Posts Tagged ‘Gripes’
Un-neighborly Neighbors?
Posted by Erin | Filed under General
Do I ever do anything but whine on this site? 
Anyway, yes, more unhappiness, with pictures this time.
I snapped this pic of the butt-can outside the front door of our building a few weeks ago. This has since been cleaned up, but by the maintenance guys and not the jerks who left the mess.
The trash only gets dumped twice a week. The week before Memorial day, they dumped it on Thursday.. this is how it looked by mid-weekend.
Last weekend, we came home and discovered this lovely park job. The green car is my Bonneville. The photo is a bit of an optical illusion, I could not have physically walked between the vehicles, nor opened the driver’s door of my car.
Yesterday, Barton caught one of the residents of our building using our patio area as his own for a smoke break.
Smoking... on our patio.
Sick Again
Posted by Erin | Filed under General
Back at the end of January, I got sick. While a cold, for a normal person, might last a few days and be done with, for me they drag on and on and on. I don’t think I truly started feeling “better” until sometime after Valentine’s Day.
More Apartment Woes
Posted by Erin | Filed under General
The apartment above us is empty and the maintenance crew is apparently working up there to fix it up for new tenants. While I was making the stew, I heard a WHAM when they dropped something heavy on the floor. A little while later, I’m sitting at my desk writing up my previous post about making the beef barley stew, and there’s another WHAM.
This time, it jars the floor so hard that the light fixture, that is above and slightly to the right of me, breaks loose. One of the rods that holds the glass bowl of the fixture broke free and it was left swinging by the remaining 2 rods.
Needless to say, this pissed me off. The glass bowl, while not completely broken, is in no shape to go back up there, even if the rods that hold it in place are able to be screwed back into the fixture. The holes where the rods go through the bowl are chipping away. While taking it down before it fell down on me, I got showered with little shards of glass.
Pictures to follow (once my camera battery charges).
Blackberry
Posted by Erin | Filed under General
So, my Blackberry, the phone-that-does-everything that I wanted for so long, is now pissing me off. I’ve had it for a little over a year and I’m finding it less useful and more annoying every day.
- Despite setting the option to save new photos to the media card, the camera still saves them to “Device Memory”
- If a picture fails to upload (no matter the application) I cannot get it to upload using any other application, even after rebooting (forcing me to download the picture via the USB connection if I want to post it somewhere)
- Can’t find any decent (and free) personal time management apps
- Can’t find any decent (and free) budgeting apps
- I get shit for cell phone signal at my apartment, which drains the battery abnormally fast, not to mention I can’t even make phone calls, and 3G? HA! forget it
- I pay $100/month just for my phone. Which I can’t use half the time (see above)
- WordPress app is now apparently only available via “Blackberry App World” so I just had to download and install a completely new app to update one I already had
When my contract is up, I think I’m just going to go back to a basic, non-smart, cheap-as-I-can-get phone.
Commuting
Posted by Erin | Filed under Uncategorized
Since I now live in Grand Rapids, and my job is in Lansing, I get to commute 2 hours (roundtrip) every day on the expressway route from hell. I touch 3 major expressways on my way:
- US131 in Grand Rapids (Wyoming, technically)
- M6 along the south side of GR metro area
- I-96 from the east side to Lansing
I usually need to leave my apartment by 2:30pm to get to work just before 4. Sometimes I’ve left later, and still gotten to work on time. Today was one of those days.
It seems there is no discernible traffic pattern. It doesn’t seem to matter which time of day I pick to leave, new day, new assholes. People are either pushy, or they’re a pussy. And sometimes the pushy ones turn into pussies, and vice-versa.
On my way home, there’s usually a lot less traffic, but about the same amount of dumb. One night I had someone come up behind me real fast, then pace me for about 2 miles at 1 car length off my bumper. Then they decided to shift into the passing lane, and hover in my blind spot for about half a mile before they finally passed me. Once they passed, they immediately got back over in front of me, making me hit my brakes and break out of cruise control just to get some space between us. Then they continued to drive almost directly in front of me for no reason, even though I’d slowed down by about 5mph.
Another thing that irks me is that it seems like people refuse to even use their cruise control. Or, when they do, its set ridiculously fast, or ridiculously slow. Why not just pick the speed limit and set it to that?
Also, police presence on the freeway seems to be inconsistent at best. One night I counted no less than 5 traffic stops, and most nights its none at all. There is also a truck weigh-station on I-96 between Portland and Ionia that I have only seen open and in-use one time since I started commuting 5 weeks ago.