Tag: Annoyances

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Disadvantage of being out of a city

Well, there are actually remarkably few. The trouble is, when something happens it’s “big” and a royal pain in the butt.

It’s a disadvantage to be so far from shopping centers if you need or want something. Even the nearest Home Depot is 30 minutes away. The Lowes is 45 minutes away.

It’s tough to find people to do work on the house, especially people that know what they’re doing in this particular climate. For their additional knowledge, they’re more expensive. Meh, that’s how capitalism is supposed to work.

The biggest issue, is the septic tank. Sigh, it looks like that’s going to be the Thanksgiving and Christmas expense this year. 

(As an aside, I admire this picture of a septic tank and the model doing her level best to make it look at least a little sexy. Good Job! To the model and the company, thanks for making me smile about it.)

44510 750 Side Image 1024x768 2885845250

My septic tank is old. Really old. When the house was rebuilt in 2008, the builder didn’t think about replacing the tank at that time. I guess there was no real need, so why would the lazy jackass do something proactive?

The house was originally built in 1992 presumably that’s when the septic system was installed. At the time the house burned and was rebuilt, the septic system was 16 years old. The system wasn’t in use for a year while the house was rebuilt, but the tank itself is iron and rust never sleeps.

So here we are with a septic system that is 30 years old, and it’s failing. The tank was pumped out about a year and a half ago and at the time the guys said it should be replaced. I decided to wait because I was unemployed and didn’t have 7K to toss at that bill. That decision was at the time against my better judgement because I like to stay out ahead of maintaining things if possible. However given the circumstances it was a viable decision, even if it wasn’t the preferred one.

I suppose this is why the solar panels have been a thorn in my side. They represent an investment that will likely pay off over the next few years or at least break even. (Even though they still haven’t produced one usable KW of energy yet, Thanks Edison!) Even as the other half was wanting to move forward with the panels, I was asking, “What about the septic system?” Warm summer days would have been an opportune time to have that taken care of, in preparation for the Winter.

To be fair, installation of the solar panels had a defined expiration date. If we’d waited any longer, we wouldn’t have be eligible to lock Edison into paying us a fair price for the excess power we generated. The septic system was a ticking time bomb with no precise date of expiration. 

Hey, you put your money on the table and roll the dice! Sometimes you roll a winner, and sometimes you crap out.

(Yes I used that analogy with intent.)

Well, the septic system has, (oh hell I can’t resist,) crapped out. Fortunately, the weather is fairly mild and we have no winter storms in the forecast for at least a week or two. That means that the replacement can go ahead without fighting a foot of snow. Unfortunately, It’s not known due to the supply chain issues and all of that when we can get a new tank put in.

Additionally, with the insanity of gas prices and the cost of diesel, it’s gonna cost more. Yeah, the excessively high diesel prices will affect the cost. Figure it’s gonna cost more for the pump truck to come up the mountain, and the truck to bring a new tank up, the backhoe to dig out the old tank, the long distance transport of the tank from where ever it’s manufactured etc, etc.

This is one of those few times when I wish I lived in a city. If I did, I’d be connected to s sewer system and wouldn’t have to worry about much other than the cost of a plumber to occasionally snake the main pipes that lead to the sewer.

Ah well, we’ll be paying for this for a long assed time. Especially when you consider the interest rates on credit cards. 

These are all the things I was thinking while outside digging a cat hole to bury some waste that had been expelled from the pressure relief pipe at the front of the house. At least the plants next to the hole will be well fertilized come Springtime.

A plumber is coming up today he’s going to see if there’s some blockage. (it’s possible, not likely, but possible). I’ve also got calls in to a couple of different septic tank folks. I’m hoping we can have the existing one pumped out, maybe Wednesday. That should get us through Thanksgiving. Today I’m taking the water softener offline, which will reduce the amount of waste water going into the system. My hope is that we will not have to decamp to a hotel waiting for the tank to be replaced. The dog is the issue there. He freaks out in closed rooms.

Once I get a schedule for the tank being replaced, I’m going to be digging up the sprinkler system. Me & my trenching tool got some work to do. Yes, the sprinkler line crosses the yard in such a way that when the backhoe gets here it’s gonna tear up that line, if I don’t expose it, and remove it. I’m figuring that I’ll cut that section out, set it aside then temporarily cap the loose end. Come Springtime, I’ll finish the repair and reset the line and sprinkler heads.

Nothing living in the mountains is ever easy or straight forward. On the plus side, at least my knees may be completely up to the challenge by then. In a strange way I kinda look forward to being a shirtless redneck with a shovel sweating my ass off in the sun. I do not look forward to being a freezing redneck bundled up in 30° weather digging up the sprinkler line in the coming weeks, but you play the hand left deals ya.

I suppose I could have a portapotty delivered. Now that’s super redneck! Bundling up in the middle of the night to go take a leak really takes me back to my roots. Showers would be a problem in that case, but I suppose I could go out to the truck stop nearby and rent a shower there.

All I can say is Happy Thanksgiving.

Update: Well, it looks like the problem was some kind of blockage going from the house to the septic system. The plumber who is a godsend cleared it in about 10 minutes. There’s a reason we’ve been using this particular plumber for years. He’s on time, (calls with an updated ETA, if he gets stuck on a job,) has fair prices and does great work.

The ticking time bomb of the septic system ticks on, but at least we can plan for that expense instead of having to do it as an emergency.

So that’s what I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving. 

Whew, dodged a bullet for now, here’s hoping that things hold together until Spring. It will just be a lot more convenient to deal with this when it’s warmer.

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Finally Back!

Got back to my mountain late yesterday.

I am beat. I’ve got laundry running, the car is filthy and there’s rain and snow predicted for this week. Hopefully, I’ll be able to catch up on chores around the house before Winter really sets in.

On the plus side, since I was traveling across time zones during the few days leading up to DST. That doesn’t seem to have hit me as hard as usual. I don’t know what time it is and haven’t known the time for at least the past two weeks.

Election Day is tomorrow, I specifically told the family that I needed to be back to vote, (A little white lie…). I’ll be voting in person and producing my ID even though it is not required. I want to make a statement. My statement will be ignored, but at least I’ll sleep secure in the knowledge that I made it.

Driving across country is always enlightening. When I left California, I made sure that I bought only enough gas to get me across the border to Arizona. 50 miles over the border, I filled my tank with 93 Octane for 4.50 a gallon. An immediate savings of about 2.00 and my car gave me a range of over 550 miles with that fuel blend. When the computer in the car said that was my estimated range I thought something was wrong. In California with their 91 Octane blend, I’m lucky to get 380 miles per tank. As it turns out, the computer was correct. 500 miles later I stopped to refuel.

Tell me again, how shitty gas saves the environment? It seems to me if you go further using less fuel and that fuel is burning efficiently that you’re doing more for the environment. Less drilling, less emissions, lower costs. But I’m just one of the unwashed morons what do I know?

When I got to Florida the Octane was still 93 and the cost per gallon was 3.80 The Floridians were complaining about the cost of fuel and I just smiled. There was one guy who saw my smile, I pointed at the California Plates on my car and shrugged. The man laughed and said, “I guess it’s a matter of perspective.”

I’ve also decided that TX is not for me as a possible place to escape the insanity of California. Every single time I’ve driven through TX, they seem to have more roads torn up than actually in good repair. Houston, Dallas/FtWorth, San Antonio, even Amarillo are terrible. 

Coming back to California, the last 30 miles of the I-10 in Louisiana all the way through Houston was a solid mess of construction, and traffic jams that were worse than Los Angeles at rush hour. San Antonio was a shit show and by the time I got there all I wanted was to find a straight country road to take me off I-10. I easily lost a day of travel just because of poor traffic management due to construction.

New Mexico, I blew through both directions. Last year they were still doing all the bullshit covid masking kabuki theater when I went through, and this year there was still some evidence of that. Plus their gas prices were noticeably higher than either Arizona or Texas which leads me to believe they’ve got some dumbass state taxes on the books that, like California aren’t being used to keep their roads in good repair. Fortunately, the gas range on the car meant that I only had to stop once. 

Texas may always have roads torn up, but at least there aren’t potholes that you could lose a city bus in. New Mexico on the other hand…

Most of Arizona is also out of the running for me personally as a retirement location. There are some very pretty places in Arizona. I’m fond of Flagstaff and the surrounding area. Coming through Tuscon and Phoenix felt like I was already back in California, just further from the beach. Flagstaff is a maybe, the rest of AZ not so much.

The sad part of the trip for me was that I’ve been driving across country for years. I can remember when the I-10 was a smooth ribbon of concrete. You’d often notice you were in another state because the road surface itself was a slightly different color. In Arizona for example, the I-10 had a reddish color I always thought that color was because of the color of the sand from the state. Now all the roads are gray and nondescript. What variations there are now, are from tar patches filling in the potholes. 

Approaching the California border there seemed to be a lot of U-Hauls heading East. Doing 70 behind a long line of 18 wheelers I wondered if those people apparently leaving would remember to leave their California attitudes behind or would they recreate the same conditions that led them to leave California at their destinations. 

I suppose only time will tell.

When I finally get to leave California for the last time, I’ll be sad. But I will do my best to leave all the California bullshit politics, bad ideas, and baggage at the border.

Bad ideas aren’t a crime, not recognizing a bad idea and continuing to double down on something that isn’t working is a crime. California seems to have done a lot of doubling down and not a lot of introspection.

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Okay here’s a little timesaver. Consider it a PSA.

Paypalflames

The other half has a PayPal account, they also had a PayPal credit account.

On both accounts, the balances are zero, and have been for quite some time.

Based on the now retracted misinformation that PayPal sent out over the weekend, the other half decided to close the PayPal account(s) totally.

The logic here is that PayPal sent out an updated AUP which had all the language in full legalese. The other half looks at this as clear intent. This was not a mistake, as PayPal wants to frame it. This updated policy went through PayPal’s legal folks, it went through innumerable reviews and revisions and was then sent out.

No-one who has ever worked in corporate America, specifically in the software industry is ever going to believe that the changes to PayPal’s policy were a mistake, or a typo, or whatever.

Based on that knowledge, the other half decided to cut all ties with PayPal because this “misinformation” that PayPal sent out demonstrates clearly malicious intent.

The other half spent 3+ hours being bounced around PayPal trying to close the accounts. They were successful in closing the credit account. But were then transferred back to the actual PayPal people who said that the credit card was still open.

The other half gave the folks at PayPal the confirmation number indicating that the credit account was closed but the PayPal girl couldn’t confirm that even with a confirmation number. So what good is the confirmation number?

Back to the PayPal credit folks the other half is transferred. Once again a happy people personality phone system must be navigated. 

Once again there are endless recordings about working with the account online. Once again back at the credit part of PayPal it’s confirmed that the credit account is closed.

Then back to the PayPal idiots and this time the other half cuts through all the bullshit about how the updated policy was misinformation, gives the confirmation number again proving that the credit account is closed and is finally told, “Oh, you have to wait two days after closing the credit account before we can close your PayPal account.

At this point, the other half is quite heated, and points out that had someone told them that an hour and a half ago it would have been nice.

Then the other half goes for the kill.

“Since your updated policy is now classified as misinformation when can I expect my $2500? And since the person from your company I spoke with who transferred me back to the credit folks also gave me misinformation shouldn’t I be getting $5000?

The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening. The poor lady probably had heard the line about paying the customer for PayPal’s misinformation endlessly over the past few days, but I’m not sure she’d heard the additional $2500 being asked for, because their call center gave out misinformation about closing the account.

So for those of you who are rightfully trying to close PayPal accounts.

Step One, Close the credit account. 

Step Two, wait two full banking days.

Step Three, go online or call these people up and close the PayPal part of the account.

When I closed my PayPal account several years ago, I was told that the account would take 30 days to actually close. Since there was no money in the account I didn’t care, but I’d bet that you’re going to be waiting a month for your money if you have a balance in your PayPal account.

If you call, be prepared for them to tell you it was all a mistake over and over again. At one point the person the other half was talking to offered $15.00 cash to keep the account open. 

Yes folks, PayPal values you that much… A whole $15.00!

The other half told the call center person that was insulting and suggested instead adding a couple of zeros to the amount.

I think we should send PayPal an invoice for $5015.00 or perhaps for $6500.00 to be fair.

Get out of PayPal folks. It’s going to take patience and perseverance and these people will run you in little circles but in the long run seeing them go down in flames will probably be a beautiful sight.

I guess if you’ve got stock in PayPal you might want to sell it quick.

Just a little update 11/7/2022:

It turns out that PayPal has in fact instituted their 2500.00 fine for misinformation. Apparently they slid it in with stealth, like a bastard who lets their date see them put a condom on, then stealthily pulls the condom off before penetration.

This comes after PayPal Customer Service repeatedly told the other half that PayPal wasn’t going to charge anyone 2500.00.

So PayPal LIED! Isn’t that misinformation? Does that mean I could legitimately send PayPal an invoice for 5000.00? They spread misinformation TWICE! Once when they said they weren’t going to impose this ridiculous fine and now they have. By my calculation, that’s two incidents of misinformation.

PayPal caused me grievous harm lying like they have. I’ve been triggered! My little heard hurts! I’m so offended!

Yeah, I know…

I’m going to be whistling for that money.

It does highlight the hypocrisy of the left. This is one of those glaring examples of “Our Betters” getting away with exactly what they tell us is an offense.

We live in bizzaro world. Everything the left tells us is true, turns out to be almost exactly 180 degrees from the truth.

It’s time to call these asshole out, every time, on every thing, they say.

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Oh Boy, Third Strike and I’m out!

I’ve written and discarded three blog posts today.

RonDeSantis

Im settling on this one come hell or high water!

I’ve been keeping a close eye on hurricane Ian. I have family throughout Florida including in the Ft Meyers area.

My family has said that for the past week or more Governor DeSantis has been on the local news stations providing instructions, detailing plans, and telling folks not to panic but to do commonsense things that anyone who’s ever been through a hurricane knows should be done.

Politico, Jackasses on The View, CNN, and morons in Washington D.C have totally pissed me off with their bullshit trying to say a hurricane is caused by global warming and that somehow DeSantis is at fault.

Uh NO! If you subscribe to the theory that Climate Change over the past 100 years is responsible for major storms then DeSantis sucking the cock of the Climate Change folks over the past few years wouldn’t have stopped hurricane Ian.

It’s a slow cumulative process that’s taken 100 years to create. If you were to somehow magically be able to undo all the effects of Climate Change instantly… You’d create devastating storms and more Climate Change because you instantly changed the planetary climate conditions.

What do you think happened with the extinction of the dinosaurs? Big rock from space hits the planet. The impact and heat transferred to the ocean caused tons of debris and vaporized the ocean in or near what is now the Gulf of Mexico. Rain, darkness, debris, and ash blocked out the sun. After that it was only a matter of time before the planet’s atmosphere cooled possibly triggering a kind of extended winter, followed by an ice age and poof dinosaurs died off.

That’s what happens when you radically alter an environmental system.

When the volcano on Krakatoa blew, there was enough dust thrown into the atmosphere that it apparently caused shorter growing seasons in Europe and the Thames in London froze in Winter for several years.

Tell me again how DeSantis kowtowing to Climate Change activists would have prevented a hurricane…

AmyKlobuchar

Then there’s that moron from MN Amy Klobuchar who suggests that voting Democrat would have had effect on hurricane Ian.

Either the Democrats. Have weather control technology and have been using it to destroy those who disagree with them, or Klobuchar is admitting she and the Democrat party are the single largest coven of evil witches ever seen.

The more likely explanation is that she’s just a moron. Although it might be fun to take all the democrat party in Washington and give them the Witch test. Tying them up and tossing them in the Potomac to see who floated might be good for a laugh. Nah, I wouldn’t want to pollute the Potomac with that much festering human refuse.

The shrews on The View are no better, and Joy Reid is quite possibly the dumbest person on TV.

She’s such a well informed climatologist she can make the statement, “There’s no doubt climate change is responsible for Ian”. Wow Joy! I didn’t know you could read much less that you were a climatologist.

JoyReid

Don Lemon on CNN morning (No longer a prime time Anchor) Had the audacity to try to back a real meteorologist Jamie Rhome into a corner about climate change during an interview while Ian was making landfall in Florida.

Even after Dumbass Don got politely shutdown by Rhome, Lemon tried again to have Rhome connect Ian to climate change, forcing Rhome into a more strenuous shutdown, Lemon had to have the last word saying, “I grew up there and the storms are getting stronger.”

Well Don Florida is much better off without you living there. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that you were one of the people who created the “Hanging Chad” voting debacle.

This was almost as funny as Dumbass Don being roasted by royal commentator Hilary Fordwich over reparations when he pushed that issue during his coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.

Ms. Fordwich was properly British and smoked Lemon without raising her voice. It was epic, the link is here and funny to watch.

CNN Royal Correspondent Tells Don Lemon Reparations Should Be Paid for Slavery By Africans 640x335 2828689854

The thing is, this season in Florida is called Hurricane Season for a reason. It’s a yearly event, it’s been happening forever and most folks throughout the Caribbean are familiar with it.

Some years you get a lot of little storms, some years you get a couple of major storms. It’s the luck of the draw.

Old timers in Florida try not to look a gift horse in the mouth if the hurricane season passes with one or two minor storms, but they’ll tell you if you ask, they worry about “paying the piper” the next year with a major storm.

Anyway, every time I started to write something I’d get distracted by the stupidity of some other moron.

But the one that really pissed me off was President Biden.

Grandstanding as he was in the D.C. FEMA office was obscene. Although I did enjoy the look the guy behind Sleepy Joe’s left shoulder had.

BidenatFEMA

There was absolutely nothing Joe could offer being in the FEMA office. The odds are that his presence significantly disrupted those folks working day.

In other words, Dementia Joe slowed down their progress at getting needed resources out of warehouses and moving toward the area they are needed.

Sort of like him bloviating at a major airport during one of the recent air traffic snarls and because of him being there to run his mouth, he added to the problem by having that part of the airport shut down.

We got another dose of angry Joe, when he said that he was going to be watching the gas prices in Florida very closely and threatened the gas stations not to gouge the consumers.

I found this particularly annoying since in California, 3000 miles away from the hurricane. The gas prices rose .16 cents overnight. If that’s not gouging sleepy Joe, I don’t know what is.

Mayorkis running his mouth wasn’t adding anything either.

I think DeSantis has probably done everything pretty darn close to right. I think that when Florida does the “After Action Review” they’ll find some things that could have been done better and then implement what they learn so that the next hurricane they’ll handle better. That’s a marked contrast to the Biden Administration and the Democrat party who never learns anything new except how to fuck over the American people.

Lemon, Reid, Klobuchar, Biden, Mayorkis, and the vicious harpies on The View, are a bunch of jackasses and they cannot be removed from their positions too fucking soon!

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I’m over it! 3 months and not 1 usable watt generated.

The other half decided to have solar panels installed on the roof.

Panels

Their reasoning was that Edison and PGE were trying to work out some B.S. where they would no longer have to buy any excess Kilowatts from homeowners whose solar panels generated power in excess of their usage during the day.

To my way of thinking this is blatant theft. Even if Edison or PG&E wanted to put free panels on my roof, I’d still charge them space rental based on SqFt. I’m sure we could work out some arrangement where they paid for the usage of my roof space in electricity. That being said I’m equally sure they’d find a way to make the power so expensive that the space rental would be negligible.

Simultaneously, Edison has been raising rates and re jiggering their Tier rates such that the only time you’re not paying the most expensive Tier is early in the morning and very late at night. Basically it’s like they’re doing everything in their power to screw their customers.

This is happening throughout the year but it’s especially annoying because the only high usage appliances we have are the refrigerator, the A/C unit, dishwasher, and the washer. The Fridge we can’t do too much about. The A/C is rarely on, the washer and dishwasher are only used with full loads.

More often than not we hand wash the dishes.

Every single light in this house is LED, or fluorescent. The lights are only on in the room we occupy. Even our ceiling fans are EneryStar Compliant at the highest level we could purchase. We’ve dialed our power consumption down to bare minimum and yet the Electric bill kept going up. I was all set to put padlocks on all the external wall sockets because we were wondering if someone was stealing power from the house. It wasn’t until I started running comparisons between bills that I realized that wasn’t happening. Our power consumption is very constant and predictable.

Our path lights and even the exterior Christmas lights, (In season) are solar powered.

I’d sort of given up on Solar panels on the house because snow on those panels in the wintertime coupled with the general overcast would make the panels useless for 3 to 4 months a year. The other half pointed out that much of the rest of the year, if we could put enough panels on the roof we’d bank the excess power during the Summer and possibly not have to pay much of an electric bill during the Winter.

I saw the merit of this logic and agreed that panels could potentially do us some good. Because the panels were installed prior to the date Edison and PG&E were going to implement their nefarious plan, we got in under the wire and will be banking our excess and Edison will have to pay us prevailing rates according to their own Tier schedule.

So we went ahead with the installation. The panels were installed in June.  Edison will have to pay us prevailing rates according to their own Tier schedule. You can bet your ass, we’ll be calling them out on any discrepancies or delinquent credits or payments. After all essentially, we’re an independent power company now…

You’d think all of this would be great. It would if everything was actually connected. Here we are in September and the panels are still not producing power for household use. The panels have the potential and god knows they’re getting tons of light during the day but this installation and interconnect to our house circuits is still not complete.

Some electricians were out today to install a subpanel.

Now we find that we’re going to have to wait 3 to 4 weeks for Edison to get off their asses and inspect / approve the actual connection. Before we can turn the damn things on.

That’s annoying, so is the hole in the exterior wall where these connections were added.

Apparently, the installation company is going to send out carpenters to patch the hole and pretty things up. Great! More waiting!

By the time these panels are online, it’s going to be Winter. So they’ll do very little good. Perhaps we’ll start to see a return on the investment by Spring of 2023, if we’re lucky. At this rate, I’m beginning to think we’re not going to have these things online until next Summer.

I don’t want to install backup batteries until we know the panels are working as expected and that the power distribution is so automatic that we don’t notice the changeover from Solar to Edison at night. Only then will I consider backup batteries, so that when the inevitable rolling blackouts hit California, we’ll be able to keep running. I’m looking at UPS (Uninterruptible Power System) systems now for the more delicate electronics.

I just saw the guy up the street Tesla on the back of a tow truck again. That has become at least a monthly event. I think it’s being towed to a charging station.  If he follows the normal routine, the car will be driving back up to the guy’s house in a couple of hours.

I don’t know why the car doesn’t charge at his house, but obviously something isn’t working right. Perhaps he should consider buying a new house in a new neighborhood where the power infrastructure can handle his car? His house was built in the 1950s it may be that the place just can’t handle to power requirements. Alternatively, he could just go buy a gas powered vehicle.

Perhaps I could point out that I’ve got some solar panels on the roof that aren’t doing anybody any good? Nah, I’d probably have to have the electricians back out to install another panel specifically for his car. God knows what kind of inspection process that would entail.

Then there’s the risk of his Tesla deciding to ignite some of its batteries in my driveway. Yeah, not interested.

The really weird thing about having solar panels up here is that people are always asking if our house is off the grid. When I say “no, we don’t have the battery backup option and are still reliant on Edison when the sun goes down,” I get this blank look.

Then I have to explain that the panels only generate power they don’t store it. This is usually followed by a blank look and them repeating the question. I’m constantly astounded at how little people understand about simple science.

The next person who puts me through this I’m going to clamp jumper cables to their nipples and connect ‘em to the solar panels. At least that would be a test proving that the panels are actually working. Yeah, I still don’t know if they’re working.