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

Helped a friend install an aftermarket cat back exhaust on his 2006 R53 Mini Cooper. It's from a well respected company and made in the UK. It looks good and sounds great but that's where my compliments end. It took two of us using pry bars to get it even close to lined up. We had to modify the factory exhaust hanger locations. The flange was welded 90 degrees off from the factory flange. We had to cut and reweld. We checked their website and they show the correct orientation so this one was built wrong somehow. The left and right pipes didn't quite match so each side required different hanger modifications. Overall just a crappy experience. I'm glad we were doing it on my hoist and we had the tools and skills to fix it.

What overzealous autocrat saw fit to lock the "Guy Rules" thread?  Sense of humor much?

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Agreed

1988RedT2 said:

What overzealous autocrat saw fit to lock the "Guy Rules" thread?  Sense of humor much?

I guess somebody doesn't have a sense of humor. 
 

I tried 🤪

(and some astounding E36 M3 is allowed to go on for interminable periods)

Further to the air conditioning conversation from a couple of pages back, or from another thread, ( I'm too tired to look it up).

Every few years, i have to go next door to the landlord at my shop and get the key for the upstairs band practice room, because there is water dripping form the bathroom ceiling.  The source of the issue is the condensate drain from the A/C evaporator for the upstairs suite.  The drain is to a small container with a little pump to send it down the drain.  The drain plugs witrh dirt and cobwebs and such, and eventually overflows onto the floor.

My minor rant has nothing to do with the leak, because E36 M3 happens, and its not my building.  Easy to fix,

My problem is that people should be taught how thermostats work.  We went in, and it was cold, with nobody there.  Here is the lesson, in case anybody on this thread is also a moron:  It does not cool the room faster if you set the thermostat to 57 degrees.  It also doesn't cool the room faster if you leave the window open to the 80 degree air outside.  And, if there is no one in the room for days on end, save the berkeleying world by moving the thermostat up, and turning the fan from continuous to cycling.

Science, kids.  Learn how E36 M3 works.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

We have this yearly conversation;

leaving a ceiling fan on and not being in the room does not make the room cooler and cooler.  In theory the electric motor is generating heat in the room.  

Going into the room and turning on the ceiling fan will give you instant results. No need to run it all day when you are 3 rooms away.

tb said:

I am ok, but my heart is still racing! 

 

Same happened to me a decade back. My two post lift is the best money I have ever spent on a tool. 

13 since 5am Monday, damn do I wish I was talking about hours of sleep instead, but that number is way lower. 

According to my back, I have apparently failed at sleeping properly.

I've been looking for a lotus seven for a while, its on the list of cars I want to experience. A great deal popped up and my uncle found it first, $2000 for a 62 super seven, disassembled but complete. The rant is that I'm about 90% sure its just going to go into his storage unit for a few years, because he's already got a MG TD hes in the middle restoring taking up his garage. I've offered a generous amount over what he paid for it but he's declined. oh well

Found an online Toyota parts supplier. Hey, alright,  only $50 for the plastic brackets I need. $89 for shipping. $89 for what amounts to a size of package that's half of a traditional show box. I know shipping is insane lately, but $89? berkeley you and your low price huckster bait and switch bullE36 M3.

200 miles, one-way, to drop my wife off at the airport last night for a redeye.  Of course, the highway is closed on the return leg, adding an hour to the already long trip.

1988RedT2 said:

What overzealous autocrat saw fit to lock the "Guy Rules" thread?  Sense of humor much?

If it hadnt been locked by the time I saw it, I would have done so.

You know, considering it broke most of Marjorie's rules of etiquette and was just in poor taste.

Personally, I enjoy when ladies show up to motorsports events and feel welcome.  That thread did not advance that ideal.

Now.  What productive discussion would you all like to have about this topic?

Appleseed said:

Found an online Toyota parts supplier. Hey, alright,  only $50 for the plastic brackets I need. $89 for shipping. $89 for what amounts to a size of package that's half of a traditional show box. I know shipping is insane lately, but $89? berkeley you and your low price huckster bait and switch bullE36 M3.

I can help! Please shoot me a PM. I used to sell Toyota parts for a living (still have contacts there and still work near enough to walk in) and we didn't play those games.

In reply to SV reX :

It's easy to tell the people that weren't around when fax machine jokes like that were a common means of entertainment. 

To further the thermostat discussion....

Come into the office today, there's several women standing around and complaining about how cold it is in the office.  I walk over to the thermostat, and it's set at 69 degrees.  I press the up button 5 times, set it to 74.  Problem solved.  

There is no policy about not touching the thermostat, and the thermostat is in the public area.  Why was this hard?  

Also, with the newer inverter A/C units, they in fact sometimes do cool harder with a higher temperature differential.  We have an inverter window unit in the kitchen at home (which is great, BTW, nearly silent, and cools the whole bottom floor) and the higher the temperature differential between ambient and its set point, the harder it chugs.  

We also keep the ceiling fan on in the living room most of the time, to circulate said conditioned air around the ground floor.  

I'm attempting to register for care at any one of the 3 local VA facilities in my area. Not a single one could be bothered to answer the berkeleying phone on the enrollment line. Fine, I'll check the main VA.gov website so ensure I have the correct number.

And people wonder how veterans die waiting for care.

In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :

I had to wait about a year for a vasectomy but other than that I've had a great time with the VA. Same thing with my stepdad. 

In reply to peanutpckrupper :

To be fair, I've actually received better care from the VA than when I was on active duty. I know that's a low bar to clear but I really can't complain about the quality of care I have received.

I think the website was down for about an hour and I finally got through to the correct people. I was able to walk in to my local CBOC (community based outpatient care) facility and get scheduled for an appointment.

I don't know whether this counts as a minor rant or as minor win...

Over the weekend The Dancer and I watched one of our favorite movies that we bought on a streaming service shortly after it came out and as we were talking about it I thought to check if the streaming purchase had any extras like deleted scenes, commentary tracks, etc- and found that it didn't. So I checked and found that the BluRay of it was pretty cheap and ordered it without telling The Dancer about it, figuring that it would make a good Christmas gift for her. The package arrived today- and unfortunately I wasn't the one who got the mail after it arrived and Amazon had shipped it in a padded envelope such that it was pretty obvious that it was a DVD/BRD case. When she asked me what it was I told her it was a surprise- and after thinking about it for a short bit she said, "It's the DVD of MOVIE, isn't it?" 

So, the minor rant is that my surprise got ruined (she doesn't think I would have been able to wait until Christmas to give it to her, but that's because I know there's no way she could have waited that long to give it to me) and the minor win is that my wife clearly knows me very well to be able to figure out what it was with essentially no clues other than it being a DVD case in the package.

Well Berk. I wasn't planning on looking for a new job but I guess I'm going to be looking regardless now. Thanks for the two days heads up berkeleyers it's not like I have a one year old and a pregnant diabetic wife who depend on me for health insurance and a roof over their heads. 

In reply to RacetruckRon :

Oooof, that sucks. What field are you looking in?

In reply to Duke :

Engineering. I'm a BSME with a background in manufacturing processes and consumer product design. I have a lot of practical experience in for my age bracket. Not worried about finding a job just frustrated, this was not on my 2024 bingo card.

kroger replaced most of its checkouts with self-checkout, which i normally wouldn't mind but their self-checkouts have got to be the worst in the business. They're always locking up and accusing me of stealing or something and I have to get an employee to come unlock it. I should get a discount for using this and doing a cashiers job

regexes do exactly what you tell them to do.  Even if you didn't really mean it that way.