If I still had my old job, I could be driving a Focus RS right now...
If I still had my old job, I could be driving a Focus RS right now...
Toyman! said:You want to charge me $500/year to process my invoices to you? I sell about $30k/year to you so that works out to about 1.6%. Guess what. I'm going to double that 1.6% and add it to every invoice you get from now on. Since my math skills suck I will end up rounding up to 5%. Then I'm going to add another 5% just for pissing me off.
So that $500 is going to cost you $3000+-/year.
Now, you can take your business elsewhere and that will be fine. You might want to keep in mind while I sold you about $30k worth of materials and labor last year, I bought a little over $100k from you. If my sales go away, so do yours.
Bend over ass hole, 'cause I'm not the one that's going to end up taking it in the ass.
This all started from the morons who paid a fee to Costco to be allowed access to their store to buy stuff from them.
Nope.
In reply to Toyman! :
Yeah, when a client wants to charge you for invoicing them the answer always is yeah no...
USPS is giving FedEx a run for their money.
Also, people are picky. It's a $1000 van with working AC. No, it isn't perfect. No, there are no guarantees. It's a cheap car with working ac when the temps are going to be 100+ for the next three months. I figured it would sell itself.
In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :
I've found selling something practical in the $1000 range can be a nightmare. Unlike with a Miata or a non running project car, it's something that someone needs, and if they are shopping in that price range, they need it to be a good runner that will cost them as little as possible to keep alive. Not saying their expectations are reasonable(they usually aren't), just explaining a bit.
Just got back from Europe and as much as I loved it, sometimes it felt like I was in the third world because the air conditioning and wifi are so poor. Germany and France seem so obsessed with energy savings that effective air conditioning doesn't exist. We rented an expensive room by the Nurburgring that claimed to have A/C but when we got there, A/C was actually just opening the windows. This proved to be a problem because we were on the first floor and when the diesel truck parked outside our window started at 5:00 am, we got ALL the noise and some of the fumes. This was not an isolated thing, the other rooms we rented in Frankfurt and Munich had A/C but the one had a minimum possible temp set at 21 degrees (70 F) and the other had sensors that would shut it off if it didn't detect movement in the room. So, we would get back from touring the countryside and our room would be hot because the A/C had not been running, it would kick on while we got ready for bed but once asleep, it stopped working until at 2:00 AM I wake up with my pillow soaked in sweat and I wave my arms around a while and it would kick on again.
Wifi was similarly poor everywhere. We paid a premium for a high speed train from Paris to Frankfurt with wifi but the wifi was only good enough for sending text, not images. Wifi in most of our rooms was also very, very poor and even on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that I paid $20 for wifi, I couldn't even look at Facebook or Instagram. None of these complaints apply to Prague, though. Our room at the Agnes Hotel had cold A/C and really good Wifi.
In reply to eastsideTim :
Oh I get it. And I've been that guy. It's not that big a deal, but I'd take an insulting offer over a million inquiries of "will it last 500 miles home and pass emissions when I get there?" It's a 2005 Kia Sedona with 220k. Expectations should be low.
In reply to loosecannon :
Can confirm. Lived in Germany a little while and most places don't have AC, the ones that do you can't really tell the difference between it being on and off. Having to sleep with your window open and living next to a church that rings its bells all the time is a wicked combo.
neverdone said:In reply to Toyman! :
Yeah, when a client wants to charge you for invoicing them the answer always is yeah no...
That whole scheme was thought up by accountants who work in airless rooms 18 hours a day and live in a world of numbers with almost zero connection to reality.
The same accountants who think that the most cost-effective company is the one where you fire all the employees so that your staffing costs are low.
Duke said:neverdone said:In reply to Toyman! :
Yeah, when a client wants to charge you for invoicing them the answer always is yeah no...
That whole scheme was thought up by accountants who work in airless rooms 18 hours a day and live in a world of numbers with almost zero connection to reality.
The same accountants who think that the most cost-effective company is the one where you fire all the employees so that your staffing costs are low.
This is what happens when the MBAs take over companies.
Toyman! said:Duke said:neverdone said:In reply to Toyman! :
Yeah, when a client wants to charge you for invoicing them the answer always is yeah no...
That whole scheme was thought up by accountants who work in airless rooms 18 hours a day and live in a world of numbers with almost zero connection to reality.
The same accountants who think that the most cost-effective company is the one where you fire all the employees so that your staffing costs are low.
This is what happens when the MBAs take over companies.
"Well, you see, our accounts payable department costs us money to run, so let's charge our vendors to cover the cost-- genius!"
or
"Our accounts payable department costs us money to run, so let's reduce the cost by subcontracting the process out and eliminating the department-- genius!"
In reply to Streetwiseguy :
I never understood that one either.
Karacticus said:Toyman! said:Duke said:neverdone said:In reply to Toyman! :
Yeah, when a client wants to charge you for invoicing them the answer always is yeah no...
That whole scheme was thought up by accountants who work in airless rooms 18 hours a day and live in a world of numbers with almost zero connection to reality.
The same accountants who think that the most cost-effective company is the one where you fire all the employees so that your staffing costs are low.
This is what happens when the MBAs take over companies.
"Well, you see, our accounts payable department costs us money to run, so let's charge our vendors to cover the cost-- genius!"
or
"Our accounts payable department costs us money to run, so let's reduce the cost by subcontracting the process out and eliminating the department-- genius!"
I would bet they have fired the accounts receivable department and replaced them with this service.
Corporate arrogance is a thing. While these ideas may save them some on their payroll, they end up costing them elsewhere.
loosecannon said:Just got back from Europe and as much as I loved it, sometimes it felt like I was in the third world because the air conditioning and wifi are so poor. Germany and France seem so obsessed with energy savings that effective air conditioning doesn't exist. We rented an expensive room by the Nurburgring that claimed to have A/C but when we got there, A/C was actually just opening the windows. This proved to be a problem because we were on the first floor and when the diesel truck parked outside our window started at 5:00 am, we got ALL the noise and some of the fumes. This was not an isolated thing, the other rooms we rented in Frankfurt and Munich had A/C but the one had a minimum possible temp set at 21 degrees (70 F) and the other had sensors that would shut it off if it didn't detect movement in the room. So, we would get back from touring the countryside and our room would be hot because the A/C had not been running, it would kick on while we got ready for bed but once asleep, it stopped working until at 2:00 AM I wake up with my pillow soaked in sweat and I wave my arms around a while and it would kick on again.
I was debating if I should respond to this as the resident hun, but I figured I'd try to explain at least some of what you experienced here.
Yes, other than hotels at the more luxurious end of the price range, a/c is either not a thing at all or most definitely not the North American "turn everything into a fridge/freezer" kind. The reason for that is that until maybe about 10-15 years ago, there wasn't really a need for that. Germany has a pretty mild climate, and buildings were built to handle the "extremes" which weren't really that extreme. The area I grew up in (around Lake Constance) is one of the sunniest areas in the country, and handling the hottest days was simply a matter of closing the shutters during the day and opening the windows at night. Heck, that's how people in Italy and Spain deal/dealt with the heat. That's definitely changed in the aforementioned 10-15 years.
Regarding the "obsession" with energy savings, you don't need to look any further than the cost of energy vs income. Energy - especially electricity - is a lot more expensive over there both in absolute terms compared to the US pricing, and even more so in relative terms as salary ranges across the population are a lot more compressed than they are in the US. From a simple anecdata point, one of my cousins and her other half both have good, professional jobs (she's an IT manager at a large corporation, he's a civil engineer, both with the equivalent of masters' degrees) and both are in their prime earning years, but they recently stopped using the hot tub in their garden because it had become too expensive to run. Seriously, one of the German IT magazines that I still read for its in depth coverage gives people estimated annual electricity costs for the computers/NAS/servers they test. That's how big a deal that is these days.
I'll try to swerve around the politics for this, but Germany - at least West Germany - always had this policy of cheap energy including subsidy for industry and expensive energy for the peons. It just got more extreme since the current government shut down the remaining nuclear plants shortly before or after a certain natural gas pipeline magically assploded.
The further East you go (like Prague), the more the climate turns into a continental climate with cold winters and (even) hotter summers, so no surprise that they've got better working a/c because they need it more.
Wifi was similarly poor everywhere. We paid a premium for a high speed train from Paris to Frankfurt with wifi but the wifi was only good enough for sending text, not images. Wifi in most of our rooms was also very, very poor and even on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that I paid $20 for wifi, I couldn't even look at Facebook or Instagram. None of these complaints apply to Prague, though. Our room at the Agnes Hotel had cold A/C and really good Wifi.
Ah yes, public WiFi Germany. To be frank, you can count yourself lucky that there was any - until very recently, the way the laws were written basically made the provider of any kind of public WiFi (including hotels etc) jointly liable for any violation of any law that occurred, so everybody noped out really hard and for good reason.
German WiFi outside a home or business (for the employees, not the guests) IMHO is 10-20 years behind the civilized world. I had better WiFi at McD's in France 20 years ago than most of what I found in Germany last year.
Voicing your opinion on a building project at public meeting is common discourse.
Making violent threats against the developer is berkeleying insane.
Guess which one our local NIMBYs chose?
Our city already had a reputation as hard to deal with at a civic level, but this is going to ratchet things up. We are in a high demand metro area, stuff will be built at some point. The next developer isn't going to even attempt to have public meetings. They will simply kick down the door with their lawyer, state what they are legally allowed to build on any given lot and that any attempts to stop it will be met with heavy legal response, give the residents the finger on any input, pull permits and go.
Minor rant at myself. I made a travel itinerary for this trip that's as just berkeleying stupid. I should have drove but I chose to fly, I don't even remember why. Well my flights here got jacked up, my flights home are super late so I am totally wasting a day at the Pitt airport. If I had left in a rental car when I left for the airport I would be home for dinner. All my choices, all wrong choices 😐
Me as the seller, on a different forum. Buyer (well his Mom most likely) or other family sends a partial payment for the item. Goods and service so buyer protection is in effect. With an email saying she is a little dyslexic and wants to confirm the right person got the money and will send the rest when I confirm. $70 sent, $200 to remain.
Paypal sent at 10:10am, I pondered a bit then refunded the money at 11:36am. Replied to their email saying deal is off, money refunded.
Likely legit, but just left a bad taste in my mouth about the whole thing. Especially because he said he's been scammed before using Venmo so we used PayPal and he's had packages stolen from his house before.
In reply to dan0 :
If someone is sending off signals, it's usually best just to walk away. I was close to driving to a guy's house to look at something I was pretty interested in buying, when he said he'd only accept "cash, with valid ID". I questioned him why he wanted to see ID for a cash sale (it wasn't a car or anything with a title), and he said something about not wanting to be scammed. Very weird. I passed.
I'm finishing work up early today to head out to meet up with a friend from college (well, two actually, since eastsideTim will be there too)- so naturally last night when I was trying to get to sleep my back/hip was hurting the most it has in years and I eventually had to take some Tylenol to be able to get to sleep. I'm scrambling to finish printing something out for the friend and his family- so of course the extruder cooling fan on one of the printers got disconnected without my noticing and seized up the extruder drive (and I'm guessing broke something in the process), so one printer is down and I'm going to be pushing it for the remaining one to finish the last few things before I need to leave.
Chiggers.
If you know, you know.
Sales call.
Business owner shakes my hand during the intro.
He pulls nose hairs (using his right hand) out during presentation and winces when he hits a home run.
Shakes my hand on the way out.
The glamour of sales.
I get a call from a very thickly-accented Indian lady. She wants to sell me website design services for my domain. I tell her that I don't really need that, but thank you.
"But your page is just a landing page!"
"Yes, that's correct."
"But how do you do the business? You cannot do the business with just the landing page!"
"Well, yeah, but it's not a business, so I need anything. Thank you!"
"No, you need the website so that you can do the business with your domain!"
"Yeah, I get it, but there is no business."
"You do business."
"No, really, I don't"
"Then you have another domain you do the business from"
"So, here's the thing: One can register a domain name without also having a company. I do not own any companies or any businesses. I just have domains"
"I do not believe you"
"Well, I mean, that's fine, but I'm just trying to save you some time here. I have domains, but no businesses, so I just don't need any design services"
"No! I am saving my time! I am trying to help you to do the business!"
"Right, well, I don't need any help, but thank you for calling"
"No, you are lying to me. You do the business and I could help, but you are lying. *click*"
I try so hard to be polite to people, but sometimes they make it so damned hard!
I drove yesterday and it was fine. This is the OEM battery that is less than 16 months old. I missed an appointment today because of this. The Maverick forums are rife with complaints about the OEM Ford 12v battery. This is the 3rd time since buying the truck in April 2023 that the 12v battery has gone dead in a matter of hours for no reason.
Luckily the Advance around the corner has a T4 Diehard Gold battery in stock. Ford owes me $241 because they can't manufacture an OEM battery worth a E36 M3.
In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :
Is your Maverick the hybrid?
We have a 2013 C-Max in which a couple times a year we come out to a practically dead 12v battery. Something in the car doesn't get alway shut down properly, and there's a significant drain that kills it overnight. In order to get an intelligent charger to work, the battery has to be disconnected from the car so whatever that extra load is gets removed. The C-Max has the added fun that the 12v battery cannot be accessed except through the rear hatch, and that can't be opened in any way without power. So I have to apply a jumper to the terminals under the hood so that I can pop the hatch.
Im currently in Italy, and I've walked farther carrying more in hotter, more humid weather. But this is still HOT. So the AC conversation is hitting here.
But the worst part about it is that I'm traveling with my BIL. He can be quite difficult. He doesn't complain about the heat, he complains about the lack of AC in a manner that is just annoying.
I walked into a Europcar to see if I could rent a car and cancel our train tickets to get us into the AC 3 hours earlier, but none were available for a 1-way. But even that was met with "Mike you can't drive here blah blah blah trust me I've been driving a long time blah blah blah." Buddy, let's let me decide that. I'm 34 years old. You're just embarrassed that it isn't even an option for you because you can't drive a stick.
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