In case you missed the thread last night, a Balloon Juice Angel came forward to offer up to a $5,000 match on donations for Ukraine. I wrote this in last night’s post:
As I write this, the total sits at $73,561 – as soon as the thermometer hits $78,561, our anonymous donor will add his $5,000, for a total of $83,761 for Ukraine since the war began.
You guys more than met the match, and our BJ Angel has added his $5k. I’ll let you see the results yourself!
Thanks to our Angel and all of you who donated, Ukraine has nearly $20k more in aid from us in less than 24 hours.
I would like to share a short note from our Balloon Juice Angel:
I’m really humbled by the way the jackals rose to this, grabbed it, tore it to shreds, and gulped it down. Really humbled.
I am proud to be in the company of all you BJ peeps. You guys rock!
Here’s last night’s post in case you missed it.
Totally open thread.
WaterGirl
testing.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
It’s up and working, most people are just celebrating Pat’s dead.
rikyrah
Clap clap clap
Bravo, BJ
Jackie
BJ Jackals have the most generous ♥️s. I’m so proud of us all!
Maxim
Good.
And speaking of Ukraine, WaPo says the counteroffensive is officially underway.
WaterGirl
@Jay: This from @trollhattan was so good:
I liked it so much that I tweaked it a tiny bit and made it into a rotating tag.
Old School
@WaterGirl: Wait – it’s not Friday?
Maxim
@Old School: Thursday and Friday are interchangeable around here.
Gin & Tonic
As I said yesterday, I am immensely grateful to the good people of Balloon-Juice for their continuing, very generous support of Ukraine. I only hope that when this is over, some of you can have the opportunity to visit and see for yourselves what a wonderful country it is. In contrast with some other countries in the immediate area, US citizens can visit without a visa.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
You do understand don’t you, that God created HELL so that assholes like Hitler, Goebbels, et al, Pat Robinson, et al would have an eternal resting place in which to contemplate their bullshit and how low and warm it keeps them. Actual humans get to attend a quite different party because they learned to be actual humans while they were alive…
gene108
@Old School:
Thursday is the unofficial start to Friday.
Baud
@gene108:
Also the unofficial end of the previous Friday.
zhena gogolia
Yay, BJ!
Yutsano
We is some good peoples, we is.
thruppence
I have tickets to see the incredible Rodrigo y Gabriela Sunday night at Red Rocks Amphitheater, yay, but we’ve been having raging thunderstorms almost every night for the past couple of weeks and they’re forecast to continue. I want to see them but I don’t know about sitting outside on a mountain in a lightning storm. Guess I’ll drive up and see what happens.
Baud
It’s interesting what’s happening with social media. Facebook has been trash forever. Twitter is going downhill fast under Musk. Reddit is pissing a lot of people off because they are cutting off access to third party apps in advance of their IPO. Not sure where everyone will end up.
Maxim
@thruppence: Ooh, nice! I hope the weather cooperates.
gene108
I am rambling and venting a bit. I’m also trying to get better about “talking” about myself. Hopefully it helps talking to people IRL.
I have a VW. I took it to the dealer at the end of April for an annual oil change. Dealer found a bad gasket around the timing chain that leaked oil, and damaged front shocks. Nice thing is the technician took short videos of the bad areas and texted it to me to see repairs needed to be made.
I was on a contract position, which I felt might end soon, which it did three weeks later.
Got the gasket issue fixed, as the service rep said it’s more pressing. Held off on getting the shocks fixed, because they are expensive. Had a couple of good interviews, and one really bad one where I felt like I forgot how to talk. One of the good interviews extended an offer.
I decided to call around local places that had good reviews to see what they’d charge relative to the dealer. One place said they don’t work on European cars anymore because parts are hard to come by now. The other place gave me a quote a bit less than the dealer.
I dropped my car off at the latter place. After they got to look my car over, they said I had a nail in my tire, I needed new sway bars, as well as new shocks. The only place that had the parts was a dealership, which probably added a markup to sell the parts. The actual job quote was $800 more than the over the phone quote. I wasn’t thrilled with how they handled things. I did get the tire patched.
Took my car to the dealer to get the shocks replaced. I got a loaner, because it took them a few days to replace the shocks (my current suspicion is they may have trouble retaining senior technicians that can work on more than routine maintenance, as it took three days from drop off to pick up). Get the car back, and almost immediately notice a squeaky rattling noise coming from the front suspension. After a week of this not going away, I dropped my car off at the dealer this week to see what’s wrong.
They looked it over and said the sway bars need to be replaced (chalk one up to the local garage). Go to pick up my car today , and the squeaky noise is still there. Dropped it right back at the dealer.
The one redeeming feature about the dealership is getting a loaner.
The disappointing thing is they aren’t reliable on things outside of routine maintenance. I could drop my car off at the local place and Lyft or Uber to work, in the future, which sort of sucks to have an added expense to car repairs.
This whole thing is annoying that it’s taking this long. I doubt it’ll be a regular recurring problem, as this is wear and tear issues (I must’ve hit something hard to bust my suspension. I think I know what I did), but I feel like the Great Supply Chain issue and Great Resignation issue still aren’t fully sorted out and I’m finally feeling the effects.
Alison Rose
It’s really amazing what this place can do. Luckily we’re using our power for good!
BeautifulPlumage
I have put a temporary hold on gifts until my financial situation stabilizes (fingers crossed) in a month or so, so thanks to all who could support this bleg.
Speaking of money…FUCK CHASE BANK!. Over the course of 3 months, 4 visits to the branch, and 3 phone calls to their deceased account department they finally released all but the last SSI payment. Over that time they’ve had to re-copy my docs, and I got a different story each time. Then the branch manager “forgot” about our appointment today and was at lunch (or, as they said “in a meeting”) so I didn’t leave there until an hour later.
When I finally said something to her she said they had to ‘follow procedure’s. Lady, how can you say that when, apparently, there are no defined procedures. It’s like they never had an account holder die and no one knew how to process my attempts to claim the funds. Grrrrrrrr
Manyakitty
@Gin & Tonic: count me in!
Jay
@gene108:
sway bars should be fine. I mean they are half inch or more tempered spring steel. It’s the bushings where the swaybar connects, (rubber) that are shot.
Thing is, almost nobody does that sort of work anymore.
Yeah, it’s a simple press fit, and for $150 more you can upgrade from rubber to urethane, which lasts forever,
But for any job shop, it’s not worth the time, even when you are paying staff $20 an hour. Because it takes time, and time is money.
Pisses me off, not as a customer, but a repair tech who really wanted to do a good job for the customer.
Anyhow, hope the new job comes through, and it’s not contract.
BeautifulPlumage
@thruppence: they played live in the KEXP studio today. Check out the streaming archive at their website: mid-morning show at noon in Seattle. They sounded great!. Hope the weather abates and you can enjoy their show!
kalakal
@thruppence:
I’d love to see them. Hope the weather cooperates
Ksmiami
@Yutsano: speak for yourself, I have a bad reputation to uphold.
Ksmiami
@Baud: on a certain top 10000 blog…?
gene108
@Jay:
New job is permanent.
Thank you for asking.
Thanks for the explanation on sway bars versus sway bar bushings going bad.
Chris T.
@gene108: Yeah, the problem with replacing bushings like that is that you (usually?) need a hydraulic press to pop out the old ones and put in the new ones and it’s kind of slow going. You can probably rent one…