The Rant Thread - let it out!

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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby NZcaver » Feb 12, 2011 6:00 am

Now I feel bad. At least you and your vehicle made it home safely, and that's the important thing. There will be more caving opportunities. I usually do OK solving technical problems and being self-sufficient in remote areas etc, but sometimes I forget not everybody is so easily accustomed to this.
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby sjphill » Feb 12, 2011 9:29 am

Amy, I dont know sh*t about caving, a noob and learner, but do know quite a bit about cars. A CEL (or Check Engine Light) is produced by a system, or set of software in your car called OBDII, or OnBoard Diagnostics Two)(to differentiate it from OBDOne!). All it does is take measurements from various datapoints or sensors in your car, and measure them across time. If a particular sensor takes a reading (ok, that O2 sensor has sent me X amt of bad measurements in the last Y amt of hours runtime) then it tics the light on. Go by Autozone, or drop by my NAPA store in Cookeville Tn) and have them read the code and give it to you. Then have them clear the code. Google the code and get back to me. In the meantime, the CEL will probably stay off for a while, as the diags start their measuring all over again. Example, my car threw a CEL last October. It was a P0400 EGR valve. I reset it, it stayed off till January. Went on again, same value, I cleared it again. 3 weeks go by, threw it again, I said ok, ok, time to replace the EGR valve. Not a biggie. Be careful of what the guy at the store who reads the code tells you. Parts stores (not mine!) sell craploads of useless parts to innocent folks having their CEL lights read by a 20$ tool. If you know a good honest mechanic, (find a grumpy old man, they dont give a sh*t what you think about them they'll tell u the truth) and have them read the code with something called a Genesis, that takes the code and drills down to the underlying diagnotics. Sorry for the lecture, pls dont buy an O2 sensor just cuz some parts monkey tells you to.
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby Bill Putnam » Feb 12, 2011 10:06 am

NZcaver wrote:What a load of BS! Well OK, maybe not quite. You might get great advice from a person who travels miles on rope in really deep caves around the world.

Jansen - I think you missed the point. It's all about the probability of the advice being useful.

Advice from a person who doesn't do much vertical caving is probably not worth much consideration, though it could be if the person just read a good book on the subject, or stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. On the other hand, advice from a person who does a whole lot of serious vertical caving is probably worth considering, though the person might just be an idiot savant - able to do, but not able to explain.

Randomly chosen, either type of individual might give good advice or bad advice, but the smart money is on the one with more actual experience.
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby mgmills » Feb 12, 2011 10:10 am

Chads93GT wrote:ehh biners are mostly personal preference, but I always use the SMALL lockers, not the big ones you can fit your hand through> I used black diamond neutrinos. I think thats what they are. anyway, I use them to link the cowstails/safety's to the ascenders. Always use lockers on the permanent stuff, always use lockers when rigging. I use non lockers for the short end of the cowstail and for accessories or biners I use to hang stuff from my harness. Everyone uses different stuff, but I prefer smaller, lighter lockers, when using lockers on my rig ;)


I mostly agree with the above except I don't think I have any black diamond ones. Without going out to do an inventory in my shed I couldn't tell you what kinds I have. I'm pretty sure most are petzl or smc. Just remember, you always need extra biners. Just buy some locking brand name ones and if you don't like them buy something else later on and keep the ones you don't like as your extras.

Rant on! I too get irritated at people who insist on a particular type of item when in reality there are several options all of which are safe and will work very well. Each person is an individual and may like their system set up a little different. My biggest grip is those who insist that a right handed Petzl ascender is better than a left handed one. . . both will work just fine.
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby self-deleted_user » Feb 12, 2011 2:03 pm

Well i guess it was an ok thing I paid attention. I could've maybe made it to person's house okay, but the light came on because the temp sensor to gauge bit thingie in the coolant system was wrong - I was overheating and I didn't know it because the gauge inside the car was reading fine.
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby NZcaver » Feb 12, 2011 5:23 pm

Sungura wrote:Well i guess it was an ok thing I paid attention. I could've maybe made it to person's house okay, but the light came on because the temp sensor to gauge bit thingie in the coolant system was wrong - I was overheating and I didn't know it because the gauge inside the car was reading fine.

Interesting problem. Good to know! So you and your vehicle will survive to go caving another weekend, and that's the important thing.

mgmills wrote:My biggest grip is those who insist that a right handed Petzl ascender is better than a left handed one. . . both will work just fine.

I like the way you think, Martha! That old myth one of my big grips (gripes?) too. :big grin:

As for Bill, sometimes I like the way he thinks and sometimes I don't. :tonguecheek: But that's OK. :waving:
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby Chads93GT » Feb 12, 2011 5:34 pm

I hate it when new interest is attracted, people want to get into caving, they find out we do vertical so of course they want to get into that too. AT the meeting they here terms like "Rack" and "harness" being thrown around so they run home to the internet and order some gear without consulting me first on ANYTHING. then I have to piss them off by saying "Send it all back and eat the shipping charges" becuase they chose to buy crap from "cheapoutdoorsportinggoodsonline.com", stuff they really had no idea about at all.

what is more frustrating than that is people who never respond to emails, so you count them out on trips and/or interest, then they show up at the trip..........thanks.........
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby Sierra Echo » Feb 12, 2011 5:54 pm

I love captains wafer crackers but they gave me horrrible HORRIBLE gas! :shrug:
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby NZcaver » Feb 12, 2011 5:59 pm

Chads93GT wrote:I hate it when new interest is attracted, people want to get into caving, they find out we do vertical so of course they want to get into that too. AT the meeting they here terms like "Rack" and "harness" being thrown around so they run home to the internet and order some gear without consulting me first on ANYTHING. then I have to piss them off by saying "Send it all back and eat the shipping charges" becuase they chose to buy crap from "cheapoutdoorsportinggoodsonline.com", stuff they really had no idea about at all.

what is more frustrating than that is people who never respond to emails, so you count them out on trips and/or interest, then they show up at the trip..........thanks.........

Ditto on both of these. And related to your first point, it also hate it when narrow minded cavers tell newbies "you *must* buy this type of rack or that type of rack" (or get told a rack is the only acceptable caving descender), and this harness, and must set up your gear this way. Instead of being being presented with suggestions and options, and being able to try out different ways for themselves before buying.

People with poor communication skills also piss me off. Since we're laying it all out here... I also get really, really frustrated with grottos and cavers who seem unwilling to welcome newbies and sometimes actively discourage outsiders from having an interest in caving. :down:

:rant:
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby Chads93GT » Feb 12, 2011 6:31 pm

NZcaver wrote:
Chads93GT wrote:I hate it when new interest is attracted, people want to get into caving, they find out we do vertical so of course they want to get into that too. AT the meeting they here terms like "Rack" and "harness" being thrown around so they run home to the internet and order some gear without consulting me first on ANYTHING. then I have to piss them off by saying "Send it all back and eat the shipping charges" becuase they chose to buy crap from "cheapoutdoorsportinggoodsonline.com", stuff they really had no idea about at all.

what is more frustrating than that is people who never respond to emails, so you count them out on trips and/or interest, then they show up at the trip..........thanks.........

Ditto on both of these. And related to your first point, it also hate it when narrow minded cavers tell newbies "you *must* buy this type of rack or that type of rack" (or get told a rack is the only acceptable caving descender), and this harness, and must set up your gear this way. Instead of being being presented with suggestions and options, and being able to try out different ways for themselves before buying.

People with poor communication skills also piss me off. Since we're laying it all out here... I also get really, really frustrated with grottos and cavers who seem unwilling to welcome newbies and sometimes actively discourage outsiders from having an interest in caving. :down:

:rant:


particular caver bought a 5 bar rack and weighs about 270 pounds...............................
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby self-deleted_user » Feb 12, 2011 8:28 pm

Ok...that seems a bit heavy for 5 bars but then again we all know I don't know much lol i'm just thinking physics here...I mean I'm like 160-170 or something I dunno anymore but I seem to be nice and controlled on 4 bars and if I want to creep at a snail's pace I can push 'em together or if a faster rope throw it around a hyperbar too. Usually, I go with creeping until I get fed up with getting nowhere especially when MacNair who was next to me (we had 2 ropes side by side on the cliff) was basically "gahhhhhh you are way too slow see you!" and zipped down :rofl: well it worked I was "hey wait up!!" and decided to try faster too. Or the other day in Aaron's garage he was on one rope and I on the other (it's so cool there now, you can go up, crawl through the attic, then rappel back down another rope, different ropes too one is fast one is slow, he even put like 30 pounds in my bag for me to drag around. That was fun :roll: haha) but he got down the one rope and I was still like hanging at the top like "hrm...why am I not moving?" and a minute or two goes by and hes "Gee you are so slow, I'm waiting!!" so I got the bars spread out so I actually moved (I was on the slow rope). I keep forgetting I can spread them apart to go faster lol.

OH RANT: It bugs me when the grotto is like an old boy's club that is misogynistic and downright rude. I can take teasing and digs and whatever with the best of 'em (usually I find them hilarious) but such a difference between being rude and degrading and playful joking and teasing.
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby batrotter » Feb 12, 2011 8:42 pm

Sungura wrote:
OH RANT: It bugs me when the grotto is like an old boy's club that is misogynistic and downright rude. I can take teasing and digs and whatever with the best of 'em (usually I find them hilarious) but such a difference between being rude and degrading and playful joking and teasing.


Are you referring to your new Grotto?
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby self-deleted_user » Feb 12, 2011 9:14 pm

batrotter wrote:
Sungura wrote:
OH RANT: It bugs me when the grotto is like an old boy's club that is misogynistic and downright rude. I can take teasing and digs and whatever with the best of 'em (usually I find them hilarious) but such a difference between being rude and degrading and playful joking and teasing.


Are you referring to your new Grotto?
no, the old grotto. 'Tis why I can't stand to go up north anymore because there is no escape and 2 of them are okay but that's it. If two of the wives would come up I could get away better but they don't or just show up Saturday afternoons or something so that doesn't work. I mean it all depends, but at this point while it is the only really pretty place I know in Michigan up there I'm never going back unless I have my own friends to bring along so we can run off and do our own thing and let the old rude annoying guys be.

So far the SJVG is amazing :)
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby caveflower » Feb 13, 2011 5:06 pm

Since we're laying it all out here... I also get really, really frustrated with grottos and cavers who seem unwilling to welcome newbies and sometimes actively discourage outsiders from having an interest in caving.



Bingo NZ this one really pisses me off!

I also hate it when caver a that have been caving for a long time don't treat newbies with respect. Treat them like their dumb. Everyone was a newbie at sometime.
Caving is fun but people are always more important.
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Re: The Rant Thread - let it out!

Postby NZcaver » Feb 13, 2011 5:42 pm

My new rant of the day :rant: people who don't LOOK before they POST! :roll:

Come on, people... this isn't Facebook. You can't take 10 seconds to do a quick keyword search for existing topics before starting a new one? :doh: Or if it's really big urgent breaking news, at least click the view new posts or view active topics tab first!

Since yesterday, there's been 4 different topics started about the same incident in Ellison's. I know people were just trying to be helpful, but it doesn't take much to check first.

Grumble, grumble, grumble... :boxing:
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