I'm beyond proud of Little Monohue. He's barely five and he's been reading for half of his life. He's clever, funny, creative, thoughtful, and empathetic. Handsome, even.
But.
But would you please. Just. Stop. Talking.
Put down the Calvin and Hobbes anthology and just finish the got-dang chicken nuggets. Before I die of old age, ideally.
My dad had 6 kids like the Brady Bunch - 3 girls and I have one.
Now I know why he walked to a dudes truck late one evening in his boxer shorts and pulled my oldest sister out.
A customer who happens to be a mechanical engineer (like a vegan, he let me know right away) dropped his quad off for repair a couple days ago.
He had the stator cover off and now he can't get it to stop leaking oil.
He also adjusted the valves and now it's making a tapping noise.
As of 9:00am today, I've received three texts from him about what he thinks might be causing the tapping sound. Everything from piston slap to an ignition module.
I don't have the heart to tell him that I'm going to start by checking the valve lash.
In reply to DarkMonohue :
Remember the part in Jedi where Yoda gets so tired of answering Luke's questions that he just dies?
In reply to ShawnG :
I would tell them immediately.
In reply to Appleseed :
I like handing things back, working perfectly and explaining what I found.
wae said:Gee, sir, I'm sorry that I inconvenienced you by asking relevant questions about the thing for which YOU put out an advertisement.
There are sellers who subscribe to a school of thought that goes something like this: "If they're serious about it, they'll come and look for themselves."
It doesn't matter if you're hours away- if you're serious, you'll come and look at it. Don't waste their time. They don't care that they might get more serious buyers actually showing up if the buyer has all of the information they need.
In the past, when somebody was posting their "1968 Cougar: red/red, lux inter, pwr str, dsk brk, v8" in the classifieds or want ad digest, you know they spent money to put it there and were serious about getting rid of it.
As previously stated, there are also buyers who ask hundreds of questions about everything, even if they're written in the ad. They could live *next door* and they won't show up until they have all of the information they want.
Selling or buying anything is a nightmare these days. I listed my boat for sale a few days ago. I'm dreading the whole process.
Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:wae said:Gee, sir, I'm sorry that I inconvenienced you by asking relevant questions about the thing for which YOU put out an advertisement.
There are sellers who subscribe to a school of thought that goes something like this: "If they're serious about it, they'll come and look for themselves."
I decided that my strategy was to first arrange a time to come and look at it. Once that was on the books as it were, I'd then go back to my questions and send them one at a time and see if I could get any answers. So I messaged him thanking him for the video and asking if we could arrange to come up some evening next week. That was 14 hours ago. No response, despite having read it. I'm not too torn up about this, honestly. It's a little too far away to go just to see what one looks like and this one has some appearance issues for sure. Nothing that I couldn't fix, but he's about $2,500 over the jd power "average" value. To get to "average" on the appearance would probably take about $4k and if the tires are aged out, that's another $1k in value that I'd have to figure in if we assume that an average coach would have tires halfway through their lifespan. So if everything else on the coach was 100% perfect, I'd be asking him to take a $7,500 haircut on his asking price before I'd consider it.
The other thing that really surprised me was that as he did his walkaround video, he would open some of the outside compartments and instead of gently lowering them, he'd just let go and let them slam shut. To me, that's a sign of someone who doesn't care about their things and doesn't have the kind of mechanical empathy that a big ole house-box-on-wheels really needs.
Rant 1: I dropped my wife off at the Hospital at 6 am this morning. This was her second trip there this week.
Rant 2: I am expecting to need to go pick her up in about an hour and I just discovered my neighbor is having his roof replace and the roofers have scattered depris and nails all over my driveway. Is it unreasonable to expect some more care in not covering a neighboring driveway with nails? I am now trying to simmer down a a bit before I talk to them about it.
You are going to fine me $36 for parking in your parking garage every time you call me to repair a door at your building? Did I hear that correctly?
Did your company think this all the way through before they made this decision? Have you heard of cause and effect? How do you think that's going to work out for you in the long run?
Let me lay it out for you in the simplest terms.
You are going to hand my guys a $36 parking ticket on the day of the service call. Keep in mind that this is before I invoice this particular service visit.
When I invoice that call, I'm going to double that amount and invoice your company $72. Hell, just for E36 M3s and giggles, I'll triple it just because I really like smart people. So I'll invoice you $108 on every service call I do.
Then, just because working with idiots is so tedious, I'm going to go ahead and raise your hourly rate another $10/hr just for having to deal with stupid E36 M3 like this.
So, what it boils down to, is you charge me $36, and that $36 is going to cost you $128 per call.
Because berkeley you. Did you get your MBA out of the Cracker Jack box?
In reply to Toyman! :
I'm totally agree - add a line on the invoice and see if accounting calls you out on it.
PGT Fee - $108.00 (parking garage ticket)
I have just under a year to figure out how in the hell I'm going to afford car insurance when my oldest son turns 16. My friends are saying their insurance DOUBLED adding their teens. I'm already paying just over $2k a year for our two cars, so I'm guessing at least $4.5k a year. That a damn car payment PER MONTH just for insurance.
I know in the dark ages when my brother and I turned 16 our Dad's buggy insurance went up, but it sure as hell didn't double.
We got our 16 year old daughter a beater Honda Civic, liability only, paid cash. State Farm had us as 3 cars, 3 drivers so she was assigned to the Civic.
Maybe $100/month to add her?
In reply to slefain :
i'm not 16, and I don't know what your son will be driving, or what your friend's kids are driving, but ive always been astounded by how much more expensive insurance is on a newer, financed vehicle. An older cash car may lower that premium quite a bit
Class Dojo really sucks, I miss Remind. I love how every grade uses a different app to talk to parents about what's going on in school.
In reply to slefain :
I'd recommend talking to your agent. I heard the horror stories but it wasn't really nearly as bad as people said if you look at it on a per vehicle basis.
Adding the third vehicle with my son as the driver was more like 1.0 - 1.5x the per vehicle cost of the other cars already on the policy.
Some companies also have discount for good grades and usual discounts for drivers ed and street survival or skid school.
I ordered the mini clutch and flywheel from Sachs performance in Germany and the shipping was approx $85. That was great, and it's due to arrive Monday.
Today I get an email from UPS saying I owe them $42 upon delivery for additional fees (customs and broker fees). Not catastrophic, but irritating when already spending $1200 on the parts and original shipping cost.
In reply to No Time :
Each company may be different, but for mine, the driving school discount was something in the range of double digit dollars per year. A good student discount was significant, but driving school was completely worthless.
In reply to slefain :
Depending on where you live and what you drive, it's bad, but not that bad.
Having a beater will help. We insured our kids as primary drivers on our 10-year-old minivan.
Good grades are a plus, and a 3-hour defensive driving course costs $30 and is good for 10% off your liability premium - 15% if you take refreshers every 3 years.
No Time said:I ordered the mini clutch and flywheel from Sachs performance in Germany and the shipping was approx $85. That was great, and it's due to arrive Monday.
Today I get an email from UPS saying I owe them $42 upon delivery for additional fees (customs and broker fees). Not catastrophic, but irritating when already spending $1200 on the parts and original shipping cost.
Welcome to buying stuff in Canada.
Brokerage. Ick. At least they told you, instead of mailing you a bill two weeks after the parts are installed, the bill is paid, and the car is gone.
Toyman! said:You are going to fine me $36 for parking in your parking garage every time you call me to repair a door at your building? Did I hear that correctly?
Did your company think this all the way through before they made this decision? Have you heard of cause and effect? How do you think that's going to work out for you in the long run?
Let me lay it out for you in the simplest terms.
You are going to hand my guys a $36 parking ticket on the day of the service call. Keep in mind that this is before I invoice this particular service visit.
When I invoice that call, I'm going to double that amount and invoice your company $72. Hell, just for E36 M3s and giggles, I'll triple it just because I really like smart people. So I'll invoice you $108 on every service call I do.
Then, just because working with idiots is so tedious, I'm going to go ahead and raise your hourly rate another $10/hr just for having to deal with stupid E36 M3 like this.
So, what it boils down to, is you charge me $36, and that $36 is going to cost you $128 per call.
Because berkeley you. Did you get your MBA out of the Cracker Jack box?
The shiny happy person fee is what I call it lol
I usually just don't work for those types of people but years ago when my dad was still working with us we had a repeat client that didn't want to pay $300 for a pump so we bucketed 2 yards for a block wall, cost him 3 times that and he tried to just pay us the $300 that a pump would cost.
Every job after that included a $300 Idiot Tax on the invoice and he repaid it about a dozen times.
Stupid should hurt
In reply to slefain :
My parents solution their insurance rates goinging up by adding me to the policy... was to make me pay the difference.
And I was happy to do so. The alternative, getting insurance on my own, was totally unaffordable.
I got told by a new coworker that they don't feel I'm working up to my potential. No kidding. I haven't been working up to my potential since the third grade, I've got stacks of report cards saying it. If I had the slightest ability to straighten out my train wreck I would, but clearly I can't. Feel free to continue making comments but don't expect them to be taken seriously.
I had to turn in the rental car today. Except that the reservation was for 8 days and not 5 like I was told from my insurance company. So I called the claims department to get another reservation. After 3 hours and no reservation email, I called them back. The rep got me another reservation in about 3 minutes. Now I'm sitting here at the only car rental place in town (Enterprise) and they only have 2 employees and there is like 30 people waiting.
What a giant waste of my time and money. The PDR shop hasn't even started work yet because the claim appraiser just show up yesterday, almost 3 months to the day after I submitted my claim. They won't start work until the appraisal gets processed. Thanks for wasting my time you berkeleys. I'm dropping them the second my truck gets repaired. I'm done with these idiots.
I've been working 4, 10 hours days. 0600-1600, Friday thru Monday. Today I showed up at work at 0550 and was the only car in the parking lot. There are 3 other people working the same shift but nobody was in the building.
It's now 0658 and I'm still the only soul here. I feel like I missed something; like showing up to school on a Saturday.
I texted my shift lead and he didn't answer.
Very weird 🤷🏼♂️
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