Drunkard's Walk Forums

So.... Please allow me to vent.

Earlier this week I had an excellent job interview. Really good. Twenty minutes ballooned into a half-hour and every left happy. Got a phone call this morning, telling me that the interviewer had really liked the stuff I'd shown him on my laptop, my referee on my CV was positive and I'd made an excellent impression - but he'd decided to go for someone with more experience.

Ten minutes later, I get the same thing from an interview I'd had after that one. You're good - but not experienced.

Disappointing, but par for the course. I've a third one to come tomorrow morning, 2 hours drive away in Lurgan. That's probably 40 euro worth of fuel and another tenner in tolls to get the exact same Catch 22 answer. What is this experience and how does one get it?

Fast forward to evening time, there's a big fight going on outside. Dogs are going wild. Until I hear a sound outside suspiciously like a car horn, followed by revving and a trailer full of something toppling over. Turns out some knacker had backed their car through the garden wall in an attempt to run someone else over as part of an ongoing feud - before driving off at speed. I hand a few carparts to the Garda when she shows up. Someone hands a registration to me they found further down the street from the car after the Gard' left.... Chances of them having car insurance are somewhere between none and less than that.

And putting my car back into the driveway after going to get a pizza to sooth my frustrations, trying to avoid the damaged pillar with the front of the car, I forget that there's another gatepost and tear the shite out of the paint on the passenger door. And it's a proper fucking gouge, right down the door to the primer.

Bollox.

And now I'm officially the worst driver in Ireland.... worse than paying for it is listening to the nagging over it. Like nobody else ever scratched a car in their lives.

Sorry about the rant.... It's all petty. It's all minor. The world isn't coming to an end, I know. Nobody's dying. Thursday's over and no Vogons. But it's all bloody annoying and frustrating as hell when it dumps at once.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

It isn't all petty - three interviews in a row with that same answer can grind down a person.

Any chance you could do some volunteer work for somebody and get that experience, or would that take away from time you need to earn a living?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

*Blinks* Damn, your accent really bleeds through the screen when your pissed. Not that this is a bad thing - I seriously had fun imagining hearing the whole schpiel in a proper Irish burr.

Anyhow, I am genuinely sorry to hear all that. I know from experience that it's pretty damn loathsome to have a day like that. And in my experience, the rest of the week usually isn't much better due to the fallout.

Don't feel too bad about the door on your car. I'd have probably done the same thing myself if my day had been like that. Your car can still be driven safely, right? Damage is just cosmetic?

Glad that this didn't happen to me. I would have been seething worst than Reactor 2 at Three Mile Island and generally making me unbearable to be around, therefore pissing off my brothers and setting off a positive feedback loop of pure nastiness that wouldn't taper off for a month.

Sorry to hear about your day, Dartz. At least you have heat, though...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Thanks everyone. Things changed a bit today mind which makes everything seem a bit superfluous now....

Welp, the car's worse than I thought. I didn't just scratch the paint, I gouged the steel. Structurally it's fine but it looks pig-ugly. Still drives fine... 4 hours Lurgan and back, with some 'spirited' fun along the way. It's not cheap to make it pretty again, though. Especially since it's a 2013 car I did it to. The wall will have to be knocked - along with the gate-pillar - then rebuilt. It's a weekend at least. The registration plate points to a car that doesn't match the parts I found in my garden - so they're trying to pull a fast one. Both cars have been impounded by the Gardai and I'll be dropping to battered reg' down to the station when I'm not asleep.

We're warm because we have three redundant heat sources and a ton of insulation in a concrete home. Our central heating runs off a kerosene boiler, so we're used to having it run out every few weeks. Usually on the night of a big freeze. Or the two-decade old boiler decides to be intransigent. I've some experience fixing water-based heating systems....

As a matter of fact, it's part of what I'll get paid to do starting Tuesday. It's part-time only because it's just a startup - but it's something. Funny how that happens. The details still have to be hammered out next week, but it's something.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

Little bit late, but hitting the same household gate post has been a thing with my family, I've done it in the corolla. My sister did it in a crappy J-body. My Dad's done it with his van. We've still to rebuild the post, we gave up on the gate and installed a regulation letterbox on a post. We've also still yet to repair the damage to the vehicles, I occasionally look at the pull 'n pays for a door (almost unobtainium) and the van's bumper cover's being held on with the traditional fencing wire, abet the coated variety.

Mailbox on a post, Rod H?  Funny.
When I was just getting started with my first car, back in late 2011, I managed to knock over our mailbox whilst backing up.  Didn't even realize it until I got home, and the car wasn't even damaged.

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My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

Typically down here there's a few methods of having an authorised mail drop (and in the country it can become an art-form), our original one was a hollow in the brick gatepost, the first hit cracked it and took out the gate hinges, mine took out the hollow. In the time between the two events the posties pulled the old OHS thing (mostly to get rid of the bicycles and change to a motorcycle) and to meet it a recommendation went out that a residential letterbox should be on a post if feasible. We decided that was a better thing then what we had and put one in next to the gatepost, then some time later a local yahoo took it out - along with some others - with a bat.

So, we installed another and reinforced the post, the next batting attempt should destroy the bat.

Ugh, mailbox baseball? That old gag? (For those that don't know, you have a friend drive a car real fast while you hang out the passenger side and try to nail the mailbox with a baseball bat as it zips by. Which is kinda dumb if you ask me because a mailbox is bigger than a baseball and won't be travelling as fast as one - therefore, no real challenge.)

Well, it's somewhat challenging to do mailbox baseball here as they're typically a couple of meters away from the curb with a footpath and a treeed verge. Kinda like the suburbs of San Diego (it's the quickest equivalent I could find on google earth). Yet we do have streets where the letterboxes are on the curb and they are typically built like a light bunker.

Ah, yes. Can't remember what movie had Mailbox Baseball... was it Grease? But shortly afterwards, my Grandfather created the ultimate "fastball strikeout" for it. Even if it took two mailboxes to do it:

An old "Parcel-size" mailbox and a standard "post-size" mailbox, nested, with the space between them filled with concrete.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll