The last week or so has been quite hectic in my life. At least, hectic for what I'm accustomed to. I am a very routine, planned out person and try making sure I'm not inconveniencing anyone. I felt like every turn I took I was getting in the way of others.
Long story short, I didn't handle it as well as I could or should have. If I took out those frustrations on folks here, I sincerely apologize. I do not wish to make anyone to feel their thoughts, opinions or what not is not welcomed.
Again, I apologize for my being an asshole the last couple weeks, well, MORE of an asshole. None of you did anything to deserve it. It was unfair and I am sorry.
If you're curious about some of the highlighted details of what's been going on, here you go. If you don't read it, that's fine. It felt good to get it out anyway.
A few weeks ago I brought my truck in for an estimate. They came back saying I needed $3,645.57 ($2,061.07 in parts and $1,349.85 in labor) in repairs. Clearly, I am in the wrong profession! The truck is a 2000 Dodge Ram 1500 Sport 5.9L so as you can imagine, that's a lot of money for an old ass ride. They outlined lots of front end work (tie rods, axles, ball joints, etc), power steering pump, transmission mount and driver side hydraulic brake hose. I knew about the front end work, which is why I brought into the shop to begin with.
I spent a week or so buying up all the parts, including wheel bearings which brought the total to $905. My buddy Cory says he bring it over Saturday (11/9) and he'll get it done that day or Monday.
That same Saturday our web host was attacked. When I checked in the morning and got the error, I figured meh, it'll be back up in 5 minutes, no worries. As I checked periodically through the day I grew worrisome. My daughter had a performance that evening so didn't get back home until late. Site still down.
Sunday 11/10 - I scrambled to get a new host that could handle our database and everything. Got the site "sorta" online. Figured, OK, we lost like five months of posts, but my host says once we the databases unecrypted we'll be ready to rock. I'm thinking so I'll have to merge the data, so what. I can handle that.
Monday 11/11 - I have to get tires for my car and my girlfriends car, plus have Cory replace the wheel bearings on the front end. Scheduling this was difficult as my girlfriend was leaving for work travel Tuesday morning, which meant I was handling my girls, plus her two little ones too. End of the day, still no word on my truck.
Tuesday 11/12 - Around 7:40 PM Cory says truck is done, but instead of $400 he needs $450. It's not the money that bothers me, it's that I had to make an extra trip. Another problem was the Saturn wasn't at home, so I had to have Keiana give me a ride to the Saturn, so I could swap it for the truck. And that meant Rebecca had to watch the girlfriends kids. After getting to Cory's he says one of the steel brake lines is ready to burst and I need an alignment (expected).
-- I'm thinking OK so tomorrow schedule an alignment and pick up the Saturn and how the hell am I gonna do this --
Tuesday 11/12 - Around 11 PM Cory texts me the Saturn is done, come get it otherwise it'll get a ticket if parked on the road overnight. Once again, I need Keiana drive me -- she was fine with it, but I hated having to rely on her when she should be sleeping. Cory put me in a shitty spot there -- I feel anyway.
Wednesday 11/13 - Saturn is done. Truck is done. Work slams me like a shit ton of bricks. Apparently, everything that others couldn't do fell into my lap and each of the four things were emergencies. Meaning, drop everything and work on it. I had people coming in an out of my area non-stop. I somehow got my truck scheduled for an alignment for Thursday an they said drop it off today. Keiana finished school around 1 PM and picked me up at the shop where I dropped the truck off. Work keeps hammering me to fix things I don't support or have knowledge about. The other three developers were gone and so was the database administrator and her backup. The shop calls saying truck is done, but we noticed your brakes were really soft. I finish work and Keiana picks me up and drops me off at the shop. I get into the truck and brake pedal goes straight to the floor. Oh, and it's the worst road weather we've had this winter. I put it in 4x4 and drove slow and used parking brake and lever to slow me down while keeping a distance. It took me 50 minutes to do a 15 minute drive.
Friday 11/15 - Vacation day. I see the hydraulic brake hose is squirting, so I start taking it off. But there's a rusty bracket that has four other brake lines connected to it. If I turn it wrong, I'll be forced to redo all brake lines. I call up a shop to see how much it'll cost for them to do it. The lady wouldn't even hear me out and said "I need to see it". I looked up the brake hose again and this time found one without that bracket. I was excited thinking holy shit, I might actually be able to do this after all. I go to AutoZone for the steel brake line that is rusted through and the guy does not know anything about parts. Nice guy, but wasted 45 minutes or more of my time because he wouldn't listen to me. Finally get the line. I replace the brake hose and the steel line connected to it and start pumping the brakes. I see two steams squirting!! WTF!! I was dejected as hell thinking when the hell is this gonna end!! I take off the busted brake line which went from behind the front driver side tire towards the front of the truck and back to behind the passenger front tire. Wow.
Saturday 11/16 - The girlfriend and I bring her Saturn to the tire shop and they say 4-5 hours they'll have both Kia and Saturn tires done. I said nope, I need one of the vehicles, you only get the Saturn. We head home and pick up the brake line I need. Somehow, someway, I get that punk installed and no more leaks! Elation sets in! Smart me, I thought ahead and bought two new bleeder valves figuring the old ones are rusted. Driver side one comes off just fine. I go to passenger side and that sommbitch breaks off!! That means I need to replace the brake caliper!! Elation gone, pissed off sets in again. I'm extremely careful with the caliper bolts and STRIP. They have the stupid female star shape junk. So I'm thinking great, I need the damn bracket too! I look around town and NO ONE has the damn caliper bracket! I rip the existing bracket and caliper off the truck and somehow get the caliper separated. Good news, I only need the caliper. I'm back in business! I pick up the caliper and guess what. GUESS FREAKING WHAT! The damn brake caliper comes WITH the damn bracket I spent an hour looking for!! And a new bleeder valve. Go figure. As I'm ready to bleed the brakes the tire shop calls saying Saturn is done, come get it before 5 PM. That gave me 30 minutes to bleed the brakes AND get across town. We ended up getting the Saturn at 4:58 PM.
Sunday 11/17 - Work has a SQL server upgrade that I'm part of starting at 7 AM. Not ideal, but hey my truck is done! While waiting for my part I hit PackersHome.com ... ... ERROR. WTF! NO! Worst part about it is I can't do shit about it because I'm working and we have this clown who doesn't have a clue what to do fumble farting around. And while this is going on we get a Priority 1 incident (that means STOP everything and fix issue). I'm irritated that the site is down AGAIN. Thankfully, I didn't cancel the 'new' host and while juggling that crap was able to get the real files upload to the new host and get the DNS pointed to as well. What really pisses me off about the host is I spent hours helping others getting their sites back online and threw up a guide for folks and what not. And then 503 error. Pissed off was an understatement.
Monday 11/18 - My mother would be 57 today and that is something that I should he handling better, but that's been weighing on me hard. It always does in November until after the 18th. I don't know why I can't handle it better, but I am working on it. It is also Rebecca's 16th birthday today and I don't want it to be sour for her because it's grandma's birthday.