UnfortunateShit.com

So the night before thanksgiving, I’m doing some work in my office and I hear, “Dave…  The TV isn’t working.”  Great.  The DirecTV HD DVR in my living room evidently crapped out.  It locked up, and upon rebooting it I was greeted with a “ERROR 14 – Internal Storage Problem.”  Several reboots later, I was on the phone with DirecTV.  They ordered a replacement receiver, but could not guarantee what model I would receive.  Over a year ago, I fought tooth and nail to get the HR24 receiver, because the previous models are painfully slow.  I was certain that I was going to get one of the previous models, because the guy said I would be receiving a refurbished unit. Oh, and did I mention I have to pay $20 for shipping on the replacement receiver?

The order didn’t get officially entered until Friday afternoon, due to the holiday.  7 days go by…

Last night I received the replacement unit.  To my surprise, it was an HR24!  I was quite pleased.  I immediately unboxed it and hooked it up in place of the dead unit.  Upon plugging it in, I kept hearing the “bong” noise through the speakers that you normally hear when you press an invalid button on the remote.  My first thought was that they had shipped me a remote and I didn’t see it in the box, and the buttons were being mashed.  No remote in the box.  I went through the entire activation process (muted the audio).  When the programming finally came up, it started wildly cycling through the screen resolutions.  So fast that my TV couldn’t keep up and I basically just saw a black screen.  The resolution indicator on the front of the unit was rapidly and erratically cycling between 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p.  This particular unit has a touch-sensitive front panel, so it does not have any physical “hard” buttons.  For some reason, it thinks the resolution button is being pressed repeatedly.  In an effort to stop it, I press the resolution “button”, and some of the other buttons on the front of the unit.  No joy.  It just keeps cycling through the resolutions.  I thought maybe I should block the front of the unit, to make sure that it wasn’t getting some erroneous IR signal causing this to happen.  The cycling continued.  So again, I’m on the phone with DirecTV.  This time they run me through 20 minutes of useless troubleshooting.  “Try unplugging the HDMI cable from the receiver.  Ok, reboot it.  Ok, now try unplugging the HDMI cable from the TV.”  ?!  Eventually, the “tech” concludes that the replacement receiver has an internal issue.  They assign me a case manager and tell me that I will be contacted within two hours.  Mind you, it is 8:30pm on a Wednesday.  Unsurprisingly, I don’t get a phone call that night.

This morning I got a call just after 8am from a case manager in Colorado.  She asked me to explain to her, in detail, the issue and the steps I’ve taken to try to resolve it.  She recommends having a technician visit my house.  I tell her that I don’t want to take time off work to resolve this issue.  She says that my only other option is “chance” having another receiver shipped to my house.  She says that she has no way to guarantee that it will be an HR24, and that it may or may not have a similar issue.  How can you run a business like this?  Is there no quality control?  By the tone in her voice, I could tell that she did not have a high level of confidence in the refurbished receivers that ship from their warehouse.  I suspect that their quality control process consists of little more than checking to see if the lights come on when it is plugged in, and then it gets shipped out to another poor sap.  There is no shipping charge for the second replacement, and I managed to get her to credit me the shipping for the first unit.  Still not really compensation for not having service for what will probably wind up being 11 days (at best).

I’m amazed by how little control anyone seems to have over this process.  She said the receiver should arrive in 2 days, but she couldn’t promise that the order would get processed today.  It was 8:30am (6:30am her time) on a week day.  If she submitted the order during the call, how could it not be processed the same day?  She had no ability to choose to ship me a new receiver, vs a refurbished one.  Apparently the only way you can get a new receiver is to have a tech visit your home and install it himself.  What a sweet setup.

I realize it’s just TV.  Big fucking deal, in the grand scheme of things.  But this kind of stuff infuriates me to no end!  So, DirecTV, you are on very thin ice.  One more strike and I’ll be choosing an alternative content provider.

To be continued…

So my neighbor has a large Silver Maple tree in her backyard.  It hangs over my driveway and frequently drops large branches on our vehicles.  I’ve had lots of dents/scratches in my vehicles over the year, courtesy of this tree.  So I finally work out a deal with my neighbor to have the tree cut down.  It was scheduled to be cut down on Wednesday (yesterday).  However, the tree guy had to postpone the work due to weather.  This morning I went to get in my truck to go to work, and couldn’t open the door.  The door handle was GONE.  There’s a huge 20′ limb laying next to my truck, and the door handle is laying in the grass next to it.  The door also has some nice scratches on it.  Awesome!  How’s that for lucky?  The same day the tree was supposed to be cut down, we have a wind storm and a fallen limb breaks the door handle off of my truck.

So over the last couple of days, I have been building a new VMWare server / NAS in my basement.  This involves ordering and assembling probably 50 different components.  One of those components is the case that everything mounts to.  Last night I completed mounting everything in the case, and began testing.  I could not, for the life of me, get this server to turn on.  Since I had assembled everything over a couple day span, I figured I must have missed or forgotten about something.  I start double checking all of my work, and I can’t find anything wrong with it.  Finally, I get frustrated and just short the pins for the power button with a screwdriver.  The server immediately powers on!  WTF?  So I test the power button with an ohmmeter.  It reads about 130ohms.  That means the button sort of works, but isn’t quite completely making a connection.  How the hell does that even happen?  How hard is it to manufacture a power button?

So my options are this:  I either disassemble the entire server and return the case, for a new one (a huge amount of work), I install a secondary power button and stick it to the front of the case (cheese), or I just deal with a server that doesn’t have a power button.  I have the server configured to automatically power-on when it receives power from the wall, but having to unplug the power cord to shutdown the server is not exactly what I had in mind.  What a pain in the ass!

Oh, and to be clear, this is a rackmount case, with a very unique power button.  It’s not something I can just purchase and replace.  What a pain in the ass!

May of 2010 we are in the process of moving from Lansing to Grand Rapids. I have loaded up the Traverse I was driving at the time with boxes, kids and hooked up the camper to haul to the new place. Chris has already headed out with his Dad and a truck load of stuff. On the highway in 5 o’clock traffic on a Friday I am driving along when all of the sudden the car in front of me swerve’s out of our lane, I look quickly around and see that I can not make the same move, not only because I am hauling the longest freaking camper ever but because there are cars all around me. Then I see why the car swerved… there is a freaking tire, rim and all, laying in the middle of the highway! I have no option but to slow down but that doesn’t help much. I run over the stupid tire, it catches on the undercarriage and I continue to drag it while I come to a stop. Once I stopped and pulled over, I get out (a fun task all by its self on the highway at 5 o’clock), I smell rubber burning and look under the car. Yup the tire is lodged under there.  Does anyone stop to help? nope.  Who would stop for the crazy lady kicking the front end of the car on the highway screaming obscenities, “who leave a f*&^%^& tire on the highway?” Once I calmed down a bit I decide to back up my car, mind you I have the camper hooked up and I am on the HIGHWAY at 5 o’clock. I get this train backed up, removed the tire from under my car and kick the stupid f@#! down the side of the road. So if your ever driving on 96 NW towards GR look to your left just passed the Grand Ledge exit, you’ll see the stupid tire down there by a tree.

This happened to my dad’s computer (with a genuine Intel motherboard).  He was just using it as he normally would, and smoke started billowing out of it.  I imagine there was a frantic struggle to turn the thing off, and get it the hell out of the house, but I don’t remember all of the details.  I’m pretty sure this doesn’t support my theory that it’s best to just leave computers on all the time, though.

My passenger side headlight went out on my 2001 GTI.  Headlight lamps are typically very easy to change because it’s something that has to be done frequently over the life of a car.  Volkswagen decided to make this a little more involved.

Each headlight module has a small door on the rear surface that can be opened up providing access to each of the four bulbs (high/low, fog, turn, day).  On the passenger side of the car, however, the headlight module is backed up and almost touching the wiper fluid reservoir and several tubes.  You can’t get your fingers or any tool in the gap to open the door, and even if you could, you wouldn’t be able to reach into the module to change any bulbs.

I figured I would just have to take the module out – not a big deal! Huge deal.  The front quarter panels wrap around the front of the modules, preventing them from coming forward out of the car.

I took the grill off and realized that the modules would have to go down underneath the front of the quarter panel.  The problem with that, however, was that the front bumper was in the way.  In order to take the front bumper off, I had to take the oil pan cover off the bottom of the car.  Once I got the bumper off, I was finally able to get the module out.

What a pain in the ass.  I’m surprised the windshield wipers don’t retreat into a steel compartment when not in use, forcing you to change them while they are on the highest speed.

That is a serious flat tire.

This is Erin.  This story is from December 31, 2010 (New Years Eve).  Do you remember how weird and awful the weather was that day?  39 degrees and raining!  Anyway, I wanted to go to the fitness center that morning, so I loaded up all 4 of the kids, in the cold and rain, (the realization of which when I went outside very nearly made me turn around and go back in) to go to there.

We get to the facility, and I pull up to the entry doors for a second to check which entrance they were using for child care that day.  I then needed to back up to actually get lined up to pull into a parking spot by the correct doors.  So, I backed up, keeping an eye out for any other cars pulling into the parking lot.  Also, for reference, I have a back up sensor on the truck that (as far as I know, every other time, consistently) starts beeping very annoyingly and persistently any time there is anything behind the truck.

Suddenly, I hear this horrible grinding sound and the truck jolts a little bit.  I stop immediately, put the truck back into drive, and try to drive forward. The truck would not move.  Mind you, this is a ridiculous beast of a vehicle…a diesel Ford Excursion.  I stopped again a moment, kind of stunned, and then tried again, giving a little more effort to the gas pedal.  We moved forward, but at a very uncomfortable, grinding, kind of lurching gait.  I go forward a couple truck lengths and stop, thinking I’m doing irreparable harm to this vehicle by trying to drive it.

So, I get the kids out of the vehicle, into the freezing cold and pouring rain, thinking I can at least let them go in and play with the other kids while I figure out how in the world I am going to get us home, since I am going to have to call a tow truck and find someone who can fit us all in their vehicle to get us home.  (Josh is in Ohio for work.)  We get in the doors, only to find that there isn’t even any child care that day!!!

This is the post that I tore out of the ground, bent over, and broke the top several inches off of.  I do wish I had thought to take a picture of the truck too…but it didn’t really show much.  The bumper had a gash in it, but not much else was visible.  Too bad the damage was still $900…

I’m going a bit further back in the archive, Dave – 2002.  Pretty simple task: go to the store and get some cat litter.  I went to the store and purchased cat litter.  I then came home.  As I yanked the bag of litter up off the floor of the car it got caught on the seat lever and, well, take a look.

This is how Newegg treats two Xeon E5606 processors.  Nice!