, flattening peak periods and pushing as much work back onto you, the customer, as they can. Self-service is the holy grail of customer service.
 

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

Damn you

I did 30 years rather than 25 years as it's more common and I put 20% down on both as that's

the typical minimum so apples-to-apples, you'd have to factor in the additional 42K down on the 300K home.

Having said that, the 300K home "only" has $13,640 more in interest.

72K for 30year at 15% = $327,744...240K for 30 years at 2.5% = $341,384

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

YES. Give me tactile switches and knobs. I want the screen to be big enough to show me my map and the rearview camera. That is it. 

Attempt to find an endocrinologist that takes this trash insurance. 3. 3 berkeleying doctors in 100 miles. Oh, they're taking new patients...in SEPTEMBER. Sweet, I'll be dead by then. I doubt my primary care can just write a script for insulin, even though this is what the BlueCrossBlueShield customer service lady said to do.

Looks like I might just have to eat the $200 and go to my original endocrinologist.

Why do I have this insurance again?

In reply to Appleseed :

Assuming they're a DO or MD, and probably even a Nurse Practitioner can write the script. There is the chance that they won't, of course, but they definitely CAN do it. 

For three days, I am trying to run a test that should take 10 minutes of work and a couple hours of waiting.  Tangentially related issues have popped up that ruin the setup every time, and I have to reset the test.  Only for something else to go wrong.  I'm running out of time to get this done before my vacation, and right now, I'm not sure I trust anyone else to handle this while I'm out.  I mean, it probably works, but if other E36 M3 keeps breaking that keeps me from confirming it, I can't really say it works.

In reply to mtn :

I can think of 10,000 ways a heath insurance company would try to weasel out of doing their part if I don't jump through thier rigged, flaming hoops.

Whatever, I need insulin.