So long and thanks for all the rants! (November mini-rants)

i’m sorry to hear this.

So sorry, LurkMeister.

Well, it seems I’m not the only one noticing soaring food prices. It’s even affecting rabbit food!

I’m sorry @LurkMeister, this is the hardest part of having pets.

Meanwhile, my son vomited again this morning. The doc was like “it’s just constipation. Do the miralax and call us if it gets worse.” So I guess he’s just gonna vomit every morning? I think I need to get a second opinion.

Yeah, you need a doctor who’s actually giving the matter any thought or attention at all. I’m not a medical professional, but the only situation I can think of where vomiting every morning is not abnormal would be pregnancy (and dehydration from vomiting is very likely aggravating the constipation, based on my own doctor’s adamance about my fluid intake, since I have a chronic constipation issue myself).

Definitely a second opinion. Find someone who understands that you know something is wrong. Keep pushing!

I couldn’t find Mammoth, but I found… Mastodon? ( Same thing? )

Oh, yes. My mistake: wrong prehistoric pachyderm-turned-social media animal.

I’ve heard undoubtedly apocryphal stories about ads saying that “My opponent is an admitted philatelist and his sister is a thespian.”

And they both matriculated while they were in college!

Thanks for the kind wishes. Fortunately, I am at a SF con with a lot of my friends, so I’ve been getting moral support (and a few hugs) to help deal with this.

And this just reminded me of when my wife died a few weeks before a local convention which I had not planned on attending because I had expected to have to be home caring for her. I was almost literally dragged to the con so I would not be sitting at home alone. Being with friends helps. (Including getting hugged by Jeanne Robinson, who saw me sitting in the audience of a panel as she was coming in and apparently just sensed that I needed a hug. But that’s the kind of person she was.)

Good to know I’m not the only one. :frowning_face:

Screw you GPS, if you don’t know that 1-40 runs East - West.

This is probably the mini-est of rants, but yesterday I was going to an event in a town about thirty minutes away. Please note that although I’ve heard the name of the town, I had no idea where it was located relative to me, and I didn’t check, which is on me.

I just plugged the address into the GPS, and took off.

The closest entrance to I-40 is a pain in the butt, a left turn across a highly congested retail strip to a cloverleaf ramp. So if I’m going west, I usually detour to next entrance to the west, which is a right turn onto a straight ramp, much easier and a little quicker, because I’m not stuck waiting through three cycles of traffic lights for my protected left.

But that advantage doesn’t hold if I’m going east.

So, I’m waiting for the next GPS instruction to decide if I’m going to make the detour, and the GPS says “In a half mile, turn left onto 1-40 South. Screw you, GPS, there is no 1-40 South, and I still don’t know if I’m heading west or east. So I missed my detour.

And I was late to the event because there were several temporarily closed street the GPS didn’t know about, and the GPS just kept assuming I missed the turns, and it kept circling me back to try again. So I had to pull over, look up a map, and find a route. But that’s another rant.

No worries; it’s a little odd to navigate, but it’s doable. There is also something called Tribel?
There is absolutely nothing smooth about that platform. I mean you could probably replace the dashboard of your car with 100 toggle switches and 3 analog gauges, but why would you?

“Honey, did you change the settings in the Prius?”
“Maybe; but I put them all back. Why?”
"Well, it’s jumping up and down and making a < Goink! > sound.
Wait, I think it just said ‘Herschel Walker’… "

Anyway, I’ve never been more grateful to be here.

Alexa keeps notifying me of a National Weather Service Freeze Advisory. For a shopping center 2700 miles away. She’s confused about which Washington I live in.

I have gotten that notification twice so far today. I live in Pennsylvania.

May I congratulate you on getting a bright, shiny, and new Senator and Governor?

( On election day, Pennsylvania Kicked Some Ozz…! )

Seriously, Walgreens? $67 out-of-pocket for a flu shot? We went elsewhere.

Thank you. I’m glad the guys I voted for won this time.

It looks like a mouse crawled into our dryer vent and died. The smell is pretty bad.

Tomorrow, I’ll pull the dryer out from the wall, disconnect the silver dryer went tube, place a paper back under it, and try to fish out the little bugger with a straightened wire hanger.

Oh Joy!