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

In reply to Ashyukun:

Wanna buy my tdi?

Took a new co worker over too a friends house too look at a dirt cheap 88 omni. Test drive went well and unlike most ohio cars of that age its not rusted apart. Hes now been asking my buddy questions about the car every day. Its getting annoying for everyone involved except this kid. Its a 200 dollar car that runs and drives, yes its not perfect!

Dusterbd13 wrote: In reply to Ashyukun: Wanna buy my tdi?

It looks like you're solidly too far away for that to be a reasonable option. I'm also ideally looking for something 4WD/AWD due to some plans SWMBO and I have in the works, though something FWD that would handle decently in the snow would be fine.

Berk you jury duty.

I reported to fulfill my civic responsibility promptly at 7:40 AM yesterday. There were 101 cases pending (average is ~90) and there was right around 200 jurors in que to possibly be assigned to cases.

We sat around all day watching the number of cases being reduced as settlements were made and by quitting time, the number of cases dropped to zero and we were all sent home.

I understand that typically around four cases go to trail (so that would require 48 jurors) and we started with a relatively large number of cases and extra jurors are required so the nut jobs can be weeded out…blah, blah, blah…maybe 100 jurors would be a good safe number and yet 200 people had to waste their entire day.

I know there are several attorneys on here…am I missing something or are jurors considered worthless garbage that you treat will all the consideration afforded a Harbor Freight anvil.

It appears the court system considers their time to be wildly, fantastically, astronomically more valuable than that of the jurors…no problem wasting 200 people’s entire day to ensure nothing ever has the slightest chance of getting pushed to the next day.

Which is it…are we H.F. grade material or am I missing something.

If I am so berking bored of eating - either home cooking or restaurant - why am I still so hungry and fat?!

Wife had day from hell. I'm on call. Kids wide open. And nieces truck that I helped her build was apparently berkeleyed with in her high school auto shop class and now is having electrical problems that they take no responsibility for.

And I'm supposed to leave for vacation tomorrow. Maybe not anymore....

In reply to Duke:

Stress? Boredom? Those are my biggest problems. I stopped for pizza on my way to lunch today.

In reply to Duke:

Avoid sugar.

RX Reven' wrote: Berk you jury duty. I reported to fulfill my civic responsibility promptly at 7:40 AM yesterday. There were 101 cases pending (average is ~90) and there was right around 200 jurors in que to possibly be assigned to cases. We sat around all day watching the number of cases being reduced as settlements were made and by quitting time, the number of cases dropped to zero and we were all sent home. I understand that typically around four cases go to trail (so that would require 48 jurors) and we started with a relatively large number of cases and extra jurors are required so the nut jobs can be weeded out…blah, blah, blah…maybe 100 jurors would be a good safe number and yet 200 people had to waste their entire day. I know there are several attorneys on here…am I missing something or are jurors considered worthless garbage that you treat will all the consideration afforded a Harbor Freight anvil. It appears the court system considers their time to be wildly, fantastically, astronomically more valuable than that of the jurors…no problem wasting 200 people’s entire day to ensure nothing ever has the slightest chance of getting pushed to the next day. Which is it…are we H.F. grade material or am I missing something.

I would like the answer to this too, but I suspect we both already know.

Mike wrote:

RX Reven' wrote: Berk you jury duty. I reported to fulfill my civic responsibility promptly at 7:40 AM yesterday. There were 101 cases pending (average is ~90) and there was right around 200 jurors in que to possibly be assigned to cases. We sat around all day watching the number of cases being reduced as settlements were made and by quitting time, the number of cases dropped to zero and we were all sent home. I understand that typically around four cases go to trail (so that would require 48 jurors) and we started with a relatively large number of cases and extra jurors are required so the nut jobs can be weeded out…blah, blah, blah…maybe 100 jurors would be a good safe number and yet 200 people had to waste their entire day. I know there are several attorneys on here…am I missing something or are jurors considered worthless garbage that you treat will all the consideration afforded a Harbor Freight anvil. It appears the court system considers their time to be wildly, fantastically, astronomically more valuable than that of the jurors…no problem wasting 200 people’s entire day to ensure nothing ever has the slightest chance of getting pushed to the next day. Which is it…are we H.F. grade material or am I missing something.

I would like the answer to this too, but I suspect we both already know.

At one point, some high level guy came into the room and made an appeal for Superior Court volunteers…he talked for about three minutes saying how vitally important it was, started a little automated PowerPoint slide deck show, walked out, and was never to be seen again. Um, there were 200 jurors in the room and he couldn’t even be bothered to stay with us through the show. Clearly, he thinks our time isn’t even worth one half of one percent of his time. Berk you and the horse you rode in on buddy.

I really hope somebody chimes in with something that changes my assessment of the situation as I want to do the right thing and help my community.

If not, there’s no way I’m ever going back…summons’s are going straight into the trash and if they’re sent certified mail, I’ll get a doctor’s note…the hell with this nonsense.

In reply to RX Reven':

If you were the one on trial, who would you want sitting in the jury seats? I would want someone who is smart enough to get out of jury duty but does it anyway.
I got my summons in the mail this week. My date is 2 days before Thanksgiving lol.

EastCoastMojo wrote: In reply to RX Reven': If you were the one on trial, who would you want sitting in the jury seats? I would want someone who is smart enough to get out of jury duty but does it anyway. I got my summons in the mail this week. My date is 2 days before Thanksgiving lol.

I completely appreciate that, that’s why I showed up.

However, I expect a win-win; high quality juries without flagrant waste.

We need to fire people, and fire people, and fire people until they Berking shape up and treat other people’s time and money as though it were their own.

Added later…

I’m a Process Engineer and wherever I go, I pay attention to how systems are set up and how well they’re performing. It never stops, if I’m at Disneyland for instance, I’m looking at how they provide services, move people around, etc.

I had all the time in the world yesterday so I asked the clerks a number of questions…when do attorneys typically start calling jurors for interviews?…”oh, usually after the first break at 10:00”…how many are called at a time?...”ten to fifteen”.

WTF, so there is no possible way that any more than 50 people could be of use before lunch and yet they made all 200 people show up at 8:00. Bottom line, they wasted almost an entire human year of productivity yesterday and although it appears it usually isn’t that bad, a generous estimate is that they average wasting a third of that…that’s the equivalent of perpetually taking 80 people out of commission to compensate for their inefficiency.

Plus, as you pointed out, they’re inducing selection bias as the smart ones are more likely to be disgusted by the waste, say Berk it and ditch them.

berkeleying rain.... enough already

In reply to RX Reven': After my experience with the court system "It's the LAW Mr. Allroad, and the LAW is fair." I have utter distain for the legal system as it stands.

Bring back trial by combat to make it interesting or figure out how to actually be effective ya useless berkeleys.

Guess what, hipster? When you work as hard as I do, then you can tell me where to park my ass.

This day can't end soon enough. Aside from all the things that generally happen on a Friday to cause service problems we started the day with a crew paving the street in front of the depot at 7:00. There is a bike tour of the city Sunday so they go around and fix the really bad streets at the last minute but you would hope someone had enough sense to not block a bus depot until the buses made it out for rush hour. It's kind of hard to maintain service when most of the buses can't even make it to the route. Five hours later we are still trying to get everyone back on schedule. At least I'm nice and damp from standing in a steady downpour all day.

just got my schedule for next week. starting with today (my Monday) till my next day off.. 9 days straight with 5 of them being at least 10 hours. This is all because one person is going on vacation from our crew...

This is so going to cost me in taxes. I am at the point where even one hour of OT costs me take home pay.. I shudder to think that 20+ hours of overtime are going to do

I have some serious first world problems today. I had a annoying couple days at work, don't have a lot of time to myself with kids and a wife. I play video games very rarely.

I was going to work on the car this morning, but it is ridiculously hot. So I decided I'll throw on the PlayStation and get some game on. Nope, same a-holes decide today is the day for some BS attack on a bunch of servers crippling many online services. At least I can read threads on here!

I'm all for unplugging every once and a while, or even most of the time, but I don't need help doing it.

Is it berkeley this E36 M3 o'clock yet?

mad_machine wrote: just got my schedule for next week. starting with today (my Monday) till my next day off.. 9 days straight with 5 of them being at least 10 hours. This is all because one person is going on vacation from our crew... This is so going to cost me in taxes. I am at the point where even one hour of OT costs me take home pay.. I shudder to think that 20+ hours of overtime are going to do

Uh... What? it sounds like you either need to work on your budget or change your withholding.

fasted58 wrote: berkeleying rain.... enough already

Send it our way. It hasn't rained here in weeks.

Pushrod riding mower engines get really hard to crank over when you haven't set the valves in like 5 years and the clearances have opened up to double what they should be, effectively disabling the compression release.

Took me a while to figure that one out, new battery load tests great, yet it cranks at like 7 volts, I ended up testing all the wiring and swapping the starter before I figured it out.

In reply to BrokenYugo:

So wait... lash opening... makes the compression release inoperative?

I am trying to figure that out and it's not working. But then the only compression releases I've worked with were Tecumseh sidevalve engines.

In reply to Knurled:

Compression release just cracks one valve open (IIRC some centrifugal deal turns it off when the cam starts spinning at running speeds), have a crack's worth of slop in the system and it won't open any. EDIT: Or at least not enough to make the starter not draw something like 200 amps while failing to crank it over, see image.

Foo Fighters. How the heck is this the band that inspires me to break down and cry when my life is rough? Seriously "Walk" and "Best of You", and I can't control it.