Life

[Dewar]

My cars turbo is shot. Est 3k to fix unless I find the parts on the cheap. Probably will spend Monday work morning scouring the Internet or calling junk yards

Pretty sure just sealed my fate to drive it until total failure

I don't suppose you can just remove the turbo?

[undermind9]

im driving it...so maybe? its a mini cooper s... i could just chip off the "S" off the trunk

 

As part of my monday morning f'ing around ive found parts that will drop the cost by about 1k, and if i feel brave and do myself - i can take another 1k off the labor. (theres other sensors that are getting sprayed with oil everytime the turbo should wind up)

 

it may end up not being the end of the world, but certainly felt like a gut punch when told 3k to fix a ~6k car

[Dewar]

I guess the main question there is can you replace the turbo without having to pull out the engine. If so, and there's no unusual tools required, you can take a shot at doing it yourself with one of those $100 automotive manuals.

[Roderick]

This morning I opened my window to a heinous shrieking across the canal and saw a train of jackdaws swooping down on one of their own. More than their usual crowing, they were actively chanting. I went to pick up my glasses for a clearer look, but as I returned the jackdaws had vanished and all I saw was a black clump in the grass. After breakfast I went to take a look and found the bird still alive, but obviously crippled. It was breathing and peered at me, blinking. I didn't have the guts to kill it to end its misery, but neither the skill to help it to good health - and after that, what? Jackdaws are social animals, ill-suited to domestic life. Once cast out of the group, there's no going back. This poor creature had done something to anger the others, and was doomed as a result.

[Twig]

My lower back has been killing me since Sunday (I presume because I slept on a really shitty bed while visiting my grandparents, because I've done nothing strenuous since the Thursday before that Sunday). Almost every other time a body part has hurt this much, it's gone away in a couple days, or at least diminished in intensity over time. I almost feel like it's getting worse (or maybe I'm just getting less tolerant, and it's staying the same). Either way, it's crippling me. I can't run/exercise like I really want to. I can barely walk downstairs to make breakfast. I'm fucking miserable.

 

I might have to go to the doctor... But I don't have health insurance yet because the stupid Obamacare is taking forever to go through for me. Uhghhhhhhhhhh.

[Joewintergreen]

Jesus christ, Rodi. That is bizarre/heavy.

 

I have moved into a share house where my housemates are kind of really unclean it turns out. A couple days in I felt I had to clean the floor of the bathroom, and I found one of these caked onto the side of the bath, completely covered in gunk

 

[Nachimir]

The only reference I could find to that sort of behaviour was in a wikipedia article, claiming jackdaws sometimes turn on sick and injured among their own. For such clever birds, that's pretty dark :|

 

Lacabra: Eww!

 

I'm not particularly fussy about cleanliness as long as things are sanitary, but I've lived with similar housemates and it seems to go one of three ways:

You spend a bunch of time cleaning the stuff that bothers you and come to resent your filthy housemates.

You spend a bunch of time reminding/nagging/hectoring your filthy housemates to clean up their filth, and come to resent them.

You gradually replace the filthy housemates until you have a more cleanly/less filthy majority.

 

In a house with a roughly 50/50 split where none of those things happened, we found a rota actually worked really well. Part of that was because even the cleanest of us got busy and forgot, which was then visible to everyone and stopped people from being too self-righteous. It built a sense of "we all do some cleaning, and we all get distracted sometimes".

 

Good luck, I hope you aren't subjected to continual grossness.

[dibs]

There is a short story in the Sandman Series about it. I think it might have made reference to "a parliment of rooks" but for sure they were judging one of them and then murdered him.

[Roderick]

Perhaps it was sick, but how strange that they didn't kill it then. Weird thing.

[Apelsin]

That's awful. Hate seeing injured/dead animals, especially when there's nothing you can do.

I saw a Jackdaw with an injured wing once. Me and a lady from the volunteer "animal ambulance" spent around 40 minutes trying to capture it so it could be taken to a vet.

 

A friend asked me why I had spent so much time (I had stayed in that spot for around an hour before the lady had turned up to help) on what he saw as vermin, but I just couldn't walk away from an injured animal when I potentially had a chance to help. The depressing part is that wing damage on birds usually mean euthanasia anyway, but you can always hope the little bugger is out there somewhere flapping around.

 

Speaking of depressing, I turn 25 tomorrow! Yaaay!   

[Justin Leego]

Pre-congratulations!

[Nachimir]

Speaking of depressing, I turn 25 tomorrow! Yaaay!   

 

I hope it goes like my 25th:

 

Suffer existential dread the day before.

Wake up on morning of birthday, realise "Oh, it's just another day".

Never worry about the number again.

[miffy495]

Sounds accurate. I'm pretty sure that the last time I did a big thing for a birthday was 21, and 25 was one of those "Oh man, I can't get away with as much bullshit anymore" days, but as soon as it passed it stopped mattering. Happy birthday, anyway!

[tegan]

There's a guy with rifles, a knife, and a crossbow running around just uptown from where I am. Police from all over the province are rolling in, one of the main roads was shut down, and there's helicopters patrolling that part of town. Sounds like he's killed two officers and a K9 so far. He was last seen incredibly close to my friend's house, headed in the direction of my part of town. Eep.

[Ucantalas]

Wow, that's crazy! Hope you stay safe.

[tegan]

 

 

 

jesus, this is surreal.

[Ucantalas]

I wonder if that guy plays video games?

Eh, no use worrying, if he did the news will be sure to give an extensive list of which games he liked to play.

[tegan]

Three more mortally wounded officers according to RCMP twitter, plus two with non life-threatening injuries. He's gradually making his way across town, heading in the direction of my own neighbourhood. Eek.

[tegan]

I wonder if that guy plays video games?

Eh, no use worrying, if he did the news will be sure to give an extensive list of which games he liked to play.

 

Even better, he liked Megadeth.

[Justin Leego]

How ya holding up, Tegs?

[tegan]

How ya holding up, Tegs?

 

Still here; had trouble sleeping. They still haven't found the guy. It's all pretty surreal. I didn't even know we had these:

 

 

 

 

 

Know what the worst thing about this is gonna' be? The political fallout. I guarantee that American pro-gun groups are going to point to this as gun control not working. Ugh.

[Nachimir]

Yikes. I hope you're okay and still holding up tegan.

[Justin Leego]

Anti-gun groups can point to it as guns not working (or working too well, depending on how you look at things). Hope you can get some rest, chum.

 

I feel awful that I secretly want to see how many "how ya holding up"s we can get worked into this otherwise terrible episode

[Ucantalas]

Dammit. Just had a call with a recruiter about a position I applied for a little while ago. When she told me the name of the company the position was for, I misheard her. It didn't sound like any company I had heard of, so when she asked if I had heard of it I honestly said "No." Then in the follow-up email I find out she said Cineplex. God dammit.

Also I need to touch up my portfolio and the more I look at it the more I feel like a piece of shit who isn't any good at the one thing he spent his entire life working on. I don't want anything I've made to be in my portfolio, it all looks like crap. Ugh.

[coaxmetal]

Dang tegan. That's really scary.