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

Trying to ship an x-ray today to a customer in FL.  What a hassle...

Apparently there is FedEx Air freight, and a FedEx "freight" freight by truck.  Seems the boss scheduled the wrong one, we wanted air and the driver that showed up is truck.  We didn't want it bouncing around a truck for 3 days.

There's also regular FedEx, and a separate FedEx Ground.  ...So that means 4 separate companies that don't communicate and are completely apart (our FedEx Air driver confirmed this multiple times when Ground doesn't pick up our E36 M3 and it just sits here).

wae said:

In reply to stuart in mn :

wait wait wait.. You're telling me that I could shower just once every three days?  At 15 minutes a day, that's like 60 hours a year I'd get back!

Or am I taking the wrong message from that?

Yeah no.  That scalding hot morning shower is too restorative to bypass.

Wonder how hard it'd be to build a sauna.  Or a Japanese style heated bath.

I'm an idiot.  Left some groceries in the bag that I thought had none that needed to be refrigerated.  Guess who gets to go brave the Christmas shopping traffic later tonight to go pick up a couple items that were supposed to be refrigerated.

Accidentally sent my house keys off with the totaled car.

Tried to iron my sons perler bead project and berkeleyed it up.  Now I have to redo the whole thing tomorrow

TravisTheHuman said:

Verizon has been a pain in my ass this week.  First travel pass didnt work when I was in Costa Rica, then my account got locked.  Then when I returned to US, SMS didn't work.

Guess what you need to get any form of support?  Access to your account.  Guess what you need to reset your password/unlock your account?  SMS.

 

Between that and work IT issues, the first 2.5 hours of my day was spent on the phone with various forms of technical support.

I'm always worried about this happening due to stupid-ass companies using SMS-based TFA rather than TOTP. My bank is one of them.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

My bank seems to think it's OK to send confirmation texts to the number in my 35yr old account listed in my profile as a land line.

For those of you in Anne Arundel County Maryland that asked for a White Christmas, I hope you are happy with the ice falling from the sky.

In reply to Noddaz :

Baltimore County says 

Every now and then I feel like just tossing everything I own. Where the hekk did all this crap come from and why? I used to live in a 1200sf 2-bedroom house with my wife and we felt comfortable. Two kids don't take up that much room. Hahahahahahahahhahaaaaaaaa

I think this was discussed in the past few weeks:

My rental is a 2023 or 24 Nissan Rogue.  Its fine.  The shifter is weird though.  The position of R relative to D is fine, however relative to P, its odd.  From P to go into reverse, you have to push foward, which is unnatural.  To go into P, you don't push foward, you press the button on the top of the shifter.

In general I don't see how this is an improvement over any current automatic patern.  Since they already have the ability to go fwd/back, why not maintain the PRND "standard"?

In reply to TravisTheHuman :

What standard? 

Part of what damaged my Volvo's transmission in 2018 was me trying to upshift and failing, because the manual gate is backwards to a performance transmission.  Although I suppose that after six more years of driving it, if I haven't rewired it to work correctly, I'll probably never do it.

As far as the separate park button, that does seem to be the new "standard" as these things go. Mercedes and Toyota both use a similar paradigm.  They really want you to get into the habit of a specific, non-ambiguous motion to put a vehicle in Park, instead of possibly missing it and leaving it in Reverse.  This is probably super important when you can't be forced to put it in Park to take your key out because there's no mechanical key.

Mercedes, of course, will also slam it into Park if you open the door, even if the thing is rolling.  Ford will too when you shut the engine off in gear.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

One of the things that I love the most about my GL350 is that when I turn the car off and remove the key, it automatically puts the transmission in Park.  The downside, of course, is that I'm forever needing to remember that I need to put other automatic cars into park before I can get the key out...

In reply to wae :

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to TravisTheHuman :

 

What standard? 

 

Yeah, that's why its in quotes.
 

That said, I have never owned an automatic vehicle that wasn't PRNDxx, and I think aside from this rental and maybe one other very recent vehicle (Chevy Bolt comes to mind), I've never driven one that doesn't follow that convention.

In reply to TravisTheHuman :

We recently had a rental Rogue and that shifter set up is bizarre. I suppose after a few weeks of ownership you would get used to it. I drove it probably 20 trips and I usually did something I hadn't intended to when reversing or parking. Not a huge fan of the electric parking brake either. Damn new fangled cars, get off my lawn!

ShawnG said:

That is a fuel sending unit grommet on a ski-doo. Yes, a grommet, below fuel level. Idiots.

Half an hour of disassembly later, here's what the rotten one looks like.

So, yeah. Fuel rots the grommet, which is in the bottom of the tank. Rotten grommet falls out and dumps 10 gallons of fuel on my customers floor.

Bloody stupid design.

Didn't Holley teach everyone "no gaskets below fuel level" 70 years ago?

Old habits die hard...

Skidoo has been putting grommets in tanks below the fuel level for probably over 50 years. It used to be for the fuel pick-up line to run through when the fuel gage was in the cap or a sight glass on the side of the tank. 

Well this has turned out to be a terrible Christmas for the mtn family. Not-so-minor rant/ramblings/trying to make sense of anything: 
 

This Christmas started Saturday with kiddo being sick, fever of 103-104. Turns out it's influenza A. Apparently the flu shot missed this particular strain.

Monday I am running all around to the vet, doctor, pharmacy, another errand I can't remember... when I was home, it was either walking the dog or taking care of kiddo... and wife is starting to feel it too. Obviously have to cancel Christmas Dinner with the in-laws that was supposed to be that night. Didn't get anything done that I was supposed to.

Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year. My favorite family party, and one that basically everyone wants to go to. But no way it was happening yesterday for us. I had to run to pick up my wife's Christmas gift that finally got delivered to the store; grocery for pedialyte which was the busiest I've seen this grocery store, walk the dog, take care of 2 sick people... both were puking after they were in bed... not a great day. And I ended up staying up until 2am despite being exhausted to clean the house and let Santa in.

Today, we all slept in until 11. Did Christmas. Wife goes to nap. Meanwhile, kid pukes again. Stick her in the bath. Take her out, dry her off, put her on sofa... she passes out. I cover her up and sit next to her. Then my FIL calls... my MIL has had a heart attack. 

I go wake up my wife, she heads to the hospital.

Kid wakes up, pukes again. Missed the bowl entirely. Luckily it was basically all water and it was all over the towel from the first bath, and me and my clothes. Stick kid in the bath again.
 

And then my wife calls. My MIL did not make it. She was 66. 
 

This sucks. 

In reply to mtn :

Oof.  That's a bad week.  My sympathies.

In reply to mtn :

My condolences. Very sorry friend. 

In reply to mtn :

Wow, I'm so sorry to hear all that, man.  My sincere condolences.

In reply to mtn : I'm sorry for your loss.

In reply to dculberson :

I'm the same - why keep all this?  

Example - bought a new fuel filler neck ($105) - the rock hard 240z 52 year old original was not going back in without getting destroyed but I'm going to put it into a box and keep it. 

Why?

In reply to mtn :

I'm very sorry to hear this man

In reply to mtn :

My condolences. Really sorry to hear that.

Quoth the plumber: "In 23 years of doing this, I've never seen one of these standpipes break like this".

Happy berkeleying Holidays to me. Fortunately they're pretty confident that that dribble isn't going to turn into a geyser overnight so hopefully it'll hold until the appointment to fix it.