wacky1980

for that high a fee, you can withdraw it at an in-network atm and use the savings on lube for when they ram that larger tax bill up your ass next year.

it's gonna be pricey. mf's wanted to charge me $50 to mail six bottles of beer cleaning solution to california.

i wish i was at the bar right now. but i'm on hold with my ATM vendor. apparently there was a weather event in texas or something, and it's causing service issues all over the place. good times.

i finally got in what i believe was the last couple pieces of hardware to build my control panel. depending on how ambitious i get this evening, i might try drilling a few holes in the panel to see how much trouble it will be to do all of it myself. if it goes well enough, i could maybe get it drilled out and ready to prime/paint over the weekend. i do have a dead truck that needs attention this weekend though, so that might take priority. it's always somethin'.

not too bad. you?

they operate primarily as a junkyard, so i'm guessing they are trying to score a quick scrapper. little do they know, i have a rudimentary knowledge of automotive repair, and a BiL with extensive knowledge in engine repair.

right?!? their line of reasoning was simply they couldn't get it to crank over, even though i told them it died while in operation, and i could get it to jump but it would die after running for a minute. i'm assuming a bad alternator and cold weather combined to cause the mess. they were going to look a little deeper this afternoon and get back to me. i didn't pick them because they're good. i picked them because their shop was three blocks away and i knew they'd be able to tow it quickly, which was kinda a necessity since the truck was dead in the intersection.

they're telling me my baby is most likely dead. they think the engine seized up. and if they're right (i'm not confident in their diagnosis but they're technically the pros in this scenario), it's probably not worth the cost to fix her up at this point. she's 18 years old and has been one major breakdown away from getting retired, for probably 3 years now. she needs a new cluster, exhaust, 4 new tires, driver's door re-hung, new electronic lock and window motors, upholstery work, and she's starting to rust out underneath. but i loves her and don't want to lets her go. sadness. guess it's time i start thinking about a new ride. wife really wants me to get a jeep, but i don't know how much i like the idea of losing the truck bed. and i'm not getting one of those fugly jeep trucks. good times.

i just can't get into gaming on the switch. i -loved- the wii. especially after cracking it and doing the whole homebrew thing. i had a hard drive loaded with a ton of games, plus all the old s/nes roms. it was awesome. i didn't care if it wasn't up to par in terms of graphics, the experience was new and unique back in 2008 or 9 or whenever it blew up. for me, the switch doesn't capture any of that fun-ness i got from playing the wii. not sure why.

i remember turning 30... ...well, kinda. it's been awhile. actually, now that i think about it, i don't remember that birthday at all. or 40 for that matter. ugh.

i'm at the point in life where i most look forward to the weird patterns they can put on socks. my lower legs look like they're made of little puzzle pieces! so much fun.

i'm old enough once again that socks are in my high rotation of received gifts. so they don't get old before getting chucked and replaced.

my days of fucking anything that young are long gone. unless we're still talking about socks, that is.

hey hey guess what. drain pipes froze in the upstairs bathroom. didn't notice it til after i had put the youngest in a full tub for his bath. since the water couldn't go down, it decided to back up thru the other fixtures as it tried to find level. thankfully, the toilet drains on an interior line, so i spent 10 minutes frantically baling water from the tub to the toilet until water stopped flowing out the sink trap and into the floor. today's supposed to get all the way up to +15F, which only sounds cold until you realize it hasn't made it into double digits in a week.

aaaaand this morning, the truck decided it didn't want to run anymore. while i was on the way to work. it died rolling up at an intersection, and i couldn't get it to start again. i hopped out and jogged home (in -6F), got the wife's van, and came back to try jumping the truck. it would eventually start with the cables attached, but would only run for a minute before shutting back down again with a dead battery. i fucked with it for half an hour (thankfully it wasn't a busy intersection) before i threw in the towel and called a tow truck. the battery's only a year old and it started right up yesterday after sitting for a week while we were on vacation, so i don't think the battery is the problem. i'm leaning towards alternator trouble. anyways, the tow truck has it back on their lot now. if they get a chance to fuck with it today, i might find out what's going on. otherwise, it's looking like the plight of pedestrian wacky for the next couple days of this cold fucking messy winter shit FUCK ASS I'M TIRED OF THIS GOD DAMN COCKSUCKING COLD BREAKING ALL OF MY SHIT FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

i've been told since i was a kid, to never let a car battery discharge while below freezing because you'll never get it back. also, never store them directly on concrete or they'll discharge. while i've never questioned those words of wisdom, i have managed to inadvertently prove them both right over the years. we added a heater module to the bar's central air system in december because our ooooold LNG heater finally crapped out. the folks who installed it may have undersized it, because it hasn't been keeping up too well all weekend. so this morning, i ran to the hardware store to pick up a new furnace filter, hoping that might help out a little. the new filter didn't gain anything in the way of airflow, which i never really expected because the old filter was <1mo old. went back to the store and grabbed one of those big squirrel-cage fans to help circulate air better in the main room, pulling hot air down from the high ceilings. that did the trick. ugh, this cold snap can break anytime now.

And this, motherfuckers, is a fixed god damn furnace. Good. Night.

my furnace decided to crap out overnight, on one of our coldest days so far this winter (-5F). i woke up to 45F in the house at 5am. first repair company i got to come over, around 10am, diagnosed the problem as bad bearings in the draft inducer motor. only they didn't have the part on hand to fix it. by time i got ahold of a technician at the second repair company, around noon, i knew which part i needed so they just went straight to their warehouse to grab one. only they were out of the part as well. third company i found with an answering service, an hour's drive away, sent a tech out to their warehouse. they had the part! but by that time (6pm) they weren't going to dispatch someone to fix me. i talked them into leaving the part outside their back door, and i drove over there, after dark in the middle of a sub-zero snowstorm and back, to get the part and install it myself. so here it is, 10:15pm, about 17 hours since this bullshit day got started, and i'm sitting down in the living room after installing the new draft inducer assembly. it needs to cycle on/off at least twice before i can call it fixed. so far it's cycled once...

It's the 21st century version of programming your grandoarents' VCR.

Shush you. I'm working on my helping the elderly badge.

The obvious alternative here is to familiarize yourself with piracy and torrents.

Sure it's possible. But with your list of wants, it won't be cheap or clean, and the experience will be tedious.

rather than buying a subscription for every one of these services, you might be better off picking up a live subscription service like youtube.tv or hulu or sling. you'll get most of the things you're after in one service, and it will probably end up being cheaper (and definitely more convenient) than using several services to cover every base. you'll need to have a smart tv or a streaming device to access any of these platforms, except the local tv stuff which can be picked up using a regular old TV with an added HD antenna for $20.

What DO you want? Let's start there.

That is correct. If you have a tv that can load the disney+ app, for instance, then you only need to subscribe to the hulu streaming service and have a way to hook the tv up to your internet. Do you have amazon prime? If yes, you already have a subscription to their "prime tv" streaming service at no extra cost.