Why My Life Sucks

Well, I got a new battery.  Actually, I got two.  Let me explain.  I go into $CarPartStore across the street from where Darling Wife works and next to where Redheaded Girl used to work. At $CarPartStore, I speak with Clerk Dude about my need for a battery.  Clerk Dude does some computer fu and comes up with a type of battery I need and said that if I bought a 1 dollar “mounting kit” (two felt thingies that go under the cables and some sort of portected goo/lub stuff) he could install the battery.  Sounds good to me, not dealing with heavy toxic acidic crap inside a car is worth a buck, plus I get the little felt thingies under the cables, score all the way around.  He even yumps the battery out to the car for me.   He undoes the battery, puts in new one, plus mounting kit and tells me to start it up.

Nothing.  Not even tick-tick-tick etc.   He putzes about with the cables.  Tells me to try again.  “tick-tick-tick-tick”  Really weeny tick-tick-tick, I might add.

“Oh, that’s your starter.” sayth Clerk dude.

“No, It’s not.  If I hook up the Jump Buddy to it, the car will start.” sayth me.

“I don’t think so, but let’s try it.“  At least he was willing to listen to the customer, unlike the last “expert” I had to deal with (see rant about Vonage VoIP provider below)

Hook up “Jump Buddy”.  Car starts, as expected and predicted.  Clerk dude, to his credit, shrugs and takes my old battery into the store and puts it on on the battery tester.  It’s dead Jim.  Highest value, 6 or so volts, at any sort of amps.

He takes the portable tester out and hooks it up the “new” battery.   It’s even more dead, Jim.  Highest value, 4 volts, and dropped to under 2 under load.  It wouldn’t even power the clock whose display at least, is a 7400 TTL based system, which means 5 volts or it’s dead. (It bothers me some times that I know things like that, but don’t remember what the syntax of a SQL insert statement is.  It’s not like I’ve done any IC works since, oh, 1978 or so.)

He takes the portable test in to the store, takes battery number 3 off the shelf and test it.  Good to go.   Replaces battery number 2 (i.e the one I just bought) and has me do a “turn in” paper work thing.  (zero days on a 3 year pro-rated warranty, comes to, oh, full price….)  While he’s doing that, the store manager type (aka PHB for you Dilbert fans out there) wanders over and asks what’s going on. Clerk dude explains.  PHB looks amazed that a product that is known to have a life span is dead.  Shocked and appalled even.  Really appalled, at one point he was standing with his arms out at 45 degree angle over his head [heralds don't pun, they cant] {rim-shot} Thanks, be here all week. Try the fish...)  PHB doesn’t think clerk dude knows how to run the tester correctly.  (It’s not hard.  I can do now.  Hook up battery like you were jumping it, i.e. red clamp on the positive terminal, black on the negative. Push test.  Enter the Amps of the battery.  Watch LCD. Wait 45 seconds. Read result.  I could train Velifer to do it, if he had the thumbs to hook up the battery.)  PHB putzes with cables.  Pushes Test etc. Still dead.  Reads, if any thing, lower than it did out side attached to the car.

I sign the papers and leave, while PHB and Clerk dude start talking about checking lot numbers and who gets to do what with this issue etc.  That sounds like a load of fun and games. But Not My Problem.

Got the new D&D group’s first game tonight, I’m all sorts of happy about that.

Let’s start with my car.  Well, the battery.  It’s dead.  Need to get that fixed ASAP.  dur.  Should have done it this weekend.

Which brings us to “I feel like shit.”  More or less literally, given that I’m taking a crap about once every 45 minutes or so.  For the last 3 days.  “Lots of that virus going around” the doctor says.  My crapping eating habits, due to the various anti-freak out meds I take may also have something to do with it.

Then there is my VoIP provider.  I’ve got 2 routers, and two number, one one each router.  Each router has two phone ports.  I wanted to add a 3rd number to the second phone port of the first router.  This should be simple.  It wasn’t.  6 (six) calls, average time 40 minutes each, and 2 (two) supervisor level personages.  This did not make me a happy camper.  There service if first rate, assuming you don’t have to change any thing.

The Craptop’s hard drive died.  However, I have a cunning plan, and the fact that I know what to do with Gentoo now should make it an faster rebuild.  Bonus, the cunning plan will make the hard drive bigger.  Score all around!

Got a Doctor’s appointment later this week.  Need to tweak my Cymalta I think.  Current load doesn’t seem to be working quite right.

$WeSellUsedMacs is becoming more and more surreal.  Average life span of a tech working there seems to be about 3 weeks. When I’m the most knowledgeable person about Mac hardware/Software in the building they have problems.

Google.  Go back to the way iGoogle was before you fucked it up.  It fails to read RSS titles about 70% of the time and each freaking tab has it’s own settings.  This does not make me a happy camper.  Actually, just fix the RSS feed issue and give and option to apply setting and theams to all tabs and that would fix it.   I may need to go look at my Google Lab stuff, this might be a side effect of those.  More later.

Spammers.  “Comment Spammers” in particular.  Please use software to comment spam that at least tries to make it look like a real comment. The “comment” on the top of the Spam Karma reject pile is ‘22gy2zo5g0a0f8lg paucyh yhtrg’. This, of course, is really a link to really random web sites, but, come on, what happened to “This is very interesting web site. I will be back later” comment spam?

Well, off to see if the Jump Buddy has enough juice yet.

The Darling Wife took the car out last night, after I took my night time meds.   Just a note, after I take my night time meds, I’m done for the day.   Really, totally out of it. Any rate, this morning she said that she thought it (the car) sounded funny.     If a flat tire on the drivers side front sounds funny, this was a laugh riot.     Can’t find my jack.   Redheaded Girl’s triple A is dead.     Art Dude will be by some time soon to take me to work,   where I have a meeting with the boss scheduled.   Then we have the “move Art Dude and Redheaded Girl’s things” to deal with, then getting my tire fixed.   It’s going to be a fun day.