1. Car would not start. Dead battery. Still sitting there after a couple of days, have not taken time to deal with it because of other fires to put out (keep reading).
   
   
2. Use backup car, get to hangar to go to work. Fire alarm is beeping loudly indicating communication failure to the alarm monitoring service. Enter code on keypad to silence the beeping, will deal with the communication failure later.
   
   
3. Delivery truck from container distributor shows up and unloads my order. My six cases -- 924 bottles -- of pint bottles are not on the truck. WTF? Driver calls office in Tampa, sales rep says "Ooops! That item was accidentally deleted from the order when an error on a different item was corrected." I have a guy standing by to run the bottling machine, no bottles to put the product into.
   
   
4. Plan B for the bottling today. Now, let's look at the fire alarm. We have had multiple failures in the past couple weeks, all of which have been solved by resetting the DSL modem. Even though it's on a battery backup, I have been fixated on power interruptions (looks like a wrong assumption now). This time, resetting the modem does not work. OK, maybe a bad DSL modem. Call the local CenturyLink store to see if they have a modem in stock that I can pick up. No joy on the call, I get a recorded announcement telling me that they can't come to the phone right now, but here's the number for the national customer no-service center.
   
   Twenty minute drive through a downpour that has to be experienced, come to Central Florida during the summer. Visibility maybe 100 ft. in really heavy rain. Arrive at CenturyLink store, yes they do have a modem in stock. Ten bucks / month to rent, or a hundred to buy. Quck math says "buy it." Get the modem back to the hangar office, make all connections, no joy. Screw around with it for quite a while, changing settings, still nothing. Contact national tech support. Get the office that only deals with west of the Rockies, get transferred, expected wait time is seven minutes. Forty minutes later a human comes on the line, turns out he's in the support center ten minutes away from me. He walks me through all the settings on the modem, all of which I had already tried, still no joy. I ask why even though I'm not getting data, the modem status shows "connected' with a speed of 17 Mbps when I should have 25 Mbps. Tech guy runs some remote line tests, finds a bad phone line, very high error rate. Can have somebody out to test / repair the line next day. Nope, I can't do that, scheduled to visit customers in the Space Coast area all day (see next paragraph). Friday is NG too (see the paragraph after that). Scheduled visit for Saturday. No alarm monitoring until then. City Fire Marshal will not be pleased, fire alarm monitoring is required in all hangars.
   
   
5. Next day, visit the Space Coast stores (my customers). First store is fine. Wrap it up in an hour, head for second store. Pull into parking lot, brake pedal goes to the floor. WTF? Truck has pissed all its brake fluid all over the parking lot. Store manager has local knowledge, calls a service shop, yes, they can take care of this on a 2001 GMC 3500 Savana. Truck arrives at service shop on a flat bed, brake line has corroded and failed, shop will get it fixed, expect it next day. My helper guy calls his wife in Orlando area to come and get us in Titusville. I'll have to get my wife to take me back later today to retrieve truck, assuming it's ready, after the $100 tow truck (two miles) and the expected $200 brake repair.
   
   
6. A couple hours from now, I have appointment with the urology doc who will disclose the results of last weeks prostate biopsy, which he deemed necessary since my PSA has been slowly rising, following the series of radiation treatments for prostate cancer in 2010. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that news.

Like PHPaul said in one of his threads, "If it weren't for bad luck..."

At least you don't have a toilet flush valve problem

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny 3eagles:
At least you don't have a toilet flush valve problem

I forgot to mention that one. I replaced the fill valve, which is now working fine. I also replaced the flapper, which now works fine most of the time. Sometimes after a flush, the flapper doesn't close all the way and the water keeps running.

I'll take another look at it after I deal with all of the previous problems.

Oh yeah, I need to replace a fluorescent fixture in the kitchen. That will be a joy, standing on a step-stool, with my no-longer-so-good balance. Then when the light stops flickering and I can actually see what I'm doing, replace the leaking O-rings in the kitchen sink faucet. Free parts of course, with Delta's lifetime warranty, but the labor is not so free.

I've found that when I do the work myself, the labor is free, but the quality may be worth what I paid.

V-Tail, the way your week is going maybe you should just sit quietly in the office and wait for Saturday. I know it doesn't fix any of the problems but you seem to be having a run of bad luck. I hope your test results come back OK.

Hoping you got the bad out this week & have some good weeks on the horizon.

Thanks for the timely replies to my string of emails while dealing with your own fires.

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny 3eagles:
I've found that when I do the work myself, the labor is free, but the quality may be worth what I paid.

I've found that I trust myself to go the extra mile and do extra work to get a better, longer lasting result. Stuff that no paid laborer would even consider doing.

I also know that something actually got done and not just pencil whipped ('flat rated' as they say).

Hang in there V-Tail.

Don't say "it could be worse" cause life will say "challenge accepted!"

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
Don't say "it could be worse" cause life will say "challenge accepted!"

Agree, that's poking the bear.

Hope the biopsy results are good. My guess is that if number 6 works out for you the other problems will seem inconsequential.

By the way, you're not intending to test-ride P250's bike, are you?

Hang in there Tail. It's got to get better!

V-Tail, good luck with the Doc.

Tuesday I was riding my bike and thought to myself "Man, it's been several months since I got a flat." Immediately I cursed myself. About 20 minutes later I found a staple with my rear tire's name on it. Changing a flat on the side of a country road with no shoulder with trucks whizzing by ain't fun. But doesn't compare to your woes.

Hang in there!

I strongly recommend you buy a Powerball ticket. With luck as bad as you've been having, karma has to make it up somewhere.

 
UPS power supply for the modem? Keeps it from interrupting itself, at least for a 5-10 minutes.
 

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:
 
UPS power supply for the modem? Keeps it from interrupting itself, at least for a 5-10 minutes.

Yup, I have a 550 for the modem, router, and small (5-port) ethernet LAN switch, which should have ruled out momentary power interruptions (we have these, as things on the grid are switched around, especially during our frequent summer thunderstorms). I was thinking that maybe a power interruption was somehow getting past the UPS. Turned out that it's maybe the phone line, DSL test from the CenturyLink end was showing a high error rate, big data loss.

CenturyLink lineman is expected at the hangar later this morning (it's 2:00 am now).

I hope things straighten themselves out for you.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:
 
UPS power supply for the modem? Keeps it from interrupting itself, at least for a 5-10 minutes.

Yup, I have a 550 for the modem, router, and small (5-port) ethernet LAN switch, which should have ruled out momentary power interruptions (we have these, as things on the grid are switched around, especially during our frequent summer thunderstorms). I was thinking that maybe a power interruption was somehow getting past the UPS. Turned out that it's maybe the phone line, DSL test from the CenturyLink end was showing a high error rate, big data loss.

CenturyLink lineman is expected at the hangar later this morning (it's 2:00 am now).

Have you tested the UPS (unplug it and see if it actually still powers things). UPS's circuit boards can take a hit from a storm, too. They will pass power through in good times, but fail when the power does. For this reason (learned the hard way from experience), I always use a good surge protector between the wall and the UPS.
 

Thought I was having a rough week, gee did not know how good it was.
Buried my 15 year old dog, yesterday. Was supposed to get my ATV back from the shop..no, been there over 3 wks now. Repaired my air compressor fittings, as they were leaking...fixed one, the others still leak. My internet has been running about 1/2 speed all week. Full speed is .7mbs, so it has been mostly unusable.
But, hey I guess it really was not that bad...except for my dog..

quote:

Originally posted by Aquabird:
Buried my 15 year old dog, yesterday.

I am very sorry to hear about your dog. They are truly a gift from God.

My sweet Corgi foster / rescue girl had a fatal stroke this past September, at the age of 14 1/2. I really miss her.