10/16/13

Did I tell y'all about ordering the brake stuff for the Mini?  I see that I did.  Well, I got an e-mail confirming the order the other day but it said the drum-to-disc conversion kit, the one that was on sale and prompted the order in the first place, was on back-order.  I was a tad grumpy at that bit of information.  Well, the other day I got another e-mail saying my order had shipped… and it included the D2D kit after all!  I was pleased.  I looked up the tracking number and saw that it was scheduled to arrive at the house Thursday.  Again, I was pleased… until I saw the bit about “Signature required for delivery.”  Mom is in Florida.  I called FedEx to see if there was any way to put a note on the thing to deliver it after 1700 h.  “It is scheduled to be delivered by close of business Thursday,” the customer service dude told me, “which is 2000 h.”  I said, “Yeah, but ‘by 2000 h’ doesn’t necessarily mean after 1700 h.”  “2000 h IS after 1700 h,” he said.  I finally gave up and said, “I’ll just leave a note asking the driver to come back after 1700 h.”  I know it won't work, but that is all I can do right now.  So, I guess I'm going to have to go to the FedEx facility to pick up my package.  That irks me a tiny bit.  I'm trying to be calm about it, but I still can't bring myself to say, “Meh, whaddayagonnado?”  I spoke to someone the other day who kind of put a bee in my bonnet about the abandonment issue.  He said, “If I was the facility people, and you abandoned all those cars out back, I'd sue the hell out of you.”  I've asked John to contact his scrap guy to come take as many of them as he will.  He, John, said that he would ask if he, the scrap dude, could come Saturday.  I sure hope so.  I just called a scrap metal place and got a phone number for a scrap metal guy to come get the rest of the “scrap” from the various and sun dried units.  I left a message, we’ll see if he calls back.  I sure hope I wrote down the number right.  I've also arranged with someone to take the laser alignment machine and the Miata rear suspension.  Perhaps if I can give away enough shit, we CAN get out of there in two to three weeks.  Gregg is trying to convince me to put the mill on Craigslist… but I don’t know how to do that.  Sure, it would be nice to get a couple hundred bucks for the thing rather than abandoning it, but… I don’t know.  I suppose worrying about how the buyer would move the thing is just as productive as worrying about how the facility folks are going to deal with it… as in “not productive at all.”  I just remembered that all of that Formula Vee crap used to belong to Gregg before I inherited it from AUTOCOMP.  I just sent him a text asking if he a) knows any FV guys or 2) wants his FV crap back.  I rectum a CL ad offering up a Formula Vee “kit” might bring in a dollar or two.  I doubt it, but it might.  Of course, ideally, we would have had a couple “garage sales” where we invited groups of car nuts to come root through the piles to see what they want, but I think having a scrap dude haul it off is the way to go at this late date.  I think, if I don’t hear back from the guy I called, I'll take a drive around and see if I can find one of those scrap metal guys who would be willing to come take what we have.  I suppose there is an off chance that John knows of someone… other than the car hauler scrap dude.  Psh, he might take it for all I know.  I'd rather not have to pay anyone because I think they will make a pretty good chunk of change from the sheer weight of all the stuff we’d be giving them.  Feh, I don’t know.  We’ll see.  Well, I've been away for a bit doing actual work and have lost my train of thought.  I guess I'll call it a rant.