Minor Win thread - Life is good!

We made the last payment on my wife's car yesterday. Woot!

Phased retirement. That's what they're calling it.

I approached the big boss Friday and told him I want to cut back, I only want to work two days a week, and will probably have to take some of those days off depending on how the race season plays out. Sure, speak to (other boss) Evan and see what he says. If that's what you want to do, we'll find a way to make it work, let's go see HR and see what they say. They were just as easy going.

So starting some time in April I'll go down to two days so I can spend my time riding and racing and not have to worry about getting up and going to work. Well, mostly, anyway.

In reply to Peabody :

DW retired at the end of '22 and one of her previous managers is already calling asking if she'll come back to do one specific part of her job for 10 hours a week, WFH, at 150% of her previous hourly rate.

Mind you, this was one of her side tasks, not even her main role, and they have 7 people working together failing to get it done.

In reply to Peabody :

Congratulations! That’s awesome.  Boss man brought up having me go to 3 days a week starting the beginning of next year, looking forward to that for sure.  

The daughter and I cleaned up the shop and got the Saab in there before it rained tonight.

I got the Goldwing to start again and it sorta runs.  It's running enough for the guy who says he's coming tonight to buy it.

For dinner I made a pork roast in the instant pot that was probably the best I've ever done.

It's been a great day.

After waking up with all the sparkling charisma and can-do attitude of a mud fence, I got a late and reluctant start on some yard work yesterday.  Got two different lawn mowers running after cleaning some green slime out of a carburetor - literally the first time I've had to touch that carb in 13 years. Mowed the front lawn once with each mower just to give them a workout and push some fuel through them. In between, got a string trimmer working again and trimmed the edges up a little, fired up the leaf blower and cleared off the sidewalk, and wrapped it up by sharpening the boss's mower blade. I don't enjoy yardwork, but it felt good to get something done for a change.

Duke said:

In reply to Peabody :

DW retired at the end of '22 and one of her previous managers is already calling asking if she'll come back to do one specific part of her job for 10 hours a week, WFH, at 150% of her previous hourly rate

PW did as well, though she's only ever worked part time, and by the end was down to 12 hrs a week. But we're half expecting them to call when they get busy, she was one of their top producers.

I was so looking forward to retiring. I did all the right things, was careful with money, maxed out my savings, and investments, and when I hit 55, though I would have been OK, I couldn't do it. When I hit 60, I couldn't do it.  I turned 61 a few weeks ago and only now am I actually doing something about it, but I can't quite cut the ties... I love that paycheque

Geez, it was easier to quit smoking

In reply to Peabody :

Sounds like easing into it is the way to go for you.  This will be a good transition.  Congratulations!

They already told me, I won't be tied to only 2 days, I'm welcome to come in any time I want and help out.

I hope I don't, but I could see working summer and Christmas shutdowns for a little spending money

Celebrating 11 months with Hot for Teacher this weekend!

Meet Wendy.  (she's the lady, not the one with the beard).  She's an outdoorsy type and loves to travel.  So basically me with boobs.

Congratulations Curtis!

I plugged my 12V (15A) portable compressor into the 12V AUX port in my Cayman a couple weeks ago and it ran for about a second and then stopped. I checked the 15A fuse for the cigarette lighter and it was still good. I was at the track and didn't have time to mess with it so I decided I'd take a look at it later.  A couple days later I checked the fuse with my multimeter and it was good but I still couldn't get power at the outlet. Today I finally got around to downloading a wiring diagram and realized that the 15A fuse was for the cigarette lighter in the center console and that there is a separate 7.5A fuse for the AUX outlet in the passenger's footwell. Sure enough that fuse was blown. 

I listed our Prius for sale this morning. I listed it higher than I thought logical, but listened to a couple of friends who are good at these things. The first people to look at it bought it at full asking price. 

Duke said:

In reply to Peabody :

DW retired at the end of '22 and one of her previous managers is already calling asking if she'll come back to do one specific part of her job for 10 hours a week, WFH, at 150% of her previous hourly rate.

Mind you, this was one of her side tasks, not even her main role, and they have 7 people working together failing to get it done.

And her old manager texted today, "sounding desperate."  DW made a counteroffer at 200% of her old rate, and after some offline management discussion, they accepted.

So she'll be doing just one side part of her old job, for twice as much per hour, for roughly a quarter of the hours she used to work.  Plus she'll be reporting only to the one manager she likes, not the d-bag of the quarter they kept reassigning her to.

This is one part of her job she didn't mind, and that's all she'll be doing. The main reason she retired is that they kept piling unrelated tasks on her because she has a wide range of competences and she gets her E36 M3 done, unlike the other 90 people in her lab.

Much more than a win-win.

I volunteer at our Trail Life troop. I am the Woodlands Trail Ranger and also the committee chairman. I also run the pinewood derby, among other duties. It's my favorite thing to do without real racing or a lady.

I give a speech every year to the Dads and to the kids as I hand out the kits, and a few times afterwards. It's something like this:

I have a pinewood derby car here [holds it up] from 1988 or so. I was six. This is not my car. It's my sisters car, because she wanted to build one too, even though she never raced with the cub scouts. It's here because she had a great time building it with my grandfather. You may ask where mine is. All I remember is that it was blue. It looked great in the bottom of the garbage can. I built mine with my Dad, which is to say that my Dad built it for me while he yelled at me for doing it wrong. DO NOT give your kids this experience. Make it the kind where they still want to hang onto the car 25 years later. My rules are short. There are only eight, and most of them are just to make sure the car fits on the track. Rule number nine is don't make me name a rule after you (stole this from GRM and the Stampie rule). You can watch videos on how to make your car faster. You can do fun things and it's all fine. If you buy cheater axles, cheater wheels, use cheater oil, bearings, or whatever else, you're doing it wrong, you'll have a bad time, and you won't teach your son anything other than how to cheat. I had a colleague who bought a car for his son from a professional builder. He wonders why his kids don't appreciate anything. Don't do that. I am an engineer, and have access to modern machine tools. Last year I went into work early and used the mill and lathe and built something pretty cool, and did every trick I could think of to make it faster. I was beaten by a nine year old, and his car looked like he put the wheels in while he was sitting on the couch. HAVE FUN. LEARN SOMETHING. Make it a great bonding experience.

It varies.

Anyway, I had breakfast with one of the Dad's whom I don't know well. He told me after that meeting his son rode home chatting the whole time about my speech, and how crazy it was to cheat, and how much fun he was going to have doing this with his Dad. I learned that their family situation is pretty strained, and they needed this experience.

WIN.

In reply to tuna55 :

Excellent speech and excellent story!

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Congratulations

I listened to the little voice in my head for once! 

Generally speaking, I'm the one that's supposed to handle designing and building the environment and then I transition it to the ops team who is supposed to operate it on a day-to-day basis.  They don't want to stay in their lane, though, so they said they wanted to install the software package themselves.  It was kind of like this:

I wind up getting dragged in to "help" but basically they get me on the call having done zero work themselves and ask me what they're supposed to do.   When I tell you that I have been on calls with these guys literally reading the install manual to them word for word I am not exaggerating.  When I've told them that the install manual is available on the support site and it gives them the step-by-step instructions they respond with "can you write that up into a document for us?"  This also includes doing things that I've never done before and working with things that I've never used.  The expectation is that I'm going to figure it out for them, then essentially remote-control their fingers to have them type and click what I would ordinarily type and click myself.  And then the next time it needs to be done, they come back to me to repeat the process because they don't remember, don't take notes, and when I provide them with notes and instructions, they don't follow them.

This time, however, I knew what was coming.  It was a status call with the PM and he was asked by that PM what the status was.  He faltered because he didn't know what the next step was, so I helped him out: "Well the next step is [irrelevant technical stuff one] and then you can [irrelevant technical stuff two]."

Silence.

Nervous laughter.

"Uh, well, what is [stuff one]?  How do I do that?"

And this, my friends, is where they usually get me in the trap.  But not this time!  "Oh," says me, "Have you read through the installation manual?"

More silence.

"In a move that shocked the publishing world," I said, trying to keep the sarcasm humorous instead of completely nasty, "they actually describe in step-by-step detail how to install [the product]".

"Oh.  Uh.  Well, I don't know if I ever got a copy of that.  Let me look", he said over his clattering keyboard.  "Uh, is this it?  It says [Product Name That Hasn't Been Used since they changed it 2 years ago] Install Guide."

"Well, yes and no.  It hasn't been called that in a while, so you might want to go get the latest version."

"Can you send that to me?"

"Oh!" I feigned surprise.  "Is your support site login not working either!?  I can't believe that we're continuing to have problems with that.  Give me a day to get our Escalation Manager and the regional Customer Support Manager fired up and we'll get that fixed!"

"Ah, oh, is that on the support site?"

I chose silence as my response and just waited for him to figure it out on his own.  I could almost hear the gears beginning to turn through my headset.

"I guess I'll go find that and read through it, then"

I'm going to take that as a win.

For years I have lamented that while I didn't hate the Konig Dial-Ins that I have on the Miata, they didn't thrill me either. They were just kind of there. On a whim I decided to go poke around on Good-Win Racing's website today and saw they had the super cool Konig Countergrams that I'd really liked on sale for $169 a wheel (normally $259 a wheel) so I know have a set en route. Also, finally getting away from black wheels, this set has the machined lip with the Hyper Chrome silver center.

In reply to NickD :

I'm with you on the Dial-ins. I have them too.

I have come to the conclusion that Dial-ins look better in pictures than in real life on the car.  Advanti Storms look better in real life then they do in pictures.

I wish I had gone with the Advantis a few years ago.

In reply to Duke :

I have the Advantis on the Yaris, I like them, but having two cars with the same sets of wheels is some sort of automotive stylistic faux pa, I believe. I recall buying the Dial-Ins largely because at the time, the options for 15x9 wheels sucked. Your options were the Dial-Ins, the Advantis (which had just come out and kind of sounded like a Chinesium brand) or wait for 949Racing to make a run of 6ULs and hope they were in the size you needed and you got some before they sold out. Not long after I bought the Dial-Ins, the 15x9 kinda-sorta exploded in popularity and Konig started cranking out 15x9s in like 6 different designs that I liked better. But I couldn't rationalize replacing wheels that I didn't hate and didn't have anything actually wrong with them. Lately though, I've started coming the realization that I make actual money these days, and while I'm not going to spend every last dime, it's okay to actually use some here and there.

Chips, guacamole, burritos, and cold beers on a 70+ sunny day. Already done with work for the week. Time to get some challenge car work done.

After a ridiculously long time, finally found some 14" aluminum wheels that fit a WRX.

And painted them and mounted the 175/70-14 Dmacks on them.

Colin now has competition tires!

Well, gravel/dirt anyway.  Still looking for small diameter 16" purple crack or similar for the stock WRX wheels

It's now officially fish fry season.

Theres a strong chance I might have a job with ZF (yes, that ZF) transmissions.