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

In reply to Toyman! :

I'm totally agree - add a line on the invoice and see if accounting calls you out on it. 

PGT Fee - $108.00 (parking garage ticket)

I have just under a year to figure out how in the hell I'm going to afford car insurance when my oldest son turns 16. My friends are saying their insurance DOUBLED adding their teens. I'm already paying just over $2k a year for our two cars, so I'm guessing at least $4.5k a year. That a damn car payment PER MONTH just for insurance.

I know in the dark ages when my brother and I turned 16 our Dad's buggy insurance went up, but it sure as hell didn't double.

We got our 16 year old daughter a beater Honda Civic, liability only, paid cash.  State Farm had us as 3 cars, 3 drivers so she was assigned to the Civic.  

Maybe $100/month to add her?

In reply to slefain :

i'm not 16, and I don't know what your son will be driving, or what your friend's kids are driving, but ive always been astounded by how much more expensive insurance is on a newer, financed vehicle. An older cash car may lower that premium quite a bit

Class Dojo really sucks, I miss Remind. I love how every grade uses a different app to talk to parents about what's going on in school. 

In reply to slefain :

I'd recommend talking to your agent. I heard the horror stories but it wasn't really nearly as bad as people said if you look at it on a per vehicle basis. 

Adding the third vehicle with my son as the driver was more like 1.0 - 1.5x the per vehicle cost of the other cars already on the policy. 

Some companies also have discount for good grades and usual discounts for drivers ed and street survival or skid school. 

I ordered the mini clutch and flywheel from Sachs performance in Germany and the shipping was approx $85. That was great, and it's due to arrive Monday. 

Today I get an email from UPS saying I owe them $42 upon delivery for additional fees (customs and broker fees). Not catastrophic, but irritating when already spending $1200 on the parts and original shipping cost. 

In reply to No Time :

Each company may be different, but for mine, the driving school discount was something in the range of double digit dollars per year.  A good student discount was significant, but driving school was completely worthless.

In reply to slefain :

Depending on where you live and what you drive, it's bad, but not that bad.

Having a beater will help.  We insured our kids as primary drivers on our 10-year-old minivan.

Good grades are a plus, and a 3-hour defensive driving course costs $30 and is good for 10% off your liability premium - 15% if you take refreshers every 3 years.

No Time said:

I ordered the mini clutch and flywheel from Sachs performance in Germany and the shipping was approx $85. That was great, and it's due to arrive Monday. 

Today I get an email from UPS saying I owe them $42 upon delivery for additional fees (customs and broker fees). Not catastrophic, but irritating when already spending $1200 on the parts and original shipping cost. 

Welcome to buying stuff in Canada.

Brokerage.  Ick.  At least they told you, instead of mailing you a bill two weeks after the parts are installed, the bill is paid, and the car is gone.

Toyman! said:

You are going to fine me $36 for parking in your parking garage every time you call me to repair a door at your building? Did I hear that correctly? 

Did your company think this all the way through before they made this decision? Have you heard of cause and effect? How do you think that's going to work out for you in the long run? 

Let me lay it out for you in the simplest terms. 

You are going to hand my guys a $36 parking ticket on the day of the service call. Keep in mind that this is before I invoice this particular service visit. 

When I invoice that call, I'm going to double that amount and invoice your company $72. Hell, just for E36 M3s and giggles, I'll triple it just because I really like smart people. So I'll invoice you $108 on every service call I do. 

Then, just because working with idiots is so tedious, I'm going to go ahead and raise your hourly rate another $10/hr just for having to deal with stupid E36 M3 like this. 

So, what it boils down to, is you charge me $36, and that $36 is going to cost you $128 per call. 

Because berkeley you. Did you get your MBA out of the Cracker Jack box? 

 

 

The shiny happy person fee is what I call it lol

I usually just don't work for those types of people but years ago when my dad was still working with us we had a repeat client that didn't want to pay $300 for a pump so we bucketed 2 yards for a block wall, cost him 3 times that and he tried to just pay us the $300 that a pump would cost.

Every job after that included  a $300 Idiot Tax on the invoice and he repaid it about a dozen times.

Stupid should hurt

In reply to slefain :

My parents solution their insurance rates goinging up by adding me to the policy... was to make me pay the difference.

And I was happy to do so. The alternative, getting insurance on my own, was totally unaffordable.

I got told by a new coworker that they don't feel I'm working up to my potential.  No kidding. I haven't been working up to my potential since the third grade, I've got stacks of report cards saying it. If I had the slightest ability to straighten out my train wreck I would, but clearly I can't.  Feel free to continue making comments but don't expect them to be taken seriously. 

I had to turn in the rental car today. Except that the reservation was for 8 days and not 5 like I was told from my insurance company. So I called the claims department to get another reservation. After 3 hours and no reservation email, I called them back. The rep got me another reservation in about 3 minutes. Now I'm sitting here at the only car rental place in town (Enterprise) and they only have 2 employees and there is like 30 people waiting.

What a giant waste of my time and money. The PDR shop hasn't even started work yet because the claim appraiser just show up yesterday, almost 3 months to the day after I submitted my claim. They won't start work until the appraisal gets processed. Thanks for wasting my time you berkeleys. I'm dropping them the second my truck gets repaired. I'm done with these idiots.

I've been working 4, 10 hours days. 0600-1600, Friday thru Monday. Today I showed up at work at 0550 and was the only car in the parking lot. There are 3 other people working the same shift but nobody was in the building. 

It's now 0658 and I'm still the only soul here. I feel like I missed something; like showing up to school on a Saturday.

I texted my shift lead and he didn't answer.

Very weird 🤷🏼‍♂️

In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :

The rapture.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture

buying khakis sucks now. So many stupid cuts and fit types. Somehow I can't just get new pairs of the ones I'm wearing.

The power flickered yesterday and for some reason when I powered up the computer I was logged out of everything.

And, Yahoo being Yahoo, I was not able to sign in to my email account(s). - The password you have entered is incorrect. I know the password is correct, I've been using it for years and I have it written down. I know the PW is correct for the verification email address because I also have it written down. I have had this email address for about 15 yrs and I'm probably going to just let it go.

Any recommendations for a new free one?

Peabody said:

I have had this email address for about 15 yrs and I'm probably going to just let it go.

Any recommendations for a new free one?

That sounds more like a computer or peripheral issue than a provider issue. Maybe the keyboard isn't reporting the correct keystrokes, or the computer doesn't read them correctly. Try logging in from another machine.

At the very least, type the PW somewhere else (Notepad or whatever) and make sure that what you type is what you see. If that fails (forgive me), power cycle it. 

I use Gmail for stuff that is not necessarily top secret and a paid provider called Fastmail for things I don't really want Google reading.

The plane just stopped at the gate.

Sit your dumb ass down and wait until they say to leave.

It won't make things any faster.

Also. Check your damn luggage. You don't need all that stuff.

Signed: the guy who's carry-on is a book.

In reply to DarkMonohue :

Excellent advice there, all around. I can't tell you how many times I was standing behind someone and they would type their password and windows would reject it and they would turn around and look at me like "see!? I told you so! Look what the stupid thing is doing to me!"

then I would turn away and have them take the password into the user name field and voilà something was wrong with the keyboard or their keystrokes. 
Good to know about Fastmail

Ordered a vevor tubing notcher from Amazon, the openings the shaft the with the hole saw goes through  weren't concentric, so the shaft wouldn't turn freely. and I had waited too long to test it to get a refund. So I thought I would turn down the shaft to make it work, but I had literally just sold my mini lathe. I thought about taking it to work using the lathe there, but ended up just chucking it up in the drill and hitting it with the grinder while spinning it. Normally vevor branded stuff has been on par harbor freight for me, but this is the first one that straight up hasn't worked out of the box

My wife's car (09 Jetta wagon) is fighting tooth and nail to get sent down the river.

Axle bolts wouldn't budge with my impact guns, or even my buddies big 1400 ft lb guy. Well, put a little spritz of PB blaster on it and Bob's your uncle! Wtf, never seen such a difference from a little lube on it ..

Next up: strut mount.. one of the nuts on the underside of the mount broke free and started spinning, so I had to sketchily compress the spring and undo the top but to get better access. Thankfully didn't lose any teeth.

Wheel bearing bolts: holy crap! No love from the impact gun. Spat a little lube on it and still no dice. Broke out the torch and after some fuss they came out at the expense of the wheel speed sensors.

Wheel bearing: yup, rusted, didn't want to pop out. Air chisel didn't work when pushing on the bearing or bolts. More lube. To hell with it. Get the mini sledge and bang on the bolts to break it out.

Wheel speed sensor: corroded to hell, and partially melted. You guess it, fought me. Nothing some time with a punch and hammer couldn't win.

I'm regretting opening the can of worms.

In reply to DarkMonohue :

Did all of those things and copy/pasted username and PW from a saved file. The same thing happened when I switched providers for my phone, I was no longer able to log in but was able to reset the PW for the confirmation Yahoo address ... which no longer works. 
It looks like the only way I can get in now is to pay for their tech help service. berkeley that. 
I'm done with this Yahoo garbage. 

In reply to gixxeropa :

Rather than modify it, in that situation I might have considered buying a second and returning the defective one.