The Small Rants Thread XI :What Do you Want to Bitch About?

[Nanshork]

I just spent $730 making it so that my car heating system works again.  It snows here, this wasn't optional.

[Sinfire Titan]

• Due to me being a first-time buyer I need a cosigner to get a car loan. My own mother won't help me with this, and I have no family members with good enough credit to get one.
• My cable and electric bill are both overdue and going to be shut off this week. I can't physically pay for both without assistance. Which I can't get in time to pay for the bills.
• Due to the Americans with Disabilities Act, our apartment complex replaced every refrigerator in the place. Ours is the only one that doesn't work, and now our food is spoilt and we can't get a new fridge until Monday (which we may have to pay for).

[altpersona]

heres ya a crappy catch 22...

if you cant do the bills, using regular income or emergency fund, then you cannot really afford the car.

did you get an insurance quote yet? (sorta weird before buying, but it would be good to know what to expect)

first car, spend less than a grand (no loan). run it into the ground and make car payments to yourself. next car spend only out of your car fund (no loan), rinse, repeat. it may take 10 years (depending on the car payment your a making to your self and and your discipline) to get a 'Nice' 'New' 'Reliable' car, but it is overall better.

if you start a small business, consider leasing a car. the lease as a business expense is deductible from the taxes, effectively free as is the insurance, as long as the business is remotely profitable after a couple years.

[Sinfire Titan]

heres ya a crappy catch 22...

if you cant do the bills, using regular income or emergency fund, then you cannot really afford the car.

The bill issue was due to lending a family member money and not getting paid back. I've done the math, I can afford a car on my job's income without difficulty. The bills are behind because I've been playing keep-up for 6 months. The car would also enable a second job (which I've already got lined up through several of the employees, whom I've worked with in the past)

did you get an insurance quote yet? (sorta weird before buying, but it would be good to know what to expect)

Yes.

if you start a small business, consider leasing a car. the lease as a business expense is deductible from the taxes, effectively free as is the insurance, as long as the business is remotely profitable after a couple years.

That would require me to be able to start a business. I have no skills regarding that area.

[altpersona]

heres ya a crappy catch 22...

if you cant do the bills, using regular income or emergency fund, then you cannot really afford the car.

The bill issue was due to lending a family member money and not getting paid back. I've done the math, I can afford a car on my job's income without difficulty. The bills are behind because I've been playing keep-up for 6 months. The car would also enable a second job (which I've already got lined up through several of the employees, whom I've worked with in the past)

did you get an insurance quote yet? (sorta weird before buying, but it would be good to know what to expect)

Yes.

if you start a small business, consider leasing a car. the lease as a business expense is deductible from the taxes, effectively free as is the insurance, as long as the business is remotely profitable after a couple years.

That would require me to be able to start a business. I have no skills regarding that area.

catch up a few more months...

 

[Amechra]

I just updated my laptop (I've been putting it off for a while - I finally got around to it because my second monitor kept dropping the signal.)

Now, thanks to some driver incompatibilities between Ubuntu and Nvidia, my second monitor ain't working until I can fix the drivers.

It feels really lame, being restricted to one screen.

[phaedrusxy]

So I installed a couple of skylights today in our living room... Due to having to cut and frame around a few ceiling joists and rafters, it literally took me all day, and the last few nails were put in with a flashlight. I didn't get to install the flashing at all, but figured... "Hey, as long is it doesn't rain really hard, we should be OK."

Guess who got woken up at 3:30 AM to the beautiful sounds of a waterfall in their living room? 

So... I climbed back on the roof, in the rain, and spread some random bullshit plastic pieces that I could find laying around in my garage over the skylights, and then rushed back in to shove a kiddie pool and an old baby bathtub under the worst areas, and mopped the rest up with towels and blankets... and now it's 4:15 and I have to get back up at 7...

[altpersona]

skylights are notorious

[RedWarlock]

Guess who just god told this morning that his whole department is being eliminated!

<--- this guy.

Sept 30th is our last day, then we get supplemental income to bring unemployment up to the level of our salary, for a time in weeks equal to the years worked. Most people get a few months, but I've only been here a couple years. Fortunately there's a minimum of 3 weeks, but still, 3 weeks is like nothing.

I've got a few other side-things I'm hoping I can churn into something substantial. (Freelance animation, design work, and I've got my homebrew RPG system I've been working on. Might be able to turn that into something sellable...)

[phaedrusxy]

skylights are notorious

Eh, it should be fine. I've installed one before, and never had any trouble out of it after about 1 year. The problem is that I didn't get to finish the flashing, which is what actually keeps the water out... Going to try remedying that today...

[altpersona]

Guess who just god told this morning that his whole department is being eliminated!

<--- this guy.

Sept 30th is our last day, then we get supplemental income to bring unemployment up to the level of our salary, for a time in weeks equal to the years worked. Most people get a few months, but I've only been here a couple years. Fortunately there's a minimum of 3 weeks, but still, 3 weeks is like nothing.

I've got a few other side-things I'm hoping I can churn into something substantial. (Freelance animation, design work, and I've got my homebrew RPG system I've been working on. Might be able to turn that into something sellable...)

been in that boat ...

am in that boat 

sucks...

[Keldar]

Is the boat in phaedrusxy's living room? 

[altpersona]

 


in related news, i might have a job offer coming... not sure i want the job... and pretty sure im sick of school again already.

"in 300 words or more, tell us your name" ugg.

[dman11235]

Do this: "firstname lastname firstname lastname firstname lastname firstname lastname firstname lastname firstname lastname firstname lastname firstname lastname firstname lastname firstname lastname firstname lastname ....."

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Hugs for sinfire


alt-rickitickitimbanosarimbasarigariguchipipperipimba-persona ... is only 1 word.

[brujon]

My girlfriend's cat is driving me insane. He constantly bites, scratches, not only me, but her as well. He's not - at all - a cat that likes to cuddle, that likes to receive head scratches. Yes, he likes company, but only if he can be near you without you disturbing him.

If that was all, i'd be fine. The problem is, he starts going completely balls to the wall insane at about 4:30 in the morning. It doesn't happen every time, but when it does, he makes SO MUCH NOISE that i'm unable to sleep. I chide him and go back, and he stops for just enough time for me to go back to a sleep state... And then starts back up. I wake up with a jump from all the racket, worried to hell he's going to wreck shit up.

Not only that, his bad behavior extends to other things as well. He completely fucked up her bed, her bedsheets and pillow cases. And sometimes he decides to do that while we sleep too, making a hell of a lot of noise.

Today, i was furious. I woke up, and we had to get ready to leave, she needs to go to her internship and i need to go study... But i slept very little because of the cat.

So i told her i think he needed to get sent to a trainer, so that his bad behavior can, hopefully, be corrected. She took issue with what i said. Left pretty fucking angry.

So now not only i have very little sleep, but my girlfriend is mad at me for suggesting her cat needs to be trained.

She never corrects his behavior, at best, screaming a little at him... But does little other than that. She has a spray bottle with water, which she seldom uses... And the cat is increasing in his bad behavior.

He's about one year old, so i know for a fact there's still time to get him trained so that his bad behavior at least decreases, but she seems to think that is the end of the world.

She suggested i use earplugs and sleep with the water bottle next to me if he bites my foot or scratches me while i sleep... WTF? Why is she so opposed to getting him sent to training?

Hell, at this point, even if it was expensive, i'd find a way to afford it. I'd pay for it.

[bhu]

Given some of the symptoms you mention it's also possible he's simply just feral or has a medical issue.  Have his issues ever been mentioned to a vet?

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Hugs for Red Warlock.


Stupidest firing I ever got ... a "boss" (stretching the term massively) flipped out, fired a guy working, fired a guy not working that day, and me.  I wasn't even in the country that weekend, and had only worked 1 training shift.  Tangentially I had saved him about 8% labor cost that 1 shift.  Maybe I was too threatening? idk and didn't care soon enough.

[brujon]

I think Bhu might have hit the nail on the head. From the circumstances of his birth, i think there's a pretty good chance he's feral. But he was adopted when he was still breastfeeding - shouldn't he be fully domesticated by now? And how do i deal with a possibly feral cat?

[dman11235]

So this laptop is the first machine I've ever had any trouble with, aside from simple age. A couple weeks ago it started crashing seemingly randomly, with a HD error message.  Took it in, they took it apart, couldn't find anything wrong with it, put it back together, it hasn't crashed from it at all since.  The hypothesis is that it was bad seating for the HD and/or other parts, and simply trying to find the problem fixed it.  When they tested the HD for bad sectors, they couldn't read my HD.  However, no other HD worked with my laptop.  It was super bizarre.

So fast forward to today, it's crashed twice.  It updated the other day (2 days ago), and I'm not sure what happened with the update?  But with it, it reset a number of my settings.  So I've tried to redo them.  Anyways, another thing it did, apparently, was install for the first time a graphics driver.  I have no other driver on here....so I didn't have graphics before that?  Not sure.  The problem now, with both crashes today, is with that graphics driver.  So I've tried to roll it back, can't do that, because it was first installed the other day.  Can't update, it's fully updated.  I did reinstall it from my computer, although I'm not sure what that will do?

Anyways, I'm really not sure what to do. I really need this thing to live for the next three months minimum.