March Nemesis (Monthly Mini-Rants)

The BBQ Pit
81

I found out yesterday that my cat Seven has diabetes and chronic kidney disease. The vet sent me an email outlining all the treatments she will need. It was just overwhelming. My stomach hurt all day and I alternated between trying to figure out how I can do it all and crying because maybe I should put her to sleep. I talked to him earlier and we will start treatment tomorrow. I still feel sick but at least I made a decision. It’s going to be expensive and stressful for us both but she’s not at death’s door so hopefully this will help her feel better.

Then as I was waking up today, I started hearing a faint plopping sound. I got up and saw that water was dripping on the bedroom chair. It’s raining and there is a leak from the ceiling. Fuck. I don’t need this right now.

82

You made the right decision. I made the same decision for my dog when he was diagnosed with a progressive neurological problem that was gradually affecting his mobility. It was a painless condition and gave him a few more happy years.

Yikes! Troubles like to come in sets, sometimes doubles, sometimes threesomes. So sorry to hear that!

83

All my life I have preferred that bad things happen all at once rather than being stretched out one after the other. My thinking was that there is an upper limit to just how stressed out you can get. Well, younger me was a whole lot better at dealing with that than older me. :upside_down_face:

84

My allium (yep, I’m down to just one) decided to emerge, just in time for the mulch delivery last week. The mulch guys trampled the heck out of the poor thing, but the combination of fresh mulch and warm, damp weather seem to have helped it perk up. So of course we’re headed for another cold snap tomorrow.

85

Not sure where to put this, because it is totally mundane and pointless, but I do find it mildly amusing.

I arrive in one of my local bars, to overhear possibly the oddest theft story of the month.

They are missing a full size (ie double door closet style) refrigerator. It was emply at time of exit, and despite this being a suburb full of students from the local university- prime suspects - it was apparently taken into a truck with a tail-lift, which is hardly within student budget.

Broad daylight, customers in the bar, just manager absent.

86

Reminds me of something that happened to one of the offices I support a few years ago.

This office had a report about overheating in the server room. When we had someone check it out, it turned out the air conditioning wasn’t functioning (which is bad news, as the room is small and the servers and network equipment generate a lot of heat, which is typical for a server room). They then tried to figure out why the AC wasn’t working, and went to physically check on it.

The AC unit is a large outdoor unit. It was no longer physically connected to the building, and everything pointed to someone deciding that they wanted to steal it, and unhooked everything to start the process, realized this gigantic thing was way too heavy to fit in their pickup truck or whatever other vehicle they wanted to use it for, and fled without it. They hooked the AC unit back up, and then time put a locking cage around it so that it could no longer be easily disconnected by a random person.

87

In the US, a truck rental is not that far out of a group of students budget. And I can see pulling this off - walk in with confidence and a dolly, say you’re here to pick up the refrigerator. Bonus if you know the manager/owner’s name. Possibly a clip board with a form for the bartender to initial.

88

Can’t you put sheets over the trees to keep them warm? It will look silly but may save your crop.

89

When the trees were smaller and lows not as cold, sure.

But these plum trees are now close to 20 feet tall, and even if I could somehow cover them, sheets and even blankets probably wouldn’t be sufficient protection from temps in the high teens.

90

There are a few things that you can do to raise the temp at a tree about five degrees F. There’s putting out smudge pots. There’s - is it netting that you put over them? Anyway, it lets the light in. And there’s incandescent Christmas lights. LEDs don’t do much.

And the bonuses stack.

91

Customer service is letting me down hard this week. Today, I had an honest to Buddha Planes, Trains and Automobiles moment.

Here’s the thing … without going into excruciating details, I’m picking up sticks and heading to Florida to help out my parents for a while - and so they can help me out as well, I’m not going to lie. So I’m out of my apartment, I’m in a temporary rental for the week while I finalize plans to rent a vehicle big enough for some of my stuff, me and my dog for a five day drive across country. I went through Booking . com as they’ve always done me well. I thought I was all set with my booking. I had confirmation numbers and a voucher pdf and receipts and all sorts of shit. So I go out to the rental building at PDX and step up to the Budget desk …

“Hi, I booked an SUV.”
“Ok, well, some problems. We don’t have the SUV you wanted but first we need a major credit card.”
“But I already paid via Booking.com”
“Oh, we don’t know anything about that.”

She shows me her screen - which is just a green text dumb terminal - like I’m fucking NEO and I can interpret this gobbledygook on her screen. I’m literally like, “I don’t know what any of that means.”

I search through my Booking . com app and see that there’s a pick-up instruction pointing me to a different location altogether, so I ask the clerk if that’s where I’m supposed to be, if that’s where I’m supposed to pick up my vehicle.
“Oh, yes sir. That’s it. No question. Just go there and you’ll be all set.”

Guess what? I wasn’t all set; I was pretty fucking far from all set. First al all the location was a mile from the train stop. It was raining. I walked a mile in the rain to get to a building with a bunch of rental cars in it.

“Hi,” I says to the guy at some security booth, “I’m here to pick up an SUV from Budget.”
“There’s no Budget here. This is Enterprise. You have to got to the airport for Budget.”

Fucking joking me. I wander around the neighborhood just in case I got some direction wrong, but there was nothing but mud puddles. A mile in the rain back to the train stop and then to the Budget desk. At this point I’m in full-on Steve Martin mode. I’m dripping wet. My pants are soaked from the knees down. My jacket is saturated. I walk up to the desk - the same woman who told me to go to this phantom building and I say, calmly, “Hello, may I speak to either a supervisor or a manager?”
“For what reason?”
“Well, because you just sent me to a building that doesn’t exist, I’m soaking wet, and I still don’t have me vehicle so I’d like to speak to a supervisor, please.”

I wait for like five minutes before this guy comes out and asks how he can help me. I take a deep breath and - again, calmly - reiterate the whole affair. I end with a plea to just help me get things resolved so I can be on my way. He informs me, tersely, that he’d love to help me but I can’t rent with a debit card, I need a credit card. Fine, my father will be happy to help me out, I’ll give him a call.
“No, he need to be here in person.”
“Well, he’s in Florida, so that doesn’t help.”

I got shit from him. Not one, “I’m sorry,” or “we apologize for the inconvenience,” nothing.

I say, fine, but you’re going to refund me the money I paid for the insurance, $72.
“You’ll have to do that through Booking . com.”

I was so pissed off, I just said, “Alright, good-bye,” and turn to go and this unmitigated asshole had the temerity to call after me, “Have a nice day, sir.”
By the time I got home I had scripted the perfect walking up and down of that dickhead and back again, but at the time I settled for a emphatic, “Fuck you!”

So. back to square one. I extended my temp rental so I can regroup. I’m pretty sure I have the resource to square everything away tomorrow, but I swear to Vishnu, I thought I was on some sort of practical joke show today.

(Old) Time Is On My Side (?) - A Daylight Savings MMP
92

I am sorry you went through this, but this part tickled my funny bone a little because it reminded me of a passage from the Hitchhiker’s guide to Galaxy book Mostly Harmless, where telephone operators were allowed to say “Use BS&S and die!” once an hour instead of “Thank you for using BS&S”. I am sure his response was something that is likely required despite all the problems you had. Not that it makes it better.

I had a similar, but minor frustration today, trying to change a return flight. The website would always error out and finally I just cancelled my previous flight and rebooked again. As soon as I did I got a warning about my credit card limit being low. Of course it really is isn’t since I cancelled the previous itinerary within 24 hours so the charges from the previous flight are pending and will go away, just like the charges for the new flight are. It will resolve itself within a day or so, but it just added to the frustration of the whole thing. But at least, unlike you, I was at home and did not have to trudge to a different desk or part of town.

Good luck with the move.

//i\\

93

This happened at a pizza place I worked at in college back in the 80s. There were three video games near the front door. One day a guy with a truck showed up pretending to be from the amusement company and drove off with one of the video games. He even had the audacity to ask the manager to help him load it!

94

I’m very sorry about your experience, and I’m not blaming the victim here, but this is exactly why I almost never use third-party booking services, and book directly with the hotel, airline, or what-have-you. It might cost a little more (although I often find that the source’s prices are exactly the same as the consolidator’s) but if anything at all goes wrong, they each say it’s the other’s fault, and you’re screwed.

Just last fall, Priceline screwed me to the tune of a $300 night in a hotel room that they didn’t cancel with the property as I had asked them to. When I pointed out it was their mistake, they refused to reimburse me for the extra charge.

95

I’ve definitely learned to do that with hotels. At a few hotels I’ve stayed at, they’ve told me to just use their hotel’s web site or their parent company’s site to book a room. It’s even sometimes cheaper (which surprised me) and your reservation is more likely to go through without a hassle.

(There was one hotel I’d stay at every year when I would fly out to see my oldest daughter, and the guy running it got to know me and her a bit, and strongly suggested this.)

96

Working from home today. My kid was very sick Wednesday and we’re keeping him out an extra day. He’s fine today.

We recently got him a laptop for his birthday.

My husband’s like, “Why don’t you let him play Minecraft in your office while you work?”

Great idea!

Terrible idea. My son is a brilliant child, but he’s only six. Minecraft turned out to be WAY more complicated than I thought it was. So he’s interrupting every ten seconds in a state of panic because he doesn’t know how to do something. So I’m trying to simultaneously do my job and teach him Minecraft - which I know nothing about - much crying and yelling ensued, it was really just an all-around terrible idea. So after I lost my temper I just said time for a break.

I promised him we’d figure it out together this weekend. He did pick up some skills so I’m optimistic he’ll be able to learn. But holy cow. It’s kind of like programming I guess? There’s a text command system. And there are two different versions? What the fuck. There’s not even a tutorial as far as I can tell. I’m really going to have to sit down on my own and figure it out.

It’s been a fucking week.

That is pretty terrible. I had no idea such things could happen with 3rd party booking. I hope when you finally get to your parents you’ll all be a great support to one another.

97

Lots of Youtube help out there.

Play creative mode - makes it basically Lego, no dying, etc.

98

I have quite a bit of Minecraft experience. I’ve played it on and off since it was in beta, and my oldest daughter and I used to build stuff together in creative mode when she was little, because I could set up a server and we could play together despite being on opposite coasts. My youngest child still plays it often today.

However, while it’s true that you don’t have to worry about things like dying, or trying to find resources (because you can spawn everything from your menus), and you can fly so even elevation isn’t an issue, it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem:

Even in creative mode, there is a learning curve, and for a child or anyone else who gets anxiety about something they don’t know anything about, it’s pretty daunting. Minecraft is complicated, which is one of its biggest strengths, and it appeals to people who love to explore and experiment, but is a nightmare for anyone who is daunted by systems like that.

99

My hope is if I can get him started on the basics, he’ll get really into the more complicated aspects…I can see him getting really into it. Maybe he’s a little too young or maybe I can spend a few hours getting the gist and we can work on learning together on the weekends.

Right now he’s playing Universe Sandbox which is much easier to grasp.

100

Maybe, but he’s also really bright from how you’ve described him, so he might catch on quicker than other kids once he figures out what he’s doing. But it would probably take a little commitment from yourself to learn so you can pass it on (as you said), and I know you don’t have an endless amount of time, so I’m sure it’s a “deal with it later” thing. As something you give to a kid as a bit of fun, I’m sure it sucks to see it end up being counterproductive out of the gate.

I’ll say though, with multiple kids now who have gotten into it, it can be really rewarding once they figure it out. And just from what you’ve shared, I have a feeling it will be worth it in the long run.