Biggest Cluster F*ck Ever - Dodge and Its Stupid Ideas

I didn't like the way Dodge designed the way you have to adjust a rear on the 2004 Dodge Ram 1500. You don't shim it - you have to turn these adjusters with a special tool. Well, Big Bertha worked just as well as the special tool, but still... how do you know they won't come unadjusted, right? At least shims stay where you put them.

I thought that was bad, but they came up with one more that's a really Cluster Fuck. Lower ball joints that are riveted in. And to boot, lower ball joints that typically go bad in 60,000 miles. Well, they pegged that one right - we only have about 60,000 (just over) on the truck, and the passenger ball joint was squeaking to beat the bandit. Hubby has been drilling, pounding and grinding these sons-a-bitches now for about five hours. There are four mongo rivets to get out.

Now that is a stupid design. I don't know what Dodge was thinking when they did that. Oh wait, yes I do. Since it takes about six hours to do the job and dealerships get upwards of $120 or better an hour, I do know what they were thinking. Too bad for them hubby's arsenal features a $20,000 Matco tool box with just about every tool known to man (and he was thinking of selling it all when we moved from FL to TN... don't know what he was thinking, but talked him out of it). Dodge got fucked out of this job anyway.

For those who don't have a clue - the only way to get a rivet that is as big as a dude's index finger out is to drill the snot out of it. And pound it. Drill it some more. Pound it some more. You get the picture. Once out, the replacement ball joint has big bolts. Oh yah, and grease fittings. Something Dodge neglected to put into the original ball joint. Gee, Dodge, ya think it would have made sense to put some grease fittings in the original lower ball joints? No? Oh, you wanted people to pay you to get these honking rivets out. FAIL.

Now, once he gets this last pain-in-the-ass out, we can only hope that Napa, in its infinite wisdom (Not!) gave us the right part. It looks different, but that might not mean anything as it's a different design. Then again, who knows.

Happy New Year!

Well, it's the first day of 2013, so Happy New Year to you! Hopefully I will do better at keeping up my blogs this year. Yes, that qualifies for a good WTF on me... not blogging.

Speaking of WTF, on Christmas (and a couple days before), when I was having company and was really busy, one of my clients posted tons of work. Now, it's New Years Day and I figured I would work this holiday... alas, no work is popping up on any of my sites. Thus, I'll take the time to work on all five of my blogs.

Back to watching the clouds -- yes, we are sitting IN a cloud right now. It's pretty neat. Might take a ride on the ATV down into the woods. It's really muddy, but will try to get the camera out for some good pictures.

Moving Sucks...

I forgot how much work it is packing up an entire house. And, it wasn’t that long ago we did this. The last time was about six and one-half years ago when we moved from S. Tampa to Valrico. It was pain in the ass then — and we were only going about 30 miles. This time, we moved over 700 miles — to Crawford, TN. We fit almost an entire three-bedroom house plus a garage and a huge shed into a 26-foot U-Haul and an 8x12 trailer.

That didn’t include the living room. The chairs were old, so we left them for the scrap guys. Gave the sofa away to someone who needed it. Gave a bunch of other stuff away to the neighbors. It took us three days to load the U-Haul and get the house ready for renters. But we did get lucky on that front — found a renter a couple days before we left. Seems like a very nice family with a 12-year-old boy (con't).

But the work isn’t finished yet — tomorrow, we have to unload everything and get it in the barn. It should hopefully fit — the barn is 18x20, which is bigger than the U-Haul. Gonna take some arranging of stuff because we will need access to certain boxes — like my office boxes and stuff.

The trip up was surprisingly uneventful. You don’t expect that when driving a rental truck. And the truck, though fully loaded, managed to do 65 to 75 mph all the way up here. That as quite surprising. Don drove the pig and I drove our truck. Rambo was excited to be on the way — he knew something was up when all the stuff started disappearing from the house. And when he saw his blanket go in the back of the truck, that was all she wrote. He loves to ride and he knows that if he goes in the truck, we are going to TN, and he loves it in TN. He’s not as itchy (environmental allergies), plus he gets to go off leash if no one is around. As for the moving sucks, yah, it does, but so worth it.

Perpetually Hungry

My ol' man is perpetually hungry. He will eat you out of house and home if you let him. So, I have to go into town to do some errands. I told him I'd be back in two hours - don't eat anything, I will make bacon and eggs when I get home. Sundays are "big breakfast" days at our house. But first thing he did this morning was to get up and get a bowl of cereal. Thus, the reason for me making breakfast for lunch.

I came home and he said, "Boy, I could eat a little bit, I'm hungry." I noticed a plate by his chair with hot dog stuff - you know, ketchup, relish, and hot dog grease on it. I asked, "What did you eat?"

"Oh, I just had a little hot dog."
"Which means you are not hungry." (This, after I put the bacon on). "Why are you making me cook something if you just ate? Furthermore, those hot dogs were for lunch tomorrow. I guess no lunch for you tomorrow."

He had a coronary. I'm not too happy, because he is totally going overboard between the cereal, hot dog (loaded) and bacon and eggs. He's supposed to be on a diet per doctor's orders.

I don't have anything for him to do on my "honey do" list... Hmmmm, I guess I'll have to create one so he can use up all of those extra calories. Let's see - there is a 10-foot tall, 15-foot wide pile of what they call "top soil" up here in TN. It is full of sticks and roots and whatever the hell else was in the way when the guy cleared the land. I guess he can go sort through it by hand so that I can use the dirt part of the pile to make a garden. That'll knock some of those calories, off, ya think?

This is the pile of dirt. I took this picture from about 100 feet away, so yep, it's pretty big.

Submarines

So, my husband was in the little boy’s room forever. I yelled, “whattaya doin’, fallin’ asleep in there?” He yells back:

    “I was sitting on the toilet and all of a sudden noticed a submarine. Intelligence told me it could very well be a U-Boat. So then, I had to depth charge it. Then I threw the white flag to surrender, changed my mind about surrendering, hit the afterburners and got the hell outta there.” It takes time to plan that out. You know you can’t just have a battle with no planning. You’ll get shot to shit.

WTF Ovah.

I guess I shouldn’t have asked. I don’t even know where he got that – it’s not like he was in the Navy. He was in the Army. He flew helicopters. I expected something along the lines of dropping bombs from helicopters or something (he flew helicopters in Vietnam).

WTF Ovah.

Rambo...

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Cornbread on the Grill... Maybe.

Well, the only way to make cornbread is in a cast iron pan on top of fire... so I use the grill. I turn two burners on full blast and it gets to a nice 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Perfect for cooking cornbread.

Waiting for the grill to heat up to the proper temperature.

Ok, so the grill heats up properly. I stuck the cornbread in and continued with the rest of the prep. I pulled the turkey out, got everything else in bowls and on the table and go to grab the cornbread. The grill decided it would pick this day to run out of gas. WTF.... Ovah. Out it comes an into the oven it goes...

Cornbread the right way... almost.

Well, it was 10 minutes late to dinner, but it came out ok, despite my grill telling me to take a hike. My grill can bite me!