Category: Rants

If I have a problem with something, here it will be.

Categories
House Rants

It's good to have hot water

So the “new” house I live in is starting to show signs of its not-so-newness. On Friday the water heater died and I’ve been dealing with the impact of that ever since. What impact, you say? Well for starters…

– No showers because the water here is about 45F coming out of the tap
– Dishes piling up because there is no way to wash them
– Running out of clothes because there is no way to clean them

I never realized how much I was dependent on hot water. I also didn’t understand that the life cycle for water heaters was so predictable. In my complex 4 other water heaters failed this month. The complex is only 14 years old, so it seems like that is the max lifetime for water heaters, or at least A. O. Smith 50 gallon versions like I had.

I’ve been told to expect the HVAC and garage door opener to go next. Just when I was happily expecting to save some money here comes the home issues to eat up that savings.

Categories
Rants Work

Upgrade/Downgrade: Tokyo Travel Edition

For those of you who have seen the VH1 show Best Week Ever this will be familiar to you. For those who haven’t, there is a segment in the show about good things happening to someone meaning “upgrade” and bad things happening meaning “downgrade.” I now present my own version: the Tokyo trip edition.

  • Got to fly out of the local airport directly to Tokyo: Upgrade
  • Had flight delayed by nearly two hours: Downgrade
  • Magically received bump from business to first: Upgrade
  • Ran out of water 1/2 way through flight: Downgrade
  • Was second person off plane, breezed through customs: Upgrade
  • Had to wait for an hour for luggage: Downgrade
  • Long wait caused a missed train, and another hour wait: Downgrade
  • Paid for train pass, got on nearly empty car: Upgrade
  • Found out I was in the wrong car, had to sit in the vestibule: Downgrade
  • Negotiated way out of train station: Upgrade
  • Had to walk for 20 minutes to the hotel: Downgrade
  • Sweat like a pig thanks to 80 F weather: Downgrade
  • Wake up every morning at 4am: Downgrade

For those keeping score at home, that is 5 upgrades vs. 8 downgrades. I’m only half way through this trip (which continues for another 6 days) and the downs are already winning. It isn’t looking good for upgrades, but then it wouldn’t be me if it did.

Categories
Movies Rants Review

Episode 3: It could have been worse

Yes, I knew this 3rd (or 6th) installment of Star Wars would be rough. I’m a fan of the previous SW movies, so I knew what I was in for. The effects were fantastic, and the battles were epic. Its good to finally know how everything fell into place and how the empire began.

But good lord, could the dialog the actors had to read be any worse? Hayden should have changed his name to wooden, Natalie turned up the sap and turned down the drama, and Ewan & Sam just phoned it in. I was thankful for the long silences later in the movie because the rhetoric was just weak.

In the final analysis, I decided that this was a pain that I had to make it through, if for no other reason than to see Yoda put out the smackdown one last time. I’m sad that it cost me $10, though.

Categories
Rants Review

I Found the Lost Season Finale Sad

Maybe I set myself up to fall on this one, but I was expecting much more from the LOST season finale than I received. Yes, the crazy French woman is back. And the baby is stolen and returned. Rocker dude finds the heroin from the drug plane. And of course the rescue raft sinks.

But the biggest bummers are the hatch is now open but all we see is a ladder, and the creature on the island is a puff of black smoke and clanking sounds. What gives with that? We have to wait all season long for these bits of knowledge? And could ABC please pack a few more commercials into the episode? Most of that 2 hours was spent skipping through the latest car ads, insurance pitches, and movie promos. Sad indeed.

At least I was entertained by the “teacher bits”. Too bad that happened so early in the episode that no laughs came after that. A big thanks goes out to Mark and his super HDTV theater room for the finale’s screening goodness. At least I got to see 720p widescreen in all its splendor.

Categories
House Rants

Of Bumps on the Head and Untrustworthy Toilets

I’ve learned two important things this weekend, both quite different from one another:

  1. Watching a cat negotiate its way down a slide is so much less important than making sure you don’t slam your head into a 2×6 board
  2. Installing toilets can be painful, and learning to trust that your own installation works without making a mess is even more painful

So for those keeping score at home: head vs. 2×6, 2×6 wins. Thinking vs. toilet install, well I’m still waiting to see who wins this one.

Categories
House Rants

How Did You Spend Your Mother's Day?

I spent mine (and Steve & April’s) pulling out and replacing 2 toilets at the homestead. It as one of the most horrifying experiences I’ve ever been a part of, primarily due to the cleaning and moving task it presented.

All of this pain was undertaken to kick off the re-do of the floor of the master bathroom, which for reasons unknown to me, the previous owners had carpeted. Hopefully that will soon be remedied, but until then I have the scars of the toilet removal that will haunt my every waking moment.

Categories
Rants Work

Flights, Frights, and Long Painful Nights

Another week, another trip to LA. This week brought the following interesting and weird happenings to bear…

  • I walked across the street for lunch and saw Robert Blake. TV really does make people look fat, because this guy is a straw in real life.
  • For a change, I stayed at the LAX Westin. It was a comfortable bed but I got very little sleep. There is evidently a kennel or pound within 100 feet of the hotel and dogs were yelping from 3am on.
  • My boss purchased a Ducati motorcycle. She is coordinated enough to have dropped it twice in less than a week. And it wasn’t even moving. I’ve started a hospital vigil for her now.
  • The flight back was eventful. I had no seat assignment, the flight prior to mine had been canceled, and the ground crew had no idea how many people were on the plane, how many seats remained, and how much weight they could take.

That, in a nutshell, was my end of week trip. I think that LA may need to modify their visitor message to be…

Welcome to LA. It’s like a whole other planet.

Categories
Rants Technology

Bad, Bad Microsoft

I had one of those wake up calls today where I remember why its best not to leave all the thinking to someone else.

Microsoft’s XP Windows Update site pushed an upgrade to my home PC. Since it is automated, all I had to do was say “yes” to reboot the system after the update arrived. Once I did, I got a “blue screen of death”, had no working audio, and shortly found several dead files written to my hard drive. Of course, the WU Crash dialog appears shortly after my 3rd reboot, telling me that Microsoft has no idea what just happened. Funny, my PC worked just fine up until today.

To make this long story short, Microsoft pushed down drivers for my nForce2 APU audio SoundStorm product, and they were very broken. I had to roll back to older drivers on the nvidia.com web site to get working again. Now the Windows Update site keeps demanding that I install the “new” drivers again.

Talking with some folks at NVIDIA, it sounds like I’m not alone in this debacle. It was proof enough again why taking human common sense out of the loop on technology is a bad, bad thing. Shame on you, Microsoft.

Categories
General House Rants

Long Waits and Big Bills

I found out today that my chase after a sports car has ended before it began. After consulting with several dealers it appears that everyone is “allocated out” for the year. That means that no one can special order cars until the manufacturer decides to extend an offer to do so. Bummer for me, and stupid for the car maker, since I have money in hand.

On the other hand I’m headed into a mini house overhaul for the master bathroom. Conservative figures put the upgrade at around $4K, but depending on what else comes along for the ride (new door frames, additional room painting, furniture, etc) it could go up from there. So much for saving money by buying a place.

Categories
General Rants

Common Sense vs. The Doctor

It’s now a few weeks on from my second, knee bending ski accident and a few more weeks further out from my snowboarder tackle accident. Things seem to be getting better, but slowly, so I figured why not go visit the doctor and see what the matter is?

The doctor told me, in not so many words, “don’t ski.” Thanks, I figured that part out. So now I’m supposed to wait another few weeks and see if things improve on their own, even though I have pain now (I should take Alleve, he says) but no visible signs of trouble. And I can’t even imagine how much money the healthcare companies get for this short visit.

Makes you wonder what we did before modern medicine (and HMOs) came about, doesn’t it?