Minor Win thread - Life is good!

My oldest sister, who is the best cook I know, made me homemade pierogis for my birthday. I don't like sauerkraut and I don't much care for mushrooms, but the mushroom sauerkraut pierogis were particularly excellent

Scotch, beef stew and some Marvel shows are apparently the best way to relax after a long day 

Successfully wired in the new stereo, ran the wires for the sub, and got through the setup and pairing/initializing so it talks to my phone. Best part is I thought the previous head unit was wired in with residential wire nuts, because that's what it looked like, but they were actually crimped. Slight sad moment realizing I have zero electrical connectors at home, but then I remembered I still had my soldering stuff out so I did it properly. Got it all done and still had time to eat before folks started showing up for our Wednesday night games. If I keep up this pace I can get the sub fully installed and running before the trip this weekend. Which will be cool. 

Managed to negotiate a salary increase on my job offer, so new job is a go. plus its right next to my old company so my 5-10 minute commute stays the way it is.

Second win is I got the bissell little green from Costco and used it to clean the seats in my old F150 before I give it to my dad. The color of the water coming out of the seats was incredibly satisfying yet gross

This is pretty minor but still a win.

We have had a couple of orchids on our kitchen window sill for 5 years. They are typical cheap orchids that were drug store purchases on Mother's day or Valentine's day. Bought for the wife with blooms and never to bloom again. We've probably thrown out a bunch of them over the years. Last year something odd happenened.  One of them produced a few flowers. I was shocked. My brown thumbs had coaxed a plant to bloom by accident. Out of boredom and on a whim, I did some digging to see if I could get it to bloom on purpose. It turns out, it's kind of simple. They need to be trimmed. They don't like direct sunlight but need lots of light. When it comes time to bloom, they need to be cold at night. So last year, I trimmed them and pretty much left them alone in the kitchen window throughout the summer. When cold weather hit, I started dropping a couple of ice cubes in the pot in the evenings every week or so. 

Fast forward to today. I have 3 blooms and close to a dozen buds on two orchids. 

Apparently, I should clean this window at some point. 

They really are a beautiful flower.

In reply to Toyman! :

regarding horticulture, my Dad used to say "you can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

That's from Dorothy Parker, who was the source of a lot of great quotes.

Today was my last day at my current employer. I was on PTO but had to drive in to fully out process.

You know when you work somewhere for any length of time and it comes time to leave, you might feel like it's a bittersweet moment. You think about people you have known, things that have happened and experiences you have had there. You might feel a bit nostalgic.

Well I sure as berkeley didn't. I was there for 5 years and it was, without a doubt, the worst place I have ever worked in my entire life. So many people came and went and the monotonous daily work made the 5 years indistinguishable from one another. People that I wouldn't trust to manage a lemonade stand got hired to be the site manager which made all of us suffer. We had two chains of command; one on the corporate side and one on the government side. There were lots of conflicting directions and we never got any backup from the corporate side because they have no backbone. So we were always forced to do bullE36 M3 tasks because the government lead has a huge superiority complex. He is also a dick to boot. It made our lives hell.

If I never have to step foot in that building again, it will be too soon. 

Over lunch I was able to make the broken wires in my daily make contact so I could ge the window up. It has no power windows for the timie being but I won't freeze when driving now at least.

My 310,000 km 2k Silverado developed a lifter rattle in the cold weather last week.  Poop, I thought.  Today, it stopped rattling, and went to a dead misfire.  Poop even more, I though.  Pulled the valve cover, and the #8 rocker bolt had come loose.  After 310,000km, with never having the valve covers off, a bolt came loose.

Minor win, but a wtf moment as well.

As mentioned in a Minor Rant, we had a bad ice storm and lost power Saturday night. It's still off. We're living on a borrowed 1200W generator and enough firewood to last three or four more days. Today, though, we have internet access. My boss brought me his 5G gateway and somehow we're getting through. We are no longer cut off from the world.

Wouldn't mind a hot shower and a few loads of laundry, but you can't have everything...

The coolest thing I can think of for this site would be seeing this thread surpass the rant one and a few others.

Got a raise and promotion last fall, had a talk with my boss today (he's 350 miles away) and asked what I could do better.  I got lots of positive feedback and other news I had to keep to myself for a while.  This is so different from my previous job it's hard to get used to it.  

Major win: I posted in the rant thread the other day that my daughter didn't want to go back to college, got a ticket while unloading her car and was crying in the parking lot on Friday. My son and his girlfriend helped her unload her car and by Friday night she was in a much better place. She connected with her roommate on Saturday and it sounds like she had a good weekend.

Win #2. I've been hinting for a while that I think its time to sell my Cayman and buy something nicer and faster. Yesterday I asked the Mrs if she wanted to go test drive a 718 Cayman S to see if she liked it. I told her it wasn't the exact car I wanted but it was the closest thing that we could actually look at. She didn't understand my logic. We wound up doing something else and had a good day anyway. Today our company stock hit a record high and I showed her our account balance. She told me to just go buy what I want. Wait. What? Really? OK, how about a GT3?   Then she asked if we'd have to park the new car in the driveway since it would probably be a lot more expensive than her Explorer. Double what??? That's always been a line in the sand for her. Her car get's to be parked in the garage. 

And just like that I can move my neck.

Am a commercial architect. Market in the E36 M3ter. Got opportunity last summer to work on aviation projects and actually enjoying work for the first time in a long time. 

Just after six this morning, I was dozing in the living room when the lights suddenly came on and the furnace suddenly started furnacing. In an instant, eight days and nine nights without power, all cold and dark and tedious and deeply uneasy, came to an end. It's a huge relief.

Netflix announced it's earning after the close of trading today and wow!!!

U-Haul placed a strategically located riveted in panel in the box floor.

RX Reven' said:

Netflix announced it's earning after the close of trading today and wow!!!

Tesla announced it's earnings after the close...I guess you could say they're not running on all eight cylinders 

slefain said:

My 14yo son has discovered Sabaton. Now he's reading about the history behind their songs. Homeschooling takes the weirdest turns sometimes.

My 13.5yo daughter discovered them about the same time. Weird. A little too heavy for my taste now, but my teen years were a bit much for my parents. My kids want to see them and Judas P on tour. Too bad it's 5 hours away on a Sunday night just before graduation, or I might consider it. Strange to be introduced to music by my kids. Cool band.

I use only one suspension fluid which, unfortunately, is both expensive and not available in Canada... which makes it even more expensive. I was searching for a possible replacement last night and, to compare prices, I googled it to get the price from Summit. Instead I saw a snowmobile shop in Minnesota had it on clearance for $6 a bottle, or $8 Canadian instead of $19. They had 15 bottles left and I bought them all. And not only that, shipping in the US was free, and I'm going to Niagara falls next week, so I had it shipped to a cross border mailbox I use.

I was supposed to order from Summit last week to pick up next week. For once my procrastination paid off.

Made oldschool subs for dinner tonight. They were so good I'll probably never buy another sub again. Love me a good oldschool sub

llysgennad said:

slefain said:

My 14yo son has discovered Sabaton. Now he's reading about the history behind their songs. Homeschooling takes the weirdest turns sometimes.

My 13.5yo daughter discovered them about the same time. Weird. A little too heavy for my taste now, but my teen years were a bit much for my parents. My kids want to see them and Judas P on tour. Too bad it's 5 hours away on a Sunday night just before graduation, or I might consider it. Strange to be introduced to music by my kids. Cool band.

There's a whole channel dedicated to the history behind every one of their songs.

More funny, sometimes The History Guy or one of Simon Whistler's writers will pepper their scripts with Sabaton lyrics. IIRC the History Guy's video about the 588th used half of the lyrics from Night Witches.

Minor win #1 - While in Atlanta on the way to the Rolex, we ran into some tranny trouble and were stuck in 2nd gear again.  Having gone through this before we left, I knew it was electrical.  Turns out that I was able to fix it by unlooming the harness and taping the wires up and then replacing the blown TCM fuse.

Minor win #2 - As I was replacing the batteries in all the alarms and stuff on board, the CO detector was just making its alarm that it was too old and needed to be replaced.  I tossed it in the trash and was going to just go without.  But then I figured, what the heck so I spent the $20 to get a new one before we headed out.  This morning, I guess the winds shifted a little and started blowing exhaust from the generators behind us into my bedroom window and I was awakened by said CO detector.  I don't know how overly sensitive the thing is and if I would have actually been in any real danger so I'm not saying it saved my life or anything, but it probably at least kept me from feeling a little blah.  $20 well spent!

Minor Wins of the unexpected bargain variety:

The kid and I stopped at the thrift shop this morning, as we are wont to do every Saturday. He had an allowance of six Hot Wheels cars in exchange for donating some toddler-grade puzzles that no longer pose a challenge. Instead he clapped eyes on this Maisto Mustang and made up his mind that he wanted that instead of Hot Wheels. It's a cherry one-owner example. For $4.79 after his coupon, how could I say no?

Later this morning we stopped at a little antique and collectible shop, and I found my first 93mm SAK, an old cross Pioneer with brass liners. At that price, I could not leave without it. Not sure yet how old it is, but it was probably made somewhere in the 70s or early 80s. It cleaned up well and will get a good sharp edge tonight.

EDIT: The knife has now been deep-cleaned, oiled, sharpened, and stropped. It is one snappy, slicy boy. Really looking forward to carrying this one.