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

The dirt around the mailbox is...dirt. SWMBO, the gardener,  hasn't done E36 M3 in the yard in the 3 years we've been here. Nothing. Appleseed,  who hates yardwork of any kind, has done it all.

Appleseed gets some free hastas from mom. Going to put them under the mailbox. SWMBO, without explanation, HATES hastas.

Well, then, get the berkeley out there and garden, otherwise decisions will be made for you.

In reply to eastsideTim :

They're normally pretty reasonable, I assume the inflated cost is due to the price of fuel right now

In reply to Appleseed :

Easiest and no work to grow.  

Run lawnmower over them and they come back.   They expand so that's why your getting free ones.  Yucca plants never go away.....

In reply to Appleseed :

Parallels to my life - my mom grew hastas in my backyard to sell, and my wife hates hastas.  I personally didn't care, as long as I don't have to take care of them.  Although right now, some ivy from a neighbor's yard has been taking over the non-grassy area of my backyard.  Thinking of fighting back and planting bamboo.

In reply to Peabody :

IMHO, RA has been high on shipping costs for quite a while.  A couple years back, I bought a whole bunch of parts to go through the front end on our Bronco.  RA was the cheapest on the parts, but I saved quite a bit by buying the same parts at a higher price at Amazon with free Prime shipping.  Buying local was still the most expensive, by a lot.

In reply to Rodan :

RA kills you when you need things from different warehouses or in a hurry.  You can knock a couple bucks off by shipping to a commercial address instead of residential.  Which is funny seeing as the FedEx driver that delivers to Toiletbird Industries is random as to whether or not he'll just leave packages if no one is here.  My brother had a delivery this week that took three tries: one because he didn't bother to come around to the door and marked it as "business not open", one because I wasn't here and despite me telling him five times to just leave it he didn't.  And the final time he left it but didn't bother to say anything or yet a signature - just threw it in the door and bolted.  Sometimes he'll leave it if I'm not here, sometimes he won't.  It's really random and it's got to cost them more money than delivering to my house.  But they charge me less so....

I hurt my back standing up.  I'm supposed to be teaching at the track this weekend.  I'm reasonably comfortable in the car but getting in and out of one with a cage is a bitch.

Me: Let's get you into the right class. Is your car stock?  If not, please tell me all about any modifications.

Bro:  Yeah, it's a stock 2013 FR-S.

Bro:

Bro:  Nothing done to it except a header and exhaust.

Me:  OK, so it's not stock.  Anything else?  Does it have a muffler and cat?

Bro:  No catalytic convertors, no muffler.

Me:

Bro:  Suspension is just lowered on coilovers.

Me:  *grumbles in Get Off My Lawn*

Me:  "Stock" has an important definition in autocross.

Straight piped, lowered Frizbee?  You can probably hear the crackle tune from wherever you're currently sitting.  No way I'm letting Bro run at my event, with an aprtment complex right across the street from our venue.

Sigh.

I was out running errands yesterday in my BMW M535i when a storm blew in.  I headed for home, but didn't quite make it back into the garage in time...I was just four blocks away when it started to hail.      I set a land speed record over those last four blocks, but I still I ended up with a half dozen dents in the hood, a couple more in the roof and one in one fender.  I suppose it could have been a lot worse, but I sunk a crapload of money into getting this car restored a few years back and it was more or less still in concours condition.  Time to find a good paintless dent repair guy.

Went out for our anniversary to a fancy steak house.

It started with the appetizer not being cooked, the chef apologizing in person, promptly replacing it, and somehow forgetting that he'd taken our plates, and not replaced them. Oh well, they're comping it anyway. Oops, They charged us for it. At least the service was consistent. I went half the meal without anything to drink, and he finally came to see if everything was going OK, which it wasn't, but that's OK, we were already done by that time.

On the way home a hawk dive bombed into side of my car denting the passenger door and scaring the E36 M3 out of both of us.

Motherberkeleyer

In reply to Peabody :

I like a fancy restaurant meal, but I stopped buying steaks out decades ago.  I could never get one as good as I could make at home, and got tired of endless disappointment.

Dang, I was under my truck and noticed a lot of oil all over my orange Koni shocks I installed last August.  

I've talked up Koni shocks since 1980 and the first set I buy suck?  

Datsun310Guy said:

Dang, I was under my truck and noticed a lot of oil all over my orange Koni shocks I installed last August.  

I've talked up Koni shocks since 1980 and the first set I buy suck?  

Every Koni I have had sucked, so this is statistically accurate

I changed the oil in the '16 Chevrolet Silverado yesterday- all went well except the WW cap broke off and it fell on to the factory aluminum skid plate.   As I'm looking - hey - are those replacement oil cooler lines leaking?

So I find my sarcastic FB post and see they must be due as I now have 134,000 miles on the truck?  

What frosts me is that I'm in the hydraulic hose business and I don't like the idea of seeing crimp fittings leaking.......or maybe I do like to see hoses failing so I can sell more?   
 

In reply to Datsun310Guy :

You got 6 years and 134,000 miles out a GM hose?  That's almost triple the normal up here in cold ville.

Everything I sell stuff on FB marketplace it is the worst experience in the world. Why the heck do I keep doing this to myself?

Yeah, normally those start leaking at about 25-30k.

 Not just Chevys.

Three belts because they have electric power steering, so they cannot run Hydroboost anymore, and they want a dedicated belt for the vacuum pump.

Not sure why they are not simply using an electric vacuum pump.  I mean, every 3.6 I have seen had one...

Had an autocross today and just came away in a generally poor mood. The whole event just had literal and figurative rain cloud over it.

• My friend Josh came to the conclusion that he can either afford the diesel fuel to trailer his car to events but have to run old, castoff, near bald tires with no grip, or he can buy new tires but not afford the fuel to trailer the car to events.
• My friend Noah bought a Miata that was a proven E/Street car that's been garage-stored for the past ~15 years and was hoping to run it this season. Turns out the garage had a roof leak and there was frequently standing water under the car, so he has determined he needs to replace all the brake lines and suspension components to trust it, so he doesn't think it'll be ready this year.
• My friend John worked out a deal to co-drove said Miata, and in an attempt to rationalize his and his wife's car fleet a little, sold off his FIRST. Now he's looking at a season with no ride. I let him codrive my car today and said he's welcome to drive anytime, not sure if he'll further take up that offer.
• My friend Karl put together an engine for his E30 for this year, went to break in the engine at the previous event to seat the rings and the car smoked excessively. He ended his day early then, said some further running between events lessened the smoke, then today it developed a bad misfire after the first run and had to park it. He also was in charge of course design and had a number of people who were supposed to help, then all of them showed up late and he basically had to build an 0.8 mile course alone. He has sworn that he won't build another course.
• Said course was, uh, not good. He even admitted it was the worst course he'd ever built, but that he had no time to test and revise because he used all the time just building it. It was slow, tight, and just had no flow or rhythm. Tons of off-courses and cones everywhere.
• My friend Mark took over as Solo head 2 years ago, and is already tanking the ripcord. He confided in me that he's tired of members who hold important roles but always show up late and don't pull their wait, a curmudgeonly divisional safety steward that makes getting any new sites approved into a battle, and people who just don't listen or refuse to commit to a course of action.
• Nobody has any clue who is going to replace him. Any of the members who have been around and are involved enough to make sense as a Solo head has already done it and wants no part of it. A bunch of people are looking at me, but I'm not the leader type, I'm more hired muscle. Give me a job like Tech or Audit, I'll get it done, but don't put me in charge. Also, I'm one of the more distant members, so every meeting or needing to exchange paperwork or such is a 2-3 hour round trip for me.
• Our timing system is an old JACircuits wired system that's been generally reliable if a little fiddly at times. At our first event this year, it completely E36 M3 the bed and took an hour of cajoling to get working again. There was hopes it was fixed, but the same thing happened this event.
• It was cold and rainy and windy after the lunch break. I hate racing in the rain, my car sucks in the rain, my tires aren't good in the rain, and I end up cold and miserable.

The thing is, I didn't do that awful at the event. I was 3rd on raw, 10th on PAX, and 3rd in class, but everything just left me in a poor mood

Streetwiseguy said:

In reply to Datsun310Guy :

You got 6 years and 134,000 miles out a GM hose?  That's almost triple the normal up here in cold ville.

No - they leak every 75,000 miles or 30 months.  Normal for a Chevrolet?   Okay - I'll buy into that.  

Don't own a Honda Accord then buy a Silverado truck.

On Friday morning I find that the QC process has revealed some major issues with some submittal drawings that are going to the customer, understandable as its a new system.  Its gonna require a minimum of a full day to get this done, might take two.

I blast an email off to the person who talks to the customers at around noon.

She sits on it till damn near C.O.B., and the owner tells her to tell the customer Monday morning.  So unbeknownst to me, that's what goes out Friday afternoon.  Get out of a meeting, get asked where the Final Record Drawings are for an absolute clusterberkeley of a project that I inherited from a guy that left before I got here.  Its been such a clusterberkeley that I was revising designs last week while we were sending stuff to our galvanizing people. 

"I didn't know the design was finalized, so I haven't had a chance to do it yet."

Explosions rock the building as heads blow up from shock.

"We have to have that! We need to ship that today!"

"Well, since I have till tomorrow with Project Blah I can put it off till later this afternoon and wrap up Project Blee now."

"You don't have till tomorrow for Project Blah.  Its due this morning."

"The hell, you say."

Now, apparently I'm the bad guy.  berkeley this place.

In reply to NickD :

If he needs a lot of Diesel fuel to tow to events where he drives a car three times on a 60 second course, looking at the problem logically, he is not a driving enthusiast, he is a towing enthusiast.  Or he has his priorities backward.

I spent the last half of last week running around the theater and hauling things to and from there and made it out unscathed beyond a few minor scratches. Yesterday afternoon we had to fetch a ton of things that were donated for the annual non-profit yardsale that required using both the truck and Infiniti- and still didn't have room for several boxes of clothes (which was fine, clothes never sell well for us). After The Dancer griped about how cluttered the den where her office is was from all the stuff- and would get worse when we get several other donations later this week- I spent an hour or so trying to clear at least a bit of room out in the garage to at least store stuff after we've priced it. At some point during that hour I tweaked my right wrist which is not happy with me today. I've been using a cold pack as a wrist-rest the whole day while working which has helped, but I worry that it's not going to be up to full capacity by the weekend when the yard sale is supposed to be. Especially since The Dancer herself won't be able to do much with having a minor surgery Thursday that will have her unable (or advised against...) lifting/carrying/running around much for a week or so.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

The problem is that the car he autocrosses doesn't have a title, so he has to tow it to every event. And he lives an hour and a half away from our nearest events, but because of the way the SCCA divided up NY state, we are the closest events to him. The plan was to try and hold some events up that way to try and get some new people, but, again, that divisional safety steward makes things so difficult that our Solo head gave up on trying to get a new site approved this year after he spent four months last year getting a new site approved, and then four more months this year getting that same site approved with a different layout this year. There was also talk of a new site in my town (I drive an hour to the nearest events as well) and he said he also gave up on that because he doesn't have the time or patience to deal with the DSS to get the site approved.

I've been re-screening the screens in the house that the dogs have torn.  This morning I pulled the one from the kitchen to take to the shop.  I assumed that the dog had pushed through because it wasn't torn - the spline was out of the bottom causing the screen to just hang there.

In removing the screen, though, it is damaged in such a way that it really looks like someone has tried to force the screen out of the window frame and then picked at the spline.

The screen has been hanging for a few months now so I don't know exactly when that happened, but it really looks like someone may have tried to break in to the house at some point.

Felt like E36 M3 yesterday (negative home COVID test), felt better this morning then started feeling crappy again by 10am. Left at lunch and now waiting at docs.  Checked in on time, got to the room, seen by the nurse, now been 30 min of waiting.  And I'm not getting any better.  Feverish, cold, hot, achey. Family is fine fortunately.