today's rant: scratch and dent

I worked for Samsung for all of 5 months.  The best thing that came out of my time there was that I gained enough knowledge to justify buying a new washing machine when I discovered a leak in my old one.  I knew enough to estimate the cost of repairs if I hired somebody or how much work and time lost there would be if I tried to fix it myself.  The ultimate deciding factor was that I saw mold forming where water was leaking.  That was all it took.  I couldn’t guess where else the mold was spreading, so the most prudent option was to get a new washing machine.  It would have been an expensive repair anyway.  The simplest choice was to toss the fucker.  The 2^nd best thing that came out of working there was visiting the corporate headquarters and hearing that they refer to the security guards at their mobile phone building as “The Guardians of the Galaxy”.  I appreciate a sense of humor.

If you see something or hear a salesperson say that something comes with a limited warranty when buying an appliance, this is misleading terminology.  The misleading is intended.  It is not like you are buying an appliance and you are getting a limited warranty for free on top of it.  The truth is that the warranty is factored into the price of the appliance.  As evidence of this, I direct you to the scratch and dent section.  Chances are good that an appliance is half off the original price of the appliance (note:  I said “original” price, not the sale price.  At an appliance store, I seriously doubt they ever sell for the “original” price).  So, if a washing machine’s original price is $1,000, the scratch price will probably be around $500, sold as is.  Know why it is “sold as is”?  It is because the store has already filed a complaint against the manufacturer about the scratch and got the entire price of the appliance back already.  It would cost too much to bring the unit back to Asia or wherever it came from, so they just let them keep it.  However, since the store got their money back, this voids the warranty.  So that $500 price tag is pretty much all profit for the store.  Getting back to the beginning of the paragraph, most of the time, the limited warranty is expired by the time a malfunction comes around.  Therefore, you unknowingly pay for the limited warranty for no good reason.  Enter the stores who offer you their extended warranty that THEY profit from.  Juggle that risk if you want, but the longer that appliance runs, the risk for malfunction goes up exponentially.  I’ve see the charts and I’ve seen the math.  You don’t fuck with charts and math… unless you are Enron or their accountants, and look what happened to them.

today's rant: online dating honesty, Waffle House

I think it would be interesting if online dating services forced male members to disclose, as part of their public profiles, instances of:

-          Being called to their HR department for complaints made about his comments to/regarding females

-          Any past or present restraining orders or outstanding warrants

-          Current child support payments (required per court order vs. actual provided)

-          Up-to-date STD test results

I’d also want to know the percentage of profiles that would be put on hiatus or deleted if those disclosures were put into place.

Last year, the mobile application for Monster, the job search website, changed its format to a swipe right/left for job postings that their special algorithms think match your background; swipe right to apply, or swipe left to disregard.  Yeah.  Monster is now the Tinder of job searches.

In the fictional universes of comic books, you see a fair amount of characters that are neither aligned with the polar opposites of heroes or villains.  So many characters in the grey area make for more entertainment and drama.  You don’t see a lot of that in Star Wars.  I can only think of one character types that fit that mold:  scoundrels.  In this context, “scoundrels” include characters that are not closely affiliated with the light-side, good-guy characters (Luke, Leia, Rey, etc.) or the dark-side, bad-guy characters (Vader, Jabba, Kylo Ren).  Each of the major trilogies had had clear-cut dueling factions:  Jedi vs. Sith, Republic vs. Confederacy, Rebel Alliance vs. Empire, Resistance vs. First Order.  Scoundrels include bounty hunters (the Fetts), pirates (Han), and, more recently, hackers/slicers (DJ).  They rarely picked sides on a permanent basis.  You really have to dive deep into the Expanded Universe to find other types that fit the gray area between the polar affiliations (non-interfering species like the Chiss, fringe sects of Force-practitioners).  Such a shame that it was declared non-canon.  It is going to take a long time and, if they are making movies for it like “Solo”, a lot of production value to recreate the spectrum of character morality.

I don’t have anything snarky to say about a guy shooting up a Waffle House.  The only thing I objectively have to say about Waffle House is simply personal experience from one that I visited in Montgomery, Alabama.  I don’t like eggs when the whites aren’t fully cooked.  In general, your dining experiences are a crap shoot, depending on the cooks.  I will say that, once again, some sniveling little white dipshit with nothing better to do made a whole lot of trouble for no good reason, although this time, he was enabled by his father.  Gun permit was revoked, then cops told the dad not to give the guns back to him.  He did, and one of them was used.  Live with the shame, pops.  Another option is to kill yourself in front of your son at one of his upcoming court appearances.  That ought to get the message to sink in to him.  Throw yourself from a balcony.  That will work in case there are metal detectors at the courthouse and you can’t bring anything sharp in.

Today's rant: dinner as a dad

There is one little small thing, totally innocent and nobody’s fault, that gives me a very uncomfortable feeling.  When I pick my son up from daycare, there is this random 4 year old that rushes at me faster that my own kid and hugs me around the waist.  It is all I can do not to scream “STRANGER DANGER” a the doorway of a room filled with children too young for formal education.  Come on, do you know how tall a 4 year old is?  I don’t need that kid hugging my legs.  Not for me, NOT FOR ME!  If this boy does this for a total stranger, come Christmas time, he must act like a coked out wolverine in the cereal aisle of the grocery store ripping open every box just to find and eat the marshmallows.  Good thing daycare is closed for Christmas.  As you can tell, children in general are objectively both funny and scary from my adult point of view.

I have flat-out told my kids that I don’t like going out to dinner anymore specifically because of them.  They fuck shit up.  I almost always end up angry, tired, and frustrated with everyone halfway through dinner.  Firstly, there is the debate of who sits next to mommy.  Nobody wants to sit next to me.  Whenever one is forced to, they start crying.  Then, completely oblivious of the consequences, my wife will say “Just let him/her come here and get the other one”.  What do you think happens?  Right.  The other one will start crying.  I haven’t even sat down yet, and I already want to storm out of a restaurant because the kids can’t stop emitting their high-pitched wails of spoiled fuckery.  Then, there is the blowing of the straw paper across the tables.  That particular trick was taught to them by their grandfather.  Thank you, father-in-law.  I don’t mind if the paper stays at our table, but I do not need to deal with the fuckheads at the booth next to ours when one of them goes rogue.  When the food finally does arrive, after my daughter has asked 6 times when the food will be out because the obviously thinks I have a fucking timer on my watch that is synced to the restaurant’s kitchen, we’re lucky if the kids eat half of their orders.  Sometimes they fill up on fruit or French fries.  On occasion, my son will flat out refuse to eat what has been given to him.  At Olive Garden, despite being told that what he ordered was not a real grilled cheese sandwich, he insists that it is when he points to the stupid little picture on the children’s menu.  When it comes out, he completely loses his shit as if I just told him his grandparents were dead.  It’s a quesadilla-like fucking thing, which confuses the fuck out of me because this is supposed to be a faux-Italian restaurant, not a faux-Mexican restaurant.  The only comforting words I have for him are “Well, I fucking told you so.”  Then all he wants to do is let it stay there.  No one else can touch the food he doesn’t want.  When I go to take a bite, he screams at me.  “Well then you eat it!”  “NOOOO!”

Apparently, my daughter is “graduating” Kindergarten in 2 weeks.  I had to actually use that word when I RSVP’ed “yes” for her teacher.  In my opinion, it is not a graduation.  I wife is getting a Master’s degree on the same day.  THAT is a fucking graduation.  Here is how I see it:  unless you are physically leaving a school with a certificate, diploma, or degree and you’d have to re-register to continue your education, it’s not a graduation.  I swear to God, if my daughter puts “Graduated Kindergarten May, 2018” on any resume categorized under her education, I will personally tear up the resume.

I am glad that my kids lost their little tablet computers.  Serves ‘em right for paying so much attention to them and obsessing over them.  The thing the irked me the most was when my daughter would be on this kids version of YouTube.  The only thing she would watch was videos of moms and girls playing with dolls.  These videos were made my women who were paid money by toy companies to open toy boxes and play with the toys on camera exclusively for the purpose of posting it on the internet.  My daughter could not understand this socioeconomic concept or method of advertising.  When failing to explain to her how the scam worked, I would usually break down, cry, and scream “WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU WATCHING VIDEOS OF OTHER PEOPLE PLAYING WITH TOYS?!  GET THE FUCK UPSTAIRS AND PLAY WITH YOUR TOYS!!!”  As you can tell, we have a lot of deep, meaningful, philosophical conversations.  Adults, I am not letting you off the hook here, either.  Unless you are watching a tutorial, there is no… NO reason why grown men should be watching videos on the internet of other people playing video games.  I’m talking to you, person 3 desks away from me.  Just because some kid created a Super Mario World level that is difficult doesn’t mean you should watch a video of him fail to finish the level.  Go home and play the game yourself.

If you work in the field of quality control and are looking for a good laugh, I highly recommend reading the parody document “DUMB AS9100”.  It is a parody of the aerospace quality standard AS9100.  Do a google search and you should find it.

today's rant: new car?

I am probably going to need to buy a bigger car before the end of the year.  Whoopie.  I just got done paying off my current car last year, and now I may need another one.  We’re planning on adopting two siblings, so that means my sedan isn’t big enough for everyone.  The law requires that I have two child safety seats for my two current kids because they are not big or heavy enough to be “safe” in the car’s defacto seatbelts.  This was not a problem when I was a kid.  I dealt with my seatbelt digging into my neck with no problem whatsoever.  Besides, the mark looks like someone tried to cut my throat and I survived.  Bonus points for me looking like a badass.

The point is that with the child safety seats currently in my sedan, there is no room for 2 teenagers in my car, not even if one of them sits in the front passenger seat.  The only option is to have a car with a third row.  While I like the prospect of getting something with more room, satellite radio, and a push-button start because my lazy wrist isn’t up to turning a key, my wife already has a minivan.  There’s the third row right there.  Let’s just use that car.  Jeez, if only that were the case.  Right now, I’m the one dropping the little kids off at school or daycare and picking them up.  If I have to do that with 2 more kids, I certainly can’t put one or two of them in trunk, now can I?

One apprehension of giving up my sedan is that it is my friend.  We’ve been through a lot together.  I’ve slammed on the breaks, sped off in it, accelerated, avoided car crashes, gotten into car crashes… I know my car’s limits.  For example, take Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon.  The Falcon was upgraded and modified and if something falls apart or vibrates a certain way, he knows what’s wrong and he knows for hard he can push his ship.  So if I can pretend to be Harrison Ford, I’m going to do it for as long as I damn well can.

For shiggles (shits + giggles), I have been looking at potential midsize SUVs to replace my car.  I’m not in a position to buy one right now, but when the time is right, I want to know what to expect.  I don’t want to keep my sedan if I need a bigger car.  That’s car insurance and maintenance I don’t want to pay for, even if any of the teenagers will be old enough to learn how to drive some years down the road.  So I’m either going to trade my car in or sell it.  Unfortunately, since some bitch ran a red light and T-boned me last fall, the resale value of my car is down.  For a trade-in, I’d probably get $5k-$6k; selling it by myself, maybe $7k-$8k.  That’s a damn shame because I’ve been keeping this car in good working order for as long as I’ve had it.  It’s way less than what my previous car was worth when it was totaled.

Looking at potential makes, I am going to choose an Asian manufacturer.  Sorry, but I’ve been told Ford stands for “Fix Or Repair Daily”.  I don’t need that crap.  I need something with quality built in, and as a person who works in quality control, history and reputation speak volumes.  My current sedan has 120,000 mi on it over 4 years with no problems for the most part.  I’d push the car to 200,000 if I could.  The only complaint I have is that the car battery needed to be replaced recently.  I thought that shit was supposed to last longer! I want to see what happens to the old car batteries.  I want to know how they dispose of them.  If I had the opportunity, I’d do some experiments.  Let’s see what happens when we crack open a battery while it is on top of some Styrofoam.  What happens when you use a guillotine?  How far can you lug one of those things with catapult?

I do not know the thought processes of a 4 year old boy who suddenly breaks down and throws a temper tantrum for a reason as simple as “we have to go to daycare, so you don’t have time to watch television”, but I will try to contextualize it in a way that adults would be able to comprehend.  The way he reacted is as if I dumped a bucket of ice water on him to wake him up and made him watch while I murdered Cat Boy, skull-fucked his eye-socket, and ate all the ice cream in the house while doing so.  IF I had done all of those things, then I would be able to understand why he was screaming as loudly as he was.