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

Today is the second day in a row we have had freezing fog. I would like to see the Sun at some point this week...

Pogonip sucks.

CAinCA said:

I woke up at 7am and started on my personal E36 M3 list. Installed some new LED shop lights, worked on my daughter's car, started laundry, etc. SWMBO crawls out of bed after 10am. She comes out to the garage at 11am while I'm in the middle of throwing out some of my old E36 M3. Her immediate response is "don't by throw out any of my stuff". You mean like the 10 boxes and steamer trunk full of mementos I moved out here two years ago, asked you to go through and hasn't moved since? Wouldn't berkeleying dream of it dear.

Late last year The Dancer decided that she wanted to do some early spring cleaning in the house because she feels that our house is always messy compared to everyone else's that she sees (and no amount of my trying to convince her that everyone else almost certainly does what she herself does when she knows there will be people over and cleans the berk out of the place first has worked). In what I'll call the Den (for lack of a better word) is our all-too-small shoe rack which had 3-4x more shoes than it could hold piled up on it. I went through and put all of my older shoes I didn't need anymore in a bag to donate and set all of hers aside, laid out to see easily for her to decide on which should be donated as well. Her shoes are still sitting there, pushed aside as needed to be able to open the side door nearby and to get through the area...

Since 99.44% of our shopping is done at Kroger, we use their website and app with a shared login.  Scan an empty container when you're throwing it away while cooking and add it to the list for later.  Or sit at the computer and idly peruse recipes on one monitor and the sale ad on the other.  And when we're out and about and think of something we need, we can just add it with our phone.  The best part is that it can become a go-to-the-store-and-shop list or a pickup list.  And it will organize everything on the list by aisle for you - just tell it which store you're in and it re-sorts the list for you.

Before the Kroger app, we used OurGroceries a lot and it was pretty good.  If we ever shopped anywhere else, we might still use that, but there's no reason to ever set foot into any of the other grocery stores that are within a 30 minute drive of my house.

Wally (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Toyman! :

I hope it passes quickly.  

 

I got talked into watching Afterlife on Netflix.  This was a mistake, It's a really good show but way too relatable.     

I've heard a lot of good things about that, it's on my list of things to watch. I just finished (what I'm hoping is just the first season/part of ) Inside Job. It was a lot of stupid, irreverent fun. 

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Beer Baron :

I wouldn't say I've watched enough to have defined reasons I don't like it except that I don't really like it. I had an ex gf that was into Studio Ghibli that she tried to get me to like but I didn't like any I saw. Other animated stuff I like a lot, like Futurama and I did like Avatar a lot( I don't think that's considered anime though) so it's not that.

I'll give the anime Bebop a try and maybe I'll have a definitive answer 

IMO the Bebop anime isn't as sacred and awe-inspiring as many anime fans claim it is. It is good- I'm not going to argue that- but I think that for many people it was their first real exposure to good anime and they put it up on a pedestal, similar to how many people remember Evangelion. It likely is worth a watch though if you enjoyed the live-action show. 

Honestly, I far prefer the older Ghibli films to some of the newer ones- Nausicaä remains one of my favorite movies of all time, with Laputa not too far behind. Some of them (like Spirited Away) are very heavily rooted in Japanese/Shinto culture an while undeniably beautiful can be a bit confusing without a lot of liner notes/cultural explanation. 

Finally- domestic animated shows and even those from other countries have come a long way, likely in large part thanks to the popularity and success of anime. Honestly, I've not watched all the way through an anime series in a few years (that will change this coming year as they are making a new series/rebooting a show that was for a long time my favorite) but have watched through a number on Netflix and Amazon, and Star Trek: Lower Decks is probably one of my favorite Star Trek shows ever.

I don't like rules, and I don't have a lot of rules. But I do have one. We should never, ever, under any circumstances be in a position where we have no peanut butter in the house, and there always has to be one full backup jar. Yesterday morning I decided to have peanut butter for breakfast, and yet, despite having this hard and fast rule, there was not enough in the jar for me to enjoy a nice quarter inch thick coating of crunchy goodness on my raisin toast. How could this happen? How could it be? Well, those were the very questions I was asking myself. Yet at the same time, Mrs. P was not only dismissing the urgency of the situation, but not accepting any responsibility for it. She knows the rule, how could she not see this? 

Well, it wasn't easy, but I moved on and had bacon and eggs, a little home fries on the side.  So last night I had to get some spark plugs, but figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and while out get food for the barn cats. I also got food for the house cats while I was there. So I wake up this morning and remember yesterdays fiasco while thinking about breakfast and what do I realize? I was in the store that sells my favourite peanut butter last night getting the cat food. And I completely forgot about it. 

But it's still her fault.

I get it that every other parent doesn't want to take their kids out of school for an orthodontist appointment, but I would like it very much if they would just get over that and schedule their appointments for earlier in the day so I can have the times in the afternoon for my kids.

The pile of things on the To Do list that fell by the wayside when I had two broken arms seems daunting. Nothing to be done about it than start working through the backlog.

One of those things was to replace the worn, old tires on the Subaru. It seems like the tires I used last time (Geolandar AT) went from about $125 each to close to $200 each. 

MIL is being run around by the kids all day long and after a week and a half of it, I'm tired of fighting it.

Another week and a half or so and we'll be done with it.

We will get to unwind all of the behavior issues she's going to create and I'll try hard to avoid having her back to watch the kids.

Kiddo is staying home right now. Daycare closed due to Omicron, and we're keeping her home regardless until the wave passes and PICUs stop being so overwhelmed. 

That means I'm working and watching her as best I can. Sometimes that means we're watching TV while she's sitting on my lap and I'm on a conference call. It also means that when my wife gets home, I need her to watch the kid for 30 minutes while I can go and catch up with everything that I need to that couldn't get my full attention. 

Every single day, within 5 minutes, "Honey, I need help" with something she most definitely does not need help with. Yeah, I get that it would be easier to do it if I was watching the kid still or if you were watching the kid and I was cooking, but deal with it. I've been watching her for the past 8 hours, doing my best at multitasking. You can now play that game for 30 minutes. Leave me alone, or we'll be doing this back and forth for an hour or more. 

EDIT: Oh great, you caved and gave her cake. THAT IS CHEATING

Still foggy. Pogonip still sucks. Makes pretty pictures, though...

COVID Day 2. 

Did a little work, slept a little, ate lots of food, drank lots of water. 

If it doesn't get worse, this won't be a problem. The cold I had over Christmas was worse. 

I do think I'm going to bed early though. 

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

Wally (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Toyman! :

I hope it passes quickly.  

 

I got talked into watching Afterlife on Netflix.  This was a mistake, It's a really good show but way too relatable.     

I've heard a lot of good things about that, it's on my list of things to watch. I just finished (what I'm hoping is just the first season/part of ) Inside Job. It was a lot of stupid, irreverent fun. 

It's a good show, like everything he does it's very well done.  I'm four episodes in and they could have been following me around to write this. 

$45 shipping for a 6 oz box.... pretty sure I should have gotten some K-Y with that. 

dculberson said:

Toyman! said:

That doesn't say much for the future of the human race if that's what we are showing our kids. That's infinitely worse than the fat purple bastard that was around when my kids were growing up. 

Kids music has always been inane. If you think it's any worse these days, I have news for you: "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't be Late)" was a number one hit in 1959. NUMBER ONE. That's a much bigger deal than 10 billion plays on Netflix or whatever. It's hilarious to think that TODAY'S youth is all of a sudden more infantile and more ridiculous than any other of all time. Yeah, your parents and grandparents said the exact same thing about you.

Hey, wait.  David Seville was a GENIUS, A GENIUS I TELL YOU!

In reply to Rodan :

Wow, is it overnight parts from Japan?

I just shipped a large size, probably 10-pound box about 500 miles, and it got there in 3 days, through a snow storm.

For $37.

Mr. Peabody said:

I was in the store that sells my favourite peanut butter last night getting the cat food. And I completely forgot about it. 

You buy your peanut butter at Petco?  

No, Canadian tire 

So, what you call peanut butter, is actually...maple syrup?

I went to put a bit of cocoa into my coffee and wound up knocking the vanilla extract out of the cabinet. The vanilla extract fell into my parfait, which flew everywhere all over the counter, floor and stove Yay.

Duke said:

In reply to Rodan :

Wow, is it overnight parts from Japan?

Nope.  $80 worth of very small, very light Mazda parts from NM to AZ.

Right after I posted that, I let the dog out to pee.  Apparently there was a skunk in the yard.  Wife and I were up until 2am washing the dog.  Ugh. 

In reply to Rodan :

UPS 3 day select is the biggest rip-off, especially from NM to AZ. NM to AZ is less than 3 days, when shipped ground. Most places within 500-1000 miles are 3 days or less, ground. I'm not sure what 3 day select is for.

In reply to dculberson :

3 Day Select. That's what you selected: 3 days.

Like marking a bucket of feces guaranteed. All you're getting is a guaranteed piece of crap.

In reply to dculberson :

Yeah, that was "standard shipping" according to the website. 

Fun fact:  adding a windshield reveal molding (which probably would have fit in the same box) to the same order raised the shipping to $367!  I even called them to ask, WTF!!?  Their response was I'd have to place the order, and then they could 'adjust' the shipping.  No thanks.  Got that part off eBay with free shipping.

If my local dealer didn't charge 2x Mazda retail prices, I wouldn't be forced to use online parts suppliers... but that's another rant. 

I understand that you've probably had undiagnosed ADD for most of your life.

I understand that you're fundamentally an impatient, big-picture, get-it-done-now kind of person.

I understand that it's hard for you not to see immediate results when something happens to be in your focus.

But PLEASE, for the love of Bob, STOP "HELPING" ME by doing the background preparation stuff that you really just don't understand, when having you do it is going to save about 10 minutes right now but will cost me several hours of cleanup and busywork later.