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

In reply to mtn :

Yeah, I have similar feelings, I think, about the whole "SWMBO" acronym that, at least for awhile, was fairly prevalent around here.  I haven't seen it in awhile, so maybe it's lost its luster.  I told Mrs. VCH about it when I first heard about it, and she thought it was about as awful as I did.  Children are supposed to obey, not adults, and last I checked we're all berkeleying adults here.  We listen, we discuss, we compromise as required.  I understand it's supposed to be humorous, but given that all humor has some element of truth to it, it's not a brand of humor I'm inclined to engage in with the person I've decided to cohabitate with, raise small humans with, and spend the majority of my living hours with.  

volvoclearinghouse said:

Recon1342 said:

In reply to NickD :

Put the team that designed it into a round padded room with two large ball bearings. In five minute's time, they'll have lost one and broken the other. I hate bureaucracy.

I just repeated this line to a co-worker.  He literally laughed out loud, and told me I'd brightened up his difficult afternoon.  

Oh, wait, sorry, this is the _rant_ thread.  Uhhh...Don't you just hate airports???

It's a minor edit of the phrase I often used in the Marine Corps when referring to a recruit or junior enlisted Marine who had done something particularly... noteworthy.

Okay I have an exceedingly tiny rant to make today.

I got my COVID booster last night to prepare for Dethklok/Babymetal and since it's been nearly 2 years since my last round. I deal with them super well, but the tendon pain/aching I get about 12-16 hours later woke me up. Even now my left arm feels off, and I know the pharmacist went too low in my deltoid.

I realize that complaining about fees is quite in vogue right now, but my middlest daughter and I went to an event at one of the universities she's considering and I can't help but wonder why every other school doesn't do what they do.  They have two line items.  You can buy housing from a short list of different types (single/double/apartment-style) and then there's tuition.  And tuition includes the credit hours, the parking pass, transportation on the local bus system, the health center fee, books, the meal plan, the recreation fee, the fitness center fee, the activity fee, the lab fee, and all the other stuff that every other primary, secondary, and post-secondary institution that I've ever worked with tacks on as an extra fee of some sort.  And it's not some two-bit fly-by-night place, either - they've been around for over a hundred years, routinely lands on the USNWR best schools lists, and has a really good reputation in the region.  It's not cheap by any means, but with the scholarships that they already offered her that she didn't have to apply specifically for, it's about the same cost as the local state university's retail rate (before fees, of course), and there are a number of additional scholarships that she needs to apply for that she has a decent chance of attaining.

Can't we just all go ahead and roll all that stuff into one and just call it "the price"?

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

I don't ask my wife's permission.  I ask for her input on whether something is a good idea or not.  I don't always agree, but sometimes the trusted second opinion makes me see things I missed or was downplaying before.

In reply to Duke :

SWMBO asks ("asks" is a roundabout way of simply telling) me if it's ok to buy something. I tell her of course. I have no reason not to trust you.

In reply to wae :

Sounds like Dayton?

Duke said:

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

I don't ask my wife's permission.  I ask for her input on whether something is a good idea or not.  I don't always agree, but sometimes the trusted second opinion makes me see things I missed or was downplaying before.

 

That's how things work here for the most part.  We're equal partners in Family, Inc. and as such we have some things for which we make unilateral decisions, but consequential things are a conversation not seeking approval.  I guess it sometimes sounds like asking for permission - as in, "is it okay with you if I run over to the shop tonight?" or "Do you mind if I go on a weekend rip with my co-workers?".  But that's not permission as much as making sure that we're coordinating our scheduling.  Sometimes the answer is "oh, well, I needed your help with this other thing" and we'll figure out which is more urgent.  Or "a trip sounds good, but we do have that new dishwasher to pay for".  It's not always perfect because sometimes my biggest priority and her biggest priority might be mutually exclusive things so one of us has to change, but it works more often than it doesn't.  When it comes to buying things, we each set aside a small amount of money each week for ourselves - giving ourselves an allowance, basically - to save up and blow on whatever we want without affecting the general budget of Family, Inc.  Most of what we do, though, is together and there's almost always one of us keeping the other planted firmly here on planet Earth.  A few months back, I was ready to run out and buy an electric lawnmower since we had been talking about that for a while.  She reminded me, though, that our mower works but our dishwasher was on its last legs and I couldn't argue that point.  Turns out she was very right because just a couple weeks later, the timer crapped out so rather than having to spend a bunch of time and money fixing a dishwasher that we hated, we had the money buring a hole in our pocket to get a pretty nice new one.

mtn said:

In reply to wae :

Sounds like Dayton?

None of my kids have been interested in UD, although one of my neighbors has a daughter up there and they like it.  My daughter is looking at Thomas More University, a few miles down the road.

In reply to WilD :

I was crossing a street in a crosswalk, and I had the walk signal telling me to go.

Somebody on the main road decided there was an opening to make a left from the main road onto the side street I was crossing. They took it by stepping on it, veering around me and putting two tires over the curb. Once pointed straight down the side street, they decided to practice for the Ohio Mile or something.

If I had decided to speed up while crossing the street, I'd be dead.

 

In reply to wae :

I can see splitting some of that out. For example, my sophomore year of college I lived on campus, but didn't have a meal plan- I lived off what I could make in a microwave, store in a mini fridge, or was shelf stable. Saved a considerable amount of money doing so, too. And I didn't even die of malnutrition!

News flash.

Questions about an estimate do not constitute acceptance of the estimate.

As stated on the estimate and in the email you need to either sign and return the estimate or respond to the email informing us to proceed with the work. 

If you fail to do the above, I will not order the materials. Lead times start when I receive the approval. 

Another News flash. I write between 50 and 100 estimates a month. Between Amanda and I we write about 3,000 estimates per year for service and installs. When you call asking where the material is for an estimate that you have not approved, it would be helpful if we had an estimate number. My memory isn't good enough to remember all of them. While we can look them up, it does take more time. 

Edit: If your account is 4 months past due, I'm not ordering materials even with a signed approval. 

Among the lowest bars in driving is "don't drive into the clearly already stopped traffic ahead of you."

I've been rear-ended, IIRC, six times in my life. *One* of them involved traffic suddenly stopping, though traffic was being so twitchy I feel you'd have to be silly not to be leaving extra room. I left room, and I managed not to turn the three-car pileup into four, but it still totaled the only project car I'd ever nearly completed.

I was just about to head out of town a couple of hours ago and had someone in a berking 26' International box truck rear-end my pickup. About as lightly as you can in a vehicle that size, but it wasn't sudden. We were at a stoplight. We had been stopped for a little while.

Half of those six cars were totaled. A '68 Dart, a '71 2002, and an '87 325is. The light hits to the Volvo 145, Legacy, and my F250 did no discernable damage, but FFS, folks drive like making contact is brushing elbows at Starbucks! And a couple of them seemed about as concerned... The woman who basically failed to keep her brake on enough and bumped into me seemed offended that I got out to ask WTF she was doing.

I don't think I'm going to be sore from today's jolt, but I am feeling slightly silly about worrying about the old guy's job/etc when I looked over the truck and decided not to exchange info etc. He could've at least offered to pay for the mocha that was all over me and the interior. If that's how he's going to drive perhaps he shouldn't.

Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:

In reply to WilD :

I was crossing a street in a crosswalk, and I had the walk signal telling me to go.

Somebody on the main road decided there was an opening to make a left from the main road onto the side street I was crossing. They took it by stepping on it, veering around me and putting two tires over the curb. Once pointed straight down the side street, they decided to practice for the Ohio Mile or something.

If I had decided to speed up while crossing the street, I'd be dead.

 

It's getting worse in this area. Somebody claims (claims being the operative word) that they were hit on purpose. 

volvoclearinghouse said:

In reply to mtn :

Yeah, I have similar feelings, I think, about the whole "SWMBO" acronym that, at least for awhile, was fairly prevalent around here.  I haven't seen it in awhile, so maybe it's lost its luster.  I told Mrs. VCH about it when I first heard about it, and she thought it was about as awful as I did.  Children are supposed to obey, not adults, and last I checked we're all berkeleying adults here.  We listen, we discuss, we compromise as required.  I understand it's supposed to be humorous, but given that all humor has some element of truth to it, it's not a brand of humor I'm inclined to engage in with the person I've decided to cohabitate with, raise small humans with, and spend the majority of my living hours with.  

i am confused.  I thought SWMBO was short for Someone Who Might Be Online.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I always thought it meant She Who Must Be Obeyed  

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Maybe it migrated.  That sort of thing happens, I guess.

I saw someone get taken to task for being holier than thou for putting the H in IMHO.  I was confused, what is virtue signaling about being honest?

Took me a while to realize he thought it meant "humble".  When I learned it, it meant "honest", and I still intend it that way.

The dashcam in my truck died today. Its a little over a year old but spent a year in the box on my top shelf in my closet before being installed. It was marketed as being heat resistant but ended up being about as heat resistant as an 85 year old woman from Boston.

With the rampant idiocy here, I immediately ordered a different one. There is simply no way that I will drive around here without a dashcam. Lets hope this one lasts longer as they aren't cheap.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Maybe it migrated.  That sort of thing happens, I guess.

I saw someone get taken to task for being holier than thou for putting the H in IMHO.  I was confused, what is virtue signaling about being honest?

Took me a while to realize he thought it meant "humble".  When I learned it, it meant "honest", and I still intend it that way.

I've always understood them as She Who Must Be Obeyed and In My Humble Opinion.

EvanB said:

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Maybe it migrated.  That sort of thing happens, I guess.

I saw someone get taken to task for being holier than thou for putting the H in IMHO.  I was confused, what is virtue signaling about being honest?

Took me a while to realize he thought it meant "humble".  When I learned it, it meant "honest", and I still intend it that way.

I've always understood them as She Who Must Be Obeyed and In My Humble Opinion.

That's what I always thought too. I often use "owner / trainer" to refer to my partner.

Staying at a Bed and Breakfast on the Isle of Skye in Scotland a couple of weeks ago.  The house was owned/ran by a single older lady who was awesome.  She tosses us our keys.  The keychain read "She Who Must Be Obeyed."  

SWMBO is definitely "She Who Must Be Obeyed".

It came from an H Rider Haggard novel (the guy who wrote King Solomon's Mines, and a ton of other adventure fiction) in the late 1800s.  I think the novel might just have been called SHE.  I read it when I was 10-12.

I remember hearing it in an old BBC show called Rumpole from the '70s or early '80s.  The lead character was an irascible old barrister / detective, and he constantly referred to his wife that way.

My wife and I are partners. Equals. Neither of us "obeys", "owns", or "trains" the other.

...unless there are whips, chains, and outfits involved.

My daughter had a big surprise planned for me last night.  Put it on the calendar and talked it up and everything.  I figured it must have been something car-related because she came home from class yesterday and set about vacuuming out the Saab.  When we got to the place - it's one of those old-school burger/ice cream/milkshake places that's only open in the summer(ish) - she got really disappointed because there were no interesting cars there, and not really any sort of crowd at all.  It turns out that she found a Wednesday night cruise in but that it had been canceled for last night due to the rain and thunderstorms that we weren't having at the time.  The good news is that she wants to try again next week, but she was pretty bummed that her big surprise got deflated a bit.  For my part, though, I really appreciated it!  I got a burger and some onion rings out of the deal, so I can't be too disappointed!

Scotty Con Queso said:

Staying at a Bed and Breakfast on the Isle of Skye in Scotland a couple of weeks ago.  The house was owned/ran by a single older lady who was awesome.  She tosses us our keys.  The keychain read "She Who Must Be Obeyed."  

Congratulations on going to Scotland, my wife and I are planning a trip next year, but mostly to Islay.