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

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

Toyman! said:

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

The system is broken. There is no thought or compassion used in the application of it. No one is allowed to look at it on a case-by-case basis. There is no consideration of how to transition a person from assistance to no assistance. It's a list of arbitrary numbers made up by people whose only interest is skimming millions to line their own pockets. Their only interest is in keeping their position so they can keep up the graft. I thoroughly think they enjoy ripping the carpet out from under people just as they are starting to get ahead. They probably pulled the wings off of butterflies when they were kids. 

Well that's kind of brutal. Most of the people that I know who work in the government are decent folks trying to do a proper job. Laws exist because you can't just trust people to use common sense and behave ethically. But whenever the system has some fluidity, people take advantage of it and corruption works its way in. It's really hard to make a society function based on mistrust, but that appears to be where we are. 

It's certainly not the worker bees, for the most part.  From what I can see from a sort-of inside view - my wife works for the state in the entitlements department - there is a certain percentage that are there because the pay is not great which means they can't be too picky and it's very hard to get fired which means they can be even less picky once they've brought someone on.  There's a percentage there that's higher than the private sector places I've had experience with of people who just aren't equipped with a giveadamn and aren't interested in trying to make sure they're doing the right thing.  Most, however, are like most people: just regular work-a-day types that have a set of rules and regulations that would make Kafka and Orwell proud on one side and "clients" on the other side.  (in my line of work, a "client" is someone that gives you money, not someone to whom you give money, but that's their terminology so let's just run with it, I guess.  Doubleplus good, amiright?)

Most of the rules that are in place exist because there's a constant tug-of-war with the legislature - and by extension the voters - as to how to make sure we're helping people that need it and not giving stuff to lazy people.  For the most part, both sides of that argument want the same thing - there aren't that many Ebenezers out there wanting to fill the poorhouses nor are that many that want to just give everyone as much cash as they can stuff in their pockets.  But since it is legally an "entitlement" program, anyone who meets the legally-defined threshold has to get whatever the program gives so those thresholds have to be put somewhere.  There can't be any discresion because that would be "unfair".  And anytime you want to try to change those, we pick up our respective sides of the rope and start tugging again.  And so it gets more and more complex.

From the data-gathering that I've done with my wife and her coworkers, for every one person that is in genuine need of help, there's four more that think that the most important day in their child's life is taking them to the food stamp office on their 18th birthday so they can apply for public assistance all on their own.  I don't know if the system is screwed up because there are screwed up people like that or if there are screwed up people like that because the system is screwed up.  But it's a no-easy-answer, non-monocausal problem.

In reply to wae :

That is a very-well-put-together response.  I would love to make my own detailed reply, but A) I have a job to do, and B) it would very promptly veer into an array of patio topics.

I will just say that this situation is exactly why I am in favor of narrowing the broad scope of entitlement programs, so that with the same amount of money and staffing, we can go into more depth for a smaller group of more clearly defined (and clearly in need) candidates.

Okay, seriously: It is not optional to pay contractors. When you comission a job and sign a contract, that is an obligation to pay. I am SO FREAKING TIRED of people loving the work that I do just to disappear when it's time to pay the bill.

Court is often toothless (I've won judgments but have yet to collect money) and liens are difficult to file.

I just wish people would pay their bills.

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Reality is brutal, particularly in California. 

But also here. We bought our house in 2020, got married in 2021. It wasn't until March of this year that we got a new caseworker from the welfare office who called one day and said "hey, your E36 M3 is really berkeleyed up, I'm gonna fix it."

The old caseworker never adjusted foodstamps for our mortgage. After 4 years. Almost $225 a month we never saw. It also turned out that since we'd been married I'd been qualified for state health insurance as a secondary provider, which would have saved us $4100 we had to put on credit cards to get my cancer testing done earlier this year. 

There's no collecting the monetary difference, unfortunately, but at least the useless old caseworker has finally been fired. Turns out she'd been on the ropes for years, but they could never get and keep s replacement for her long enough. 

Even before I got sick, we couldn't afford for me to work. Because the only jobs around here really are shift work or 10-14 hour days on the road. With the wife's job being shift work already, we'd have had to pay for childcare at a higher hourly rate than e either of us makes, to get the youngest on and off the bus, on top of everything else. 

We don't get welfare checks, but the $400/month in food stamps only lasted one good trip to the store with proper planning and a lot of freezer living, so getting a boost there has been a big help. 

Talking to friends that work in the social security offices, and seeing the E36 M3 my dad went through which kept us poor my whole life growing up because the state and the hospitals wanted ever possible cent the family could collect, brutal is how the government treats people that actually need the help, because there's no shortage of people who just don't want or know how to try and do things on their own. 

It's a double edged sword, and both sides are ugly.

brandonsmash said:

Okay, seriously: It is not optional to pay contractors. When you comission a job and sign a contract, that is an obligation to pay. I am SO FREAKING TIRED of people loving the work that I do just to disappear when it's time to pay the bill.

Court is often toothless (I've won judgments but have yet to collect money) and liens are difficult to file.

I just wish people would pay their bills.

 

I hear you. We've been pretty lucky, but right now out $27K to a complete douchebag. His wife is a lawyer, so it costs them very little to fend us off. 

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Read Wae's response, I could not have put it better.

brandonsmash said:

Okay, seriously: It is not optional to pay contractors. When you comission a job and sign a contract, that is an obligation to pay. I am SO FREAKING TIRED of people loving the work that I do just to disappear when it's time to pay the bill.

Court is often toothless (I've won judgments but have yet to collect money) and liens are difficult to file.

I just wish people would pay their bills.

 

Over the past year or so, I've started requiring deposits of at least 50%-75% for any customer that I do not know. If they aren't willing to pay a significant deposit, they aren't interested in paying for the work.  

I will also show up and repossess a door for non-payment. I did that at a hospital in South Georgia on a Friday afternoon. Left their emergency room standing wide open. 

stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:

It's been WWIII with the ex for almost 3 weeks now. She wants me to pay for my son's car that she bought without telling me. He is going off to college in July and she wants me to cover the nearly $400 car payment. It's been non stop attacks and verbal abuse. She even contacted my mom, whom she hasn't spoken with in 15 years, to try and manipulate her to manipulate me.

What kind of toxic, manipulative, abusive POS does that?

I'm about to file a non-contact order or similar protection against her. It's getting bad 

I've gone back through the text conversation and I've noticed about a half dozen messages that aren't there anymore. I think she's deleting some of her verbally abusive/gaslighting texts. This is the kind of E36 M3 I've endured for the past 15 years. None of this is acceptable behavior but she will never face the consequences of her actions because she always plays the victim card. 

I can't deal with this anymore.

stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:

stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:

It's been WWIII with the ex for almost 3 weeks now. She wants me to pay for my son's car that she bought without telling me. He is going off to college in July and she wants me to cover the nearly $400 car payment. It's been non stop attacks and verbal abuse. She even contacted my mom, whom she hasn't spoken with in 15 years, to try and manipulate her to manipulate me.

What kind of toxic, manipulative, abusive POS does that?

I'm about to file a non-contact order or similar protection against her. It's getting bad 

I've gone back through the text conversation and I've noticed about a half dozen messages that aren't there anymore. I think she's deleting some of her verbally abusive/gaslighting texts. This is the kind of E36 M3 I've endured for the past 15 years. None of this is acceptable behavior but she will never face the consequences of her actions because she always plays the victim card. 

I can't deal with this anymore.

You should be screen-shotting & saving the abusive/gaslighting texts if she's deleting them, especially if you plan on filing for non-contact/restraining order. 

I've taken this into account, and there's probably some things I could have done to reduce delays, but moving (an admittedly large sum of) money around should be much more seamless than this--

• Close on loan 4/8
• Check available from escrow 4/12.  Deposit check at CU same day
• Full amount of funds available from CU 4/23
• Transfer funds to brokerage account 4/24
• Full amount of funds available to transfer from brokerage account back to rollover IRA projected for 5/2

At least the deadline I'm working against to complete this process is 60 days from April 3.

In reply to Karacticus :

Moving large amounts of money from one institution to another is frequently a PITA with ridiculous delays.  Some of that is the institutions dragging their feet to collect a little extra interest. The rest is probably meeting federal reporting requirements. 

In this day and age, it should not take 7 days to move most amounts of money. It should be seamless and instantaneous. 

I'm tired of "build threads" in the build thread section that are just links to youtube videos. I come to this site to read text and scroll through pictures, because it's a forum and that's the format. I'm not here to spend 5 hours watching your videos. The whole point of a build thread is to document work, make it searchable and easily accessible on the broader web so that maybe you can help someone with the same problems, and engage the community. A thread of nothing but video links just comes across as a selfish lazy way to farm for viewers and pump up your metrics, especially when it's purely one-way engagement with the site. 

maschinenbau said:

I'm tired of "build threads" in the build thread section that are just links to youtube videos. I come to this site to read text and scroll through pictures, because it's a forum and that's the format. I'm not here to spend 5 hours watching your videos. The whole point of a build thread is to document work, make it searchable and easily accessible on the broader web so that maybe you can help someone with the same problems, and engage the community. A thread of nothing but video links just comes across as a selfish lazy way to farm for viewers and pump up your metrics, especially when it's purely one-way engagement with the site. 

Perhaps this belongs in a Major Rant thread; I agree 100%.   It's more than just a minor rant.

stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:

stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:

It's been WWIII with the ex for almost 3 weeks now. She wants me to pay for my son's car that she bought without telling me. He is going off to college in July and she wants me to cover the nearly $400 car payment. It's been non stop attacks and verbal abuse. She even contacted my mom, whom she hasn't spoken with in 15 years, to try and manipulate her to manipulate me.

What kind of toxic, manipulative, abusive POS does that?

I'm about to file a non-contact order or similar protection against her. It's getting bad 

I've gone back through the text conversation and I've noticed about a half dozen messages that aren't there anymore. I think she's deleting some of her verbally abusive/gaslighting texts. This is the kind of E36 M3 I've endured for the past 15 years. None of this is acceptable behavior but she will never face the consequences of her actions because she always plays the victim card. 

I can't deal with this anymore.

Too late for some of the previous stuff, but start screenshotting her abusive texts so that her deleting them doesn't make them go away.

Good luck to you, seriously.

[edit]  Treed by Ash.

In reply to Karacticus :

My favorite was when I took a $5000 cashier's check out of my local bank branch to buy a car.

Teller made a big deal about how as soon as she handed me the check, the money was deducted from my account and considered to be like cash.

Ended up not buying the car and 2 days later I returned the cashier's check to not only the same account, but to the same bank branch and teller.

Guess what?  It took more than a week to clear.

maschinenbau said:

I'm tired of "build threads" in the build thread section that are just links to youtube videos. I come to this site to read text and scroll through pictures, because it's a forum and that's the format. I'm not here to spend 5 hours watching your videos. The whole point of a build thread is to document work, make it searchable and easily accessible on the broader web so that maybe you can help someone with the same problems, and engage the community. A thread of nothing but video links just comes across as a selfish lazy way to farm for viewers and pump up your metrics, especially when it's purely one-way engagement with the site. 

Quoted for truth!!

There is nothing worse than a build video. The last thing I want to listen to is a person verbally masturbating in front of a camera.

Anyone who drops a video link and leaves is promptly ignored. 

Written words and pictures > video links.  

In reply to Indy - Guy :

I downvote every post that I excitedly open only to find out it's just a youtube link and low-effort explanation. I have no problem with adding video links to supplement the actual forum content, but we're going to allow youtube click-farmers it should be a separate forum section or at least a special thread label, because sometimes we do want to find more YT content without having to sift. Many of these users literally only post to their thread and no where else on the site. 

Respect the Art of the Build Thread.

Actually, video answers kind of tick me off in general.

I work with some pretty complicated software in the office, and I frequently have to google techniques or technical questions on how to use it.

And the first 10 hits are all videos that supposedly answer the question.  I'm in an office environment and I don't want to watch a five minute video with sound when you could just write "Click on the object, go to Properties, find this variable, and set it to X."

I prefer to do the opposite:  For my Merc rebuild project, I wrote the build thread and then went back later and made the videos.  I'm not sure if I posed the links to the videos in my build thread, but I know for a fact that a link to my build thread is in the description of the video on YouTube.

I abhor most of the how-to video results.  I want to know how to do a thing and usually it's a simple answer of "the fuse box is under the dash on the left side" or "the air box has three bolts and one is hidden under this tube".  Instead I get three minutes of "hey guys, what's up? I've been working on this.... Blah blah blah blah blah".  Just get to the damned point.  I don't want you to pan over and show me your dog.  I don't want you to talk for an hour about when you went to get coffee earlier today.

All that babble on YT is about getting minutes. You need a certain amount of watched minutes to monetize your channel. There's also a minimum video length to have it be monetized. This is all driven by the advertisers. 
 

I know what you mean though. There are a lot of channels where 90% of the content is just someone babbling to string you along long enough to get that nugget of information you actually want. 

wae said:

 I don't want you to pan over and show me your dog.

 This is a pet peeve of mine. If I'm watching your machining video and you take an interlude to show me your damn dog or some other animal, the odds are high that you have lost a viewer. 

I don't give a E36 M3 about your dog unless he knows something I don't know about machining that I don't. I have 4 of my own and if I want to watch dog videos, I would have searched for them or made my own. 

Looking at you Cutting Edge Engineering. I could not care less about your damn dog or the birds that fly around your shop. 

Huge Youtube watcher, but agree I don't want to watch it for detailed build info and how to's.  Give me pictures and text.

Youtube is great for capturing "live action" as Cleetus McFarland says.  I use it to experience things I wouldn't otherwise get the see or hear about.  

In reply to Duke :

Ugh. When the old house sold, my mom cut me a $15k cashier's check from her credit Union. Took it to my bank to deposit. 

$250 available day of, $5000 5 business days later, the rest another 7 business days later. 

berkeley checks of any sort, except, banks don't have that kind of cash on hand anymore so you gotta setup a withdrawal in advance. 

Anything to make it harder to spend your own money.

Of course someone else taps my account, and it's days to weeks to get the money back, of it ever happens at all. 

I'll stick to Mason jars to keep my money in, 0.01% interest and online only bill paying be damned.

In reply to Toyman! :

How would you feel about a donkey, though?

I didn't opt into beta testing Full Self Driving, and everybody on the street is now doing so.

We all cut each other some slack when we screw up, more or less, because we are human. This approach means every mistake made by a Tesla takes the grace we extend our fellow humans and gives it to Tesla (or the other companies currently public-trialing self-driving). I think that's deeply wrong.

There will come a point when self-driving cars are ready for prime time, and we all agree to run the related risks and reap the improvements in safety. In the meantime, we are gifting private enterprises an incalculable sum, and more that can't be priced besides.