wacky1980

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.

If you don't already have a smart tv, pick up a fire tv stick for or a roku thing for $20.

Yeah but we're right next to the water so I can wash all the Alabama off as frequently as is necessary.

If you purchase a streaming subscription and already have basic internet service of adequate bandwidth, there's nothing else you need.

you have to purchase internet service from an ISP before you can access those services. and they don't provide that path for free. that being said, sometimes mobile carriers and hard line ISPs bundle streaming services into their offerings.

We left home yesterday and it was -4⁰F. Arrived at the AL coast today and it was a sunny 65⁰F. This seems better somehow.

I mean, not yet... He's asked me to run for alderman a couple times and I'm not interested in that. I might be cheap, but I'm not easy. That's a lie. I'm easy too.

exactly. only less enjoyable, if that's even possible.

I like to cut the bottom half off empty liquor bottles and use them as cups...then fill them with other liquors.

So I just got off the phone with the mayor. He wants me to sit on the zoning board of appeals. I need more shit to do, so why not!

i'd been meaning to let her go for the last couple years, but i wasn't ready to take over all the accounting because i have no formal education or experience in that area. i spent the last few years slowly assuming new responsibilities as i found time and had the confidence to do it, but i still had a long way to go when she went dark back in apr/may. she was having some health issues and had started slipping on a lot of shit, and it was a good time for her to go. but with everything going on over the last year, i didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to learning a whole new trade. picking up all that slack has been a pain, but i'm juuuuust about competent enough to do all of it now.

It's like .... Does the city want to pay a few thousand to fix a car, or a few tens of thousands to fix a car, plus pay the legal fees of both their counsel and yours, when their asses get sued for hit-and-run, and also a little added cash for lost time and emotional distress.

wait, how did he -- how did you know that's who i was talking about?!?

backwater abject tweaker hates ladies

if you were paid and had taxes deducted from it, they're required to send you a w-2. and you're probably better off waiting for it to arrive, because it could reduce your tax bill / increase your refund if you had more than necessary deducted. if they didn't deduct taxes from your pay, they'd be sending you a 1099, but only if you earned more than $600.