I was a Good Girl and got my updated Covid and flu shots this afternoon. My left arm already hurts, the right is starting to feel hot. 
Any MMP-ers who cross post here may know the background, but I can’t post the follow-up there.
The fallout to this was hours ago & I’m still upset.
About a week ago, my next door neighbor came to my work (small town) to tell me I need to keep my cat outta his yard.
My 1st thought was, “Uh-oh, did he shit on your truck or something?” and if I’d known how this would end up, I’d have cheered my cat on.
He says, no, but he’s put out poison traps to kill the groundhog that hangs out in our yards, so keep the cat away.
Me, silently: You come to MY house job, to tell me that my cat’s gonna get cabin fever & drive us both nutz cuz he can’t go outside for five minutes, because you’re poisoning wildlife.
Thanks for … letting me know, I guess?
This is the shitty part.
I heard some noise outside this afternoon, then an increasing commotion. You know the sound of someone trying to climb a chain-link fence? Mettalic sound, unmistakable.
Add muffled quiet screaming.
Not my neighbor, but two other individuals. They had baseball bats, and were beating the shit out of it. I looked outside in time to see the poor thing twitching & writhing. In the 1.5 seconds of what I saw before I huddled back behind closed eyes, I’m guessing they’d already broken its spine, but it was a long way from blessed death.
So … how long before I politely knock on the door & ask if it’s safe to let my cat back out?
(“Hey, are the poison traps gone?”)
I’m guessing these aren’t the sort of people to concern themselves with leftovers like that.
Firestone is lying, cheating, theiving bastards; their product will never grace one of my cars ever; even if I buy a new car with their PoS OEM tires I’ll replace 'em.
P.S. Don’t forget they own Tires Plus, too. Don’t go there either unless you want to get soaked into something you don’t need.
Fuck you Google & your Play Store & you’re BS authentication!
No one uses my phone but me. You need to put in a passcode to get onto my phone, & then do something else not normal (intentional on my part) to get into the Play Store to download anything. I did go in the other day to download an Aurora app, & while I was in there, update a number of my existing apps. When I went to go back in later I can’t get in unless I setup security on it, either password or biometrics (never!). I can’t even update any apps until I change my password, on the fly! I’m not even home to enter it in my password manager. IOW, their wonderful security makes my phone less secure in that I can’t update apps with known vulnerabilities until I setup extra security.
If someone gets my phone & breaks into it & downloads something (for which I have no CC attached & no $ balance available - I think I’ve only ever paid for one app, & for that I got a gift card to Google Play to do such so that I didn’t need to give them my CC info.) to my phone, then I’ll suck up the piddly few dollars it cost me because they’ve already cracked thru multiple things & stolen my CC to add it as a payment method. IF all that happens, I’ve got bigger identity theft issues to deal with! I don’t need your nanny police!
Every major tire manufacturer, including Goodyear and Firestone, has their horror stories. My personal experience with a particular type of Goodyear tire on my former minivan was really systemic and off-putting, though. They were always springing leaks and the life-threatening blowout on the highway was truly the last straw. I’d be happy to name the tire series so that it never curses anyone else’s car or threatens their life, but I’ve forgotten it. Chances are, they’re not made anymore anyway.
I’m familiar with the Firestone tire problems on early versions of the Ford Explorer, but that was many years ago. I’m perfectly happy with the Firestone all-weathers I have on the current car. Much better traction than the former tires, I don’t have to bother with switching to snow tires, and the car rides like a locomotive on rails. They were more expensive than some of the cheap alternatives, but well worth it.
See my previous post about Gmail. Google’s obsession with security would be considered pathological paranoia if an individual human exhibited those sorts of traits.
I don’t care what their products are like, their employees are rat thieving bastards!
Tires Plus - I needed a plug; they told me it wasn’t safe to put one & & that I’d need four new tires. Ummm, I have front-wheel drive, not AWD; there is absolutely no reason I need 4 new tires. I drove around the corner to a local tire place, got a plug for about $20 & didn’t have another issue with that tire for over a year until I replaced 'em due to normal tread wear.
Firestone store - found a great deal for Firehawks on their website. Called up the local store & told them what I found, print it out & they’d match it. When I dropped off the car, there was a note that I had to give them some paperwork. I showed the tech my printout & he assured me that all was good & they’d honor that price. The next day I get a call - My car’s ready but they can’t honor the price, it’ll be $300 more!
Ummm, F-you, no way. It was clear that they were hoping I’d take pity because they already did the work
Alright, lemme talk to my manager (wait, I thought you were the manager) & see what I can do.
Called back - Okay, we’ll split it with you, & give you $100 off (Ummm, a split would be $150) but you have to pay for it on a Firestone CC.
Nope you bait-&-switch bastards, I’m not paying $200 more than you told me would be the price multiple times & I’m not giving you a bonus for getting a customer to open a CC. I picked up my car with my original tires on it & it’s now wearing a nice set of Goodyear Eagles.
I misunderstood. Not poison traps. SNAP TRAPS.
I know this cuz he wandered over when I came home from getting lunch, cuz I just wanted to eat in peace.
Gave him a piece of my mind about the “baseball game” in his yard the other day, and …
It wasn’t the woodchuck.
was a possum. That two people baseball-batted to death. He was like, “What should they have done, let it suffer? It was gonna die anyway.”
I literally walked away throwing two middle fingers over my shoulder at him.
So there is still a woodchuck wandering around with a target on its back, and fucking SNAP TRAPS in my neighbor’s yard, and a cat who doesn’t understand why he can’t go outside (he’ll wander over there sure as shit) and I’m just … goddamn it.
Goddamn fucking psychopaths! I cried when I read about the beating. How many other animals have they killed in such a cruel manner?!
I don’t know about your state, but in my state we have laws about cruelty to animals. I would be contacting the authorities.
I’m wondering how soon they’re going to escalate to humans.
Just as soon as they figure out who ratted them out to The Man…
As I’ve posted about, my last apartment had rodents of many sizes and varieties. Once while I was sitting at my makeshift desk and on the phone with a client a rather large and mostly hairless rodent came out of the wall and tried to run across the floor. We saw each other and panicked. I was debating whether or not I should try to kill the rodent by stomping on it. I only ever wear crocs at home. I was worried about, in no particular order- getting bitten on the foot, getting blood and bits on my crocs, and whether I could even stomp effectively in crocs. Then, the rodent made a decision. It dove for cover underneath a nearby rubber welcome mat. I stomped. Then, in case it was just wounded and not dead, I stomped quite a few more times.
I maintain that I did the right thing. However, I continue to feel guilty for stomping a rodent. I also caught many more rodents (for a long time, it was about one a week) in snap an release trapse. I had no car. If I released them anywhere within easy walking distance, the odds were 100% they would just come back to the apartment complex. It was good odds that they would end up back in my apartment. So, I dumped the closed plastic trap- rodent and all- in the dumpster. I was not happy about this. I did not really want to kil the rodents. I just wanted them to be somewhere besides my apartment.
Any human who would gleefully beat a possum to death with a baseball bat is a sick individual. Odds seem good that they will eventually pose a danger to other humans. Best to nip this in the bud.
So PHS just has to wait until his neighbor hides under his welcome mat…
I’m with @Taters, report them to the authorities. It apparently is legal in Michigan to trap ‘nuisance’ animals on your property but you must only release them on your property or where you have permission. The law says that if you decide to ‘euthanize’ (kill) them, it must be done humanely. Beating a living creature to death with baseball bats while it screams hideously is not humane.
Here’s a cite about the Michigan ‘nuisance animal’ trapping and ‘removal’:
It was 67° & sunny earlier today, I was wearing shorts & a t-shirt outside. It’s now 40° out 
Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.
Some idiot a couple of streets away has a cackling witch character in their Halloween lawn diorama. This would be fine except they don’t turn it off overnight. When I returned to bed this morning at 3 a.m. after a bathroom run, I could hear it cackling every ten minutes or so for the rest of the night.
I can’t tell exactly which house has the cackling witch, because there are several homes with dioramas in the neighborhood. I only hear it when the wind is from the north, though, so it has to be north of me. And it must be motion-activated, so when the north wind kicks up, the witch senses it and starts in on cackling.
Jackasses.
So they turned the a/c off in the building.
So now theres water dripping through my ceiling because the pipes are sweating.
They hadn’t before.
I’ve just been through Banking Hell with a certain bank that I won’t name, but a credit card is the only business I have with them, and I only have it for ancient historical reasons. I despise the incompetent bastards.
I was making an online purchase late on Saturday night and the particular site said that the bank needed to send a security code to my phone which I had to enter. So I sat there watching the phone and … nothing. Tried it again. Nothing.
I called the bank’s help line and they confirmed my cell number and sent several more SMS messages. Nothing. Then, while I was still on the phone with them, a huge pile of all the backlogged SMS messages arrived all at once. They asked me to read back the last code sent but there were so many messages that where they were coming from and which was the latest became confusing.
In all the confusion, assisted no doubt by several strong Caesars richly embellished with extra vodka, I read back several incorrect codes and they suddenly declared me blacklisted and that I no longer had access to the help line because they could no longer access my account, though I could still use the card. The only remedy was to go to a physical bank branch and rehabilitate myself.
So I did that this morning, and that’s when the fun began. The customer rep I dealt with was very pleasant but after getting enough ID to satisfy herself that I wasn’t an impostor, needed to call the bank’s HQ to get the restriction lifted, as she couldn’t do it herself. Furthermore, the instructions on the screen told her that I had to remain present while she made the call – for no discernible reason except apparently to maximize my inconvenience.
Which went on for nearly an hour. First she was on hold for a long time, then got connected and immediately disconnected, listening to a dial tone. Then tried again, was on hold again for a long time, finally got through to someone who said “just a moment”, and that was it. The line went dead and no one ever returned to pick up the call. She kept apologizing for the horrible customer service, and this was a freaking bank branch trying to get hold of their own head office!
Eventually she made a second call over her own personal cell phone while leaving the other call on speakerphone in case anyone ever picked up (no one ever did). She finally got hold of someone who claims to have resolved the problem, and then handed me the phone because “they need to talk to you”. I still have no idea what purpose that served – it was yakking about various things that seemed to have no relevance to the issue. Also, the rep at the branch was apparently getting the third degree herself to verify that she wasn’t a crook, perhaps in cahoots with me, because she had to answer all sorts of questions about her own ID and things she was reading off the terminal. Apparently the idea of a secure internal communications infrastructure is unknown to this bank.
All told, this was the most stunning accumulation of bureaucratic incompetence that I’ve experienced in a long time.
I pit…myself! I am a horrible, awful person!!
I was at her place from last Tues thru yesterday, & I’ll be back there tomorrow evening but am I there today? Noooo! Is today my baby’s gotcha day & am I not there to give her even extra lovin’ & skritches?
Is it even possible for me to give her more than I do? That’s besides the point because today, her special day I’m giving her none. 
As someone who was once the director of a nonprofit that received UW funds, I can attest it does do good work, and my program made good use of the funds we got. United Way is based on a great idea: Give generously ONCE to UW, and you won’t get pestered with fundraisers from the agencies UW funds.
The problem was that in my community, United Way really couldn’t fully fund all the nonprofits who applied for and were granted funds, so we had to do quite a bit of fund-raising on our own. This understandably angered people, especially those whose employers pressured them to donate to UW.
My problem is that I just react very badly to being pressured by my employer to use my salary in a certain way. If my (very large) employer were to choose to donate a million or two to United Way, I’d be thrilled. But having my employer pressure me to donate to a specific if broad-minded entity is, in my eyes, unethical.