Random Rants 91 - Semiprimal Rage

[Samson]

Somebody stole the catalytic converter off of our Habitat for Humanity affiliate's only truck, a converted U-Haul that I am generally the one to drive since I live the closest to the office.

It still drives fine, but is louder than our lawnmower and you can definitely smell the fumes when standing beside it after the engine has been running.

I took it to our Habitat's normal mechanic just a few blocks away, but he said he cannot handle emissions issues. He recommended a muffler shop about 6 miles away that could. He said if it were his vehicle he'd ask if they could just weld a pipe there instead of paying to put in a new catalytic converter, since those aren't cheap and since the vehicle is large enough not to need emissions testing.

I took it over to that shop this evening, and got a ride home with the co-chair of the construction committee.

It may not be safe to leave the truck out in the open in the office parking lot, lest someone just steal the new catalytic converter or something else again. There was some talk about having someone take it home to keep it in his driveway. I am assuming I'd be the most logical person to do so, as I live the closest and have been the one driving it for a few years.

We have a really long driveway though, with a lot of branches that may need to be cut back for the truck to fit through to the portion near the house that is wide enough for our other vehicles to get through. The truck has no rear view morrow or backup camera, and there is not enough room at the end to turn around with my car or dad's van there, so backing up could be quite a challenge.

I started cutting back some of those branches this evening, but forgot to borrow any tools from the truck first to help me do so. I just had to make do with my battery powered reciprocating saw (which only had rather dull blades) and an old bow saw.

I decided to call it quits after briefly losing control of the bow saw and cutting my hand. Two lacerations were bleeding a fair amount when I got inside, but it stopped pretty easily after washing it off and applying pressure for a couple minutes. I don't think there is a need for a bandage. Since the blade was rather rusty, I guess it is good that I got a Tdap booster shot a couple weeks ago.

This catalytic converter theft is a thing all over, and something is wrong but I am not sure what it is:

• Catalytic converters are bad for global warming, but better for local air quality. Are they really worth it?
• They are really valuable, but designed to be easy to change. Wheels are like that, and we have developed locking wheel nuts. Why does something like that not exist for cats?

WRT the "just weld a pipe there" the issue is the tuning. The engine is designed to have a certain back pressure, and if this is reduced without some settings of the engine being changed it can cause damage. I do not know how serious this is, or if it would even apply to your engine (I think some are clever enough to figure it out and change itself), but it is something worth being aware of. I have driven without an exhaust pipe for a while (read a year as that is the frequency of inspections here), the fumes are a problem in traffic and the noise is a problem for your neighbors.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I've been replaying several of the Vacation Adventures: Park Ranger games, due to a discussion on another gaming forum. We were talking about continuity in the Casual Arts' Vacation Adventures/Christmas Wonderland games, and someone said that the Chief Ranger has the same photo in his office that the Captain in the Cruise Director games does, so that could mean (what followed was a discussion of how the game characters in these franchises cross over among all three games and weave in and out of each others' storylines - which are loose at best, and something I don't think the developers actually planned at first, or they'd have done a better job of continuity)...

Anyway, I'd never noticed the photo the other person was talking about being anywhere but in the Cruise Director games, so I've been replaying Park Ranger to see if it's there.

Conclusion: There is a family photo, but not the same people. The person on the other forum is mistaken (unless the photo was there in the first 8 games, but I really don't want to replay all of them to make sure).

So my actual rant is... I was reminded that a couple of games back, they added dinosaur and fossil digs to the various activities that campers can get into in this game (it's a hidden object game that takes place in a fictitious U.S. national park that is simultaneously located in Washington state and Jasper National Park in my province, at least going by the background locations).

I have nothing against dinosaur and fossil digs... as long as they're not referred to as archaeology.

Not that anything will come of it, but I finally got annoyed enough to write to Casual Arts and inform them that if they're going to have campers observe and participate in these digs, at least refer to it as PALEONTOLOGY, not archaeology. They release one or two new games every year, so it's not like there won't be an opportunity to fix this.

There are other issues, such as some characters being in two places at once (I mentioned that as well, letting them know they've got continuity problems going on), but I honestly don't think they expect their customers to pay that much attention.

This is one of the games I picked for my "adapt a computer game to prose" NaNoWriMo projects, back in 2017. I got a good start in April and July 2018, hit a bad case of writer's block in November, and switched to my current project that will soon hit the 3-year mark for consistent work on it.

But replaying a couple of these Park Ranger games reminded me of why I decided to tackle them in the first place, and I'm getting some more ideas. I took a few pages' worth of notes about the characters, so just in case writer's block hits again at the most inconvenient time of year (first week of November), I'll have something to fall back on.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

We had a robot vacuum that conked out on us after only 2 years. The issue seemed to be related to the battery, so I bought and installed a new one but that didn't fix it. I think disassembled and cleaned it as it was acting as if it was pulling too much current and cutting off (like gunk was jamming motors) but the deep clean didn't fix it either. I'm pissed because it died and also because I bought an expensive new battery for it.

I did get to take it apart in front of my baby a few times though; can't start 'em too young.

 

[Paul in Saudi]

I am a retired Army man. I have never been to Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the developments there have inspired in me a sadness I cannot explain.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I am a retired Army man. I have never been to Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the developments there have inspired in me a sadness I cannot explain.

I've stopped watching the news as a result. It's pretty distressing.

It's was a horrible predicament, and ultimately Biden 'just' followed through with the deal Trump struck. Doesn't make it any less wrong though.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I've stopped watching the news as a result. It's pretty distressing.

It's was a horrible predicament, and ultimately Biden 'just' followed through with the deal Trump struck. Doesn't make it any less wrong though.

I guess education for women was nice while it lasted.

Trudeau is being harshly criticized for not getting the interpreters and others out fast enough (those who helped the Canadians over there). What a mess.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I guess education for women was nice while it lasted.

Trudeau is being harshly criticized for not getting the interpreters and others out fast enough (those who helped the Canadians over there). What a mess.

And jobs, and a meaningful role in society outside of baby making.

While Trump was negotiating the US surrender, the Taliban started an assassination campaign against all civil society leaders and notable people, with a special emphasis on high-profile women. That Trump let it happen is not surprising because of his gross incompetence and total self-absorption but that Biden let it continue unchecked is unconscionable.

I just listened to a podcast on Afghanistan and Trump did in fact surrender. There were no real conditions on the Taliban except that they agree to talk, in return the US agreed to a firm withdrawal table. There's no other way to look at that than surrender.


The podcaster tried to say that as a democracy, all Americans have some share in the blame but I don't remember ever getting a say in this war from the invasion up to today. Public opinion never seemed to sway our leaders, and pretty much all the politicians had the same useless vision and strategy for the Afghan war.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

And jobs, and a meaningful role in society outside of baby making.

While Trump was negotiating the US surrender, the Taliban started an assassination campaign against all civil society leaders and notable people, with a special emphasis on high-profile women. That Trump let it happen is not surprising because of his gross incompetence and total self-absorption but that Biden let it continue unchecked is unconscionable.

I just listened to a podcast on Afghanistan and Trump did in fact surrender. There were no real conditions on the Taliban except that they agree to talk, in return the US agreed to a firm withdrawal table. There's no other way to look at that than surrender.


The podcaster tried to say that as a democracy, all Americans have some share in the blame but I don't remember ever getting a say in this war from the invasion up to today. Public opinion never seemed to sway our leaders, and pretty much all the politicians had the same useless vision and strategy for the Afghan war.

Somehow I completely missed reading about this, and we do cover major American news. Of course this would have been primarily from the Canadian perspective.

Or maybe my mind was on something else at the time, like provincial politics. This might have been when I added FB to my daily routine (I haven't posted anything about my personal life there in about 8 years, but when the UCP won the election in 2019 and promptly targeted teachers, nurses, and the disabled and my own MLA stated she was "proud" of how the government was doing everything, I realized that she's as much a sociopath as the rest of them (she's the Minister of Education and there's not much difference between her and Betsy DeVos - my MLA isn't a billionaire, but the rest fits).

Don't you just love it when politicians try to force everyone to "share the blame" for things we had no say in? The premier we had just before the provincial election of 2015 tried that. Just four words were enough to anger enough people that we voted in the first real change in government in 80 years. The four words were: "Look in the mirror."

Well, you know what karma is. That premier lost spectacularly that night, both in seats and respect, as he promptly not only stepped down as party leader (not the problem as it's common for leaders who lose a significant number of seats), but ragequit the seat he had actually managed to keep (thus triggering the need for a byelection before all the polling stations had reported in). He's dead now (plane crash). I certainly don't mourn him. It's a bit ironic since Rachel Notley's father died in a plane crash many years ago. She might have a chance at being premier again, if this current government keeps on with what it's doing.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I burned my hand this morning making money bread for breakfast for the first time. I made it in a stainless steel frying pan, first melting the butter and mixing the sauce and dough together and then putting the whole pan in the oven to bake. I used an oven mitt when taking the pan out of the oven, but had taken it off by the time I read the instructions that said to flip it upside down onto a serving plate. When it was just sitting there on top of the stove I instinctively grabbed it by the handle the same way I had before putting the whole thing in the oven, not realizing how much hotter the handle gets inside the oven then when using the range. My hand is still in pain almost 11 hours later. I cannot go too long without either going to a sink to run it under cool water or grabbing a frozen water bottle.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@MagisterCultuum Aloe is your friend. If you have the plant, break off a leaf, split it open and apply the gel interior to your burn.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

@MagisterCultuum Aloe is your friend. If you have the plant, break off a leaf, split it open and apply the gel interior to your burn.

We never have any around the house because my mother is allergic to aloe. Her skin reacts to it like poison ivy, which has caused an issue in hospitals before because they tend to try to treat rashes with aloe-containing products.

I did find some aloe-containing burn cream in a first aid kit I'd borrowed from habitat. It expired 3 and a half years ago though. I used some anyway, but I'm not sure if made things better or worse.

 

[Takhisis]

If not, something cold (maybe a few ice cubes with a towel wrapped around them) should help. Just make sure not to get frostbite.

 

[The_J]

My hand is still in pain almost 11 hours later.

This sounds like a case for the doctor. Go see one soon.

 

[Takhisis]

I'd missed the bit about the eleven hours. Yes, go have it checked out.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There's a new weightloss drug that has remarkable results, but my insurance won't cover it despite the high cost my obesity causes them. Really quite penny wise, pound foolish.

I have been trying to appeal to get it approved but unfortunately that can only go through the doctor, I have no ability to appeal on my own behalf. (or at least that's what they tell me) My doctor is not pushing very hard on my behalf, so I've made an appointment to see another one in hopes they will do more.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I have something worse than no internet today, intermittent internet. Every now and then it cuts out and takes a while to work again. It first happened halfway through my Zoom & roll20 gaming session last night, very annoying.
My ISP has said its having problems in our area today and its engineers are working on it.

 

[amadeus]

MY SALAD DRESSING
FROZE IN THE
REFRIGERATOR
I AM CURRENTLY
THAWING IT OUT
IT’S SESAME SEED
MY DINNER MUST
BE POSTPONED

 

[Valka D'Ur]

MY SALAD DRESSING
FROZE IN THE
REFRIGERATOR
I AM CURRENTLY
THAWING IT OUT
IT’S SESAME SEED
MY DINNER MUST
BE POSTPONED

I've had instances of things freezing in the fridge.

Milk, for instance. And no, I can't just thaw it out by leaving it out of the fridge. By the time it thaws enough to drink, it will have gone sour.

Nowadays the thing I need to worry about freezing is my insulin. If that happens, it's useless and has to be thrown out.

 

[Samson]

Milk, for instance. And no, I can't just thaw it out by leaving it out of the fridge. By the time it thaws enough to drink, it will have gone sour.

How does this work? Surely if there is ice present in a container of liquid, it will keep the temperature of the whole container below 4C? That is how ice cubes work.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

How does this work? Surely if there is ice present in a container of liquid, it will keep the temperature of the whole container below 4C? That is how ice cubes work.

It takes time for a 2-litre container of frozen-solid milk to thaw. Even in the fridge milk only keeps so long. And the fridge in my old suite was horribly temperamental and delighted in randomly choosing which side of which shelf was going to be frozen solid, and when. I've had frozen milk, frozen egg salad (absolutely not edible when thawed; it's disgusting)... The only time I ever deliberately froze milk was when I had a small bottle of flavored milk. Stick it in the freezer, and when you want it, let it thaw a bit and then shake it up. It's like a milk version of a Slurpee.