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

I'm completely over house hunting! For the 6-18 months prior to finishing renovations and selling our house we could find tons of interesting stuff that would have met our needs and our budget......

Now, that we can actually act on property and have the money to do so?...... berkeley all.... It's all over priced or in garbage condition and even then, pickings are slim...

Staying with family is grinding us down, but we know if we get into a lease agreement something will turn up almost immediately leaving us having to try and break lease,  and that's a kind of crappy position to be in.

Don't even get me started on the levels of bullE36 M3 sprouted by real estate agents.... Deadset, I give you guys every opportunity to disclose E36 M3 before we waste each other's time looking at a place. Don't bother acting all put out when I'm not interested the place you spruiked as perfect turns out to be a complete dump. "Anything I should know about?".... Nah mate, she's a beautiful solid home is the standard response,..... Getting there and finding obvious termite damage is probably a fairly berkeleying important thing I might like to know about!!!

Rant probably doesn't make mauch sense but hey.... I'm venting

In reply to daeman :

I feel your pain.  We have been looking for the last two years and finally got a contract on one today.  Previously we passed on several thinking we would find some thing better, but the real estate market here (Nashville area) just keeps climbing.  Oh well,  if all goes well we close on July 31st,  then I can start the massive external garage build.

In reply to Cotton :

2 years! Dear God ! We're only coming up to 4 months, sorry mate, I'll completely withdraw my rant. Congratulations though, and hopefully the waits been well worth it for you guys . Now get yourself over to the minor wins thread, because that's awesome.

I'm actually seriously considering building a place, some of the stuff we've looked at is in major project territory, and I kinda feel like by the time Ive 3/4 rebuilt something that's starting from scratch might actually be better.

To Cotton and Daeman:

We gave up looking and decided to renovate our current home in Atlanta. We went from a 2/1 to a 4/3 with a massive kitchen and two family rooms. It wasn't cheap, but it was cheaper than moving when you factor in my 2.5 car detached garage. The location is good (just outside Atlanta's perimeter highway) and minutes from downtown. It helps that we bought 13 years ago when the area was "bad" but now it is coming up.

slefain said:

Fancy new 6" wide gutters don't drain for E36 M3. We just had a good rain storm and it is a waterfall off the front and back of my house, right over the top of the gutters. Good thing I haven't signed off on the final inspection yet. I'm soaking wet after building a makeshift ramp to bounce the waterfall out into the yard and away from the foundation. I'll check the basement walls in the morning, hopefully I caught it before any water could soak through the block wall.

berkeley. 1/2" of water flooded into the new addition. The new wood floors are already shot. Fantastic.

Seems the “reward” for being patient is mostly having to continue to be patient.

Trying to get the fired builder to get the (allegedly purchased and in his garage) windows and doors for the cabin to us today and get the last of his gear off of the property. Have zero confidence that he'll respond... which means we stop trying to resolve things amicably (a word which we decided we couldn't use with him because we're pretty convinced he'd not know what it meant) and start playing hard ball. 

Also mildly annoyed with the second prospective replacement builder as he was supposed to have his estimate to us no later than yesterday morning and we still don't have it.

EDIT: Aaaaaand berkeley. Just heard from the second builder (the one who had the experience fixing the fired builders previous berkeley-ups) and he said that he had decided to pass on submitting a bid to do the job. Which is REALLY disappointing as he was who I was leaning toward to do the job given his past experience with the fired builder's work and that I just liked him better in general. Now we're down to just one bid... another is supposed to be coming, but I have a decent idea that he won't end up deciding to bid on it either (older guy who wasn't sure he wanted to deal with all the stairs...).

The only GOOD potential news is that the remaining builder we do have a bid from is raring to go and will probably get things done more quickly than the one who just dropped out (and would not have been able to start for another week and a half).

Fog lights are for fog, driving lights are for Driving...learn the difference and respect your fellow motorists.  This means you:  Shiny happy new truck owner with 1 billion LEDs.  This also applies to trucks who run offroad LED lightbars in the daytime: WTF.

Fog lights spray light outwards and are completely unnecessary on I-95.  The number of brand new pickup trucks with a billion lights (all of them on all the time) is really starting to bug me.  I had a stock-looking pickup pass me (same direction) on the interstate last night and nearly blinded me.  

Have been trying to get ahold of the sheriff's office for the county the cabin & fired builder are in for the last hour or so to make sure they'd be who we'd file the report on the theft of the materials too... and so far their phone has just rung on endlessly- not even an answering machine. I suppose that's the disadvantage of having a cabin on property in the middle of bum-berk-nowhere... 

In reply to daeman :

It was 1986 and I’m engaged and we’re looking for a starter home with a basement.  This was before the internet web thingy so you heavily used real estate agents.  

The guy pulls open a door on the side of the house and shows me a dirt floor area -100 square feet.   What’s this I ask?  

You said you wanted a basement.   This my friend is a dirt crawl space.   Back then a realtor showed you three homes and then expected you to buy one.  I looked at 50+ homes and burned through 7-10 agents and found the perfect home FSBO in my local paper.   

Keep looking!  

Went on a car manufacturer's configurator and put together my ideal car.  It's not configured the way your average customer is going to want.  Searched inventory and found one just right at a dealer in CT.

Called.

They won't budge off MSRP.

Welp, this has certainly been an interesting week. Before last night, I could count the number of times I've had to deal with law enforcement outside of minor tickets in my life on pretty much one hand (and less than both if you count tickets).

I've now had to call the police/sheriff twice in the last 24 hours: First at 1am this morning to complain about a car that had been sitting in a driveway across the street for half an hour blaring music loud enough to keep us from getting to sleep, and now to get a complaint started against the builder for the theft of the materials he has purchased for the cabin but has for the last week and a half refused to even answer our calls or texts to return. Given this includes all of the windows and doors for the cabin, totaling somewhere north of $2,000, this counts as a Class D Felony in our state... 

My car transport jinx seems to be well and truly alive.

Asked a few well-known companies for quotes to get the newly acquired S2000 from Fla to WV. One of the companies (a CM advertiser) got back to me quickly with a quote.

For transporting the car from FL to some random place in WA that I've never heard of. With the WV zip code right next to the name of the place in WA I'd never heard of.

Now I don't know exactly where every zip code in the US is, but I'm almost positive that there are no 2xxxx zip codes out in WA. You'd hope a logistics company would also be aware of this.

In reply to Datsun310Guy :

Real estate agents are every bit as bad as used care salesmen aren't they?, dirt crawlspaces are basements.... That's gold. I've dealt with about 20 agents so far and all bar 2 have pegged my bullE36 M3 meter. We knew it was going to be tricky finding the right place, but I guess lied to ourselves that it wasn't going to be this difficult.

Oh! On a related note, I vented here because living with parents with your partner in your mid 30s is just plain uncomfortable!, I thought it might help me relieve some frustration.  

But  my last nigh frustrations got the better of me, I took mum's bait and got suckered into an massive argument. We'd clashed over the topic a couple of days ago and she decided to go for round 2.... I fell for it hook Hook line and sinker... I'm disappointed in myself. But I'm even more disappointed that someone I care about and always used to look up to and respect could have such an appalling outlook on things. It's kind of funny (and by funny I mean sad), all these years I thought dad had alot to do with their relationship issues, turns out to be the exact opposite.....any wonder the guy refuses to engage. Guess it's time I take a leaf out of dads book....

In reply to slefain :

We gave up our really nicely renovated place to fund a lifestyle change, I'd be lying if I said there isn't a little bit of regret at the moment

What's the story with the gutters? Insufficiently sized down pipes? Or not enough of them? Did you install them, or a contractor?  You can have 6ft gutters, but if they're trying to drain through a drinking straw you're going to have problems.

That sucks about the floors, hopefully they're not completely destroyed.

In reply to daeman :

Political?

Lots of guys figure out why their Dad was always so quiet at home after they get a bit older...

In reply to Hoondavan :

There is a special place in hell for European car drivers that always have their rear fog light on.  We aren’t in the Alps, I don’t need a bright red light shining at me at the crack of dawn every day. 

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

Kind of, but pretty much racial and just  plain ignorant. 

Big time, that bloke can't get a word in edgeways. Because I haven't lived at home since just before 18, It wasn't so apparent, but clear as day now. 

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Do you have an exit plan for if/when this just gets to be too much of a pain in the ass?  

On the materials,  do you have any proof he has the materials in his possession and used your money to purchase?  If not,  it’s best just to hire the lawyer you plan to meet with and let them sort it out,  but that will add up as well depending on how long this takes and if there is a lawsuit involved,  then if you win a judgement collecting is another matter.

Something like this could sour you and/or your wife on the cabin long term.  I’ve seen it happen before.  It was so much pain to make it to the end game the feelings about the place completely changed.

I’m trapped in the office.  I just ran to the vending machine for a can of seltzer and the machine gave me a Mountain Dew.  I’d rather have a crab juice.

Datsun310Guy said:

Keep looking!  

Is that an S12 200SX?

In reply to stanger_missle :

My guess was Celica

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

 now to get a complaint started against the builder for the theft of the materials he has purchased for the cabin but has for the last week and a half refused to even answer our calls or texts to return. Given this includes all of the windows and doors for the cabin, totaling somewhere north of $2,000, this counts as a Class D Felony in our state... 

As Cotton alluded to, this probably isn't a criminal matter that law enforcement is going to be interested in getting involved in.  You are in the midst of a business dispute, which will be a civil matter you need to take to court.  This is based on my personal observations of how this kind of thing works in most states.  Your mileage may vary.

I'm so berkeleying sick of dealing with infotainment issues on cars at work. Every vehicle that comes through the door, the customer is complaining that their phone won't stay paired or their Bluetooth drops calls or their radio locks up once in a blue moon or their infotainment display goes black once every three months. And we can never duplicate it, and you reflash the system and get paid 0.7 hours for a 2 and a half hour reprogram and have no clue if it fixes it. If I wanted to work on phones and radios, I'd have gone to work at berkeleying Best Buy, not a GM dealer.

House we were hoping for looks like we're going to miss out on it. It's currently pending, so unless the contingency makes it so the current deal falls through, we probably aren't getting it. I'm not super bummed, as I figure if it doesn't work out, it wasn't meant to be. 

Found another house, that is pretty weird, but kinda interesting. Same distance from work as the previous house, but getting to anything in our current town (church, family, etc.) is like a 25 minute drive.