The bros are back. A few years ago the SF Bay Area was chock full of younger Elon Musks - arrogant young techies whose future was so bright that they had to wear shades. In fairness, most of the really insufferable ones weren't really techies at all, but the investor class that has gotten wealthy off of them. Anyway, Since the pandemic and various other factors have seen said techies move to Texas and other friendlier/more lucrative places, our economy has taken a hit, but it's also gotten quieter and more livable.
In the last couple months Cybertrucks have started showing up as a daily occurrence. And what I've noticed is that they appear only to sell them to tech bros. So the kings of contempt now have a vehicle to match. I'm not going to rant about Cybertrucks -they're very cool in many ways. But they are also rolling pieces of brutalist design. And it would appear that the tech bros have found their ultimate expression.
wae
UltimaDork
5/18/24 10:47 a.m.
Engage pedantic mode...
An IV, by its definition, is liquid. So liquid IV is stupidly redundant. And to make it even dumber, it isn't a liquid? It's a powder?
Words mean things, people. Quit that E36 M3.
I'm paying nearly $80 a month for fiber 500 up/500 down internet. Everyday starting around 1300 it goes to E36 M3. Look at this trend data I have been collecting:
Today it was this:
So I power cycled the modem/router. It never came back up. So we left to go fart around. 5 hours later we came back home and it's still not up. So I call my ISP. They perform some basic troubleshooting but can't resolve it. Now it's going to be Monday before they can send a tech out. Oh and there might be a $75 service call fee.
If the tech charges me $75, he will most definitely be taking the modem back with him because it's going to be up his ass.
Wally (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to Toyman! :
We can't hire and train bus drivers fast enough for all our openings. This leads us to give our existing drivers a massive amount of overtime to cover open work. Then the news runs a story about how much some people are making in overtime. Now we're at the cutting overtime and leaving work open phase of the cycle. Next month will be the same news broadcasting how service has gotten worse.
Around here, bus drivers pretty much have to do OT to make a living wage. Starting salary is around $20/hr. In an area where you can't find a studio apartment that isn't located directly inside an active crime scene for under 1500 a month. I think they can drive up to 12 hours a day under Federal guidelines before they have to have a break. Throw in a Saturday every now and then and they might take home 50k a year after taxes.
And we can't find enough drivers, either.
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
Ours start at $26/hr and go up to $37/hr after six years plus benefits. With overtime we have a number grossing over $100k. It's expensive to live here but we still get a fair number of people applying. After Covid though we were down well over 2000 drivers plus a lot of the people that do the hiring and training. so it's taking a while to fill those positions but customers still expect a bus to show up which means paying out overtime to cover those open trips, maintaining the buses as we lost an equal percentage of mechanics, plus all the openings on the subways and railroads. It adds up to a lot of overtime but until hiring catches up we don't have a lot of options without service cuts.
Peabody
MegaDork
5/19/24 10:22 a.m.
Dearest Walmart, Bestbuy, etc. You know that thing you did to make yourself more relevant, and competitive against the river company? It's made you less relevant and less competitive against the river company, and made it far less likely I'm going to do business with you. Your website is supposed to make it more convenient, yet it's practically guaranteed that I now have to not only look on the website, but actually go to the store and see what you really have in stock.
When I search coffee grinder and see that you list over 1000 options on your website I don't want to have to wade through the availability, see that you really only offer 6 different ones in store, then go to there to see that most of them are really out of stock. Show me what you actually have and I will decide. I'm on your website because I want to buy it from you knowing that if I have a problem, it's a simple matter of returning it, no questions asked. In this instance, my least favourite store gets it right. No marketplace BS, and if it's not in stock in your chosen store, it doesn't even show up on the website. I ordered from them, we'll see how badly they berkeley it up. Because Canadian tire.
Peabody said:I ordered from them, we'll see how badly they berkeley it up. Because Canadian tire.
Dear Michael
Thank you for shopping at canadiantire.ca.
We are sorry to inform you that your order 0000085277079 has been cancelled because the products are no longer available in-store or available for pick up. Your method(s) of payment has not been charged. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
In reply to Peabody :
Selling E36 M3 we can't sell, because we don't have the E36 M3.
stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:
My sister is expecting and will be replacing her forlorn 2011 Sonata with something a bit more family friendly. She has been texting me cars her and her husband are looking at. So far the list has included:
2020 Ford Edge ST
2020 Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring Reserve
2020 Alfa Romeo Stelvio
2021 Audi Q5 Quatro
They all have similar mileage and prices. She drove the Audi today and really liked it but they live in a small town in Kansas. Neither her or her husband are car people. They need reliability and serviceability. Which is the opposite of the Alfa and Audi lol.
Her husband, my BIL, is a great dude but makes horrible automotive decisions. To say I'm nervous is an understatement lol.
Aaaaaand guess what they purchased yesterday? Yep, the Audi. At least they purchased a decent aftermarket warranty. The nearest Audi dealer is 2.5 hours away. We'll see how this plays out. I sincerely hope it a great vehicle for them but I'll keep my "I told you so" in the chamber for when they are faced with either an expensive repair or multi-week wait for parts.
There is a fairly friendly stray cat hanging out at my office.
My admin isn't going to get anything done until the cat is gone or she takes it home.
stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:
stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:
My sister is expecting and will be replacing her forlorn 2011 Sonata with something a bit more family friendly. She has been texting me cars her and her husband are looking at. So far the list has included:
2020 Ford Edge ST
2020 Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring Reserve
2020 Alfa Romeo Stelvio
2021 Audi Q5 Quatro
They all have similar mileage and prices. She drove the Audi today and really liked it but they live in a small town in Kansas. Neither her or her husband are car people. They need reliability and serviceability. Which is the opposite of the Alfa and Audi lol.
Her husband, my BIL, is a great dude but makes horrible automotive decisions. To say I'm nervous is an understatement lol.
Aaaaaand guess what they purchased yesterday? Yep, the Audi. At least they purchased a decent aftermarket warranty. The nearest Audi dealer is 2.5 hours away. We'll see how this plays out. I sincerely hope it a great vehicle for them but I'll keep my "I told you so" in the chamber for when they are faced with either an expensive repair or multi-week wait for parts.
Living in a small town in Kansas, the correct answer for them would be something with a blue oval or a bowtie on the grille.
Or, if they're really baller, a Lincoln or Buick.
"Cheap, out-of-factory-warranty German car? How can I go wrong?"
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
That fact that a one year newer Audi depreciated harder than an Edge should have been a clue.
They made good ones and bad ones, let's hope they got a good one. Or that they don't freak out at how much an oil change costs. (Should be $200ish, and yes every 5000 miles)
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
That fact that a one year newer Audi depreciated harder than an Edge should have been a clue.
They made good ones and bad ones, let's hope they got a good one. Or that they don't freak out at how much an oil change costs. (Should be $200ish, and yes every 5000 miles)
I mean, it could be worse. They could've bought the Alfa. *shudder*
In that group they had, my own pick would have been the CX-5, but again, dealer support where they are could be non-existent.
I cringe when I hear co-workers discussing their car maintenance costs. An oil change on a simple Mazda6 is $80 now. I do my own changes on my 3 and the filter, plug washer, and 4-1/2 quarts of Castrol run me about $35.
wae said:
Engage pedantic mode...
An IV, by its definition, is liquid. So liquid IV is stupidly redundant. And to make it even dumber, it isn't a liquid? It's a powder?
Words mean things, people. Quit that E36 M3.
I get it at least- the name sounds cool, but I suppose 'Powdered IV' or 'Drinkable IV' would have been more accurate (relatively speaking) but they don't have the same ring to them.
I'd heard that same product advertised and since they carry it prominently at CostCo looked at the packaging one trip there to see whether it was worth getting. Looked like it might be worthwhile until I got about a third of the way down the nurtition label...
I mean... I generally understand that 'electrolytes' is going to mean 'salt' (even if I weren't an engineer, I have seen Idiocracy...), but DAAAAMN! Almost a quarter of a day's recommended limit of Sodium (and that is, presumably, not for someone like me with mild hypertension...) in one bottle? Nope.
In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :
The small bottles of V8 are what shocked me. Little 8oz or whatever bottle, 800+mg of sodium.
Daaaaang
One of my kids just cut open their toe pretty well in the yard walking around wearing flip flops.
I have repeatedly asked both kids to wear actual shoes when walking around the yard.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
It's been foreeeeever since I last had a V8, but I do seem to remember them being pretty salty. I imagine the Liquid IV doesn't taste nearly as salty (owing to the 11g of added sugars, which makes the packet like 2/3 sugar) but still packs nearly as much Sodium.
volvoclearinghouse said:
stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:
stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:
My sister is expecting and will be replacing her forlorn 2011 Sonata with something a bit more family friendly. She has been texting me cars her and her husband are looking at. So far the list has included:
2020 Ford Edge ST
2020 Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring Reserve
2020 Alfa Romeo Stelvio
2021 Audi Q5 Quatro
They all have similar mileage and prices. She drove the Audi today and really liked it but they live in a small town in Kansas. Neither her or her husband are car people. They need reliability and serviceability. Which is the opposite of the Alfa and Audi lol.
Her husband, my BIL, is a great dude but makes horrible automotive decisions. To say I'm nervous is an understatement lol.
Aaaaaand guess what they purchased yesterday? Yep, the Audi. At least they purchased a decent aftermarket warranty. The nearest Audi dealer is 2.5 hours away. We'll see how this plays out. I sincerely hope it a great vehicle for them but I'll keep my "I told you so" in the chamber for when they are faced with either an expensive repair or multi-week wait for parts.
Living in a small town in Kansas, the correct answer for them would be something with a blue oval or a bowtie on the grille.
Or, if they're really baller, a Lincoln or Buick.
"Cheap, out-of-factory-warranty German car? How can I go wrong?"
See, you get it. That is what I was trying to imply to them but emotion won out.
And you are right; at least it wasn't the Alfa. I basically told them it would be better to just light $26k on fire than to buy it.
Just for E36 M3s and giggles, I looked up what a new headlight assembly would cost on the Q5. It was over $3,500 
. It also requires premium fuel. I'm sure it's nice but it just seems like a bad idea.
But hey, I tried ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Making CSRs juggle several chats at the same time is not making for a better world.
Rodan
UltraDork
5/20/24 5:56 p.m.
Almost $1k in batteries for vehicles in the last couple of months. What happened to batteries that last more than 3 years??
In reply to Rodan :
Battery quality seems to very much be a "you get what you pay for" thing. An eye opener is putting a battery tester (supplied by Interstate) on a brand new Costco battery (also supplied by Interstate). They always fail.
They also cost half as much as an Interstate battery from an Interstate dealer, but those will go six to eight years before they test as a failure.
Another fun learning experience is that if a vehicle was engineered for an AGM battery, you really need to replace it with an AGM battery. A flooded battery gets cooked, or not charged properly, or something, and they won't last long.
An Interstate AGM battery for, say, a Genesis sedan, might run $1000 installed. Oooooof
Seriously, Mozilla? No way to close a hijacked tab without interacting with it other than to uninstall the entire app?
This could totally be user error (I mean, apart from holding out hope that calculatorstupidnamesite.com would get me kg*m/s to Watts), but allowing an alert to block access to switching/closing tabs seems insane. I spent more time than was reasonable trying to find a better answer.
After changing oil in the pickup I backed over my Mac Tools trouble light and squished it. End of an era. I had that thing for over 20 years. It wasnt until I saw it smashed on the floor did I realize how much I liked it. That thing has been there for a LOT of projects and never let me down.
Jesse Ransom said:
Seriously, Mozilla? No way to close a hijacked tab without interacting with it other than to uninstall the entire app?
This could totally be user error (I mean, apart from holding out hope that calculatorstupidnamesite.com would get me kg*m/s to Watts), but allowing an alert to block access to switching/closing tabs seems insane. I spent more time than was reasonable trying to find a better answer.
Middle-click on the tab? Esc should also close any popups. Also if you crash Firefox it should allow you to select which tabs to restore.
mtn
MegaDork
5/20/24 11:34 p.m.
Not really a rant, just an observation. My driveway and yard are crawling. And crunchy.
Poor lighting, but there are about 30 cicadas in this picture.
