Minor rant thread. Post your rants o' the day here!

1. Daughter is home sick from school yesterday and today.  She's missing the Halloween costume party at school and very sad.  I took the day off surprise her and go.

2. We have a maytag front load washer. Mechanically it's great.  However today there was a small bit of water in front after starting a load.  Start looking at it and notice all the mold buildup in the detergent fill area. 

This is AFTER initial cleaning.  How the berkeley am I supposed to clean all the nooks and crannies in there? And some of them are sharp!  I'm in to my elbow trying to get to the back corners with a screwdriver and rag. I cleaned as best I could and sprayed bleach water to rinse as much out as I could.  We remove the drawer after every wash to let air in also to try and prevent this.  At least so far there doesn't seem to be any more water.  

This seems like a design to meet target and manufacturing, but the engineers never had to maintain their own designs.  

Took the family to Red Robin last night. Wow. Talk about extreme quality decline and shrinkflation. The burgers were tiny, expensive, and poor poor quality. Yeah, I know I should go (insert somewhere else) for quality burgers, but the pre 2020 Red Robin by me was really good. I could never finish their burgers and they were quite good for a quick bite. To add insult to injury, my stomach was sour all night. At least it didn’t carry over to today. 

With the exception of Texas Roadhouse, I haven’t left a chain restaurant happy in 5+ years. I don’t why I keep going back. 

Scotty Con Queso said:

Took the family to Red Robin last night. Wow. Talk about extreme quality decline and shrinkflation. The burgers were tiny, expensive, and poor poor quality. Yeah, I know I should go (insert somewhere else) for quality burgers, but the pre 2020 Red Robin by me was really good. I could never finish their burgers and they were quite good for a quick bite. To add insult to injury, my stomach was sour all night. At least it didn’t carry over to today. 

With the exception of Texas Roadhouse, I haven’t left a chain restaurant happy in 5+ years. I don’t why I keep going back. 

Unfortunately I think that's a very common experience these days.

I honestly don't know how some of those chains stay in business.

I just did a computerized order for a body shop.  They have one 3 separate orders for this car, 2 orders for 1 part and 1 order for 2 parts.  

1 of the 1 parts orders were for a discontinued part.  I marked it as discontinued,  wrote in the comments as discontinued and sent it back to the shop.

The shop re-ordered the discontinued part on the 4th order (1 part) for this car.

I am so angry I could swing a cactus.  (Not really. I just wanted to say that.)

Another weekend lost. Not that I had an itinerary, necessarily, but whatever little I thought I might accomplish had been overrode by an unspoken mandate to remain indoors, just a-loadin' down this here sectional so as I can make myself available to Mrs Monohue, who, having torqued her ankle but good in our family tradition - said tradition being that of preemptively ruining the other's plans for any given weekend through some kind of injury, illness, or indeterminate malaise - has damn near invalidated herself.

So last night I took Junior out while she relaxed at home in our thousand-square-foot palace, confident in the knowledge that our working (if you feel like it) class (lower every year) neighborhood sees only a handful of trick-or-treaters. The kid gave up after all of six houses because his Big River ghost costume totally obscured his vision. How does a six year old kid give up on the entire concept of Halloween after half a dozen houses? Defective genes, that's how, and I'm the one to blame for that. Meanwhile, Mrs Monohue gets absolutely swamped, gives away pounds of candy, and swells her ankle up like the Goodyear blimp in the process, guaranteeing that tomorrow (today, Pacific standard time) is going to suck out loud.

And it does. I got up today and commenced to running dishes, trying to be useful, and instead got an earful for discovering things in the kitchen I wasn't supposed to know about. In sickness and in health, and all that, but I sure don't look forward to getting hollered at for discovering someone else's sins.

We were recently given ("gifted", for those born in this century, though I sure as E36 M3 wish you'd just say "given") a big, beautiful Samsung Frame TV. Naturally, it pooped its bed, which we've recently learned they are quite famous for, just a couple of days ago. Would have been nice if the Little Missus could have watched something bigger than her phone during her convalescence. But she can't. Oops, All Samsungs!

The bird poop icing on this cat crap cake: I got an email from our insurance broker on Friday confirming that the imaging center to which I was referred is not, despite their adamant insistence to the contrary, in network. So now I get to either dig up someone who is in network or just say "berk it all" and roll the dice that I'm okay. Which is what I'm going to do, because I have absolutely zero faith that either the medical or insurance industries have any intention of doing anything other than bankrupting me at the earliest opportunity. Why wouldn't they? They're counting on my will to live being strong enough to overcome my will to not be robbed. Boy, do they have another thing coming.

Sometimes it always feels like I've lived too long.

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

I’ve never been a big chain fan but Red Robin has definitely fallen off the most, and somehow Texas Roadhouse has managed to stay better than pretty much all the others and resist skyrocketing prices.  I go pretty regularly because our check for two people rarely cracks $50. 

In our area, Red Robin is still pretty good, but these days I usually get the fish & chips.  They discontinued most of the burgers I used to order.  Texas Roadhouse uses waaay too much salt... have to order everything with less to make it edible.  Otherwise it's usually pretty good, especially the fried pickles.

I started to get ready for my weekly bike ride at 8am this morning when my wife flipped out a bit and told me it was unfair she had to sit at home and worry about me the entire time in case I hurt myself.  Well, long story short, no bike ride for me and we have both felt miserable all day.

i decided to order ten 4 ft.  LED lights to brighten up my basement so it’s less unpleasant to work out down there.  I was initially impressed by HD’s promise of same say delivery.  Found out they are handing all these lights off to a door dasher.  Fingers crossed.

In reply to DarkMonohue :

tThe reason men die before their wife's is because we want to. 

WilD said:order ten 4 ft.  LED lights …HD’s promise of same say delivery.  Found out they are handing all these lights off to a door dasher.  Fingers crossed.

Received 8 of 10.  I knew something wasn’t going to be right.  It’s fine.  Wife mad that I was making noise and doing stuff.  Perfect end to the day.

I spent most of my free Saturday bagging 25 paper bags of leaves. I hate this time of year. Mostly because my yard is 8-inches deep in leaves for 2 months. What a waste of time above dirt. 

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

Just curious, why not just mow them vs bag them?

In reply to Steve_Jones :

I’ve done that in the past and if I don’t run them though the bagger it’s just way too thick with the clippings. When I do cut/bag them it takes longer than just raking. 

Or..  and hear me out here:  Do nothing whatsoever.  Gravity brought the leaves to my lawn, who am I to evict them?

In reply to wae :

I agree for the small amount of leaves in my back yard.  I also mow those.  I have a maple tree in the front yard that drops every single leaf in about 2 weeks.  I should have gotten a before picture.  They were no less than 8-inches thick in my front yard and very thick/waxy. I've left them before and it killed most of my grass after about a month. 

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

I’ve mulched leaves on the lawn and it takes a solid 7-10 passes which takes forever.

My wife asked what I put on her carpet in my daughter’s bedroom.  What? Nothing.  
 

I go and look and see what looks like expanding foam in spots on the edge of the carpet by the baseboard.    It’s a white/yellow mold/fungus.  
 

spent the rest of Saturday getting to this:

that’s an exterior wall.  I think im looking at the next two weeks of my life.  This does not look like the wing mount for my c6 that I had hoped to knock out. 

wae said:

Or..  and hear me out here:  Do nothing whatsoever.  Gravity brought the leaves to my lawn, who am I to evict them?

When I was in high school, my mom bought a house from someone who didn't rake for seven years.  All of the grass in the backyard was dead, covered by inches of decomposing leaves.

The next summer was 20 bags of lawn bags on trash day, every week.  And then when the leaves and other crud were gone, the thistles started.

When I bought my house this spring, it came with 3' high thistles and poison ivy, for different reasons.

In reply to jfryjfry :

That sucks! 

You guys are making me thankful my yard has no trees other than the woods behind the house. I haven't had to rake in 15 years. If I ever move again, I'll be looking for a yard with no trees. 

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

Not to minimize your struggles, but I have a huge sycamore tree in my front yard.  My yard is 8 inches deep in giant leaves from late September until early December, even if I rake it multiple times.  I wish it dropped them all in two weeks.

In reply to Duke :

You're dealing with them the wrong way. 

Steve_Jones said:

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

Just curious, why not just mow them vs bag them?

When I had a house I used to run my lawnmower over the leaves with the collection bag attached and dump that bag into large plastic bags.  It worked great.   If it wasn't a lot of leaves I would just cut the grass and mulch the leaves in place.  

Leaf time is just an excuse to buy more power equipment.

I have a backpack blower, Milwaukee M18 Cordless blower, wood chipper/leaf mulcher, and a wheeled leaf blower. Although the wheeled one isn’t moving them like I’d like it to be. So I’m going to look into seeing if I can convert it to a vacuum or find a used vac for next year.

What’s killed me this year so far is a bunch of times I’ve been available to clean leaves, the wind is blowing in the wrong direction. Then I switch to a different section where that wind is beneficial. Then it switches again…

Y'all are doing leaf removal wrong.

no license, no bullE36 M3 tax stamp, no registry, get those leaves before they fall off the trees.