Happened to me a few years ago. I was driving my Suburban home from a long road trip, and I knew that the damn thing got a pathetic 13 mpg, but I also knew that I had a quarter tank of gas and that it was a 32 gallon tank. Based on the 1/4 reading on the fuel gauge, and the distance to home, I figured that I was ok to make it home.
Couple of things that I learned that night. First, the fuel gauge on an 87 Suburban is a POS, and 1/4 tank pretty much means empty. Second, despite having the option of the 32 gallon tank clearly marked as an option (yes, I actually had the option codes for that vehicle in the glove box), the motherfuckers at GM only installed a 24 gallon tank on the truck. So I ran out of gas about 30 miles from home at midnight.
As I was walking along the road to the next exit where there was a gas station a few miles away, I decided to call home and tell my wife that I would be late. (Actually, I was also looking for discarded plastic bottles along the road to carry gas since the while the pumps at the station were 24 hour, the actual store was closed). My wife said why didn’t I just call AAA?
Why? Because I am an idiot. I turned around and did just that. Even so, I wonder how that night would have played out if I only found a 0.5l soda bottle to carry gas. Might have been a few trips.
That’s not too bad if it stays within those delivery parameters.
Sorry about the leak. Hope it gets resolved soon.
I ordered some new pieces May 14th of this year from a local dedicated furniture store who will dispose of my old items as well as deliver and set up my new purchases.
They called me mid July to advise that the mattress company had gone bankrupt. Subsequently, I needed to make another visit and pick out a new mattress from their current supplier.
So now now everything is due to be delivered August 14th - 3 months from date of order lol!
I’m stressing about it for various irrational reasons so I’ll be relieved when it is all done.
We’ve ordered furniture from this place multiple times and it usually comes in sooner than the estimate.
The furniture lasts forever, though, so I find it’s worth the wait. I’m always nervous when we do a custom job but I’ve never been anything but thrilled with the results. In this case they let us bring the leather swatches back to our house to really make sure it was the right color.
We have only one chair in that living room and it’s going to be annoying for that to continue another several weeks. Then we’ll have to find a way to get rid of the chair. I have mixed feelings about it. It’s not a great chair, merely serviceable, but it’s also the chair on which I sat for many hours feeding and holding my infant son, so I’m weirdly attached to it. But it’s not a very attractive chair, so it’s going to have to go.
I have an installation of Adobe Acrobat Pro on my machine, that I had received through some Adobe promotion years ago. For some reason, it now is in “demo mode” and requires sign-in with a license I don’t own. Okay, fine, no big deal, I edit PDFs like maybe once every other year anyway, so it’s no huge loss. Uninstall Acrobat Pro, and download the free Reader. Easy-peasy.
Except the piece of shit automatically installs “McAfee Security Scan”. No custom installation options, no opt-out, just automatic. If I was installing something off of CNET 20 years ago, I’d expect this behavior, but from a major software publisher installing directly from their site? So unprofessional. Fuck you Adobe.
(At least I was able to just uninstall the bullshit garbage software but still, I hate that company.)
I hate serious lottery players. They have all the time in the world and anyone behind them in line can just suck it up.
Today this lady, whom I dread waiting on came in. First she will not come to the till. She stands at the lotto machine and either waves at you or stares at you until you walk over to the machnine. I can only assume she thinks that thing is going to run off out of reach if she moves away from it. She had 4? trabsactions when all was said and done. When she finished with her first lottery transaction, two winners, 5 scratch offs and 3 poker lotto, she decided she needed cigarettes. She very plainly asked for Basic Red Hundreds and stood there while I got them off the shelf, in fact I had to open another carton 'cause we were down to one pack on the shelf. She had a coupon on her phone. We have a very good rewards program and I had to ask her 3 times to enter her number. Because she was all wrapped up checking out her lotto and getting the coupon up. I scanned her ID, sat the smokes in front of her, and scanned her coupon. Then she needed more lotto. I told her once I scanned the coupon I couldn’t do anythng else for that transaction. So we finished that, she handed me another winner and wanted more poker lotto with it. Then she wanted 5 dollars in quarters. We have automatic changers and I was about to till out so I had no change in my drawer. I got the thing down got the quarters only to find that she didn’t say Basic Reds she said Marlboro Black Reds. By that time I called the manager 'cause I was over her.
My manager refunded her for the Basics, sold her the Red/Blacks with rewards and coupon (you cannot refund rewards or coupons so my drawer took the hit) She gave the idiot 1.50 in cash for the coupon. Yet the idiot could not wrap her head around the whole thing. Manager told her: I’m going to refund you 13. 25 for the Basics, you pay me with your card or however for the Red/Blacks, and I’ll give you 1.50 for the coupon, go ahead and punch in your rewards. Then it started: well how much am I paying? Lather rinse repeat about 5 times.
We finally got her out after 20 min. plus. With 8 people lined up at the other tills and the self serve. After I finally cleared the line and counted down. I tried to check the audio to see: There was a problem with the application and the audio was not captured. What a stinkin’ day.
That was really bad, but habitual lottery players are the worst.
Yes. Although in my case I’m extremely happy with homeownership in general so far. And that’s with having a gas leak, air conditioner replacement and now ceiling leak within the first five weeks. Oh yeah, and the doors fell off the washer/dryer closet. That’s an ongoing saga. The washer/dryer are adjacent to the kitchen so you can’t hear shit with the washer running now.
Also we saw foam under the dishwasher but it hasn’t reappeared yet. Oh and the oven gave us a warning but it’s working fine now.
I made a spreadsheet with a priority list.
I figure as long as we’re making progress on one issue a week, we’re doing okay.
I just love the place though. It makes me feel better just being in it. I mean think about all that shit and imagine still wanting to be here. It’s a great place.
Another upside to not being a homeowner! I don’t have to use spreadsheets!
(Context: I’m seventy years old and live alone in a one-bedroom apartment. It’s quite sufficient for me. And will minimize what my daughter needs to deal with when I’m gone.)
We moved from a manufactured home, which, while nice, was taken over by a new company that jacked up lot rent systematically by way more than inflation (we know they did this intentionally because my FIL managed it under the previous company which was owned by our family. He’s the one who sold it to them. The lot rent has increased by 20% in a handful of years.)
So we were paying more and more money to live in a depreciating asset, which didn’t feel great.
I’ve wanted a house for a long time. We bought a condo so we don’t have to do yard work. I love it. The thing I love most about it is we have a basement den for the TV/computers and a living/dining area on the ground floor that is separate and screen free, so I don’t have to listen to my kid’s videos when he’s watching them. That was a major quality of life improvement. Imagine how much better it will be when there’s furniture in it!
After my recent computer debacle at work, I learned that Adobe still limits the Acrobat features that are installed by default (specifically, Preflight). WTF??? There are plenty of features in Acrobat that the average user will never touch; why are those installed, but not Preflight? (Preflight contains a tool that allows you to ‘flatten’ a form after you type in your information, so no one can easily modify it afterward.)
That’s what I wanted to do! I lived in apartments many times, then with my first marriage I finally got a house, with a huge yard (both front and back, especially in the back) so that my then-wife had a place where she could garden, my daughter would have nice places to play, etc.
Then not long after, I got a divorce and my ex and daughter moved to the other side of the country. (Insert sad trombone sound.)
I mean, I used to do yard work professionally as a contractor for the US Navy (so yard work all day every day on end at military bases), then later moved in with a woman who had a half an acre of land that I had to mow (though with a riding lawn mower that was kind of cool), and then getting a house with massive yards to manage, I was done. So with my second fiancée (now wife) I said, please, I have literally done enough yard work to last a lifetime, I don’t want to anymore. And we focused on trying to get a good condo. It didn’t work out, and instead we got a real house but the yards are tiny and we even pay someone to come take care of them, so I guess it ends up being about the same thing.
I have maybe mowed the lawn and trimmed and all that 3-4 times in the past 14 years of living in this house, so I’m all good with it.
Yes, when I crunched the numbers it was about as expensive to pay HOA fees as it was to hire someone to do exterior maintenance on a house. We looked at both houses and condos for that reason, but we were priced out of most houses in the high-demand area we ended up moving to.
Of course now that I have a condo, I’ve learned I have a little garden in the front I’m expected to tend to. I know nothing about plants so I’m a little annoyed, but also it’s kind of cute and maybe I’ll get something positive out of it. I am allowed to plant anything in there I want to.
Every time I have to add another thing, I think, “Christ, not more.”
Grant applications, grant reports, endless admin, “back burner” projects that never get done, six home maintenance items, unpacking, clothes shopping (I need work stuff), cleaning. Getting my kid started in his new school. There’s like a half dozen things I need to have a conversation with my husband about, all pertaining to the boy. One of my tasks is just going through the process of adding a bunch more shit to my calendar.
I need to take a page from Burkeman and accept that I’ll never get to do it all.
So what do I do? I’ve never been good at prioritizing. It all feels important.
That sounds idyllic.
Every time they show “old guy all alone” (e.g. end of Brokeback Mtn), my reaction is “Rundown trailer in the desert that no-one visits? That looks great!”
I’m downsizing now so that when the time comes, it’ll be painless.
Also idyllic. My wife’s the gardener. If she goes before I do, the first thing I’ll do (well, after buying a Miata) is hire a handyman that can do ANYthing.
Hey, post your calendar here, we’ll trim it down for you!
Thanks guys for the offer. I think I figured it out.
I have serious reservations about LLMs in general but one of their genuine uses is sorting through info dumps of stuff I have to do and helping me prioritize. Claude is a great ADHD coach.
I also made a dedicated Trello card called Home Tasks with checklists for This Week/Weekend, Next Week, This Month, and Later. This way I can see at a glance what’s really urgent and everything else is prioritized accordingly. Then those tasks are all in one card and don’t detract from all the work cards.
