Rant Thread

[Greatscott]

We are certainly in a kinder, gentler world....
Not too terribly long ago, posting up a topic that had already been covered, especially if that topic was on the first or second page, would result in the OP getting punched in the face by every user with over 100 posts (virtually, of course). Now, things are different... First, we, the RCC community are much more tolerant to this, and second, and the reasoning behind the first reason, there just isn't that much traffic around here. So any post, even one asking the same question as two other posts on the first page of a subforum, isn't a capital offense, anymore....

So, why is the traffic here, and other forums down to a pitiful crawl, with us old-schoolers desperately clinging to what was, in hopes of what it could be again? Is our hobby fading, and people finding other ways to spend the excess income? Nope, its simple, Face Book. Now, lets be honest here, we are all on Face Book. And, honestly, it does have it place, when the independent fact checkers who are paid by Face Book are not blurring photos and dropping contextual warning banners over posts. In particular, ol' Face Book is REALLY good for organizing local events and get-togethers, something that has been a bit lacking here on our beloved RCC.

But, from a user-to-use perspective, there are two things that piss me off... First, users that bitch up a storm when someone asks a common question to the one-millionth time. Some examples are on the TRX4 group, asking what the best upgrades are, or if they should run portal weights. On the CR-10 group, asking what the best Bowden tube is, or the best hot end... Or, my town's FB group, someone asking what they are building on the corner of Maine and Jefferson, which has been asked and answered 1000 times. I won't lie, many of these routine repeat questions get annoying, but you take them all in strike, and try not to piss off that new kid that is just trying to get the most out of his new toy, and really doesn't have a clue as to where to start. But going on a tirade on someone's post about how that question has been asked ten-million times, and they should do a search before they post really says that they do not understand how and why FB works. Trying to search for past posts or topics is bad by design, the good folks at FB cooperate really don't want you doing it. Why? Because each new post generates add revenue, searching and finding information off of an old post does nothing but tax their servers. If you are someone that REALLY wants people to search before someone posts, or really wants to be able to search for old topic, then you really want to not be looking for this stuff on FB, and go back to the old school forums, like RCC.

My other bitch about FB users... Those that bitch about customer rights and bitch about their data being shared and sold. If you are one of these people, let me clue you in to a not so secret secret... You, the Face Book user, the person that pays nothing for the use of Face Book, are not Face Book's "customer", you, my good friend, are its product. Face Book's bread and butter is selling its user data to the highest paying customer. If you don't like this, you have a couple of options. One, stop using FB, or two, don't feed it all of your personal information; it only knows what you tell it. Face Book thinks I am 106 years old and graduated high school 2010, but got my first college degree in 2006.... I am sure I have pissed of their analytics program...

//endith rant....

[Habanero]

I work in a retail store that sells higher end leather goods average price a few hundred dollars. They change the sales often and the signs say 25% off 40% off etc and so people are always asking what the exact prices are. So they ask me and I tell them and about 20% of the time they ask "is that with the 25% off?"
1) What do you think I was doing with the calculator in my hand just now?
2) I cant think of a more surefire way to piss off a customer than to tell them a wrong price! Why would I set myself up for that?
I notice most of them are Asian. Is this a common thing in those countries? Lie to them about the price and then jack it up when they go to pay?
Anyway minor rant. As a wise lady once told me: Let it be my biggest problem.

[ScaleLifeNewbie]

Sent our Scag V-ride II in the shop about 3 weeks ago because of an unidentified issue we cannot figure out. We adjusted the valves and did normal maintenance things right before sending it. Told them specifically to at least make sure the valves were correct as we didn't have the right size feeler gauge. We get a call from them this morning just to say after THREE weeks of waiting that they didn't do anything to it!!

Going to pick it up today and do it ourselves. This is why we don't let shops touch our equipment.

[skinnyj]

UPS, but not for service or damages. This time it is billing.

My boss had me look over our most recent UPS bill, as she thought it was pretty high for us. After looking it over and seeing a 3 package NDA that had inflated the bill, I noticed something else... I started seeing all these $1-5 and sometimes $12 surcharges on the packages. They were dimensional correction surcharges. I always enter the dimensions of my packages and I understand that there is a dimension/weight relationship that determines the rate. That is fine. I get that part. Here is the rant part: a 16" x 10" x 12" box (manufacturer's spec) was "corrected" to 16" x 11" x 13" and then a "correction fee" was applied. So, later that day, when I shipped a box with those dimensions, I checked it with a tape measure. I was infuriated to discover that, if a box is even 1/8" over a declared whole inch, they will round up to the next whole inch and surcharge you for it.

[Greatscott]

You know how you tell a good engineer from a bad one? A bad engineer always has to be right, even when you have proven them wrong.

[TheLetterJ]

My wife and I have been trying to buy another house, and the seller has already accepted our offer, our current house is prepped for sale (pics taken today, not listed yet.) We called our current insurance (AAA) to get a quote for the new house, which is "rural" (on 10 acres) and were blown away with their quote of $9,273 annually... WTF?!?! Our current home is valued at about 2/3 as much and costs around $600 annually. AAA said they couldn't cover us and instead gave us a quote through the California FAIR plan (a conglomerate of insurance companies that WILL cover high fire risk properties.) I get that fire danger is higher in the boonies (even though the new house has fire sprinklers both inside, and on the roof, as well as a stand alone fire water tank, a hydrant within 75' of the house, and 100' of clear defensible space) and I expected insurance costs to quadruple, but 15 times as much? We've been working towards our dream of owning some acreage for the better part of 15 years, and we've really been getting all our ducks in a row for the last 2 years, but that EXTRA $722 per month is going to completely take us out of the running. We asked our realtor who the sellers were using for insurance and it turns out the sellers weren't even carrying insurance! A friend's family lives in the same area and his dad is a retired insurance agent and even he couldn't find coverage outside of the FAIR plan. They're paying 5 figures a year for their insurance (multiple houses on 120 acres.) It's almost like they want everyone to move to town so the pot farmers can continue taking over all the rural properties...

[OnTheTrail]

Originally Posted by Greatscott

You know how you tell a good engineer from a bad one? A bad engineer always has to be right, even when you have proven them wrong.

"...Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig. You both get muddy but only one of you likes it. ..."

[ferp420]

Originally Posted by TheLetterJ

My wife and I have been trying to buy another house, and the seller has already accepted our offer, our current house is prepped for sale (pics taken today, not listed yet.) We called our current insurance (AAA) to get a quote for the new house, which is "rural" (on 10 acres) and were blown away with their quote of $9,273 annually... WTF?!?! Our current home is valued at about 2/3 as much and costs around $600 annually. AAA said they couldn't cover us and instead gave us a quote through the California FAIR plan (a conglomerate of insurance companies that WILL cover high fire risk properties.) I get that fire danger is higher in the boonies (even though the new house has fire sprinklers both inside, and on the roof, as well as a stand alone fire water tank, a hydrant within 75' of the house, and 100' of clear defensible space) and I expected insurance costs to quadruple, but 15 times as much? We've been working towards our dream of owning some acreage for the better part of 15 years, and we've really been getting all our ducks in a row for the last 2 years, but that EXTRA $722 per month is going to completely take us out of the running. We asked our realtor who the sellers were using for insurance and it turns out the sellers weren't even carrying insurance! A friend's family lives in the same area and his dad is a retired insurance agent and even he couldn't find coverage outside of the FAIR plan. They're paying 5 figures a year for their insurance (multiple houses on 120 acres.) It's almost like they want everyone to move to town so the pot farmers can continue taking over all the rural properties...

i couldent get any home owners issurance ether in fact most people i know cant get homeowners insurance anymore

it dosent matter much for us the cost of insurance would be more than building a new house if something did happen so that money that would be payed out to the issurance agency gets put in the bank for a rebuild / remodel fund we made our own issurance

[TheLetterJ]

That was another thing I was questioning, if we moved to/towards the desert where it's flatter and there's far less fuel, would it change the insurance situation? I guess you answered that for me! 50% of a property's fire risk rating is based on the "local" fire department's ability to deal with it, but this little excerpt seems to be the nail in the coffin: "Any area that is more than five driving miles from the nearest fire station is automatically rated a 10" (10 being the highest risk assignable.) I kicked around your thought of going uninsured and saving for a rainy day, but with an estimated cost to rebuild of roughly 6-7 times our annual household income, there's no way we could recover from an uninsured loss of that scale. No insurance = no loan. Is this a California thing, or is insurance like this for rural properties all across the country?

[high plains drifter]

Update on previous rant about unlicensed/ uninsured drivers...

Just to recap: Girl hit our car with her dad's truck. Dad had insurance but the girl had no license and wasn't listed on the policy. Despite that her dad wasn't driving and wasn't even in the truck at the time of the incident, we went after his insurance co.

Incident happened Sept 17th and I guess that despite things moving so slow, I'll consider myself fortunate at this point. It took a long time because the ins co had to open up an investigation into the incident but they finally honored our claim. Very glad that we didn't have to go thru our ins company and actually surprising since it's a small seemingly fly-by-night insurer. Knock on wood... so far they've actually been pretty good regarding everything... communication included.

As of now we've been reimbursed for the preliminary damage est and rental car starting the day that we drop our car off at the body shop and lasting thru the duration of the repairs. I'm also really glad that we were able to pick the body shop of our choosing.

Certainly has taken a good deal of time between consulting with our insurance co and jumping thru all the hoops for the body shop, the other insurance co, and the car rental co but thankfully we're moving forward.

[TheLetterJ]

That's great news!

My wife witnessed a hit and run in front of her school (she's a teacher) this week. New silverado with blacked out windows and blinged out wheels with a water tank in the bed (I swear, there's got to be more "mobile detailers" per capita here than anything else, last I checked, it doesn't pay much... I'll give you 1 guess what it's a cover for) ran a stop sign and t boned the front end of a woman who had just picked her daughter up from school. He swirved all over the place after that, then stopped 1/2 block later, got out and hunched over like he was gonna puke, then got back in his truck and took off. My wife immediately called 911 and when she heard/saw emergency vehicles coming, they made a right, instead of a left at the intersection nearest the school. She called 911 again and they informed her that a vehicle by the same description had hit more vehicles down the street beforehand, and there were injuries and that another unit was on their way to the crash my wife saw. The woman and here daughter were unharmed, but the bumper/grill/headlights/radiator/ac/fender got peeled off the car. The police said they were very likely to catch the drunk sack o' $4!+ based on his "business" name plastered on the side of his truck and surveillance camera's that caught him when he got out to puke.

[DRED805]

Originally Posted by TheLetterJ

That's great news!

My wife witnessed a hit and run in front of her school (she's a teacher) this week. New silverado with blacked out windows and blinged out wheels with a water tank in the bed (I swear, there's got to be more "mobile detailers" per capita here than anything else, last I checked, it doesn't pay much... I'll give you 1 guess what it's a cover for) ran a stop sign and t boned the front end of a woman who had just picked her daughter up from school. He swirved all over the place after that, then stopped 1/2 block later, got out and hunched over like he was gonna puke, then got back in his truck and took off. My wife immediately called 911 and when she heard/saw emergency vehicles coming, they made a right, instead of a left at the intersection nearest the school. She called 911 again and they informed her that a vehicle by the same description had hit more vehicles down the street beforehand, and there were injuries and that another unit was on their way to the crash my wife saw. The woman and here daughter were unharmed, but the bumper/grill/headlights/radiator/ac/fender got peeled off the car. The police said they were very likely to catch the drunk sack o' $4!+ based on his "business" name plastered on the side of his truck and surveillance camera's that caught him when he got out to puke.

I gotta start spending more time in Santa Maria!

[TheLetterJ]

You know, the city of Santa Barbara runs a free weekly bus up here to drop off their homeless, I bet they'd let you on.

[DRED805]

Originally Posted by TheLetterJ

You know, the city of Santa Barbara runs a free weekly bus up here to drop off their homeless, I bet they'd let you on.

[durok]

Originally Posted by high plains drifter

Update on previous rant about unlicensed/ uninsured drivers...

Just to recap: Girl hit our car with her dad's truck. Dad had insurance but the girl had no license and wasn't listed on the policy. Despite that her dad wasn't driving and wasn't even in the truck at the time of the incident, we went after his insurance co.

Incident happened Sept 17th and I guess that despite things moving so slow, I'll consider myself fortunate at this point. It took a long time because the ins co had to open up an investigation into the incident but they finally honored our claim. Very glad that we didn't have to go thru our ins company and actually surprising since it's a small seemingly fly-by-night insurer. Knock on wood... so far they've actually been pretty good regarding everything... communication included.

As of now we've been reimbursed for the preliminary damage est and rental car starting the day that we drop our car off at the body shop and lasting thru the duration of the repairs. I'm also really glad that we were able to pick the body shop of our choosing.

Certainly has taken a good deal of time between consulting with our insurance co and jumping thru all the hoops for the body shop, the other insurance co, and the car rental co but thankfully we're moving forward.

Man, that's great news!

I'm glad that they finally are getting this sorted out for you guys...

[high plains drifter]

Thanks, TheLetterJ and durok...

Keeping my cool throughout all of this I think has helped. I doubt that the claims adjuster had much to do with the insurance company's decision to honor our claim but I definitely feel that early on in our communication, that we developed a good rapport. After several conversations I could "feel her softening up" lol. I'd hate to deal with all the angry and ignorant people that she likely does day to day and I didn't feel that being an a-hole would be advantageous for me nor deserved for her. The main aggravation was simply how long things were taking to actually find out if they would cover us. And I've no doubt that there will be other issues, delays, etc before it's all said and done... but at least I'm slowly getting there and remaining patient throughout the process.

[soze]

Just a rant in general on the current crop of new grads coming into the workforce.

The sense of entitlement is unbelievable! Never have I seen a group that expects to do very little, but still expects to get high level promotions and raises. On top of that the work environment is now soft enough to give in to this.

As an example, friend who has 20+ years of experience gave one of his new hire colleagues a task to do. New hire responds... "Why would you expect me to do this task if someone who has been here longer doesn't want to do it?"

Unfortunately his company kind of caters to these kids for a more "balanced & diverse" workplace. Nothing is earned on merit anymore.

It kind of feels like Gen X generation gets the shaft a bit. Told by the boomers to put in the time and earn your way only to have the new work environment tell us "we need to cater to these young kids and make it easy for them, sucks for you!"

[Greatscott]

MOTHER PUSS BUCKET!!!!

Needless to say, in one way or another we are all having to take a bite of this giant shit sandwich known as covid. But, there are times when it is more annoying than others. Last weekend I got a sinus infection. I have had them before, I know what they feel like when I get one. But, with of my symptoms, I had to get a covid test before going back to work. Getting a covid test is fun enough when you are not actually sick. But, a sinus infection makes you feel like your sinuses are being scrubbed out with a wire brush, then they ram the swab up there... SUMBITCH....

With that...
The local testing site test you in your car, which really isn't a terrible place to get tested. I was sitting there, waiting for my turn for brain-probing, and a nurse was talking to the next to the guy next to me. He was getting very upset and cursing at the nurse because they had no information on him, and could not give him a test. While I would find this annoying, I have a general rule to be extremely nice, no matter how annoyed I am, to anyone that has the possibility of shoving something into one of my orifices, or stabbing me with a needle.

[OnTheTrail]

Originally Posted by Greatscott

I have a general rule to be extremely nice, no matter how annoyed I am, to anyone that has the possibility of shoving something into one of my orifices, or stabbing me with a needle.

[Greatscott]

Joy of joys... Now we have the omicron corona virus variant... This sounds a lot like Unicron, so thanks a**holes for ruining Transformers The Movie for me...

But, just like "drone", "onicron" sounds scary and ominous, so more people might get the shot. If you want something that will scare the younger people into getting the shot, name the next variant something that will REALLY scare them, like syphilis, gonorrhea, or herpes. Now, if you want to scare the right-learners into getting it, name it something REALLY scary, like Pelosi, Clinton (which sounds like a venereal disease anyway), Biden, or even AOC (don't even have to spell this one out...).

Yup, I can hear it now...
Fed, "Bill, you go get that shot?"
Bill, "Yeah Fred, I did..."
Fred, "What made you change your mind?"
Bill, "Well, I am going camping this weekend, and the thought having a raging case of AOC scared the hell out of me... Where you goin'?"
Fred, "Gettin' the shot, the next variant is called 'Biden'. I hear that sh!t lasts for four years... Not me brother!!!!"

//endith_rate/