I took an extra day off from work, but stomach bug derailed any plans I had beyond "Stay within 2 minutes of a bathroom."
I've been doing chores instead of going fishing.
I took an extra day off from work, but stomach bug derailed any plans I had beyond "Stay within 2 minutes of a bathroom."
I've been doing chores instead of going fishing.
eastsideTim said:Over ten years after he passed away, some family members are wanting to revisit my dad's will. I suspect they are not going to be happy about it when they learn their assumptions are wrong. I'm annoyed because it is one more thing to stress my mom out about while she's recovering from Covid, and of course I am getting dragged into it, too.
It's getting deeper. I'm getting more ticked off. I had just barely started letting one of these people back in my life. Looks like that was a mistake on my part.
In reply to eastsideTim :
Grandparents die - leaves all to only grandkids except a small few are purposely left out.
Family sick about it and wants them to step up and split it evenly.
Why we not following grandpas final wishes? He knew a few would spend it all literally on hookers and blow.
In reply to Datsun310Guy :
Sounds like the grandparents were pretty sensible. The will in this case is even simpler, which is more infuriating. I don't have a copy of it, but my wife remembers that everything went to my mother, unless she had also passed away, and it was them to be split evenly between the children, and no one else was a beneficiary. Some property is in a trust that will be split between the siblings when my mother passes away. I suspect there will not be any legal wrangling, just a bunch of complaining and a lot of things said that can't be taken back. I've already told my mother to enjoy her retirement, and I don't expect to get anything, but apparently I'm going to steal the inheritance.
What is it with some people and other peoples money? Nothing brings out the worst in some humans than an inheritance. I'm sorry you've got bad people picking at old scabs, Tim. That sucks.
In reply to dculberson :
Yeah, and barring any surprises, my mom should be around for quite a while, so the comment about me stealing that inheritance really hit me hard.
Ever have a seemingly stable ladder suddenly kick out from under you? That wierd feeling of, "oh..!" as you levitate for a brief moment and fall 5 feet to crumple on to the ground? Or the surprised look on your face when you realize what brushed your right ear was a sharp, vertical slab of sheet metal that, given another 8 inches to the right, would have cut your head clean off? Cause that happened.
In reply to Appleseed :
Holy ouch! Can't say I've ever done that, but I'm super glad you only almost did that other thing.
In reply to dculberson :
I mentioned this a while back. Stepdad's daughter is suddenly part of his life... now that he's 95 and she's very interested in his will. At one point when she found out my Mom was going to inherit everything if he dies, freaked and said, Mike's going to get your house.
I've always had a good relationship with him, but now that she's involved our conversations have gone from thanks for everything you do for us, we have nobody else we can count on to him picking fights with my mom about your son's an shiny happy person, and trying to take my house from me.
I was there Monday and found some paperwork that essentially severs the relationship to my Mom for the purposes of inheritance, and I know exactly where that's coming from.
There's a good reason she was cut out of her Dad's will. He gave his fairly new top model Kia Soul to the grandson when he started university so he'd have reliable transportation. His daughter took it and gave the kid her old beater... and that was the final straw. He seems to forget that now but he seems to forget everything lately too.
I neither need or want his money or house, nor have I ever asked either of them about their wills. It's none of my business. But all this BS has turned a good relationship into into a toxic situation for me and my Mom.
And I'm pissed
dculberson said:What is it with some people and other peoples money? Nothing brings out the worst in some humans than an inheritance. I'm sorry you've got bad people picking at old scabs, Tim. That sucks.
People who are trouble in that way were already trouble in other ways - it may just not have been as a obvious. Don't get me started about my FIL's second wife. That conniving bitch (yes, I called her that to her face) makes me wish there was a hell so she can burn in it.
Sorry, Tim, that sucks. I hope it works out with a minimum of stress.
I never did buy the whole 'blood is thicker than water' thing. You don't get to choose your relatives.
Maybe it's just because my folks aren't wealthy or anything, but I've never been able to understand the mentality that you're somehow entitled to your parents' or grandparents' stuff when they pass away. Or even more mind-boggling: before they pass away. I will say that I had one exception in the Walther that my grandfather brought back from WWII. The German soldier to whom it was issued didn't need it anymore, so it came home as a trophy. A little while ago, Dad found someone who was interested in trading him a Fox-body Mustang for it but before he did the deal he asked me if it was okay. Now, I have little to no interest in the pistol as a firearm or as having any intrinsic value, but I am hugely interested in it as being part of the family story and years ago, dad said that he'd set it aside for me. I felt really guilty because I'm not really in a financial position to give him what this other guy considered it to be worth so I told him that it didn't belong to me and he should do whatever he wanted with it. While it had great sentimental value to me, I wasn't really willing to put my money where my mouth was, so if he wanted to trade it that was entirely his business and I didn't get a vote. He told me right away (and my mom confirmed) that he had decided before calling me that if I expressed any interest at all in keeping the Walther in the family, he wasn't going to get rid of it so despite my encouraging him to do what he wanted with it, he hung on to it. I'm happy about that, but had he sold it off, I wouldn't have had any hard feelings: it's his stuff and I don't have any claim to it.
They went through the process of putting things in trusts and whatnot last year and they seemed to really deliberate over who was going to be getting what, but despite how important it seemed to Mom & Dad, they just couldn't get my brothers, sister, and I to get that invested in the process. Mom is so concerned about wanting to make sure there's "something left to leave you guys" while my siblings and I keep telling them that they should live their lives so that the check to the funeral home bounces. The way I see it, the way they scrimped and saved to raise us and send us to good schools and all that stuff, we took an advance on any inheritance that we may have had and they should just enjoy the hell out of whatever they've got!
In reply to wae :
That's generally been my attitude as well. My father made sure we all had some things of his before he passed away, and (at least in my case) he offered far more than I was willing to take. Now that I think about it, ironically, the proceeds from the sale of one of his coin collections is a major part of this mess right now, and it is a collection he offered to give me when he was still alive. It wasn't even in his will, but there was a verbal decision about how the money would be allocated (higher education only for a family member), and that family member has decided not to pursue said education. I think the money is still being held off to the side in case they change their mind.
My mom is not wealthy, but is well provided for. I'm of the same opinion if the check to the funeral home bounces, that's fine. She should get to live her life without having to deal with this crap.
eastsideTim said:In reply to dculberson :
Yeah, and barring any surprises, my mom should be around for quite a while, so the comment about me stealing that inheritance really hit me hard.
Man, a little bit ago my mother made a comment about not spending too much because then she wouldn't have an inheritance to pass on to me. I was dumbfounded. Mom, you've worked your ass off for decades. Spend ALL of it. Spend it the way you want to. You want an AR15? Do it. You want a camaro convertible AND an M car? Do it. You want to buy a new ski boat? DO IT. I do not expect anything, and will be MUCH happier if you enjoy the last few decades of your life not worrying about leaving me something. I'm perfectly content.
Finally got around to checking the plugs on the Dodge Ram 1500 4.7. I've owned it 7 or 8 months now, fixed a few things. Got it just about right. The plug I pulled was the OEM copper Champion. 30,000-mile change interval. This plug, I am quite sure, came with the truck, which now shows over 125,000 miles. The electrode was essentially flush with the tip of the insulator. The gap was approaching a tenth of an inch. WTF is the matter with people?
Kinda surprised it ran so well. Replaced them with NGK platinums. Hoping to get a tick better fuel economy.
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
Might need to consider new coils soon. I'm guessing they were working really hard.
In reply to eastsideTim :
Yup. Visually okay, but if I start getting a misfire, I'll know where to look first.
Edit: I know on the Mazda MPV I had, the coils were known to crap out early. Haven't heard the same about these, but maybe that's because I wasn't listening. 
APEowner said:The Roku Ultra is the most frustrating piece of consumer electronics I've ever had the misfortune to own. I bought it because my DirecTV receiver died and I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to switch to streaming.
I messed around with the Raspberry Pi that I had been using to stream Amazon Prime trying to get it to work with Fubo or Sling so I could get the channels I want but between Linux DRM issues and the minimal hardware I wasn't able to get it to work.
I finally bit the bullet and sprang for the Roku Ultra thinking I could just plug it and watch tv and that's been a horrible experience. I've never been able to get the Fubo app to work and the Sling app only works after removing the app, rebooting the device and then reinstalling. Then it'll sometimes work for a while.
I don't want watching TV to be an engineering exercise. I just want the damn thing to work. The Roku is going back and I may just buy a cheap PC and use a web browser.
Followup on this. It turns out that I had purchased a dud. The exchange person at Best Buy said that they almost never get returns on those so I tried another and it works great.
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
My knowledge on it is mostly with LS type engines. Seems they can run well on worn plugs for quite a while, but it is hard on the coils, so they tend to start failing, even after the plugs have been swapped.
Our 2022 autocross season has been a little rough. Our Solo head wants out because he's sick of fighting internal and external factors that keep him from making changes or growing the program. Our timing system has E36 M3 the bed at both of our events so far and caused an hour of downtime as it was cajoled back to life. Now we had our 3rd and 4th events coming up as a doubleheader in a week and a half and we just had to cancel them. The track we are using was foreclosed on a couple years ago and last year we got permission to run there from the new owner. Now the old owner is claiming he still owns it and there's a big argument about the legal ownership and so we can't run there
1988RedT2 said:Finally got around to checking the plugs on the Dodge Ram 1500 4.7. I've owned it 7 or 8 months now, fixed a few things. Got it just about right. The plug I pulled was the OEM copper Champion. 30,000-mile change interval. This plug, I am quite sure, came with the truck, which now shows over 125,000 miles. The electrode was essentially flush with the tip of the insulator. The gap was approaching a tenth of an inch. WTF is the matter with people?
Kinda surprised it ran so well. Replaced them with NGK platinums. Hoping to get a tick better fuel economy.
We had a Toyota Vitz / Echo / Yaris with the 1300 vvt motor. It got a bit hard to start at around the 140 thousand kilometre mark (bought at about 110). Took the plugs out and found the smallest gap was 1.5 mm and the largest 2.5, my friendly mechanic was pretty sure they were original and the hard to start later turned out to be an air temperature sensor issue 
Further to the comments up thread on wills and inheritances the NZ Law Society has just released a report that says "testamentary inheritance" (ie a will) is grossly outdated and legislation is needed to fix it by defining how an estate should be divided based on age, need, relationship (including children of a previous partner) yada yada yada . Sounds to me like a field day for the legal profession ...
Minor compared to my earlier rant, but a big Summit order I placed yesterday shipped today, from Nevada. It may or may not make it this weekend, depending on if UPS decides to grace our neighborhood with their presence. When they ship from the Ohio warehouse, I usually get stuff the next day.
I.......really hate the level of growth up here sometimes because of the people moving in.
People who have always lived in the city don't understand that roads are not all public property, nor that you have access to everything you want to.
New neighbors suck
Spend $600 on a disk brake kit for the beetle, Cant get a decent alignment with the new spindles, wheel bearing fit in the rotors poorly, grease seals fall out of rotor, rotors fit poorly on the spindles, thrust washers dont fit. Then spend literally 15 hours trying to bleed the brake system. absolutely no brake pedal, but cant get air to come out anywhere.
Car sits all last summer.
This spring get a bug up my rear annoyed the car sat. Buy a different brake kit. its $200 less. Spindles are perfect, alignment spot on, wheel bearings are nice and fit well, grease seals fit. Rotors slide right on spindles and adjust properly. Mount calipers and gravity bleed, no air left. Wife pumps the brake pedal, bleed system, not one bubble. Perfect brakes.
What I couldnt do in 20 hours last year took less than 3 this year. Dont buy EMPI parts for your VW.
In reply to NickD :
That sucks.
If anything ever kills autocross as a sport, it's going to be lack of available venues.
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