Author Topic: Cellar Scribblings  (Read 8681592 times)

Offline CellarDweller

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Re: Cellar Scribblings
« Reply #15690 on: August 15, 2018, 06:07:27 pm »
Hiya Bettermost friends!

I hope everyone is doing well!

I worked from home yesterday, I had to take my car to the shop, and just got it back today.

I filled it with gas on Friday, and when I got home, it smelled like gas.  I thought that maybe station attendant spilled some gas on the car when he filled it up.  Saturday it POURED and my area was one of the ones that was dealing with some flooding.  Anything spilled on the car would've been washed away.   When I parked the car on Monday, I could still smell gas.  There were no puddles around, and the fuel gauge hadn't gone down dramatically, just for what was normal use, so fumes were getting out somewhere.

Since I had no desire to drive a car that could burst into flames, I took it to the shop.

My account is now $900.00 emptier, but I did get a bit of work done on the Tracker.  I had the oil changed (it was due in a few miles anyway), a new axle shaft, a new fuel line and fittings, a new fuel filter, a new air filter, and a new latch for the back door, which was only working when it wanted to.

:laugh:

My mechanic is very reliable and honest.  I've been going to him since I learned out to drive, and there have been times I've asked if something needs to be done, and he'll tell me "no" flat out, so I don't worry about him finding fake things to fix to inflate the bill.

One of the reasons it took so long is that the car will be 15 years old next year, so finding new parts is becoming tricky.  That's one of the reasons I'm out for a new car in 2019.


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline CellarDweller

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Re: Cellar Scribblings
« Reply #15691 on: August 15, 2018, 06:20:10 pm »
Saw a good musician play last night with LauraGigs, then watched fireworks from my balcony. Today, I'm taking grandsons to the circus after church. A great weekend!

Sounds like you had a busy, but fun weekend!  Nice!!!

Yes! Going to Las Vegas, not to gamble  though. Just to drink some Margaritas and to go shopping at the outlet centre.

Hello Corax.  I can understand that,  I'm not a gambler at all.  I live maybe 3 hours from Atlantic City, and I've been there a total of 3 times in my life.  If a trip is planned with friends, I'll go, but gambling isn't really my thing.

I've only been to Las Vegas once, years ago, and also didn't gamble. My impression was that it's a great place if you're not a gambler because the gamblers subsidize your cheap food and lodging. My family of four stayed a couple of nights in Caesar's Palace for $100 a night. Granted, this was the late '90s, and we got the room that cheap because we waited until the end of the day, when they're eager to get whatever they can for rooms that would otherwise go empty.

I have to say, i've never stayed in Atlantic City overnight, so I don't know what the cost would be.  If I was in Vegas, I'd have no choice.  Not like I can drive home from there.

Las Vegas is ridiculously expensive these days. Gone are the cheap deals on meals and such (the heyday of that was the last time Katherine & then family visited). Steve's sister and hub live there and we stop for a week during our trek north from spending the winter on the Colorado River on the CA/AZ border. I like to gamble but, along with the disappearing cheap meals/accommodation, the casino's are tight these days. I agree with Crow. The margarita's is where it's at and those at Michoacán in LV are to die for. Chuck, you need to get on a plane...….

Hiya Brad!  Good to see ya!   Perhaps one day I'll get myself on a plane to LV, just to say I've been there.   I don't see any trips in the foreseeable future, however.  My immediate plans are to get a new 2019 car at the beginning of summer.  It will be a 50th birthday gift to myself.  My bday is in January, but I don't want to get a new car at that time.  I'll wait for better weather, and get it in either late spring or early summer.

I also need to sit down with a financial planner.   I have a 401K that I started 20 years ago, a money market, a retirement account, an account in a credit union, and some mystery account that no one in my family can remember what it is, but it's got some money it it.  LOL  I want to see down with the planner and make sure that everything is doing what it should, or if I should make changes.

I do not gamble, have never had a margarita (sp?) in my life and only shop when necessary so Las Vegas is nowhere on my horizon. to ever visit.   I am complaining about the costs here in London. Last night I  bought Fish 'n chips for £7 (NZ$13.50).  The same in NZ which I buy usually once per week costs me $8 and is much nicer.   I had coffee and cake in the afternoon for £7.75 (NZ$14) and would think expensive if I paid NZ$10 at home.   My first night at the Proms I bought an ice cream at interval and it cost £4.50 (NZ$8) and again, while the tub is a bit smaller, it only costs NZ$5 at a concert interval at home.   The $NZ is currently about US 66 cents but thankfully my travel money is $Au which is currently US 73 cents.  I am buying dinner out tonight as I have 2 Prom concerts, one at 4pm and the other at 8pm. It is the only meal out of my apartment this week in London. I am hoping next week in Scotland will have cheaper prices as I am staying in hotels or B&Bs so have to buy dinner out every night. I will be back in London in a different apartment for 2 weeks starting August 22.

Yes, I've heard that London can be very pricey.  The last time I was in London, I was told by friends to stay in Putney instead, as it is close and more affordable.   Hope the prices are better when you get to Scotland!


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Cellar Scribblings
« Reply #15692 on: August 16, 2018, 10:09:28 am »
I thought that maybe station attendant spilled some gas on the car when he filled it up.

The whu' ...??

Does NJ still commonly have gas stations with attendants who fill up the customers' cars? I haven't seen one of those in literally decades.

Quote
My mechanic is very reliable and honest.  I've been going to him since I learned out to drive, and there have been times I've asked if something needs to be done, and he'll tell me "no" flat out, so I don't worry about him finding fake things to fix to inflate the bill.

Oh, that's good! When I first saw your long list of repairs I thought maybe it was one of those places that upsell you with unnecessary "fixes." I've run into a few of those.

Funny story, not quite on topic but adjacent to it: When I lived in Oak Park, IL, I used to take my car to this one garage that was widely respected. One day I got a flat and took it there to get it changed. Drove home. The next night I'm driving in rush-hour traffic, luckily on a four-lane city street rather than a freeway. At a stoplight, the guy in the next car over beeped and said, "Your wheel is falling off!"

Yikes. I pulled over and was fine. I called that same garage and told them to come out and fix it. The problem wheel was the same one whose tire they had changed. Obviously someone at the garage had forgotten to put the lug nuts back on or whatever.

When I confronted the garage owner about this, he angrily insisted that wasn't possible. His mechanics were far too experienced and skilled ever to make such a rookie mistake. He theorized that someone had snuck into my garage at night and, with no apparent motive, loosened the lug nuts on just one wheel of my car -- coincidentally, the very same wheel that this garage had worked on the day before.

Um ... Occam's Razor, anyone?  :laugh:

He grudgingly didn't charge me to put it back on right, but with an attitude like he was doing me a favor.





Offline southendmd

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Re: Cellar Scribblings
« Reply #15693 on: August 16, 2018, 11:55:21 am »
The whu' ...??

Does NJ still commonly have gas stations with attendants who fill up the customers' cars? I haven't seen one of those in literally decades.


I'm sure Chuck can tell you why, but in NJ, apparently you are not allowed to pump your own gas!

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Cellar Scribblings
« Reply #15694 on: August 16, 2018, 12:12:20 pm »
I'm sure Chuck can tell you why, but in NJ, apparently you are not allowed to pump your own gas!

It's the law, or so I've heard. Being just across the river from Jersey, I've heard the law was made to protect jobs, but I'm sure Chuck can us whether that's true or not.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Cellar Scribblings
« Reply #15695 on: August 16, 2018, 01:07:45 pm »
Yes, it must be about protecting jobs. Self-pumping gas has been around in most places for decades and I've never heard of it being a big safety or environmental hazard.

One time I was getting gas and an older woman asked if I could help her do hers. Apparently she'd never done it before. So of course I did. Then I posted about that incident on FB, and people (correctly, I think) theorized that her husband had always done it but had recently died.  :-\

My stepmother hung in there as long as she could, declining to learn how to pump gas and habituating the one station that still had full service. But I think even they're long gone.

Chuck, can you clear up the mystery?



Offline brianr

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Re: Cellar Scribblings
« Reply #15696 on: August 16, 2018, 04:39:42 pm »
It was one big change for me when I migrated. In Australia you almost always fill your own tank with petrol while in New Zealand you rarely have to do so or often  I will put the nozzle into the tank as the attendant is busy and then s/he comes and takes over while I go in to the shop to pay.  One funny time was when I asked her to 'fill her up' and she asked me where my twang came from. The vowel 'i' is very different in Australia and NZ. Now I am careful to pronounce 'fill" the NZ way.

 I had problems in Alaska because I had to put my postcode into the machine with the card and had to go into the office and the guy came out and only with great difficulty would he start the pump for me, I had to leave my card in the office. In Australia you sometimes have to put your card in first but mainly late at night in cities. There are unattended pumps in small country towns in NZ where  you put your card in first. Generally you fill then go in and pay. There are drive offs but they are rare enough to be reported in the paper and of course are recorded on CCTV so usually a stolen car.

Offline CellarDweller

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Re: Cellar Scribblings
« Reply #15697 on: August 17, 2018, 07:42:05 pm »
Hiya Bettermost friends!

I hope everyone is doing well!

Today was a busy day at work, but I managed to get everything done, and manged to learn a few new things regarding creating reports in Excel.

It was pay day as well, so that made everything good!  ;D

I already did some online shopping for my groceries, and some in-store shopping for new flatware, steak knives and utensils for the kitchen.

;D

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!!!


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline CellarDweller

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Re: Cellar Scribblings
« Reply #15698 on: August 17, 2018, 07:50:03 pm »
I filled it with gas on Friday, and when I got home, it smelled like gas.  I thought that maybe station attendant spilled some gas on the car when he filled it up.

The whu' ...??

Does NJ still commonly have gas stations with attendants who fill up the customers' cars? I haven't seen one of those in literally decades.

I'm sure Chuck can tell you why, but in NJ, apparently you are not allowed to pump your own gas!

It's the law, or so I've heard. Being just across the river from Jersey, I've heard the law was made to protect jobs, but I'm sure Chuck can us whether that's true or not.

Yes, it must be about protecting jobs. Self-pumping gas has been around in most places for decades and I've never heard of it being a big safety or environmental hazard.

Chuck, can you clear up the mystery?

It was one big change for me when I migrated. In Australia you almost always fill your own tank with petrol while in New Zealand you rarely have to do so, or often  I will put the nozzle into the tank as the attendant is busy and then s/he comes and takes over while I go in to the shop to pay.  One funny time was when I asked her to 'fill her up' and she asked me where my twang came from. The vowel 'i' is very different in Australia and NZ. Now I am careful to pronounce 'fill" the NZ way.

I had problems in Alaska because I had to put my postcode into the machine with the card and had to go into the office and the guy came out and only with great difficulty would he start the pump for me, I had to leave my card in the office. In Australia you sometimes have to put your card in first but mainly late at night in cities. There are unattended pumps in small country towns in NZ where  you put your card in first. Generally you fill then go in and pay. There are drive offs but they are rare enough to be reported in the paper and of course are recorded on CCTV so usually a stolen car.


At 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, New Jersey became the last state in the nation where drivers are not allowed to pump their own gasoline around the clock.

That is when Oregon, the only other holdover from the full-service era of the 1970s, loosened its restrictions. Its new law allows residents of most counties with fewer than 40,000 people to fuel up their cars themselves.

That leaves Jersey, only Jersey, with its dense tangle of highways and byways, its turnpike rest stops named for state luminaries and its status as the home of the first drive-in theater, as the sole state where it is illegal everywhere to fill your own tank 24 hours a day.

It is a distinction that makes Declan J. O’Scanlon Jr., a state lawmaker, spout frustration by the gallon.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Mr. O’Scanlon, a Republican assemblyman from Monmouth County who will soon take a seat in the State Senate. “If I want to pull in, get in and out quickly, I should be able to do so.”

Mr. O’Scanlon said that he frequently pumps his own gas, ignoring the Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act of 1949, the statute that first forbade civilians from putting their grubby hands on the nozzle.

“I break the law in New Jersey on a regular basis,” he said. “Someone can come to my door and cuff me if they want.”

Two years ago in the Assembly, Mr. O’Scanlon was one of several legislators to sponsor a bill allowing self-service stations. It stalled.

One prominent opponent of the idea is the president of the State Senate, Stephen M. Sweeney, a Democrat, who remains immovable. In an emailed statement Friday, Mr. Sweeney said that he saw no good reason to change a system that worked.

“When we have winters like the one this year, I don’t see many men and women who want to pump their own gas,” he said. “It’s something that makes New Jersey a little more unique and the people of New Jersey like it that way.”

Polling and interviews suggest that the state’s natives agree. The actor Bobby Cannavale, who grew up in the state, said that it never bothers him, though he does forget every time he leaves and comes back, and has to be ushered back into his car by the attendant. He added that he sometimes gets nervous for a split second that he’ll never get his credit card back.

“You’re sitting in your car just handing a guy your credit card,” he said. “He can hand it to another guy in another car and you’re done.”

Chris Christie proposed self-serve gas during his gubernatorial campaign in 2009, but dropped the proposal because the negative response from the public was so ferocious. At a town hall-style meeting in 2016, he said that it was a gender issue, citing a poll that indicated that 78 percent of women in the state were only too happy to stay in their cars.

Ashley Koning, the director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, said in an interview that the idea of pumping one’s own gas had never been broadly favorable in New Jersey.

“It’s kind of one of the third rails of state politics,” she said, noting that women and older people in particular enjoyed the service.

A December 2015 Rutgers-Eagleton poll found that almost three-quarters of the state’s residents preferred to have gas pumped for them, and that 84 percent of women preferred the service.

(article continues at the link below)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/nyregion/new-jersey-gas-pump.html


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Cellar Scribblings
« Reply #15699 on: August 17, 2018, 08:37:27 pm »
O'Scanlon: “If I want to pull in, get in and out quickly, I should be able to do so.”

 :laugh:  Most people want it to last at least a little while.  ;D
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.