June 1st, 1998
Why Today SUCKED...
Monday
06/01/1998
Ever had a day when nothing seems to be going your way? Sure, you might say. Some/many/most days are like that is a typical answer. Maybe. Maybe not. There were a lot of things which went wrong on this day, so many things, in fact, that I'd get too impatient trying to type all of them out on this page, so I'm only going to list several highlights. Bear in mind, that I don't necessarily have a grudge against the people/places/things I point a finger at, it's just that on this collective day, the sum of the whole added up a lot more misery than it was worth. You might notice that none of the events are particularly earth shattering. But a person can only take so much aggravation in a single day.
www.excite.com:
While on a hunt for some Redline MT-90, I used Excite's mapping program to help me locate a shop that had the stuff cheap ($7.19 per quart!). After getting directions, I drove up and down a roughly 2 mile stretch of street about 4 Times looking for the place. After calling them up, I found out that excite had put me about 4 miles away, on the wrong side of a freeway.
Myself:
I gave Eddie Wu a slightly incorrect zip code, 90620 instead of the correct 90630. This caused a delay in my Hotshot Cold Air arriving, which caused my Borla cat-back to sit in my trunk for roughly 5 days. Why? Because I wanted to do some proper bolt-on dyno testing with the stock exhaust first. In essence, I received the Hotshot about 4 days late.
CB Performance:
At 4:15, I called up CB Performance directly, hoping that they had some answers (about the Hotshot mention above). I spoke with Benson, who told me that he would check the tracking number and call me right back (he got my phone #). At 4:53 I called him back, thinking that maybe he just got busy and forgot. I got the answering machine. I just hung up.
UPS:
As a quick side note, it turns out that the Hotshot intake DID make it without being too late, but since my package mailing address is not my home address, I can't accept COD packages. So I asked UPS to "will call" my package, which means when it comes in, I go to pick it up at their local branch. They never left me a note or any indication that my package had arrived. God, they suck...
Sav-On:
I took my film to be developed there on Friday around 11:00 am. They have two pictures showing clocks. If it's in before 10:30, then you'll get it the next day at 3:00. I thought they meant 10:30 at night, like they had some kind of night crew that takes care of all the pictures. I was mistaken. It was 10:30 am, not pm. So I went back to Sav-on on Monday (June 1) at 5:30 pm to get my pictures. I had two sets, one for my uncle, one for me. After driving back home, I gave my uncle his pix then looked at mine. First, I glanced at the negatives (for no real reason). And then I looked at the pictures. They weren't mine. I drove back to Sav-On. Not only were they terribly unhelpful (didn't even bother looking for the pix), but they just said "come back in a couple of days." No apologies, no offers of a rush job, no offers of a discount or anything. At this point of the day I was seriously disgusted.
Just Tires:
They aligned my wheels after I installed the Tokico Illumina struts several days back. Later that day I found that the four bolts holding one of the struts were on the verge of coming off. I screwed them back on. On the way home from Sav-On, the realization hit me that to adjust camber/caster, you have to loosen the top bolts. The turkeys at Just Tires didn't bolt them back on afterwards. I was super pissed at this point, driving in my car, and starting to feel like a rolling road hazard.
Mom:
I'm upstairs being upset. Mom comes home with some food for herself and her older brother (the uncle who is visiting from Korea). She asks if I want some, she says it's sushi, the raw fish kind. She knows I don't touch raw meats. I've told her (and everyone else in my life) that I detest raw meats. She insists I have some again, that I should just try it. I tell her no again. She already nows that I've had sushi on different occasions at different restaurants with different people. I don't mean just one kind of fish, but raw eel, mollusk, tuna, trout, quail eggs, the works. I'm no stranger to it. I just plain think it's disgusting stuff. Later, I'm on the phone trying to help someone with their computer problem. She yells something at me. I hang up and go downstairs. She insists I try something. There's some kind of mixed/fried rice. I scoop some into a plate and just before I eat, I see it. Cubes of raw fish. Apparently she had no intention of telling me. I get pissed. She tells me to at least have some California Rolls, which happen to have raw fish eggs. I start gesturing and babbling like a madman. I go back upstairs and grab a friend's computer that I've been working on for hours and storm out. (See below)
A friend:
He is a jinx. He's like the anti-King Midas. Whatever he touches, he destroys. After spending 4 or 5 hours configuring Windows 95 for him, he did something which I will mildly call a "no-no" and may just have damaged his hardware. I am not positive, but let's just say that the hard drive spun to a stop and then refused to stay spinning when I tried turning it back on. It finally stayed on after a few minutes of leaving the machine off, but I personally wouldn't take a chance on it. Bear in mind that I've put in over 18 hours on this particular machine, installing, configuring, troubleshooting, etc. He had a hard drive go bad on him previously, which is why I was there in the first place.
An intersection:
The "smart" kind, which senses a left hand turner and gives 'em the green. Not so for me. I stop at the red left turn light. The cross traffic goes yellow after a few seconds, then red. The left turn light stays red for me. The thru traffic gets a green. Then yellow. Then red. Then cross traffic goes again. And then thru traffic gets a green. I sat there and saw the thru traffic green light go on 3 Times. There were no other cars in the intersection the entire Time. I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
Another friend/Bulworth:
He convinced me to go see Bulworth (starring Warren Beatty) with him, his girlfriend, and
another friend. We got there just in Time and sat down. Without going into too much detail, I was horribly annoyed within the first 5 minutes of the movie. After that little sequence was over, I started settling down a bit, for about 5 minutes. From then on, I was barraged with a constant stream of audio/visual load of utter bullshit. The movie was just absolutely terrible. Perhaps on any other day I would have toughed it out and stayed through the movie, on this occasion I just could not deal with the aggravation. I walked out about one hour into the worst movie I've ever paid to see. I sat just outside of the movie room on a bench (My friend drove). After about 5 minutes, he came out to go to the bathroom. Walking back in, he noticed me. He thought I had been taking a shit or something. He asked what was wrong and I told him that I just couldn't handle it (I was using controlled breathing techniques to keep from going berzerk). I told him I'd be back in in a few minutes. He walked back in. Shortly, they all walked out of the theather. We left. He apologized to everyone for having selected such an ungodly awful movie. That was a first for all of us, walking out of a theater because a movie was soooo bad.
Denny's:
There's a Denny's close to home that we've been hanging out at for years. We pulled into the parking lot. As we walked toward the entrance, my friends told me to cheer up. I looked at my pager and said, "It's only 11:50pm, there's still PLENTY of Time for something to go wrong." I was oblivious to my surroundings (i.e. feeling miserable) as I walked in. My friend spoked briefly with the manager. Turns out that they were closing early for some routine cleaning. In sheer disbelief, I looked at my friends in turn who finally seemed to realize that the day was just an utter curse for me.
Another Denny's:
There's our alternate Denny's. To make a long story short, service was less than stellar (i.e. lousy despite only 3 full tables and multiple waiters). As we walked out of Denny's, I told my friends that for me, the day wasn't over until I hit the hay. While walking to my friend's car, we saw an old beat up pickup truck that appeared long abandoned with its hood up. I also noticed a Chinese Food place that says "$1 Chinese food." It's been $1 Chinese food there for at least 8 years now. I'm not sure how those two things triggered me, but I started having a nervous breakdown. I started getting shaky and I wanted to cry. Just something wasn't right about the state of the universe.
And so I conclude my little story for this particular day, June 1st, 1998. The day has been utter crap. So little went my way. I've only mentioned the more notable events.