Ran into maganut on the bus. He wasn’t ranting but was discussing, with the driver, his dojo fighting classes. According to his instructor, hes an instinctual fighter.
Not that that matters, he has a lot of guns and ammo stashed in his apt.
We’ve decided that this is strategic: never let your enemy know what you’re planning. Or, a severe shortage of blinker fluid.
It’s not just late model vehicles, it’s all of them.
We headed toward an evening-before dinner for the funeral. Later than ideal, because we had to pack for a week versus 1 night. Then the previosly-good traffic turned the 100-minute trip into 3 hours. During which communication with SIL and BIL had us deciding to forego the funeral (and the prepaid hotel) and instead just get back on the highway and drive overnight.
On the plus side, traffic was fantastic the rest of the drive. Anyone who has ever driven I-95 knows how rare that is.
it’s good we did. Further imaging shows FIL’s brain was too damaged. We were here in time to day our goodbyes before he was extubated. Now it’s a waiting game.
The Great Atlantic Coast Parking Lot.
I do everything possible to avoid I-95. 81 & 83 and even Rt 15 are favorite alternatives. The distance is usually longer, but the aggravation is so much less it’s worth it.
“Why don’t Miami drivers use turn signals? It’s complicated.”
It’s not complicated at all. Dave Barry lives in Miami and has explained it multiple times: most drivers there are insane. I recall him writing at one time about walking through a crosswalk and nearly getting run over by a Miami driver who also leaned on her horn and gave him the finger for daring to get in her way. You expect these folks to use turn signals? 
So true. But for southern Florida, those are impractical. We’re going somewhere this summer where both 95 and 81 are valid alternatives. People live love to complain about the trucks on 81, but it’s far better than 95.
Another minirant: the car’s nav system is on crack. It kept claiming to reroute us to avoid a stoppage( which Google maps said did not exist), including wanting us to get on 95 NORTH to take an alternate route that would have added 40 miles to the trip.
And on on another trip it insisted we were on nonexistent country roads. The prizewinner was when it insisted we were in Lake George, NY.
Not the town. The lake.
If I’d been driving solo, I’d have been out of luck navigating. As it is, it’s risky to go anywhere unfamiliar without a copilot doing sanity checks on their phone.
I could post a seriously max rant about social media in regard to the East Palestine train derailment. In truth I should post it about our leadership that left an information void that was happily filled by people who know nothing but are more than willing to post misinformation. 2 weeks of hell so that we can show that we are “doing something”.
Evidently the cleaning crew at my school are homeopaths. The sinks by the public loos have pump liquid soap bottles. When the soap level gets too low, they merely add water to it. I’m now genuinely curious as to how many days it will be before the “soap” in it is indistinguishable to the naked hand from regular ol’ water. FYI: This is a 250 ml bottle of Walch’s hand sanitizer. But rather than being forced to participate in a scientific experiment regarding pseudoscience, I would much rather have some actual soap with which to wash my hands upon leaving the communal commode.
Today, one of the top stories listed on CNN’s homepage is ‘How To Drive In Snow’:
( Q: If people don’t already know this, then shouldn’t they stay home…? )
In a rather surreal juxtaposition of my two major rants: AT&T has been trying to contact me about fixing the service address on the parents’ account.
Someone called, me today to make sure his staffer had reached out. I said “um, yeah. I just haven’t had time to call back due to a family emergency”. I did not elaborate to say that the emergency meant that we soon would not need at&t at all.
FIL is still hanging in there, 48 hours after being extubated. It’s beyond bizarre to hope someone stops breathing, but we hope he’ll be at peace soon.
Here in Minnesota our local news had the young weather girl spend about five minutes describing how to walk on an icy sidewalk. I’m sure that clip of her duck-waddling won’t do her career any good. It might have been useful when winter started, but we’re already over halfway through winter (I hope).
I am on vacation. Lovely time. Last day today, and I seem to have a (mild) cold. No fever, no cough, taste & smell present, so unlikely to be covid. But I don’t want a mild cold. I’ve brought good masks, but I do feel justified now at all the glaring I’ve done at people who were coughing and sneezing in public.
I’ve gotten sick on vacation twice and it’s the worst. It turns an awesome time into an awful one. You can’t enjoy the things you want to do, and you have to make a trip home sick.
At least it’s mild, I’ve had really bad illnesses and ugh.
Rant, rant, and anti-rant. For your convenience, all in one!
My car battery is now about seven years old or maybe more and it’s been getting feeble. Today, after sitting in the garage unused for about a week, the car emitted the famous ominous clicking sounds and wouldn’t turn over.
I have a handy Li-ion battery pack that can recharge USB devices but can actually jump-start a car or truck with the included cable. Thing is, this car’s battery is hidden and inaccessible, so under the hood are just connection terminals. There is a very obvious one labeled “negative connection”. So I hooked up the negative cable to that, and the positive one to a great big steel rod sticking up right beside it. Nothing. Click-click-click.
This reveals the fact that I’m half-blind and half-senile. The actual positive connection is some distance away, near the fuse box, and has a red cover and a very tiny non-obvious label. Connected to that, and success! Engine starts immediately! What a relief, as having my car incapacitated in my garage with no ability to go anywhere was depressing.
BTW, the thing that started my car is a Li-ion battery pack no bigger than an iPhone 6, although thicker. It weighs maybe a pound. It’s literally “pocket-size” if you have a large pocket. It’s just amazing how much power Li-ion batteries can hold. After starting the car, its charge status hadn’t even changed.
Portland Oregon just had our first real winter storm of the winter, and my 20 minute drive to work took over an hour.
We had a similar storm with similar timing here on the other side of the continent. Per my previous rant, yesterday was the first time in over a week that I ventured out. I thought I had seen some snow falling but paid no attention. I was surprised to hear the sound of my plow guy clearing the driveway. When I did venture out yesterday, I was astounded – he had piled up a vast hill of snow at the end of the driveway, and shopping center parking lots were some combination of snowy or slushy. A lot of snow had come down. It was a good day to stay home but I needed to go get my car battery replaced and pick up some groceries.
My car is in the shop this week. I didn’t rent a replacement since I expected to be out of town working some of the days and could take the train to work, albeit at the cost of some wasted time each way.
So I train home on Wed and prepare to enjoy my Thu-Sun off. I’ve got my overtime request in to work over my weekend if overtime becomes available and I’m the lucky winner. So far, so normal.
This morning shortly after my shower & getting dressed my company mobile app signals overtime. Yaay! More money! But the trip departs real soon. Too soon! Oh crap!
Because I need to take the train to work, and the train is not very frequent, I have at most 10 minutes to change clothes, grab my pre-packed bags, get downstairs and be in an uber to the train station. And he better make all the lights or I’ll miss the train. The next train comes an hour later & won’t get me to work until stupid way get-in-trouble late.
So that’s not gonna happen. I’m fast, but not that fast. And who knows how long until uber shows up?
So I end up paying for an uber from home to the airport: 50 miles! With a good tip that was $75. Instead of $8 for the uber, and $4 for the train. The “good” news of this bad deal is the train takes about 1:15 to get to the airport and the uber ought to take about 45 minutes here in the late morning. So at least I have a bit more slack time to get ready at home and still be at work on time with a bit of extra slack there too. Yaay!
Nope. Foiled again. The freeway traffic was horrendous and the train beats me there by a bunch. Poor uber driver! (What is it about construction zones that attracts accidents? It’s not like the road is any different than it was yesterday.)
So I get to work late. I scramble a bit to catch up and manage to be ready to depart the flight on time. Whew.
All’s well that ends well, but if they’d given me that overtime 15 minutes earlier or if the trip had departed 15 minutes later, I’d have saved $60 and spent less time in a spacious wifi-equipped train, not riding an uber in stop-and-go while the driver kept trying to hurry.
First world problems to be sure, but this is the mini-rants thread, not the maxi-rants thread.
We’ve been without power at our house since Wednesday night at around 9 pm. I have no one to be mad at except maybe nature itself. Or the people who decide to maintain the infrastructure. Is that all of us? We’ve been really fortunate to have warm places to stay. Unfortunately, the roof has leaked around a roof vent and into a the microwave mounted above the stove. And I am deeply worried about the pipes. But we rent and aren’t financially responsible for the damage to the house. Though the landlord company could drag their feet on fixing things. I am supposed to be working right now but I am at my desk ruminating on things I can’t control. AHHHHH
Today is the first day in 4 days it’s going to be warmer than -5F. Been about -20 each morning. Poor little pup has had to do his business pronto! Getting a little stir crazy. A real MT winter for a change!