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

In reply to Datsun310Guy:

It's always easy to second guess. We bought counting on two incomes and then my wife got sick. Lots of corners were cut.

It's next to impossible for me to get a Saturday off. My father has been talking about wanting to go to a few races over the summer so I managed to take today off. It's pouring rain and will continue all night. They decided to come up here instead to watch the nascar race and have dinner. He just called to say he's not coming, he took their dog to the vet and they are doing a couple tests and may need to operate. Hopefully it's not too serious but being an 18 year old yorkie I'm not too optimistic.

Wall-e wrote: It's next to impossible for me to get a Saturday off. My father has been talking about wanting to go to a few races over the summer so I managed to take today off. It's pouring rain and will continue all night. They decided to come up here instead to watch the nascar race and have dinner. He just called to say he's not coming, he took their dog to the vet and they are doing a couple tests and may need to operate. Hopefully it's not too serious but being an 18 year old yorkie I'm not too optimistic.

I hope everything goes alright. I know that if my parents get to that decision, they'll have to call my brothers and I and tell us to get to the vet quick to say goodbye--Ralph wouldn't make it through the recovery of an operation.

I get it, you want to keep up the illusion that this is "amish made" furniture. It's not, for various quality related reasons, but you could be nice enough to translate the hand written directions to say... type written. I'm pretty sure a printing press falls into technology true Amish people are allowed to have, not to mention the Mennonites you bought this from who have cellphones and vehicles.

When the handwriting on the instructions, that appear to be a photocopy of a photocopy fall somewhere between "english as a third language" students and "foreign doctor", you can update them a little bit and not break the illusion. I can read cursive, I can't read squiggly blurs. It could be written in Farci or Arabic for all I can tell by the squiggles and dots.

Luckily, it's not that difficult to stare at the pieces and figure out where they go, but since you're only charging $25 to put it together, MAKE SOME BETTER DIRECTIONS for those of us who can't transport it put together.

At least all I have leftover are 3 deck screws and a bunch of washers. No idea where the deck screws go, everything went together with carriage and lag bolts.

Radiator replaced

Ball joints on. Good enough......

Except apparently the ball joints also affect toe. It's now in 10 degrees and I autocross in the morning.

Wife was doing a dog transport for her foster thing she is a member off said she would bring home primanti brothers since we don't have one near us but she would be near one. Win. Traffic was horrible so she took a different route home. No primanti brothers. God damnit.

In reply to KyAllroad:

Got a tape measure, some string and a set of jack stands?

If so, you can fix the alignment yourself with some effort.

In reply to Stefan (Not Bruce): I do, and I did. It's probably not perfect but it'll do for now (won't eat a set of tires in a mile). It's been a 7 hour day working on a car to autocross with tomorrow.

Wilmington National Tour is coming in two weeks and I really wanted to get her together so it wasn't entirely embarrassing against real CSP cars.

New tires got mounted today as well. This is a really stupid hobby for the economically challenged!!!

Chip sealed roads, i hate driving my car in gravel/dirt. Even worse when the tires are really hot and sticky like tonight.

In reply to mtn:

Looks to be about $1000 in constipation. She's gotten an enima and an IV and should be home tonight. My sister's family lives with my parents and delayed leaving on a trip to see their inlaws because her three year old wants to make sure Dusty gets home from the doctor ok.

Something is wrong with my charging setup, and through rotating parts, I'm still not entirely sure what. Strong lean to my phone damaging micro USB cords. Sick of waking up to find that my phone has been charging all night, bringing my phone charge from 20% to 8%.

RE: Amish Furniture. I never understood how this could be better than furniture made with precision machinery holding tight and consistent tolerances. Certainly we've all learned how much better a hammer, chisel, and a handsaw is versus a table saw, router, or even a cnc lathe.

Three hours of sleep. Get back up just after sunrise so I can mow before it gets too hot. Mower battery is dead from where one of the girlscouts was messing with it.

Go to do string trimming instead, run out of string.

berkeley yard work, I'll get the new daily finished up. My buffing pad is shot, and parts store doesn't open till 9.

Why did I even get up?

ncjay wrote: RE: Amish Furniture. I never understood how this could be better than furniture made with precision machinery holding tight and consistent tolerances. Certainly we've all learned how much better a hammer, chisel, and a handsaw is versus a table saw, router, or even a cnc lathe.

you have obviously never watched a true furniture or cabinet maker working. My neighbor when I lived in Pa had escaped from East Germany, he was a cabinet maker and worked in 64ths of an inch when he fitted stuff together. It was amazing to watch that man shave wood with a chisel

We went through the furniture selection process recently and ended up with "Amish" furniture. For me it wasn't the idea of lone craftsmen toiling away with outdated tools but the materials selection. The materials of bulk machine produced furniture are so bad nowadays. You can easily spend $5k on a small bedroom set and still find MDF or plywood in drawer boxes and the like. Yes those are fine materials when you're talking a $300 dresser from Ikea but not a $5k+ "heirloom" set.

Side rant: what the hell is with furniture stores? When shopping we looked at world market. Their stuff is mixed but mostly mid-grade and I know it can be decent based on my brothers furniture. But the store displays are all without exception put together wrong so they're crooked; drawers and doors don't operate correctly, etc. I thought you were trying to sell me these things. Why would I buy them if the drawers hit and the doors scrape and the whole cabinet box rocks when I push on it?

The Amish furniture makers by our family farm in Southern Ohio used power tools and a diesel generator to crank out goods. My uncle used to sell them fuel in milk jugs.

dropstep wrote: Chip sealed roads, i hate driving my car in gravel/dirt. Even worse when the tires are really hot and sticky like tonight.

Ugh, they just did that this week on one of the back roads I travel nearly every day. I honestly cannot fathom what purpose was served. The road is beat to hell and badly needs to be repaved, all the tar and chips have done is make it much harder to spot the potholes and dodge them.

Furious_E wrote:

dropstep wrote: Chip sealed roads, i hate driving my car in gravel/dirt. Even worse when the tires are really hot and sticky like tonight.

Ugh, they just did that this week on one of the back roads I travel nearly every day. I honestly cannot fathom what purpose was served. The road is beat to hell and badly needs to be repaved, all the tar and chips have done is make it much harder to spot the potholes and dodge them.

They just did this locally to a perfectly good road that was just repaved last year. There was nothing wrong with it. So, basically, they took a nice, grippy surface and glued dirt to it. The only purpose it serves is to make leaning a motorcycle on a hot day a dodgy test of ones' sphincter aperture speed.

They tend to chipseal the roads full of blackmarks up here. Im part of the problem but it doesnt make it any less annoying. Hell just last week they did it too spots of us127 in town.

Movers bailed 18 hours before move was supposed to start. Unable to find new movers I could afford.

Had to go at it on my own while wife was at work trying to get an 11 & 8 year old to help me.

Dropped crawfish fish pot denting it and ruining the finish.

Broke beer stein from where I was born in Germany and the year I was born.

Cast iron fell off of rack breaking my toe.

Hasn't moved a single piece of furniture at this point.

Friend of wife came by and helped. Able to move furniture. Still needed to finish moving.

Trying to avoid second day on truck.

In process of moving due to broke toe caused the associated knee to start giving out.

This combination caused a very off gate and caused a blister on my instep of the same foot.

Got moved, wife has taken pity and put me on kiddo detail while she cleans old place.

I need a berkeleying Rum and Coke. Oh yeah that got broke to.

berkeley.

At least we are moved into a super nice place that is cheaper than where we moved out of and it is in the same town we were in.

Sometimes you have to focus on the positive.

dculberson wrote: Yes those are fine materials when you're talking a $300 dresser from Ikea

My $250 dresser from Ikea is all solid wood, except for the backing. Ikea makes some quality stuff if you know what you're looking for.

Oops, I just realized that that really wasn't a rant.

Okay, my rant for the day is that people think "Ikea" is synonymous with "crap" and it isn't... always.

EvanR wrote:

dculberson wrote: Yes those are fine materials when you're talking a $300 dresser from Ikea

My $250 dresser from Ikea is all solid wood, except for the backing. Ikea makes some quality stuff if you know what you're looking for. Oops, I just realized that that really wasn't a rant. Okay, my rant for the day is that people think "Ikea" is synonymous with "crap" and it isn't... always.

Went to Ikea today. What a clusterpuck. Just being in that store made my blood pressure go up.

Friday my sister has to leave.. my 15yo niece is out of her medication on that day. I cannot wait. Living with a bipolar person was bad enough when she was young, but now with two children, it is a real challenge to somebody who prefers a nice laid back and quiet lifestyle.

The fun starts at 5am when she and the youngest (at 3) get up.. Last night I worked till 2am and did not get home till almost 3.. and at 5 they are up, the teevee is on, she's making coffee, and the day has begun.

After they leave, I think I am going to take a couple of days off from work and just catch up on my sleep

Last full day of work (may be last, am on the wall about whether to work a half day from home tomorrow or say Berk It and just take the whole day off...) before SWMBO and I fly out to Europe for 2 weeks for a bucket-list cruise. Only been here a bit over an hour and the day is already dragging. Would be dragging worse if I didn't have my Ortho follow-up appointment mid-afternoon to go to- which is another point of stress since it will determine whether I have to drag the walking boot with us or if they clear me to not need it any more.

Tried to pick up donuts on the way in for my co-workers (and to get the kind that SWMBO loves for breakfast tomorrow morning)- but pulled up to the bakery and they have a sign on the front door that they're closed today and tomorrow for kitchen upgrades. -_-

Got SWMBO's new (second try...) phone in yesterday and got her started setting it up. So far so good- at least it's not acting possessed and doing crap on its own. She's still annoyed at having to transfer over her contacts manually- but it was her call to do so vs. transferring everything from her Android phone and then going through and deleting everything that she didn't want (last time it upgraded it somehow pulled in hundreds of contacts that she didn't want/need).

Finally- SWMBO and I are feuding, to an extent, about something particularly silly. Last weekend since she actually had a Saturday free we went to the Farmer's Market and ended up picking up a basil plant- we've been eating a lot of Caprese salads and figured it would be nice to have truly fresh basil to put on them. And the plant was about what we pay for a package of leaves at the store, so if we can keep it alive it will be a nice savings too. The feud though is that I both because I like the way it sounds and, admittedly (and I've said as much), because it somewhat annoys SWMBO, like to pronounce 'basil' the British way- with the 'a' sounding like the one in 'bad' vs the typical American pronunciation where it sounds like the 'a' in 'way'. She has decided that she's had enough of this, and until I start pronouncing it the American way, she's going to start mis-pronouncing my name using a long 'o' instead of the short(?) 'o' that Robert usually has. It's a profoundly silly feud, but one that could be more than a bit annoying with going on the cruise if she as she has threatened introduces me to people pronouncing it wrong.

Why don't I just give in and pronounce it the other way? Several reasons- one, I'm a bit stubborn (as is she). Two, it is fun to tweak her a bit about things. And three- I don't want to set a precedent by caving on this, because I know there are several other things I pronounce differently than the 'norm' that she'd potentially move on to trying to change using the same approach.

EvanR wrote: My $250 dresser from Ikea is all solid wood, except for the backing. Ikea makes some quality stuff if you know what you're looking for. Oops, I just realized that that really wasn't a rant. Okay, my rant for the day is that people think "Ikea" is synonymous with "crap" and it isn't... always.

I have Ikea furniture too, and am very familiar with their stuff. It is not synonymous with "crap" but it's also not high grade. "Solid wood" doesn't mean much when you're talking Aspen and Pine.