Rant: Dammit, this isn't even my boat, it's a customer's boat. I just had my tree guy here less than two weeks ago, trimming different trees because a limb almost fell on this same boat.
RANT followed by a RAVE: In early June, we had a quick spike of 100+ degree days and the AC stopped working. Made an appointment for some HVAC people to come out and by the time they were able to make it out a few days later, the temps cooled back into the 90s and the AC started working again. The HVAC people said that's odd and it needs about $4800 in repairs to fix the problem when, not if, it happens again. July was a very mild month and the AC hummed right along until this weekend. Back to back to back of 103* and the AC stopped working again. Here's the RAVE: Punched the symptoms into chatgpt, went back and forth with a few tests and it narrowed it down to the fan capacitor. $10.27 from Amazon, 6-7 minutes of work and we have working AC. RAVE: Hit every metric for July and got all the top tier bonuses. Nice little ~30% bump in pay for the month. Now I'm drinking some champagne and freezing my ass off.
Capacitor issues seems to be a fairly common feature with HVAC units. Multiple houses in our neighborhood had theirs fail so we pre-emptively bought a capacitor last year. Sure enough, we needed to replace ours about a month ago for similar reasons.
Yep. It's probably 90% of the HVAC failures out there. It can be a bit sketchy replacing the cap if you don't know what you're doing and don't discharge it properly, but if you can follow simple instructions (readily available all over YouTube), you can do it yourself in about 15 minutes. I personally learned about it when I watched a repair guy replace it and then hand me the bill. It was crazy expensive. Since then I have a couple of them sitting on the shelf in the shop just waiting to be replaced. I've already done it twice.
Rant/Rave: Turns out a 18x24 ft shed is a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. Guess I'll build out a workshop?
RAVE: Old house sale finally closed. First deal fell through and 2nd buyers were being complete cocksuckers about every little thing. For example, they asked for $2000 towards closing costs because they deemed the walkway wasn't safe. There was one section that was higher than the next creating a potential tripping hazard. I measured it and it was just over 1/4" but not even 5/16". Assholes.
Rave: My recliner has been kind of uncomfortable lately, the back of it going back further than it should so when you want to sit in it unreclined, you're still leaning back. It's been driving me nuts for a couple of weeks now. For some reason, last night while my parents were here was when I finally got curious enough to look into it further. Long story short ( at least this part of it ) the pins which hold the back of the chair in place are worn out on both sides. I happened to remember we bought a protection plan when we got it back in 2020, but kind of figured the warranty was up. Still, we looked and saw we bought it on July 30, 2020. HOWEVER the protection plan says "5 years from date of DELIVERY." So when was it delivered? It was around 7:30 when I called Raymour & Flanigan who were very helpful and looked it up. The chair was delivered on August 22, 2020. Yesterday was August 21, 2025. The lady transferred me to the number for the protection plan claims. That lady, also very helpful, said it was covered and she was opening a claim. "Are you shitting me?!? I figured you guys would tell me 'Nice try.'" She laughed. "You've got about four hours left on this plan. I'd buy a lottery ticket if I were you." "I don't know, I think I just used up my luck." As instructed, I immediately sent pics and description of the problem to the people who would actually do the repair, still kinda shocked at this stroke of luck. Then I bought some Powerball tickets.
For most of you this probably isn’t that impressive. Rave: I ran for an entire mile without stopping, walking or jogging. Im 41. I’ve never been able to do this. My current goal is to finish a 5k in under 40 minutes. Rave: I did this because I’ve lost 85 pounds since Thanksgiving. I had a health scare last year and decided I wanted to see my kids live beyond high school. So I stopped drinking. And started exercising every day. And tracking every calorie I ate. My weight loss doctor told me I’m the most successful patient they have that isn’t on a GLP-1 or having surgery. Not drinking isn’t nearly as bad as I imagined. Everything is cheaper. And if I really want to catch a buzz I pop a THC gummy and go about my day. Rant: Every few months since this started I’ve had to buy new clothes because the old ones made me look like a clown. Thanks for listening to my nonsense.
Rant: I put a gallon of sweet tea in the fridge all dumb and basically booby trapped it for my husband. Tea fucking everywhere. Under the fridge, inside the fridge, on the cabinets, pool of it on the floor. Rave: once the shock wore off he helped me mop it up with towels and move the fridge so I could steam mop the shit out of the entire kitchen. Took 3 mop covers to clean all the sticky up. I don't think we have moved the fridge out and cleaned under it since we bought the house 7 years ago. I hate that this happened at 930pm but every inch of my kitchen floor is sparkling now, so all's well that ends well.
Rant: just got home from the ER. They think it's strep. I woke up from a dead sleep with stabbing pain in my neck/lymph node. Stabbing pain while swallowing so I've just been spitting out foamy spit the last hour. Had to take 4 pills, cried like a baby. Hope the meds do something soon, this is utterly miserable.
RAVE: First trip of the season next week. Parking the Tin Can on the lawn of my friend’s cottage that is 5 acres on the St Lawrence river. Chaos at work right now is crazy so I really need this.
Rave: So my recliner has been screwed up… Just kidding. I honestly don’t remember if I mentioned it before but three weeks ago I started a weight loss program at a nearby hospital. I’ve been big all my life and am finally tired of it enough to do whatever it takes. Plus it’s the one risk factor I have I can control. My first follow up was Thursday and I’m down 6.5# In addition, I’ve been diagnosed with insulin resistance and started on a new med to curtail that. It hasn’t been nearly as difficult as I thought. I already feel better physically and mentally from eating better, drinking less, and that little bit of weight loss. Just 45-50 pounds more to go.
Rant: Took me 6 hours to put this grill cart together. Why were there 60 screws? Why did it require 4 different Allen wrenches instead of normal screws? Why were all these screws in one unlabeled bag? How am I supposed to know what an mm versus an aa is if all you show is the picture of the same screw?
Rant: Another work related rant. They are just so dumb, but the pay cheque doesn't bounce so what can you do. If there is a right way, a wrong way. You can hand them a 10 page step by step instruction on how the procedure should work but because they didn't come up with it they will go in the complete opposite direction. Rave: It's the little things that make me happy here. I have a small storage space in a building on site, the roll up door is right next to a bunch of parking spaces, it is clearly marked not to park there. Sometimes people ignore that, so i have some fun. I will sending emails, the emails and replies(this is all from yesterday) - is this still a parking area, or do we need to increase the signage so people can read better? - the person with keys will be in tomorrow at 8am to move it - No worries, I need in there, I will find fork extensions and move it myself. - It will be moved in 20 minutes
RAVE: At a friend’s cottage with the Tin Can and the dog. It’s fucking awesome. He’s on the shore of the St Lawrence river, with whales and big ships going by. So. Fucking. Relaxing. And Zoe gets to run free on a big lot with a few people to help keep her busy. What a nice change from some rather stressing work these days.
Rave: French Laundry was phenomenal. The food and service were amazingly good. They also gave us bottle of wine signed by Thomas Keller for our anniversary and we got a tour of the kitchen after we ate. Amazing experience. Rant: Got the wine bill, yeah, apparently acting a big shot and having the sommelier choose comes at a steep price. Two bottles of wine cost me $1100.
RAVE: After being cheated out of the experience TWICE, I finally got to see Nine Inch Nails in Houston. The show was much better than I was expecting; it has been rumored for awhile that this is Trent Reznor's last tour, since he's sixty years old now, and he makes the majority of his money from soundtracks/ scores, and he famously said that he didn't want to be old and still touring. He definitely didn't phone it in, and switched between two different stages twice. There was a small stage where he did some acoustic piano songs, and there was the main stage, where shit got lit. The seats weren't what I wanted, but they weren't terrible, either. Cheapest seats in the house, and I'd say I got my money's worth. Setlist:https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/nine-inch-nails/2025/toyota-center-houston-tx-b5d013e.html Spoiler RANT: Spoiler Buying the tickets was a goddammed nightmare. I had to buy them through the Houston Toyota Center website, and it was a fucking shit show. Everyone online, and even the people we talked to a the show were complaining about it. You would choose your tickets, and then WHOOPS! The tickets you wanted aren't available anymore! So you go pick some others. SAME SHIT. And the website might randomly kick you off, because it thinks you're a bot. I stuck with it, and paid $300 for these seats, after all of Livenation's bullshit fees. Worst of all, Jungle Julia was acting like a grade-A bitch the whole day. The Toyota Center DID NOT give an option for a paper ticket, instead they force you to use the "AXS" app, which did not work on mine, nor Jungle Julia's phone. It's very important to mention that we knew this BEFORE we showed up at the concert. I bought the tickets months ago, got all kinds of confirmation, and right before we left, I decided to double check on the tickets, and the shitty app said that I had nothing. I spent almost an hour on the help line, and after uninstalling and reinstalling the app several times, they told me to just show my ID at the box office, and I'd get in. THAT WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR JJ. She berated me the whole way up there, bitching about how "WE'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE ANY TICKETS WHEN WE GET UP THERE! WHAT IF YOU LOSE YOUR WALLET BEFORE WE GET THERE?! THERE'S GONNA BE A LONG LINE AT THE BOX OFFICE! I'M NEVER GOING TO TRAVEL WITH YOU AGAIN! BLAH BLAH BLAH! " Do you know what it's like having a woman bitch at you for 350 miles? It's not fun. Everything went down like fucking clockwork once we got there, and after showing my ID, we were inside with time to spare. There was NO LINE. I think that pissed her off even more, because she was still acting like a bitch when we go back to the hotel. I seriously think she's about to start her period, because when she gets pissed off and overreacts over dumb shit, that's usually what it is.