Just because you know what a wrench is doesn't mean you should be using one for a living. Just spent the afternoon and into the early evening fixing what a supposedly professional that owns his own shop screwed up. SWMBO's minister brought his car by for me to look at, complaining about brakes and has new brakes in hand. He's not someone you want handling tools so I did it. Checked the front brakes, everything as it should be and working. Move to the rear, first hint something wasn't right was the amount of torque it took to break the lugnuts free. And one was still tight after few turns with a cheater bar. That is until it got very loose and on the ground. Looks like gonna have to replace a stud. The rear rotors looked like it hasn't had brake pressure applied in a long time, rusty. And the pads were rusted in place. Ah, I see the issue. Had to pry out the old pads which where barely worn. Finish taking apart the one with the broken stud, make a run for a new stud and lugnut and install. Good thing this car has rear drum parking brake with the rear disks. Had to pry out the old pads. When I went to reinstall things I noticed that in order to get the brake pads in after cleaning them up since they were like new, they wouldn't fit in the slots. Took the new pads and hardware and had the same issue. Ah ha! I see what the last guy did. He just forced the pads in and bent the hardware to fit. The pads wouldn't slide in the slot, just wedged in. Checked the calipers and they worked like they should, just couldn't overcome the wedged in pads that couldn't move. A minute or so on the bench grinder to do all 4 new pads and they fit and slide like they are supposed too. Reassembled the rest and now the rear brakes help stop the car and don't make any grinding noise. Took longer than it should but fixing someone else's screw-ups usually take 3-times longer than a regular task.
Slight back story, SWMBO is Korean and attends a Korean Baptist Church. The Korean Minister's English is very bad and won't learn anymore than he has to. His Korean wife speaks perfect English although a bit gullible which I have fun with sometimes. That means most of his business goes to Koreans. Apparently there is a Korean man that runs an auto repair shop and he did the brakes on this car last. Told the Minister don't have him do anymore work on your cars and went over the over-torqued lugnuts and the non-functional rear brakes that was wedged together. I've had to fit disk brake pads before but never had to grind as much as I had to on these and the pro should know better and fit them too. It really wasn't much more than about 1/32 off each end that fits in the slot though. He's been driving around with only front brakes and didn't know it for months.
Crazy neighbor is being extra crazy again. So I have decorated a old water heater that she was convinced that I was storing gasoline in, that was stored behind my house into "art". She will now look at this for the next year or more as I decorate it with each passing holiday.
My giant attack cats, my plants that cause illness and my love of roundup is now gone in here mind. She is very very focused on that water heater. So I got Christmas lights for it at Home Depot last night so she can see it easier when she glares at our house.
I have not gone full crazy and put trick racing fuel stickers on it but I am getting close.
In reply to wearymicrobe :
Do the lights have that seizure invoking blink to them? If so well done sir!
Will see if I can set that up. Maybe just Morse code for “suck it tribek” or something similar
I am am going to start building a VR race rig in the garage soon as I never have time in the weekends to get out for real. So she is going to be seeing me a lot. Putting a couch out there as well and a few other things so friends can stop by and help with cars or just talk. Looking for an old fridge to restore for beer as well.
In reply to wearymicrobe :
Have you thought of starting your own missile program?
wearymicrobe said:
Crazy neighbor is being extra crazy again. So I have decorated a old water heater that she was convinced that I was storing gasoline in, that was stored behind my house into "art". She will now look at this for the next year or more as I decorate it with each passing holiday.
My giant attack cats, my plants that cause illness and my love of roundup is now gone in here mind. She is very very focused on that water heater. So I got Christmas lights for it at Home Depot last night so she can see it easier when she glares at our house.
I have not gone full crazy and put trick racing fuel stickers on it but I am getting close.
I have literally crazy neighbors, the house next to me is a halfway house for adult males you cannot live on their own, but can live with minimal supervision. They do not cause anybody any issues and generally keep to themselves. The neighbor on the other side is an older woman who is a lot like your neighbor there. I can't even go outside without being waylaid by her into a half hour or fortyfive minute conversation about something I am working on.
Radiation symbols fashioned into ornaments will do well to calm her fears.
Or make them worse.
In reply to wearymicrobe :
Have you considered festive sparklers taped to said Dastardly Hot Water Gas Bomb?
Antihero said:
In reply to wearymicrobe :
Have you considered festive sparklers taped to said Dastardly Hot Water Gas Bomb?
In the people republic of California even sparklers are banned I think. I love the radiation sticker idea I have tons of those from work.
In reply to wearymicrobe :
You should start a build thread. I'll bet together we all could come up with ideas that would make heads pop.
In reply to mad_machine :
I've tried, and will continue to harass my boss about it. They're wanting me to send the laptop in for them to update it to Windows 10, and when they asked whether I still needed all the software on it I complained about it not being the right class for what I do and asked them to upgrade it instead of just installing a new OS that will (almost certainly) make it even slower. I don't have a lot of confidence that it will get anywhere since they said that they don't usually do hardware upgrades when updating OS's like this, but there's always a chance.
Is it wrong that I'm almost happy to be back at work after the holiday weekend, where I know things will generally be fairly quiet and the problems are ones that can actually be solved?
The main drama over the holiday involved my younger brother. He's 28 years old, has lived with our parents for the about half of the 8 years or so since he almost flunked out of college because of not going to class (only reason he didn't actually flunk out was my parents pulled him out first) with the other half spent living and working at a summer camp working as a wrangler and caring for the horses over the winter, has absolutely zero ambition to do anything except play Pokemon or other video games and read fanfiction, and when it comes to social skills and graces makes me look like... OK, I don't have a good example here, but he patently sucks at pretty much anything involving interacting with people.
The Dancer is completely convinced that he has at least a mild level of autism, possibly Asperger's- and with her non-profit working with hundreds of children with autism, I'm not wholly inclined to disagree with her. The problem is that my parents are either unaware of this or just don't want to accept it or deal with it- at least part of the potential issue being my family's religious background that tends to eschew medical/phsychological diagnoses/treatment. This massively frustrates the Dancer because as she sees it had he been properly diagnosed he'd be getting the help and assistance that might allow him to be a much better functioning part of society. However she doesn't consider it as 'her place' to be really pushing this issue- but DOES think that I should be and gets frustrated with me when I don't push the issue with my parents... which I don't do because I know them and have a pretty good idea of just how that would go, and it wouldn't be good for anyone involved. It's almost certainly going to come to a head in the next few months though as with my Mom retiring at the end of the year my parents won't have the extra income to be able to support him and have given him the ultimatum that he will have a job and be paying at least some of his own bills after she retires.
As a result of this, the 4 days that my family was here were much more stressful than they should have been. And then once they were gone, she freaked out a bit that she'd done almost nothing work-related for the duration of their stay and dove back into that- meaning we have essentially zero time over the last week to do anything remotely relaxing on our own... further exacerbated by the whole computer situation as her main computer as essentially locked up last night and we got into a fight about getting the new computer switched in (apparently I missed a window I didn't know I had over the holidays to do so- because her being frustrated with learning the new OS on top of the family frustration would have been ever so delightful...).
About the only bright point over the holidays was that when we went by to show my family the cabin they actually had put most of the roofing wood on it, the most progress in a while. Unfortunately though they were not out working that day as we had expected, and the weather this week is likely such that they'll probably get next to nothing done on it.
Topping things off, the last few times I've been at the doctor's office when they've taken my blood pressure it's been tipping over into hypertension/high blood pressure range (141/89), so that's something new and fun I'll likely have to deal with too... good thing stress doesn't make that worse! -_-
This afternoon the 3 VMs that are most critical to our operations went down. Found out it's not just our stuff, but pretty widespread throughout the campus. Now most of them are back up, but my 3 are still down. Looks like I'm hanging out till we see them come back online...
So the water crisis has now reached day 4 in the Furious House, and if there is one thing to be learned from this experience it is that there is no greater luxury than being able to E36 M3 in one's own commode whenever one pleases.
I finally spoke to the well guys today, and of course half the shop is off deer hunting (1st day of rifle season here, which is a defacto state holiday) and they have another half dozen 'no water'calls from over the holiday weekend. So no luck getting them out here today, but first thing tomorrow, with a mini excavator in tow. See, since Friday I have figured out the well cap is definitely buried, and following the pipe out of the basement there is really only one general direction it can lead due to the location of the septic field. Unfortunately, that places it under either a concrete slab, a patio, a shed, the driveway, or (shudders) the garage.
SWMBO was able to further narrow that down today with the help of our neighbor Dick. Dick had actually owned our house at one point in time many years ago prior to subdividing the original farmstead and building a house and commercial greenhouse on one of the adjoining plots, so he's full of interesting insights on the property. He recalled having to drill a new well circa 40 years ago and placed the approximate location between the house and shed, i.e. under the slab the dipE36 M3 POs (not Dick) poured.
Can someone explain to me why anyone would bury a well cap in the first place, and doubly WHY THE HELL YOU WOULD POUR A CONCRETE berkeleyING SLAB ON TOP OF IT?!?!
Of course, what all this amounts to is surely an even larger bill than I had already anticipated. Ugh. On the bright side, if in the end we end up with sufficient water pressure to flush the toilet while taking a shower I'll consider it almost worth it. Almost.
I puked 4 times today.
I have not eaten anything.
Everything hurts.
I apparently pulled a lower back muscle and the pressure pinched my sciatic nerve. My entire right leg feels like a Charlie horse and apparently the fix is laying around and doing nothing until the swelling goes down.
AWSX1686 said:
This afternoon the 3 VMs that are most critical to our operations went down. Found out it's not just our stuff, but pretty widespread throughout the campus. Now most of them are back up, but my 3 are still down. Looks like I'm hanging out till we see them come back online...
10pm and I'm still here... Supposedly we'll be back online soon.
Apparently my insides are now being liquified.
AWSX1686 said:
AWSX1686 said:
This afternoon the 3 VMs that are most critical to our operations went down. Found out it's not just our stuff, but pretty widespread throughout the campus. Now most of them are back up, but my 3 are still down. Looks like I'm hanging out till we see them come back online...
10pm and I'm still here... Supposedly we'll be back online soon.
~12:30 and I'm heading home finally.
(With a 16.5 hour day, at least I should be able to take a comp day off later this week.)
Sleep is overrated. I haven’t had a good night sleep in months and I’m doing just berkeleying fine.
In reply to Wally :
Between a baby that’s a light sleeper, a snoring wife, a cat that’s the single most obnoxious creature, a creaky wood floored house with seven people living in it, and being a light sleeper myself, I’m just not sure what a good nights sleep is. And yeah I’m doing berkeleying fantastic why do you ask? Bflrirjf djsiebvf d fork arrgh
I haven't slept on purpose in 23 years.
I called in sick for the first time this year. Second time ever. Vomiting and not eating for 2 days is incredibly dangerous for a diabetic.
So why, after calling off an hour ago, do I suddenly feel better?
This lady has been a PITA for 2 days now. She bought plugs almost a month ago but her son installed them late last week.
My manager originally sold her plugs for a 99 Accord with a 4 cylinder. She swears it is a 99 Camry with a "2.4". I sold her plugs for a 99 Camry with a 2.2L since the 2.4L didn't exist until 2002 in the Camry.
She called today complaining that she was stranded because her son installed the new plugs and broke 2 of the wires. Now she can't return the old plugs because she has to take her car to the shop to get the wires replaced so she can drive up here to get her money back on the plugs.
I'm really leaning towards that she has no idea what her car actually is and her son is an incompetent idiot.
Did I mention she is unpleasant and demanding?
Maybe people should figure out WTF they drive before blaming others for their stupidity?
I'm so tired of dealing with trashy, ignorant people! 
Duke
MegaDork
11/27/18 2:22 p.m.
They're spark plugs. The maximum investment was what, $18 for a set of 4? Sheesh.
This sciatic nerve pain is worse then a gout flare up. The best part is my family doctor cant see me until tomorrow so Monday o went too the ER. They gave me IBUPROFEN 800mg pills for pain and inflammation. I cant take IBUPROFEN with my arthritis meds. Who needs too sleep anyway.
