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

Insurance company sent a letter saying they're not renewing our policy when it expires in 45 days. 

The reason? 

"The following adverse claim activity does not meet company requirements..."

Followed by a list of claims including 1 glass claim and 5 at fault accidents totaling $22,118. Glass in 2019, 4 accidents in 2022, and 1 accident in 2024.

It appears the cut off is when the claims equal what has been paid in premiums for the last 5 years. 

Our auto policy is no longer profitable, but the same company has no problem continuing to insure our home and collecting those premiums since it's pure profit without any claims filed on the policy. 
 

Edit: I get it, they are in business to make money, but it's annoying. 

A week and a half ago I was riding a razor scooter in the driveway with my daughter.  The front wheel washed out on me and I took a spill.  Right leg first, rolled into my right arm and then smacked my head on the concrete.  Helmet did its job.  I did have a 2 day headache though but that subsided.  However this week my ribs started to hurt.  It was bad enough that tonight I went to the urgent care for an X-ray.  It turned out negative (like my IQ) fortunately, no fractures.  However I'll be dealing with some pain for a few weeks.  Could have been worse, esp. if I hadn't been wearing my (now dented) helmet. PSA always wear your helmet even when just doing mundane riding.  

Due to my recent surprise illness (2 bouts of pneumonia), I figured I'd have a house mold inspection in case it was some sort of environmental contamination that made me sick.

The inspector took 3 air samples and 2 tape samples. The air and tape sample from the utility closet/laundry room showed an extremely high spore count. There is mold growing on the wall next to the water heater. It's behind the weird built in desk next to the utility closet. It's in the wall behind the desk.

The highly intelligent and skilled contractors that renovated the house over a 9 month period ran the HVAC system with no filter and it plugged everything up with dust. This led to the A/C condensate drain getting plugged,  flooding the coil drip pan which then flooded the utility closet and then got under the laminate flooring. This happened while I was TDY on the other side of the country.

The quote for the remediation was only about $2100. But that doesn't include the lost wages due to getting pneumonia twice. I'm debating filing a claim on my homeowner's insurance. I've never had to do so. This is new territory for me.

I've been dealing with one of those projects at work where everything goes wrong.  To top it off, I am dealing with a subcontractor who flat out refuses to communicate.  I've literally been trying to talk to this guy to sort out something that will take 5 minutes for over two weeks now.  I've called, texted, emailed, left voicemails. Daily.  Either this guy hates me or is the world's worst communicator.  I absolutely need his help to sort something out and he's like nah. 

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

We had a contractor for some home remodeling that never replied to me - always to my wife though.  A bunch of texts - TYPICAL Contractor was my first thought.

Turns out I had the wrong phone number - Doh!

In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :

That sounds like something you should go ahead and claim, given your other expenses recently.

Good luck - I hope you get it all sorted soon.

Let's take a trip to the Southeast my wife says.  In hurricane season, I ask?  It'll be fine, she says...

Yeah...

My Lead is playing games.

Long story short, I was supposed to be on vacation from Sept 18 to Oct 18, but it got denied. I was not surprised really. Two other coworker's vacations are overlapping mine and they got theirs in first and we had one guy quit. With three of us on vacation and one guy gone, we would have halved our department for one of those weeks.

My lead knows he is going to get fired soon. He has been asking for it for years. He doesn't know that I am in the running for his desk. He does know that after years of him complaining that he can't get all his work done in 40 hours, that some of his responsibilities were forced onto me. I know take care of our department's "To do list." The guy who quite was my leads "right hand man" and we all knew he would go looking for a new one. He settled on me.  What this means, when my vacation was denied, he tried to blame our manager and Director in an effort to make me hate them as much as he does. Unfortunately for my lead, I am on very good terms with our manager and know what is going on.

Still sucks my vacation got denied, but don't lie to me. I would have respected him he just said "hey, with the one guy quitting and two other people already on vacation, we can't afford you taking off too." I totally would have gone "I understand that." but instead he lied to try to garner sympathy.

I've been on allopurinol for 6 months, this couldn't possibly be gout, could it? With the allopurinol , my uric acid levels are perfectly fine. Maybe my oncologist will know, next Friday. 

We're changing insurance providers January 1, can't get into a GP before then, so making an appointment anywhere else is pointless. 

Funny I thought because we paid so much more than the rest of the world that we had better and more accessible healthcare. Should have known that was just more bullE36 M3 propaganda.

My deep seated anxiety is going to kill me.

Gentlemen, 

I am a door supplier and installer. The way that works, is you tell me what you need and I supply it and install it. I am not the guy to tell you what fire rating is needed. That's what engineers and architects are for.

If you don't know, then all I can do is match the rating of the existing doors. I am also not the guy who will let things slide because the last guy let it slide. If the door is a labeled fire door and doesn't meet NFPA-80, I will have to bring that door up to standard when I replace it. In the case of unlabeled frames, that will require a frame replacement. I will not half-ass the job. I don't want that liability not to mention it's just stupid. 

I apparently misread the info on the Bimmerlink site. I thought it would allow me to also code certain features on my R56.

I downloaded bimmerlink yesterday and paid the price for the app. I also downloaded bimmercode and there was no cost, so I thought "great, it's the same company so maybe paying for bimmerlink also gives me bimmer code"

I used Bimmerlink to reset service reminders and clear a bunch of ECU errors (there are 16 ECUs read the screen correctly).  All error were related to low voltage, so I'll  assume they are from when the battery went dead when it was parked for the winter months last year. 

After that I thought I'd try out Bimmercode. The only thing I really wanted to change was the turn signal behavior for lane changes. Right now it blinks once and I'd like to change it to 5 blinks when the lever is pushed to the first click. I went in and changed the option and when a clicked "code" to apply the change,  a message pops up saying I need to spend $50 for the full version. berkeley that, I'll hold the lever to blink more than once. 
 

TL:DR - Put the damn price front and center in the App Store instead of hiding it as an "in app" purchase that's required to do anything useful. 

I need a new battery, an oil change, and two new wheel studs to be able to finally drive the Miata.  All things that I could get done tonight.  I haven't driven the car since 2021 and I'm psyched to get out there again!

...and it's now scheduled to rain until Wednesday.

wae said:

I need a new battery, an oil change, and two new wheel studs to be able to finally drive the Miata.  All things that I could get done tonight.  I haven't driven the car since 2021 and I'm psyched to get out there again!

...and it's now scheduled to rain until Wednesday.

I stopped working on the S10 during the lunch hour because rain was incoming.  Looks like I did have time to remove the starter after all, but now that I've showered, I really don't want to go back out there this evening.  Plus it is burrito night, so my ability to move after dinner time may be somewhat limited.  This may belong in first world problems.

In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :

Sounds like you may have a claim against the contractor.  But that's of course pending your interest in persuing it.  Does the 2100 in remediation also cover un-berkeleying up everything the contractor did?  

Poor parade kerning.  

Took the VCH family to the local Fall Fest last night.  Got there at 6...parade starts at 7.  The little VCH's were having a good time on the carnival rides so by the time we wandered over to the parade route it was 7:30 or so.  We were near the end of the parade route so it was actually perfect timing, the start of the parade was just coming through.  After about an hour of typical small town parade, it appears to be over, so we go back to the rides.  I turn around 5 minutes later and there's a wave of antique fire trucks coming through.  I rush everyone back to the parade, we watch for another 15 minutes or so, again it seems to be ending, we go back to the rides....yep, 5 minutes later, more parade stragglers.  At this point its close to 9 o'clock, so we hop on the Ferris wheel and take in the parade from 100 feet up.  Which, admittedly, was pretty cool.  We could watch as the tail end of the parade comes through to an increasingly waning crowd of people.  

I'm sorry, an hour an a half of parade is...too much parade.  Tighten it up.  

Appleseed said:

My deep seated anxiety is going to kill me.

When the hell did Mickey's pull their fine malt liquor out of my corner of PA? And which useless, brainless moron in Harrisburg is responsible? And yes, it had to have been a politician that made that call because only in PA do the scumberkeley politicians control what alcohol is available for consenting legal age adults to purchase.

Oh sure, there's 100 different "flavors" of canned television static, and 200 fruit "beers", but where's the good stuff?

I'm trying to sell a boat, since I rarely use it. I threw the charger on the batteries, and it kept throwing an error. OK, they are from 2017 and have led a hard life. I'll just replace them since it might help sell the boat. I was not surprised to see that the price of quality deep cycle/starting batteries has risen like everything else. I wound up using my lunch hour yesterday getting some that will do the job until the boat is gone.

Now, with the weather being what it is around here, the guy that was going to come check it out today has elected to stay at home base until the storms pass through. Dang. I could've eaten lunch yesterday.
 

In reply to RevRico :

It's 1983, I'm 21 years old, I have a 30 minute lunch and my coworker convinces me to drive across the street and buy a 6-pack and I decide to consume 3 of them in 20 minutes. 

Why Mickeys Malt Liquor? Because of the wide mouth and you can consume them QUICKLY.  Made for an interesting afternoon selling appliances at Kmart. 

Had to replace the handle on the toilet.  First off, my wife wanted one of those over-toilet cabinets, so now I can't see or get to anything in there.  Fine.

I go to remove the locking nut for the handle.  It's a square nylon thing.  Won't turn.  Get vice grips.  Turns but won't come off.  Finally I get a damned saw and hack it off.

Go to put the new one on. 

Reverse thread.

Well there's your problem...

Somebody buy this so I won't make a bad financial decision:

https://m.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1940864806386840

Rented a Suburban this weekend and it has the maps locked behind a subscription wall. And, you can't initialize CarPlay on a new phone without the car in park. So our Airport pickup turned into navigating "old school" in a fully equipped vehicle. Absolutely miserable. 

In reply to classicJackets (FS) :

I think you're looking for This thread

volvoclearinghouse said:

In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :

Sounds like you may have a claim against the contractor.  But that's of course pending your interest in persuing it.  Does the 2100 in remediation also cover un-berkeleying up everything the contractor did?  

As much as I would like to pursue those two idiots, I feel like it would not be worth it. 

The $2100 is just for the mold remediation, which covers the removal of affected materials, disposal of said materials, eradication of the mold and then environmental tested to ensure that they killed all of the mold. It's up to me to patch up the drywall they remove. It's going to be messed up for a bit but that's ok since it's in the laundry room.