# Season of the Kvetch (October mini-rants)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Tags:** monthly-mini-rant
**Created:** [October 1, 2025, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563 "2025-10-01T13:25:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2025, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/81 "2025-10-07T14:51:35Z")
> [@Spiderman](#):
>
> I also got hurt when I didn’t see a rope while going towards the West late in the day as the very bright, low sun totally obliterated it.
It caught me right between the upper lip & nose. It hurt & a little bit of blood from the underside of my nose, which has now scabbed over; said scab makes it look like I need to wipe my nose. Yeech!
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2025, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/82 "2025-10-07T17:07:12Z")
Some moron crunched my car in a parking space and drove off. Leaving me with just enough damage to require repair, and nobody but my own insurance to turn to.
😡 😠 🤬
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### Author:  [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2025, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/83 "2025-10-07T19:45:03Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Some moron crunched my car in a parking space and drove off. Leaving me with just enough damage to require repair, and nobody but my own insurance to turn to
That’s awful! It happened to me last year, but I haven’t gotten it fixed yet, assuming that it I do, it’ll happen again.
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### Author:  [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2025, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/84 "2025-10-07T19:56:20Z")
Famine or bloated, orgiastic feast here in central KY, precipitation-wise.
For the third year in a row we’ve had a serious late summer/fall dry spell, with virtually no rain this year from early August through late September, then a few good storms within a few days to ease drought, then ten more days of zero rainfall.
Until last night and today.
In the last 18 hours we’ve had nearly 3 1/2 inches of rain with more possible showers and T-storms through tonight. Though the worst _may_ be over, our electric basement pump is in readiness just in case.
The extended forecast calls for zero rain for the next 9 days.
This is nuts.
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### Author:  [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2025, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/85 "2025-10-07T20:43:49Z")
> [@needscoffee](#):
>
> I haven’t gotten it fixed yet, assuming that it I do, it’ll happen again.
Reminds me of the TV show _Strange Luck_.
> **[Strange Luck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Luck)**
>
> Strange Luck is an American television series that aired on Fox, created by Karl Schaefer and starring D. B. Sweeney in the role of Chance Harper who constantly stumbles into unusual situations. The series aired on Fox from 1995 to 1996. A total of seventeen episodes were aired before the show was canceled due to low ratings. Reruns were shown briefly on the Sci Fi Channel in 1997. The series was initially slotted as a lead-in to The X-Files on Friday nights, and was largely shot in Canada like...
The main character was cursed with having weird things happen to him all the time; as a kid he was the only survivor of a passenger plane crash, and since then he would experience strange coincidences all the time. One of the consequences of this is that his car is constantly getting damaged through unusual circumstances; stolen, hit by a small meteor, etc. So he only fixed it up just enough to keep it running but it looked like garbage, with banged-up mismatched parts, broken grill, and so on. There was no point in trying to make it look nice because as soon as it was fixed it was going to be damaged again.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2025, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/86 "2025-10-07T20:59:43Z")
Now that’s funny.
Me, I’m not going to drive a less than pristine car. Simply Not Done. Just got back from the body shop. Most of the wraparound plastic bumper is an easy fix, but they put an awkward kink into a key curve. If the kink can be ground down and filled I’ll save \>$2K for a new bumper. Then htere’s another plastic hunk that’s junk, but they’re only $400. Then there’s labor and paint. And then re-clearcoat the new paint a month later. And something else to drive (or Ubers) for a ~week.
Based on the dollars, were this a theft, it’d be a felony. I sorta doubt I could get a felony prosecution for a fender scrape if somehow I could identify the culprit.
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### Author:  [@Lancia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lancia)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2025, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/87 "2025-10-07T21:20:57Z")
I hit a deer on my way to work this morning. The front of my car is pretty fucked up but it didn’t deploy the airbags so I think it’s repairable.
My rant isn’t with the deer. Well, ok, it is with the deer. Fuck that little asshole for deciding to commit suicide with my car. My rant is with Kia engineers for thinking they know more than the people operating their vehicles (which, admittedly, may be the case for some/many people).
My car is a '23 Soul, FWIW.
So I hit the deer, pull over, call my wife who comes and picks me up and after some running around, switching vehicles, and picking up my son so he can help get my car home, I’m left driving my other son’s F-150. My son and I go to U-Haul and try to rent a car trailer. No dice – they’re all reserved. But a car dolly is available. Great! I rent the car dolly and drive out to the boonies where my car is patiently waiting by the side of the road. We load up my car, strap it down, and…
And _this_ is when I learn that my car’s electronic parking brake cannot be disengaged unless 1) the ignition is on and 2) the transmission is in gear but 3) only for a few seconds. It _cannot_ be disengaged with the ignition off or in Accessory mode. Only with ignition in the run position. It cannot be disengaged with the transmission in neutral (_what the everloving fuck??_). If I turn on the ignition but do not start the car and then put the transmission in neutral and release the parking brake, approximately 93 alarms, bells, chimes, and buzzers start going off and then after 10 seconds or so the brake re-engages itself. Kia has engineered the car so I cannot disengage the parking brake unless the car is moving, in gear, using it’s own power.
There is simply no way to to tow it using a car dolly. It has to be trailered.
To say I was livid would be an understatement. Dammit Kia, what _possible_ reason exists to make you design the parking brake system this way? Did it not occur to you that there may be situations where someone needs to move their car when it’s not feasible, practical, or possible to use the vehicle’s own engine and transmission? What if it suffered engine failure at some inopportune moment and needed to be pushed to the side of the road? Kias are know for this, you know.
Since I have Gorilla tape, honest-to-God bailing wire, and zip ties in my car my son and I poke around the front of the car and decide we can remove the falling off bits of bodywork and zip tie / tape / wire the rest back and try to limp home, my son following in the pickup in case my car dies or fully falls apart. That’s when my son discovers he forgot his driver’s license. So we take the pickup and go back to U-Haul, drop off the tow dolly we didn’t use, go home and get his license, go _back_ to my car, and I slowly and gingerly drive it the ~20 miles home with my son carefully following in the pickup.
This day sucks.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2025, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/88 "2025-10-07T22:52:56Z")
I think that’s another mandated Federal safety thing. It’s to make it just flat f\*\*\*ing impossible for the car to roll over somebody who absently-mindedly climbs out with the trans in D or N or R and the parking brake unset. The car MUST always be restrained by parking brake or locked trans. Period.
If it’s like my non-Kia, you’d also find you can’t move the car with the driver door open. The old trick of opening the door to see down to the ground and curb next to you is now impossible. So is the lazy “hop halfway in and drive 3 feet with one foot hanging out.”
Door open = car immobilized. Period.
Evidently the bureaucrats decided the lives and limbs saved outweighed considerations dealing with disabled cars in emergency situations.
Yeah, that annoys me too.
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### Author:  [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2025, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/89 "2025-10-08T00:23:09Z")
> [@Spiderman](#):
>
> I have long hated Gmail for not letting me use the {Delete} key on my keyboard after reading an email. No, I need to move my mouse up to the top of the screen & click on the {Trash can icon}.
There is an option for enabling keyboard shortcuts in Gmail; for some reason, this works great on some accounts and intermittently on others. (The shortcut is #, or shift+3.)
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2025, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/90 "2025-10-08T00:37:41Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Me, I’m not going to drive a less than pristine car. Simply Not Done. Just got back from the body shop. Most of the wraparound plastic bumper is an easy fix, but they put an awkward kink into a key curve. If the kink can be ground down and filled I’ll save \>$2K for a new bumper. Then htere’s another plastic hunk that’s junk, but they’re only $400. Then there’s labor and paint. And then re-clearcoat the new paint a month later. And something else to drive (or Ubers) for a ~week.
You’d get a hoot out of seeing my current car, which as I mentioned may soon become an ex-car, to be replaced by a much newer Camry. It has body rust on the rear lower panels on both sides, and on at least one side, it’s perforation rust – i.e.- there are visible rust holes down at the rocker panel. How would that suit you? 😉
The advantages I have are that (a) I don’t give a flying fuck what anybody thinks, and (b) I’m not trying to pick up chicks. I’m fine with any car that starts reliably, drives safely, and reliably gets me to where I’m going.
If you insist that your car must be absolutely pristine, then you’re engaged in the (typically male) activity known as “Projecting an Image™”. There’s nothing wrong with that, at all. It’s just that in my world I consider it to be expensive and wasteful. My world is all about utility.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2025, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/91 "2025-10-08T01:09:05Z")
The nature of life in snow country is that pristine is unattainable unless you garage it for 6 months a year. My cars were less pristine when I lived where it snowed too.
I once had a 20yo Ford Escort I bought to leave at JFK when I worked there in the late 1980s but lived in Las Vegas. By the time I sold it 4 years later you could see the road whizzing by through the floor of the passenger footwell. It was cost-effective mobility, and absolutely positively not one thing more. Not even warmth sometimes.
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### Author:  [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2025, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/92 "2025-10-09T11:30:10Z")
> [@Bob\_Blaylock](#):
>
> As a man of relatively normal stature, who sometimes shares a car with @Seanette, I can confirm this, that if the driver’s seat is adjusted for her, I cannot get into it at all; I simply do not fit.
I’m a bit over 6’2". My wife is 5’1". She also stores a lot of stuff behind her seat, so to move it back, I have to move things.
I absolutely no way can I fit in her seat unless I move it.
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### Author:  [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2025, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/93 "2025-10-09T11:40:48Z")
@Bob_Blaylock is about 5’9”, I’m around 5’4”. He sees to have proportionally longer legs than I do.
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### Author:  [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2025, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/94 "2025-10-09T12:26:29Z")
I would love to know what shit-for-brains asshat thought it would be a good idea to conduct paving operations on the road in front of my workplace’s only entrance at 8 in the goddamn morning. 🤬 In the past, my company has received notifications about impending roadwork, and made employees aware; this time, apparently no notice was sent. At least I wasn’t the only one rolling into the parking lot late.
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### Author:  [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2025, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/95 "2025-10-09T12:39:20Z")
> [@LurkMeister](#):
>
> Follow-up visit with my PCP today, which was mostly discussing how my body is responding to the recent changes in my medication and what else we can try. He decided I should start taking Jardiance, with a follow-up already scheduled with my cardiologist.
>
> And of course there were the usual blood tests. Which leads to my mini-rant. I’m used to running into occasional problems with blood draws and stents; sometimes they have trouble finding a usable vein, and sometimes even when they find one they have trouble getting blood. But today was the capper. After the nurse gave up I had two phlebotomists try, then they sent me to the blood lab, where the technician finally managed to fill the necessary vials. (At one point I had suggested that we just slash my arm and catch the blood as it dripped out, but apparently that would have contaminated the blood.)
You have a nice fat vein on the underside of your tongue.
Just sayin’.
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### Author:  [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2025, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/96 "2025-10-09T15:33:31Z")
A couple of months ago I had to buy a new coffee maker because the old one quit working. No, wait… the _coffee maker_ still worked, but the on/off button quit working. I could make coffee if I used the timer, I just couldn’t manually turn it on and off.
The new one we got is one of those carafe on one side / K-cup on the other machines. And I really like it, except for one thing: I can’t make a full pot of coffee without getting a bunch of grounds in the bottom. I don’t know if the water is coming in too fast or if the basket drains too slow, but the coffee overflows out of the filter and drains into the pot.
I’ve tried setting it to the “bold” setting (which I believe drips the water slower, as it takes about twice as long for a full pot to brew) but I still get grounds in the coffee, although not as much as on the “regular” setting. So annoying.
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### Author:  [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2025, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/97 "2025-10-09T16:45:44Z")
Don’t give them any ideas.
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2025, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/98 "2025-10-10T13:41:06Z")
A pox on whoever decided medical waiting rooms need a television blaring daytime TV. We all have fucking cell phones now, I don’t need this distracting bullshit while I’m trying to play Spelling Bee.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2025, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/99 "2025-10-10T14:19:32Z")
I once bought a key-chain sized “universal” remote. With a little fiddling I could discreetly mute or greatly lower the sound on nearly any waiting room TV. 😁
Didn’t always work, but when it did it was heavenly. Sometimes vandalism is an act of public service.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2025, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/season-of-the-kvetch-october-mini-rants/1023563/100 "2025-10-10T15:00:27Z")
I hate this SO MUCH.
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