Rants

The Director of Operations of our plant is a Cubs fan and after they lost game seven he kiddingly said to me, “Maybe we should form a Loveable Losers Club.” I told him I would be in soon and sure enough the Yanks beat the Sox in the 11th inning of game seven. First thing this morning I dispatched this email:

From: Bogardus, Brian [ASCO/AK]
To: Irvine, Rich [ASCO/AK]
Cc:
Subject: I’m In
Sent: 10/17/03 7:39:00 PM

The first meeting of the ASCO Loveable Losers Club meets this Saturday at 8:00 PM in front of the TV.

Agenda as follows:
Opening) We Should Be There
1) Unreasonable Placing of Blame
2) Wallowing in Self Pity
3) Crying in Beer
4) Group Hug
Closing) Wait’ll Next Year

Brian

Got to be done with all this internet shit before 8:18. That is when I’ve got a date with 25 guys who are going to break my heart. Don’t worry Cubs fans I’ll be joining you in our old familiar home, misery, real soon.

Guest Rant While you are there check out the rest of his site, nice stuff.

Rader graciously agreed to refund my second towing charge seeing as the timing belt was under warranty when it broke. When I picked up the car on Friday I was told that they couldn’t get me a check because the Service Manager was not there, but they would mail it to me.

I wonder how many times I’m going to have to call and remind them?

My least favorite thing in the world happened to me this afternoon, after finishing pumping some gas using the debit card, no paper receipt came out. “Receipt Inside,” said the LEDs. Fuck. What made it really bad was I had bought just $2 worth of gas (enough to make it back to Rader with the loaner car.) I trudge into the store and get in line at number 3.

#1 finished quickly, but #2 was not so lucky. The woman in front of me can’t get her pump to work right using her credit card. The LEDs keep saying, “See Cashier” when she scans it. The kid behind the counter has trouble grasping this. Finally she says just run my card for me in here. The kid says, “I can’t prepay with a credit card. Use the pump.” She tells him the pump says see him. He says again I can’t prepay with a card. Finally, she gives up and storms out in disgust.

My turn. “I need a receipt.” “What pump number?” “I dunno, that one.” “OK, 4.” He starts mashing buttons and gets nothing but error beeps it seems. I say, “I got $2 worth.” More beeps. Kid say, “This says $12.25.” “That ain’t mine. Two bucks.” more buttons, more beeps. The cash draw pops open and the register reads, $5.47. He closes the drawer, more buttons more beeps. My turn to give up, I say, “Forget it.”, and walk out.

Of course I catch hell from the wife because of no receipt and then even more grief when she thinks that I’ve been charged $12.25 for two dollars worth of gas – we’ll see.

Tonight was the big “gala” opening of the Drive By Photo Contest and with it the announcement of the winners. Boo-hoo, I didn’t even get an honorable mention. I think that whoever judged the pictures forgot that it was supposed to be a drive by, in your car or within 5 ft of it. There were only maybe 3 or 4 others beside myself where a car is visible.

OK, I’m really kidding, I could tell that neither of my photographs had a chance. The 1st place winner was actually my favorite photo and the others were not bad at all. Here is the entries page, 1st place was the pumpkins.

On our afternoon walk around the parking lot I glanced back at the bright green car and noticed that the front plate (that says “Rader”) was hanging crookedly. Walked back and noticed that one screw was missing and the other was really loose, so I just took the plate off and threw it in the trunk. This gave me an even better idea for when I return the car. Instead of yesterday’s Wabbit Teeth, maybe I’ll just get a dealer plate from the competing Mazda dealer, Andy Jones, and put it in the holder on the front. 🙂