Because jasg is right but apparently too lazy to do it 
A couple of days ago I had the fireplace roaring to keep us warm. Today I had the airconditioner on to cool us down.
C’mon Vic weather…get your shit together please. Should I break out the summer clothes, or keep the long-pants, jumpers and woolly boots on hand?
:dubious:
I had been renewing my Geico car insurance year after year, and assuming that it was still cheaper than alternatives. This time I decided to compare Progressive. Geico had been $588 every 6 months. Progressive turned out to be $155 for the exact same coverage!!! Now I feel like an idiot for not changing sooner.
How does Progressive handle claims? There’s got to be a reason why they’re so much cheaper.
I don’t know. I haven’t had an insurance claim since 1981. That may be responsible for the low premium.
**Turning the minirants up to 11ber
**
Is it Hendecember already? Time flies.
Yes, but did it take you 15 minutes or less?
It’s funny that you all are talking about car insurance.
My sister and her husband both work for car insurance companies. My brother in law is a customer service agent and my sister is a quality assurance coach and auditor.
And my brother in law got in an accident last night coming home from work when a car pulled out in front of him on his motorcycle. He’s going to be ok but he’s broken a lot of his face and I’m all anxious about it. He’s in a lot of pain too. I wish there was something I could do.
There is a Buick commercial running constantly:
Person 1: “I like that Buick”
Person 2: ::looking at Buick:: “yeah me too”
Person 1: “no, I mean that other Buick” :: points at different Buick::
This similar scene runs 3 or 4 times with different actors. WTF?!? I mean I think they are trying to tell me that Buick has multiple models through could appeal to someone for different reasons, but the weird messaging drives me crazy.
I’m expecting a package delivered by USPS. Two days ago, it was at a distribution center six miles away; yesterday, it was at a different distribution center 15 miles in the opposite direction! Today, its on a truck somewhere.
At least this package hasn’t been routed through Baltimore, like one back in August.
I’ve heard enough stories about Geico – in particular, what they consider to be an acceptable used part to put on a vehicle – that I understand completely why they’re so inexpensive. I’ve only dealt with them indirectly one time; they really, really didn’t want to pay up after one of their customers drove into the back of my vehicle. (Apparently they thought the labor costs for disassembling and reassembling the rear end of a modern SUV were excessive.) It does make me wonder what Progressive is doing to be even cheaper.
Very mini rant: Benedict Cumberbatch’s American accent absolutely sucks, to the point where it’s painful to listen to. He either sounds like a parody of someone from Minnesota or what the makers of the original Jeeves & Wooster series thought Americans sounded like (which is pretty similar with harder Rs).
Another mini rant: The guys in my son’s scout troop are hopelessly disorganized and it’s aggravating. I was supposed to help book a lot of the events coming up, but was provided no information on where to book them. I asked for a few weeks, then last night, “So, where are those confirmations?” To which I said, I have no idea - you never told me to make them or where to make them. “Well, we told you it was that place we went to last year. You know, in southern Illinois. And that campsite. Not the one close to town. The other one. It’s all in the book. Don’t you have the book? Where’s the book?” Holy shit, no - no one gave me the fucking legendary book. I asked for the book. Several times, got busy and forgot about the book. What the fuck, guys?
Whatever. I managed to reserve everything but the things they can set up for themselves when they walk in the door at “that place in southern Illinois.” But holy fuck, don’t look at me like I’m a dumbass when I’ve been asking you for weeks what’s going on and have been getting, “Oh, you’re good. We’ll get you the book.” :smack:
So you’re saying you couldn’t book without the book?
“Bada-book, Bada-boom!”
Why do people suck so hard when it comes to the basics of negotiating the airport and flying in general? I spent last weekend in Baltimore, flying out from San Diego on Friday, and back on Monday, and the number of fucking morons who can’t get their shit together is astounding.
Here’s some helpful advice: if you’re standing in a securty line for 40 minutes, you’ve got plenty of time to have your boarding pass and ID ready when you reach the front of the queue and the TSA person beckons you forward. Get your shit together before that, rather than standing there rummaging in your bags while the agent stares blankly and everyone in line behind you rolls their eyes. This goes double when there’s a TSA person calling out a reminder about having your boarding pass and ID out and ready.
Once you’re through that part of the line, work out how to get yourself ready for the process of goiing through the x-rays and other detectors. If they’re telling you to take your shoes off, then take the damn things off. If they want you to pull electronics larger than a cellphone out of your bag, then fucking do that. And if you still don’t know that you can’t take a full bottle of water through, then you’re a complete idiot. I know these rules are fucking stupid, but we’ll all get through more quickly if you just follow them anyway.
And before you go through the millimeter wave scanner, take all that shit out of your pockets, just like they tell you to do. I saw a guy on the weekend who set off the scanner, and he literally had stuff in six different pockets that he then had to pull out and show the people before they would let him go. He was like some airport version of the magician with the endless handkerchief; he just kept producing more and more items from various places on his person, while the rest of the line just stood waiting.
If you’re on Southwest Airlines, once you get to the right gate, and ascertain that it’s the correct flight, the only piece of information that matters is that boarding number. If you’re B46, don’t insinuate yourself in the middle of the A boarding group in the hope that no-one will notice, because the person scanning the passes will notice and send you back to wait. And when that happens, don’t stand there asking why, now you’re there, they can’t just let you on anyway. That’s not how it works, numnuts, and now you’ve managed to irritate everyone else who just wants to get on the damn plane already.
If you are in the A boarding group, and you choose to sit in an aisle seat all by yourself, don’t give a theatrical sigh or groan when someone asks you to get up and let them into the window seat. The boarding crew has already annouced that this is going to be a full flight, and the fact that you’re in the window seat will not magically cause the flight attendants to send two people off the plane so you can get the row to yourself.
And get your in-flight shit together. Don’t sit in your seat and then, in the middle of boarding, get up to bring your suitcase back down from the overhead because you just remembered that you left your headphones or your book or your Depends in there, and you desperately need them before takeoff. Work out what you need beforehand, and if you forget something, wait until after takeoff to get up and get it.
When we finally arrive, and you’re waiting for your bags, it works a whole lot better if everyone would just stand about a yard back from the carousel. That way, when someone see’s their bag, there’s room for them to grab it without trying to squeeze between a half-dozen dopey cows crowding up against the edge. Because I will shoulder you out of the way if you insist on just standing there.
I know airports suck, the TSA sucks, airlines suck, and air travel sucks, but that’s precisely why its worth taking a ffew moments and few brain cells to think about other people and get your shit together.
The route I usually take to go to the dog park passes right by the Westboro Baptist Church’s compound. Fred himself may be dead, but they are keeping up his traditions with their weekly sign. Today was one of the ugliest I’ve seen in recent months. And you just thought they hated homosexuality? Nah!
GOD TO JEWS! NO SHABBAT SHALOM UNTIL YOU REPENT!!!
Every time I think they can’t sink any lower they surprise me.
Excellent rant. A+
-but you forgot to ask for a unicorn.
I don’t tend to rants and didn’t feel worthy…
Thanks for the thread though!
Yay mhendo. This is almost up to the SDMB rants of old plus it is all information that would really help some people IF THEY COULD FUCKING READ.
Having recently flown out from PHL to TUC to visit the folks, I’d like to add two pieces of information to mhendo’s.
[ul]
[li]Different airports apparently have different requirements for what has to be removed from bags. The TSA people at PHL told me I didn’t have to take my tablet out of my purse (I asked if they were sure when they told me to put it back). The TUC TSA, on the other hand, made me rescan after taking it out. Silly me for leaving it in because I thought all airports did it the same way.[sup]1[/sup][/li][li]The milli-whatsit scanner is incredibly sensitive, to the point that it *will *alert if you are wearing a pad in your underwear. Yes, I had to go through a pat-down search because I was wearing a piddle pad. (TMI warning: I’m getting older; if I sneeze with a full bladder, odds are good that I’ll squirt.)[/li][/ul]
The short version: take everything that requires power out, even if they tell you it isn’t necessary, and wait to put the pad in your undies until *after *you’ve gone through screening. I swear, if there were a train from here to there, I might forego flying altogether, and I love to fly. At least, I used to. How is it that one failed shoe bomb means we all have to take off our shoes, but any whack job can walk into any gun shop and buy any gun with little or no oversight?
[sup]1[/sup] Come to think of it, I had the same issue with my CPAP when I went out last year. PHL TSA didn’t tell me to take it out, TUC TSA said it had to come out and, you guessed it, made me rescan the suitcase. Can it just be that the PHL TSA is more lax than TUC?