Diy hydraulic car lift
You ever had someone harass you while shooting?
2024.04.29 08:18 RogueFiveSeven You ever had someone harass you while shooting?
Context: I went out shooting in the Arizona desert with a friend at a pretty popular shooting destination. We were alone with a mountain as our backdrop and the dirt road behind us. My car was pulled up to this small enclave where we could use my car trunk as the storage and staging grounds since neither of us had tables (we were broke college graduates with not much utilities). I wanted to show my friend my Tavor x95 I got used and how it operated so when I pulled out the rifle for a second or two it was pointed at the road we came from. I lifted it up to the air so it wouldn’t be in anyone’s direction as I demonstrated the bolt hold and release with an empty magazine so he knew how it worked. As I did that however this vehicle slowly drove by yelling at me to keep the rifle pointed down range and that I was also a massive fucking idiot who shouldn’t be allowed to own guns. These two guys seemed to have driven by couple of times out of nowhere while revving their vehicle and I felt this weird cold stare coming from them every time they did. Now, that has bothered me for a little bit because I ALWAYS do my best to try and be as safe as possible even if conditions aren’t as ideal and I hate getting into trouble when it wasn’t my intention. To have someone be that angry at me though for what could’ve been an honest mistake (if that was even that at all) comes across as like a Karen type.
Now I don’t remember all the details but to me we were pretty far enough from the main dirt road and I could’ve sworn I had the file pointed up in the air as to not flag anyone. I don’t know what I did what was wrong?
I don’t know. Has anyone ever had experiences like that where someone seemed unnecessarily pushy or aggressive when you were minding your own business? Or maybe I was in the wrong?
submitted by RogueFiveSeven to Firearms [link] [comments]
Now I don’t remember all the details but to me we were pretty far enough from the main dirt road and I could’ve sworn I had the file pointed up in the air as to not flag anyone. I don’t know what I did what was wrong?
I don’t know. Has anyone ever had experiences like that where someone seemed unnecessarily pushy or aggressive when you were minding your own business? Or maybe I was in the wrong?
2024.04.29 08:15 ApatheticMill How to Build Your Own Lithium Power Station
So many people ask how to get electricity in their cars, I made this video last year, but haven't gotten around to positing it until now. I made an extremely simple 1280wh power station for under $700. Which is much cheaper than many of the bigger name brands like Eco flow (1000wh starting at $900). This power station can power low watt cooking appliances (600w or less) for a few hours and run extremely low watt items such as a laptop for a few days.
https://youtu.be/xWPshYQnKz8
I'm going to start making more DIY videos about how I get so many comforts squeezed into my compact sedan. So many people ask about my setup and I figure it could help some people. Some of the upcoming videos that I'll have are:
submitted by ApatheticMill to urbancarliving [link] [comments]
https://youtu.be/xWPshYQnKz8
I'm going to start making more DIY videos about how I get so many comforts squeezed into my compact sedan. So many people ask about my setup and I figure it could help some people. Some of the upcoming videos that I'll have are:
- Solar power
- Shower
- Kitchen/ sink
- Toilet
2024.04.29 08:00 CharacterFactor981 Nissan Note diseal yr 2007. Can't find the oil nut underneath the engine.
Wanted to change oil and l couldn't find the nut underneath like any other car. Wanted to DIY, to change oil and oil filter. Anyone with an idea? And also the oil filter was very tight, couldn't loosen it up.
submitted by CharacterFactor981 to MechanicAdvice [link] [comments]
2024.04.29 07:29 WolfKing625 What would other alien races, if one of them had the Omnitrix, think of the Homosapien/Human as a transformation?
 | I mean seriously, I don't wanna sound harsh, but we don't have much going for us as a species in the big wide universe of Ben 10. I think we would kinda be a gag alien like Walkatrout, The Worst, or Mole-Stache. Except you know what? I'd say Mole-Stache is better than us 😭 submitted by WolfKing625 to Ben10 [link] [comments] • We don't have super speed. • We're not super intelligent. I mean the smartest of us know how to make a lot of cool and powerful things, but we can't do it anywhere near as fast as something like Jurryrig. We would need a LOT of time, and so we aren't useful in a pinch there. • We can't fly, hold our breath long underwater, or survive in space. • We don't have fire resistance, cold resistance, or any weapon resistance(like Swampfire is immune to lasers, and is actually immune/resistant to all 3 of these things). • We don't have enhanced jumping or enhanced reflex capabilities. • We're not super durable. • We don't have super strengh. I mean some of our very strongest people can lift 1000+ pounds, but thats with a weight/workout equipment. Could we actually do that same type of feat with something like a boulder, car, machine, or another creature? It's something, but not super impressive compared to other strong aliens like Rath, Humongousaur, and Fourarms. • We know a lot of various martial arts, but I'm sure we all agree Kickin Hawk would have us all beat by a mile. But maybe that's one thing that could make us a pretty unique transformation. The capability of utilizing a dozen or so different styles of fighting techniques. Still though, what's to stop that Omnitrix-wearer from taking what other techniques they learned from us and applying them to their Tetramand(Fourarms) or Appoplexian(Rath) transformations? It would take what little we have to offer, and make their better transformations even better. |
2024.04.29 07:23 Unlikely-Mistake-379 The West: A New Hollywood Agent's Deathbed Confessions
I have reservations about telling these following stories. My life has taught me that nothing at all comes from reminiscing about the “golden years” as it were. But I am now an old man, bereft of any use except what I can remember. I want you to understand the person writing this in order for you to grasp why you are getting this story, why you are getting it now, and why it holds an affect on me still. I am not easily frightened or overwhelmed. But the bizarre nature of these events My simple warning to any casual observer wishing to find entertainment is. I don’t have the answers to the questions and I don’t think I have enough time to find them anymore. Though frankly I don’t think I want them.
Part one
In 1972 I found myself at a party in Beverly Hills. I was an experienced Hollywood agent by this point. I had already seen a rise and fall of an entire movement and generation, and the art industry is always following the generational peaks and pits
“Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe”
“Put your ray gun to my head”
For many clients of mine, the changing days were terrifying because it meant that they had to change or die out like a forgotten species of animal, for me I just kept following the money. If the kids wanna watch Eastwood shoot people instead of Wayne, that is more than fine by me. This was my thinking. Of course it isn’t that simple for everyone else, but I don’t make money based on the quality of the film my actors are in. I make money based on the actor and trust me, plenty of my bigger paychecks have been raked in by what my father would call “a ton of bull.” I disagreed with him and I do today but you see what I mean. An opinion doesn’t buy a home in the hills and a motorcycle. Anyways I was deep in something vaguely alcoholic and privileged that night. Then I saw a friend of mine, who I was sure drove me here, he was holding two full bottles of whiskey pointing the openings directly in his mouth. In the crowd around him was young and somewhat new actor client of mine Sawyer Thompson who was wearing black aviators indoors,(making me question whether I should work with him at all) the entire legal team for Pink Floyd, what could have possibly been Carter Jacobs or Lou Reed(I don’t know I was quite drunk), the guitarist from Deep Purple, Nancy Sinatra, and a dude dressed as Joey Ramone(he probably wasn’t) about 20 more packed around my chaotic friend as the last of the liquor slipped into his mouth. He raised both bottles above him towards the ceiling
“AAAaaaAaaAAAAAAHHHhhhHhhhhHhhHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!” Is what I remember him screaming. Then he pelted a bottle into the wall behind him and it was pulverized into tiny bits. If this didn’t look the effects of simple alcohol to you, it’s because it wasn’t. Edward Stockton Williams was a stuntman and a slave to many things, Cocaine was one of them. At any time of his last 7-8 years of life he could very possibly have been arrested for the pure amount he had in his 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, stashed in little hidey-holes throughout the vehicle. He very possibly could be alive today if that hypothetical traffic stop ever took place. After he threw the first bottle he spotted me.
“HeeeEEY! BboBBBYy! cRAtcH DIS!” He yelled as his arm drew back
My eyes widened. Then he threw the bottle at me. I ducked and saw it sail over me, perfectly past multiple people you would think were of note, and then with a solid hit it took out this music producer from the east coast. Just like that. Silence except for that Bowie record.
“When the kids had killed the man”
“I had to break up the band”
He hit the ground, and of course, that’s when we heard the sirens coming.
“Some crotchety old fart trying to get sleep at 8:30pm called the fuckin’ cops” is what I thought. And then we ran. I don’t mean me, or me and Stockton, I mean ‘we’ as in the party. It must have been 50-80 people of varying sizes and shapes all on their feet moving as fast as possible through the building. I saw a man in an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt attempt a dolphin dive through a window and he bounced off like a 210 lb beach ball. I crawled out a side window and found Stockton in his cocaine filled, dark red beetle the stereo was cranked up and he doing lines off the top of the dash “waiting for me”
“My Stars….”
“So far….”
“No one’s calling me home”
“mmhf” I mumbled.
I had thought that the night was winding down. Past a certain point at night, the moon disappears and before the sun begins appearing on the sky, there is an hour or two that are quiet and dark. This is when the night people rest. Even so, the night wasn’t over just yet. We pulled out into the street. The car was parked along the sidewalk far enough away from the house that was now a circus lit by red and blue. I had ran through the neighbors bushes and I have always been a smaller guy so no one saw me I guess. We drove up and down and along the hillside. Lesser men would be dazed by this and better men wouldn’t have driven in the delirious and spent condition we were in. Everything we said was just nonsense but it was also the funniest stuff ever spat out by humans. It wasn’t the worst of times and it was a quiet stretch of road. Not much around at all. When we saw the hitchhiker the question wasn’t “should we pick him up” it was “hEy Eddie is that… yOu know,” I said pointing. I thought he looked familiar, maybe an old client of mine. The radio was still on.
“There’s a killer on the road”
“His brain is squirming like a toad”
*tzzswwswsswsszzzt*
Eddie changed the channel. And pulled over to pick the man up. The man was wearing black dress shoes and pants, white dress shirt, black unbuttoned waistcoat, and blonde well kept hair. He was pale and he had sunglasses on. I thought he looked like a yuppie from New York or maybe an actor from the black and white days but he couldn’t have been any more than 27-29 years of age. I wondered what he did long enough for him to enter the backseat and for Eddie to pull the small gasoline-drinking creature back into the street. I snapped out of it and Eddie asked what he did
“So, what do you do?”
“Well, what do you mean?” He said politely
“I mean job mister nineteen thirty-three, what do you do?” Eddie belched
“Well, I guess… I am a merchant” he said
“English” Eddie snapped
I mumbled audibly, “he sells stuff”
“Alright then, What do you sell”
“A little bit of everything” he smiled warmly. The man had a presence that worried me. He seemed polite enough I guess, but he had an aura that made me feel like any second something was going to happen. I brushed this off as the effect of the substances
“We haven’t caught your name yet” Eddie asked confrontationally,
“People call me lots of things” the man said,
“Like what, stranger” Eddie said
“What do you do for fun” I said quickly, this guy was extremely imposing in a completely non-physical way. Simply put, he made me very nervous and Eddie was too drunk to be capable of nervousness. So I alone had to maintain the peace in the now cramped Volkswagen Beetle.
“I like to collect things that I find” he responded with “I travel around and I collect something from wherever I go”
“Mmmmm” Eddie mumbled while squinting at the winding white lines
“That’s interesting I guess.” I said, in one sentence all of the tension was shattered. This man wasn’t mysteriously evil like I suspected he was just a weirdo. A bizarre artist type who came to L.A to make it big with his shitty music or paintings of fruit crying or some crap like that. I wasn’t scared anymore, I was just bored. All that and no payoff. What a scam. To clarify, I was wrong about this.
We entered a tunnel and everything went dark around us except for the desperate headlights of the car. Then the radio started getting weird, first it flashed in and out of connection with the station and then it started flying through the channels back and forth, back and forth, I spaced out for a second before I realized that it was saying something
“zzzzIzzzzan’tzzzzzbreaaatthheezzzz”
“zzzzIzzzzan’tzzzzzbreaaatthheezzzz”
“zzzzIzzzzan’tzzzzzbreaaatthheezzzz”
I caught a glimpse of the rear view and I swear I could see the stranger slouching back in his seat and grinning as if all was right with the world. Then bright lights
shined into the car blinding us. The radio settled on the station 69.9 The Ocean which was playing the end of “When the Music’s Over” by The Doors
Eddie swerved a little and slowed down. We were in the main drag of Hollywood. Cars all around as we pulled up to a packed four-way stop.
“How the hell did we get here?” I thought as I sat up and peered confusedly out of the window.
“Hey, um… Bobby my man, when did we start heading this way.” Eddie asked
“I don’t think we did.” I said
“Then how-“ as we were talking a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia with the top down shot past our right loudly playing the same station we were oddly enough
“Music is your ooonnllyy friend”
“Until the end”
The car entered the intersection and I noticed the kid in the car wasn't looking at the road, he was staring up, head back, his long brown hair in the wind, his aviators pointed directly at the empty night sky. He ramped off a divot in the road at the entrance to the intersection and
less than a moment later he punched the car into the side of a gasoline tanker truck that had the green light. The tanker was pushed so that the side that was hit lifted off the asphalt. And then, in the time it would take to take a single picture of the scene and immortalize that moment on film the tanker exploded into a fireball that rose into the sky killing the kid in the sports car, the truck driver, and two people I hadn’t met in a ford sedan were passing through the intersection in the opposite direction. The worst part was the image of the truck driver looking out his window and seeing what happened and watching as he does nothing to save himself, watching the silhouettes of the sedan people panic, watching the kid in the sports car lift his head in time to see fire jump at him consuming him, and worst of all seeing the bodies rapidly melt and fall apart in the fiery explosion. Then the windshield shattered, the car lurched back and as the suspension rebounded we got a good look at the aftermath. Eddie got out of the car. (to help I assume) I looked back and saw that the stranger was gone too. Fire was creeping up a tall building on the corner nearest to the explosion and the tanker was still a large bonfire. Despite this the fire department was there with ambulances faster than I expected possible and despite some minor injuries from glass shattering no one else was hurt majorly. The next day Eddie called me.
“Holy fiery shit Robert, do you remember what happened last night!?”
“Yep” I said “the important parts.”
“Well I don’t, but I’m looking at the tv right now-“ Faint noises were layered under his voice and I guess it was the tv.
“-And I’m thinking, what kinda bloodbath did you drag me to!?” He said more shocked than mad.
“I’m thinking about how you were driving and also what do you actually remember” I replied
“Mmmm, I remember getting to the party, I remember some of the party stuff, and I remember leaving in a hurry because of something, I remember we picked up a hitchhiker that pissed me off and I remember the radio acting up.” He said
“You really gotta pull back on the, ‘party stuff’ Eddie”
I said
He told me, “fuck you, mom.”
Then I told him I would talk to him later and I got ready for work. I had an appointment with someone that day. I walked in and I waited an hour or two at my desk reading a western novel about a bronco buster who broke his arm or something. I don't know I was really bored that day. After that hour or two I walked out of my office to ask my secretary what was going on.
“Hey, Ali, where is the guy?” I asked
She sighed heavily “What guy Robert?”
“Saaaaa- ammy t-t tom tom Thomas, Sammy Thomas, Sammy Thomas’s the name” I said confidently
“I don’t have anything under a Sammy Thomas, Robert.” Is what she said to me.
“Are you sure” she said looking at her ledger
“Mmmm hmmm”
“Oh shit.” she said, “Did you mean Sawyer Thompson?”
“OH YEAH” I yelled “That’s the name!”
“Robert he died, like last night too.”
“Huh?”
“I was watching the news this morning and I thought I recognized that guy.” She said “Well shit, Robert I guess you have the day off”
Sawyer Thompson was all we had booked for that Monday I guess.
This is it for part one.
submitted by Unlikely-Mistake-379 to nosleep [link] [comments]
Part one
In 1972 I found myself at a party in Beverly Hills. I was an experienced Hollywood agent by this point. I had already seen a rise and fall of an entire movement and generation, and the art industry is always following the generational peaks and pits
“Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe”
“Put your ray gun to my head”
For many clients of mine, the changing days were terrifying because it meant that they had to change or die out like a forgotten species of animal, for me I just kept following the money. If the kids wanna watch Eastwood shoot people instead of Wayne, that is more than fine by me. This was my thinking. Of course it isn’t that simple for everyone else, but I don’t make money based on the quality of the film my actors are in. I make money based on the actor and trust me, plenty of my bigger paychecks have been raked in by what my father would call “a ton of bull.” I disagreed with him and I do today but you see what I mean. An opinion doesn’t buy a home in the hills and a motorcycle. Anyways I was deep in something vaguely alcoholic and privileged that night. Then I saw a friend of mine, who I was sure drove me here, he was holding two full bottles of whiskey pointing the openings directly in his mouth. In the crowd around him was young and somewhat new actor client of mine Sawyer Thompson who was wearing black aviators indoors,(making me question whether I should work with him at all) the entire legal team for Pink Floyd, what could have possibly been Carter Jacobs or Lou Reed(I don’t know I was quite drunk), the guitarist from Deep Purple, Nancy Sinatra, and a dude dressed as Joey Ramone(he probably wasn’t) about 20 more packed around my chaotic friend as the last of the liquor slipped into his mouth. He raised both bottles above him towards the ceiling
“AAAaaaAaaAAAAAAHHHhhhHhhhhHhhHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!” Is what I remember him screaming. Then he pelted a bottle into the wall behind him and it was pulverized into tiny bits. If this didn’t look the effects of simple alcohol to you, it’s because it wasn’t. Edward Stockton Williams was a stuntman and a slave to many things, Cocaine was one of them. At any time of his last 7-8 years of life he could very possibly have been arrested for the pure amount he had in his 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, stashed in little hidey-holes throughout the vehicle. He very possibly could be alive today if that hypothetical traffic stop ever took place. After he threw the first bottle he spotted me.
“HeeeEEY! BboBBBYy! cRAtcH DIS!” He yelled as his arm drew back
My eyes widened. Then he threw the bottle at me. I ducked and saw it sail over me, perfectly past multiple people you would think were of note, and then with a solid hit it took out this music producer from the east coast. Just like that. Silence except for that Bowie record.
“When the kids had killed the man”
“I had to break up the band”
He hit the ground, and of course, that’s when we heard the sirens coming.
“Some crotchety old fart trying to get sleep at 8:30pm called the fuckin’ cops” is what I thought. And then we ran. I don’t mean me, or me and Stockton, I mean ‘we’ as in the party. It must have been 50-80 people of varying sizes and shapes all on their feet moving as fast as possible through the building. I saw a man in an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt attempt a dolphin dive through a window and he bounced off like a 210 lb beach ball. I crawled out a side window and found Stockton in his cocaine filled, dark red beetle the stereo was cranked up and he doing lines off the top of the dash “waiting for me”
“My Stars….”
“So far….”
“No one’s calling me home”
“mmhf” I mumbled.
I had thought that the night was winding down. Past a certain point at night, the moon disappears and before the sun begins appearing on the sky, there is an hour or two that are quiet and dark. This is when the night people rest. Even so, the night wasn’t over just yet. We pulled out into the street. The car was parked along the sidewalk far enough away from the house that was now a circus lit by red and blue. I had ran through the neighbors bushes and I have always been a smaller guy so no one saw me I guess. We drove up and down and along the hillside. Lesser men would be dazed by this and better men wouldn’t have driven in the delirious and spent condition we were in. Everything we said was just nonsense but it was also the funniest stuff ever spat out by humans. It wasn’t the worst of times and it was a quiet stretch of road. Not much around at all. When we saw the hitchhiker the question wasn’t “should we pick him up” it was “hEy Eddie is that… yOu know,” I said pointing. I thought he looked familiar, maybe an old client of mine. The radio was still on.
“There’s a killer on the road”
“His brain is squirming like a toad”
*tzzswwswsswsszzzt*
Eddie changed the channel. And pulled over to pick the man up. The man was wearing black dress shoes and pants, white dress shirt, black unbuttoned waistcoat, and blonde well kept hair. He was pale and he had sunglasses on. I thought he looked like a yuppie from New York or maybe an actor from the black and white days but he couldn’t have been any more than 27-29 years of age. I wondered what he did long enough for him to enter the backseat and for Eddie to pull the small gasoline-drinking creature back into the street. I snapped out of it and Eddie asked what he did
“So, what do you do?”
“Well, what do you mean?” He said politely
“I mean job mister nineteen thirty-three, what do you do?” Eddie belched
“Well, I guess… I am a merchant” he said
“English” Eddie snapped
I mumbled audibly, “he sells stuff”
“Alright then, What do you sell”
“A little bit of everything” he smiled warmly. The man had a presence that worried me. He seemed polite enough I guess, but he had an aura that made me feel like any second something was going to happen. I brushed this off as the effect of the substances
“We haven’t caught your name yet” Eddie asked confrontationally,
“People call me lots of things” the man said,
“Like what, stranger” Eddie said
“What do you do for fun” I said quickly, this guy was extremely imposing in a completely non-physical way. Simply put, he made me very nervous and Eddie was too drunk to be capable of nervousness. So I alone had to maintain the peace in the now cramped Volkswagen Beetle.
“I like to collect things that I find” he responded with “I travel around and I collect something from wherever I go”
“Mmmmm” Eddie mumbled while squinting at the winding white lines
“That’s interesting I guess.” I said, in one sentence all of the tension was shattered. This man wasn’t mysteriously evil like I suspected he was just a weirdo. A bizarre artist type who came to L.A to make it big with his shitty music or paintings of fruit crying or some crap like that. I wasn’t scared anymore, I was just bored. All that and no payoff. What a scam. To clarify, I was wrong about this.
We entered a tunnel and everything went dark around us except for the desperate headlights of the car. Then the radio started getting weird, first it flashed in and out of connection with the station and then it started flying through the channels back and forth, back and forth, I spaced out for a second before I realized that it was saying something
“zzzzIzzzzan’tzzzzzbreaaatthheezzzz”
“zzzzIzzzzan’tzzzzzbreaaatthheezzzz”
“zzzzIzzzzan’tzzzzzbreaaatthheezzzz”
I caught a glimpse of the rear view and I swear I could see the stranger slouching back in his seat and grinning as if all was right with the world. Then bright lights
shined into the car blinding us. The radio settled on the station 69.9 The Ocean which was playing the end of “When the Music’s Over” by The Doors
Eddie swerved a little and slowed down. We were in the main drag of Hollywood. Cars all around as we pulled up to a packed four-way stop.
“How the hell did we get here?” I thought as I sat up and peered confusedly out of the window.
“Hey, um… Bobby my man, when did we start heading this way.” Eddie asked
“I don’t think we did.” I said
“Then how-“ as we were talking a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia with the top down shot past our right loudly playing the same station we were oddly enough
“Music is your ooonnllyy friend”
“Until the end”
The car entered the intersection and I noticed the kid in the car wasn't looking at the road, he was staring up, head back, his long brown hair in the wind, his aviators pointed directly at the empty night sky. He ramped off a divot in the road at the entrance to the intersection and
less than a moment later he punched the car into the side of a gasoline tanker truck that had the green light. The tanker was pushed so that the side that was hit lifted off the asphalt. And then, in the time it would take to take a single picture of the scene and immortalize that moment on film the tanker exploded into a fireball that rose into the sky killing the kid in the sports car, the truck driver, and two people I hadn’t met in a ford sedan were passing through the intersection in the opposite direction. The worst part was the image of the truck driver looking out his window and seeing what happened and watching as he does nothing to save himself, watching the silhouettes of the sedan people panic, watching the kid in the sports car lift his head in time to see fire jump at him consuming him, and worst of all seeing the bodies rapidly melt and fall apart in the fiery explosion. Then the windshield shattered, the car lurched back and as the suspension rebounded we got a good look at the aftermath. Eddie got out of the car. (to help I assume) I looked back and saw that the stranger was gone too. Fire was creeping up a tall building on the corner nearest to the explosion and the tanker was still a large bonfire. Despite this the fire department was there with ambulances faster than I expected possible and despite some minor injuries from glass shattering no one else was hurt majorly. The next day Eddie called me.
“Holy fiery shit Robert, do you remember what happened last night!?”
“Yep” I said “the important parts.”
“Well I don’t, but I’m looking at the tv right now-“ Faint noises were layered under his voice and I guess it was the tv.
“-And I’m thinking, what kinda bloodbath did you drag me to!?” He said more shocked than mad.
“I’m thinking about how you were driving and also what do you actually remember” I replied
“Mmmm, I remember getting to the party, I remember some of the party stuff, and I remember leaving in a hurry because of something, I remember we picked up a hitchhiker that pissed me off and I remember the radio acting up.” He said
“You really gotta pull back on the, ‘party stuff’ Eddie”
I said
He told me, “fuck you, mom.”
Then I told him I would talk to him later and I got ready for work. I had an appointment with someone that day. I walked in and I waited an hour or two at my desk reading a western novel about a bronco buster who broke his arm or something. I don't know I was really bored that day. After that hour or two I walked out of my office to ask my secretary what was going on.
“Hey, Ali, where is the guy?” I asked
She sighed heavily “What guy Robert?”
“Saaaaa- ammy t-t tom tom Thomas, Sammy Thomas, Sammy Thomas’s the name” I said confidently
“I don’t have anything under a Sammy Thomas, Robert.” Is what she said to me.
“Are you sure” she said looking at her ledger
“Mmmm hmmm”
“Oh shit.” she said, “Did you mean Sawyer Thompson?”
“OH YEAH” I yelled “That’s the name!”
“Robert he died, like last night too.”
“Huh?”
“I was watching the news this morning and I thought I recognized that guy.” She said “Well shit, Robert I guess you have the day off”
Sawyer Thompson was all we had booked for that Monday I guess.
This is it for part one.
2024.04.29 07:01 Ambitious-Fennel-605 Guys my truck ate that shit
 | I would add the video I took of the car reversing, but reddit doesn’t let me. submitted by Ambitious-Fennel-605 to carcrash [link] [comments] At the time of this post this happened an hour ago I was at a malfunctioning red light. I was at a complete stop, I flickered my lights to the cars on the road for they can pass. When it was finally my turn to go, I went straight to cross, when I saw this idiot right by the side of the truck my world froze for a second and boom it hit. I didn’t even feel the hit, and neither did my mom and cousin felt it, since my truck is a lifted. Thank God no one was hurt including the guy who hit me, I wish him the best, but bro, I was so close to putting my hands on this dude, but I knew it was gonna go worse for me, so I settled down. Thankfully it wasn’t much of a hassle, so we exchanged info and went straight home. I won’t be filling a report since my truck is in perfect condition, it’s just a small scratch that it has, and the bar where you climb to get in the truck is bent in. Doors, wheels, and everything else is perfect, the red car on the other hand, was completely fucked. The red car was far away btw, when I was crossing I was basically already on the next street as you can tell by the hit, the red car for some dumbass reason accelerated. Lesson learned from this accident: Don’t trust traffic lights, Just let everybody go, Be very high alert(even tho I was). Anyways Goodnight guys. |
2024.04.29 06:50 Big-Pollution4175 Teckwrap Vinyl doesn’t stand behind their products.
 | Chat with customer service: submitted by Big-Pollution4175 to VinylWrap [link] [comments] 3/28/24, 10:39 PM - +86 147 3970 3127: Hello Ricky, this is Alexis from Teckwrap. I hope you're doing well. I wanted to reach out to you in response to your call earlier. Could you please provide me with more information about the nature of your inquiry so that we can better assist you? 3/29/24, 7:19 AM - Ricky: Hello Alexis. I had purchased a full roll of Blue Velvet (satin chrome) a while back. I was finally able to install it this past weekend after removing my previous Vivid wrap. I'm not new to vinyl wrapping especially when it comes to my own vehicle. I've used different brands ,vivid,3m, Avery, and even a cheap Chinese no name brand🫣. This was my first time using teckerap, and for reference the vinyl was kept in original shipping box and store inside under ac temp controlled until I took out to install.(I did the install on the weekends which took about 3 weeks starting March 1st) So I say all that to give context to the problems I'm having with the wrap. After post heating yesterday I went out to run a few errands. I live in Florida and outside temperature was about 84° my car was in direct sunlight for about 5 hours. My last stop I noticed the vinyl wrap was starting to lift up on a few edges. Once I got back home I did a walk through around vehicle and noticed basically every panel except for both sides skirts have edges lifting. I have a 2014 BMW 650i Convertible, and I'm at a loss for the reason this is happening. The places it's happening is always on a edge, but on different locations. It's not a tension issue because flat areas on door and hood where I have no stretch is the location of the lifting. My car does run a tad hot because of it's very large engine and I did notice a lot of the lifting tends to be in areas where the heat was probably higher then majority of the rest of the vehicle. During the install process I noticed that compared to most vinyls I have used this vinyl tends to be much more grabby/ sticky in general...but during install at times I had times where I had a large lack of that adhesion that I would say a majority of the wrap displayed. I always expect to have 1 edge or 1 corner that might lift a little and need to be reheated and sealed back down, but I have never had an issue like this. Especially with no obvious reason I can figure out. I'm hoping the adhesive promoter I ordered will fix these issues, but I was hoping you might have some advice or information that might remedy situation. I am hoping I don't have to order more vinyl to repair any of these panels that might not stay down especially if the problem say happens again. Sorry for long response and I appreciate your help with this matter. Post heating was done over 24 hours prior to my day trip of errands. 3/29/24, 7:23 AM - TECKWRAP: Thanks for sharing your feedback. Please send us some photos of the issues so we can have a better understanding of the problems you're having. 3/29/24, 7:28 AM - Ricky: Ok, I will be able to do later today if that's ok with you? 3/29/24, 8:01 AM - TECKWRAP: Surely 4/5/24, 5:00 AM - Ricky: Now I've tried reheating and post heating area again, but I feel like if my car is outside in the sun these areas will lift back up again. 4/5/24, 5:01 AM - Ricky: Please confirm that you are able to view the pictures and quality is ok with me sending them this way. Thanks 4/5/24, 11:28 PM - TECKWRAP: Thanks for the photos. We were wondering if you apply the vinyl, stretch it first, then heat it? Or do you heat the films first, let them shrink, then apply them? 4/8/24, 8:45 PM - Ricky: I generally always try to apply first stretch then and heat after. I try never to have any tension on corners, edges, and seams. I have noticed after use 3m adhesion promoter I have been able to get a few of the areas to stay somewhat down, but it's almost like there is a problem with adhesive. I also in trying to fix these lifting problems have now overheated of few areas of the vinyl which is just my frustration and my fault in that regards. 4/8/24, 8:46 PM - Ricky: I have some of the original vinyl with backing still intact...unused not sure if that would help you? 4/9/24, 3:56 AM - TECKWRAP: Please note that Teckwrap is a multi-layered calendered film, unlike 3M or Avery's cast film. The main difference between them is the memories. Memories are the characteristics of the calendered vinyl that cause it to return to its original form after being heated/stretched. It is essential to alleviate all the tension on the edges before installation. To do this, we recommend heating the film to remove any tension on the edges. This prevents the material from shrinking back to its original form (which causes lifting) after installation. For edges and deep grooves where there may be wrinkles or tension, lift the film slightly, heat it, and then wait until the vinyl goes smooth again before laying it down and squeezing out any wrinkles. The vinyl will naturally shrink around the edges afterward. It shrinks on its own, and its shrinking ability can work to our advantage. To help the installation process, shrink the film (add heat) on the edges before cutting. Failing to do so can cause the vinyl edges to lift. Also, we suggest using primer on the edges to strengthen the adhesive around the corners. Furthermore, we recommend leaving more cuts to prevent the vinyl from shrinking back. This will allow you to achieve a more precise fit and ensure that your wraps remain in place for years to come. 4/9/24, 3:57 AM - TECKWRAP https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=SKkeURoMiHE&list=TLGGIeIdX733MBswOTA0MjAyNA 4/9/24, 4:00 AM - TECKWRAP Starting from the fifth minute of the video, you can see that he heats the vinyl first and then lays it. 4/10/24, 2:42 PM - Ricky: https://youtu.be/hKzegAjekfE?si=yG3jXFa8QnW4Sv9d 4/10/24, 2:43 PM - Ricky: Satin chrome....he lays it first. Then heats lays and then heat stretch. By stretch I mean pulling tight to help keep wrinkles away during laying it down. Later Then when I get to where I can't just lay it down anymore . I would apply heat to reset film and then stretch and lay it down. The edges I would heat to get rid of tension prior to wrapping around edges. The video for matte orange on BMW he lays almost the whole door first before heat and stretch. I watched both videos satin for how to use and matte to see how he approached the panels of the BMW. 4/12/24, 5:28 AM - Ricky: Sooo... What's next? Did you confirm the video I sent and watch his application on the doors? So now we have cleared up that I followed the tutorial video provided by your company on how to install satin chrome wrap. How do we fix this? Even after using 3m adhesion promoter the edges and areas of problems are still lifting once they reach higher temps during daily use. 4/12/24, 5:57 AM -TECKWRAP: I understand that you have raised concerns about the glue used in your product, and I would like to provide you with a more detailed explanation. Based on the picture you provided, we cannot determine that the root cause of the issue is the glue. If there were problems with the glue, the film would not only curl at the edges but also display signs of deterioration in another area. Furthermore, it seems that the method you used for installation was splicing rather than using a whole piece. This approach requires more post-heating and advanced thermal energy to shrink the film, which may have contributed to the issue you are facing. Therefore, we cannot include your case in the scope of our warranty. Nevertheless, we would be happy to provide you with additional materials to replace a certain area at a discounted price. 4/12/24, 6:00 AM - Ricky: Splice? Do you mean inlays? So it’s not the glue because you don’t see signs of glue failure. My installation must be wrong even though I followed your company’s multi video installation instructions. What is this discount for the vinyl repurchase? Is it common for teck wrap to have the back of the film to be bright white regardless of front facing color of vinyl? 4/16/24, 5:45 AM TECKWRAP: Yes, inlays. The discount will be based on the size of the item you request. 33ft: $360 49ft: $523 4/18/24, 8:21 AM - Ricky: Yeah that's a hard pass especially with me following your application video and having all these lifting problems. You want me to pay double to wrap my car again with no guarantees not to have the same problem. I could of got 3m at this price point. I provided all the information you asked for and even showed you a video from your company providing the steps I used for install which differs from your suggested install process. So if I installed the vinyl the wrong way then your company should still be responsible because the video instruction online I followed are from your company. I've tried to be as understanding as possible, but with the time lost, and now wanting me to trust your brand to spend more money is unacceptable. No way I will commit to a brand that doesn't stand by their products or process. Take ownership for having 2 videos that have installation instructions that are not the same. I see no effort to stand behind your product and not provided quality customer service that would be expected. 4/18/24, 8:25 AM - Ricky: Of the only 2 reviews of this product 1 of them lists having the same problems as me! 4/18/24, 11:23 PM - TECKWRAP Could you please confirm if the vinyl you bought was purchased during February 2022? 4/18/24, 11:51 PM - TECKWRAP: IMG-20240418-WA0001.jpg (file attached) The vinyl has a storage life of 2 years when stored at temperatures between +10°С and +20°С and relative humidity of 50% in its original packaging. It is essential to check the vinyl's adhesive properties, particularly after the 2-year period, as the glue may lose its optimal stickiness over time. Therefore, it is advisable to use vinyl within its storage life or as soon as possible after purchase to ensure the best results. 4/19/24, 3:25 AM - Ricky: Yes, stored inside my house at 74° until installed. So purchased 02/17/22 and received 02/21/22. I’m confused I thought you originally stated it was my install and there were no signs of glue failure. Now the reason your not helping me with warranty is because the glue has failed because it’s past the shelf date or warranty. 4/24/24, 10:25 AM - Ricky: The film was stored in original packaging inside a house that is temp controlled at 74-76* with humidity kept below 50% by AC unit. I noticed that online it says 2 years from manufacture date, and I don’t have anything that shows me the date it was manufactured. It would have been maybe a month past the 2 years shelf life date for the instal. So if it was manufactured on ship date then that would be about a month past “shelf life”. From your message your stating it’s recommended to install as soon as possible after purchase to ensure best results. Shelf life should guarantee the product provides the best results all the way to that said date. No where on the site does it mention that the glue starts to deteriorate prior to shelf life date provided. Nor does it have any recommendations to install ASAP because of a possibility of glue failure prior to shelf life date of film passing. My intention was never to wait this long for install, but given its 1 month past shelf life you wouldn’t expect the glue to fail so much so soon after the shelf date. I’m really not trying to be difficult, but you gotta understand where I’m coming from. Your solution puts me out almost the same amount of money from original purchase plus the TIME TO REINSTALL VINYL (mind you on faith that it is now shelf life as the cause and not my install method of film), and shipping vs teckwrap manufactured costs. That’s all risk and no guarantee in my end. If that is your only solution then I will stick with my answer of declining that “offer” and will start all over with a company that stands behind their product. My car with pictures and a positive experience on your site I would imagine does more then a 2nd review mentioning glue problems on this product. 4/25/24, 5:57 AM - +TECKWRAP: We regret to inform you that the vinyl you purchased is no longer covered by the 2-year warranty period. Our records show that your order was placed on February 16, 2022, at 2:26 pm, meaning the warranty period has expired. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer any warranty or replacement services for your vinyl at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and appreciate your understanding. If you have any further questions or concerns, please let us know. |
2024.04.29 06:48 Kd0298 Trigger
*end of rope thought *
have a lengthy story but to summarize it up I’ve had 7 surgeries total booked for another in June. I’m 25 with two little kids - almost 5 and 18 months. Have ehlers danlos syndrome but didn’t know until I was 21. At 19 I had my first shoulder surgery at the beginning of my journey- had my first child all while dealing with pain found out I had thoracic outlet syndrome while pregnant ended up having a stroke after that and then had my first thoracic outlet surgery which included a rib removal. Sustained brachial plexus nerve damage during- had ulnar nerve surgery few months after the big tos surgery and then few months post op got into a car accident due to a reckless driver. Was diagnosed with crps after my tos surgery also. Ended up having spinal cord surgery for tethered cord and another elbow and hand surgery due to tos issues. Now just had my redo for tos because I had severe scar tissue and also trying to fix my nerves that were damaged during first one/ car accident. Anyways now my scapula is not attached because I have long thoracic nerve damage and other nerves that go to my scapula are messed up. I’ve flown to the best surgeons in US for orthopedic and my case is complex so they now are sending me to a guy in Boston who works on scapula and brachial plexus. I’m supposed to go there May 15th and am scheduled for another nerve surgery in June with my current surgeon. The point of this post is the fact that I am truly at the end of my rope just because of my pain. I’ve been in various levels of pain since 19 I’m now turning 26 soon. I love my kids I’m only here because of them. I more than anything would love to fulfill my dreams and I have a lot of passions between motherhood/ my dream is to be a nurse I took most of my pre reqs for that before I got really bad pain wise. I’ve struggled with suicidal thoughts because of my pain but now I can’t escape it because I just don’t really have hope left that this is fixable and I know I just can not cope much longer. My arm is not hanging on literally my scapula is not even attached to my chest they are now sirggestion a fusion of my scapula which is a brutal surgery. I bought the means to end my life and made the arrangements. I’m currently safe right now today but I can’t escape it. I’m trying so hard everyday to just make it to the next and do as much as I can with my kids. I do so much everyday that I know is wild with everything I have but my pain is the same doing nothing or being active (just hard to lift obviously with my bad arm) It’s horrible because more than anything I want to be here just not in pain. If you read this far thank you
submitted by Kd0298 to ChronicPain [link] [comments]
have a lengthy story but to summarize it up I’ve had 7 surgeries total booked for another in June. I’m 25 with two little kids - almost 5 and 18 months. Have ehlers danlos syndrome but didn’t know until I was 21. At 19 I had my first shoulder surgery at the beginning of my journey- had my first child all while dealing with pain found out I had thoracic outlet syndrome while pregnant ended up having a stroke after that and then had my first thoracic outlet surgery which included a rib removal. Sustained brachial plexus nerve damage during- had ulnar nerve surgery few months after the big tos surgery and then few months post op got into a car accident due to a reckless driver. Was diagnosed with crps after my tos surgery also. Ended up having spinal cord surgery for tethered cord and another elbow and hand surgery due to tos issues. Now just had my redo for tos because I had severe scar tissue and also trying to fix my nerves that were damaged during first one/ car accident. Anyways now my scapula is not attached because I have long thoracic nerve damage and other nerves that go to my scapula are messed up. I’ve flown to the best surgeons in US for orthopedic and my case is complex so they now are sending me to a guy in Boston who works on scapula and brachial plexus. I’m supposed to go there May 15th and am scheduled for another nerve surgery in June with my current surgeon. The point of this post is the fact that I am truly at the end of my rope just because of my pain. I’ve been in various levels of pain since 19 I’m now turning 26 soon. I love my kids I’m only here because of them. I more than anything would love to fulfill my dreams and I have a lot of passions between motherhood/ my dream is to be a nurse I took most of my pre reqs for that before I got really bad pain wise. I’ve struggled with suicidal thoughts because of my pain but now I can’t escape it because I just don’t really have hope left that this is fixable and I know I just can not cope much longer. My arm is not hanging on literally my scapula is not even attached to my chest they are now sirggestion a fusion of my scapula which is a brutal surgery. I bought the means to end my life and made the arrangements. I’m currently safe right now today but I can’t escape it. I’m trying so hard everyday to just make it to the next and do as much as I can with my kids. I do so much everyday that I know is wild with everything I have but my pain is the same doing nothing or being active (just hard to lift obviously with my bad arm) It’s horrible because more than anything I want to be here just not in pain. If you read this far thank you
2024.04.29 06:34 doombunnies Revelations
I am almost burnt out after a week of moving followed by a LOT of social interaction with my wife and I having a vow renewal followed by a party with everyone at my uncle's house after. Spent the whole day with her in-laws yesterday and then whole day today with them again and also MY family. I've been experiencing pretty bad insomnia with the stress of the move and anticipating mainly the party after the service. I had a hard time even waking up this morning but I knew it was important and forced myself to go.
Didn't start having a panic attack until we were in the car to head home. Started out as any other one would, a dark spiral. Was kind of ruminating over making the wrong impression due to the increasing inability for me to mask my neurodiversity since starting the process of unmasking, which immediately turned to past memories, only this time instead of keeping down a path of despair, something clicked. More like a domino effect of quick succession clicks. Revalations regarding self blame. Felt like a heavy weight lifted.
The out of the blue-ness if this is intriguing the HELL outta me. You know what's weird? I've already had loads of revelations about self-blame. There are definitely a ton of layers to it. Every time I have a revelation I think I TRULY believe it, later to find out I didn't.
Also had a realization today that dissociation went WAY deeper than I realized. It isn't just not feeling anything and being blah. I think my whole personality might have been fractured at some point. It's why I seem to be working with two mindsets that often conflict. In the past when things were real real bad I often felt like the real me was trapped in a completely different person that was careless because nothing mattered. I don't TRULY have DID but I think I could have given the right circumstances. I got damn lucky.
submitted by doombunnies to CPTSD [link] [comments]
Didn't start having a panic attack until we were in the car to head home. Started out as any other one would, a dark spiral. Was kind of ruminating over making the wrong impression due to the increasing inability for me to mask my neurodiversity since starting the process of unmasking, which immediately turned to past memories, only this time instead of keeping down a path of despair, something clicked. More like a domino effect of quick succession clicks. Revalations regarding self blame. Felt like a heavy weight lifted.
The out of the blue-ness if this is intriguing the HELL outta me. You know what's weird? I've already had loads of revelations about self-blame. There are definitely a ton of layers to it. Every time I have a revelation I think I TRULY believe it, later to find out I didn't.
Also had a realization today that dissociation went WAY deeper than I realized. It isn't just not feeling anything and being blah. I think my whole personality might have been fractured at some point. It's why I seem to be working with two mindsets that often conflict. In the past when things were real real bad I often felt like the real me was trapped in a completely different person that was careless because nothing mattered. I don't TRULY have DID but I think I could have given the right circumstances. I got damn lucky.
2024.04.29 06:16 RacingRazorback Track Build Update
 | A couple months ago, I picked up a beater NA for a dedicated track build (link: https://www.reddit.com/Miata/s/FI16fBSCdO), so thought I’d share an update. submitted by RacingRazorback to Miata [link] [comments] Since picking it up, I’ve: - had the turbo rebuilt and upgraded - stripped interior, deleting the radio and interior half of HVAC, including the heater core - began reworking wiring jobs from PO with end goal of a DIY digital dash - had a cage installed - began general clean up around the car + preventing further rust - began installing hood vents - bought a ton of parts (wheels, seat, etc.) I’ve never done a build like this before and am figuring things out one video/post/thread at a time, so advice is welcome. |
2024.04.29 06:06 sirPuffingBilly 24 M Australia Would love to voice call with someone while I'm getting stuff done around the house!
Had a house party on the weekend and still haven't cleaned up. gonna stay at home today and do all the cleaning and other chores and get some admin work done. Would love some company and encouragement!
my interests are Cars, Photography, Comedy, Books, Cooking and DIY/electronics/ woodworking and also fishkeeping. I am definitely not as interesting as that last sentence makes me sound. Down to talk to absolutely anyone.
byeeee
submitted by sirPuffingBilly to MakeNewFriendsHere [link] [comments]
my interests are Cars, Photography, Comedy, Books, Cooking and DIY/electronics/ woodworking and also fishkeeping. I am definitely not as interesting as that last sentence makes me sound. Down to talk to absolutely anyone.
byeeee
2024.04.29 05:50 dirtsmith Seven Minutes
[Full text below, but it's way better with lots of photos and images here - https://dirtsmith.com/the-seven-minutes-that-justify-my-existence ]
Seven minutes elapsed from the time I pulled over, to the moment I left the scene.
[I know, because I was calling 911 as I ran to the car, and the call log shows 7:43pm. The time stamp from the last shot (taken right before I drove off) was 7:50pm].
In California, Smoke Always Gets My Attention
It was a Sunday evening in the Spring of 2022. My girlfriend and I had both spent the week laid up in bed with our first rounds of Covid. I was driving home from the office. I had gone in on the weekend to grab my computer, so I could work from home the next week. The day was warm and I had no intention of interacting with anyone, so I was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of (ridiculously light and short) swim trunks that I only wear around the house.
It was just getting on towards dusk. Up ahead, where the road began to curve, a puff of smoke drifted from the trees on the right shoulder. At first I thought it must be a fire from a homeless encampment (not uncommon). This is California, and we had been suffering from terrible wildfires, so a fire in the trees would be bad.
There were few cars on the highway. It was easy to slow way down and get a good look as I was passing. I had my phone out with 911 punched in, ready to alert emergency response as soon as I knew what was happening.
As I drew abreast, I saw a vehicle up against a tree. Smoke filled the interior, drifting out from under the hood.
The driver side door was closed and there was no one outside the vehicle. I knew someone was trapped.
The Long Seven Minutes Begin
I had already slowed significantly and I immediately pulled off the shoulder, dialing 911 as I got out of my car. I grabbed my keys before I shut the door (which turned out to be fortuitous). Running to the crash, my 911 call failed; it sounded like a busy signal or something. I wondered if I was in a bad service area (totally possible on that stretch of road), so I pocketed my phone, cursing.
As I got to the crash I saw what looked like molten fire dripping from the bottom of the engine. And now smoke was pouring faster from under the hood. The car was slammed right up into a pine tree.
I ran to the driver side door and tried the handle, but it wouldn’t open. The interior of the vehicle was just FULL of smoke; it was basically opaque. I was yelling to anyone inside, but there was no response.
Moving around the car trying each door, I found they were all locked. At the passenger side, I could see NOTHING through the window. Flames now rose from the front left corner of the vehicle into the pine tree, the fire licking the branches.
Running back around the vehicle to the driver side, I saw that another guy had pulled over. He was out of his car and had his phone out. I figured I wouldn’t need to worry about calling 911 again.
Peering closely through the driver side window, I realized I could just make out an arm resting against the door! I began shouting more forcefully and banging on the window. But there was no response.
Then I remembered that I had my keys in my pocket. And that I had an aluminum spike on the ring that I was using for a key chain. It’s the sort of thing they sell as an emergency self-defense weapon and tool. I had always just assumed it was something you could use to break glass if you were ever trapped in a car.
The Wrong Tool For The Job
I grabbed the spike and swung it hard against the window. But it didn’t break! I hit it again, harder. And again, and again, and nothing happened. But the impacts were very sharp and very loud. Loud enough to awaken the driver, who began to move and call out. The voice was muffled, and I couldn’t understand the words. I was yelling “Open the door! Open the door! You have to get out!”
I could see and hear some activity as the driver attempted to get the door open, without success. More faint shouting, but I couldn’t make out the words. The smoke was beginning to make breathing difficult for me, and I couldn’t imagine what it must be like inside. And the driver had been breathing nothing but smoke since before I even arrived on scene.
Stepping back from the car to try and collect my wits, I saw the other fellow standing closer now with his phone to his ear and his lips moving. He had to be connected with police dispatch. Looking back at the car, the fire was concentrated on the driver side corner, but it was moving back towards the interior, through the tree branches, the underbrush, the engine compartment itself. I could feel the heat from the fire even from a distance, and my poolside outfit offered zero protection. Within moments I would be unable to work from beside the driver’s door.
I felt terrible anxiety. For a second I wondered if I would have to stand there and watch while someone burned to death in front of me. It was a horrific feeling. I wouldn’t be able to handle witnessing that in complete helplessness. Should I find myself in that position, convinced there was NOTHING I could do to help, I knew that I would simply run as far and as fast as I could.
Preparation
I was raised in a very stressful and physically grueling trade, with my high-intensity Type-A father (a.k.a. “Ironhorse”) for a boss. We’ve each left the field decades ago, but to this day we both have occasional PTSD dreams about it. It was the sort of environment that routinely forced you to take immediate action under stress to prevent a bad situation from rapidly deteriorating.
Oh yeah, and the pay was lousy.
My best friend worked with us a bit during the summertime, while we were both in high school. He went on to the army, and maintains that nothing in boot camp was as hard as what we dealt with regularly.
In short, it sucked.
But it did shape me, for better and for worse. It imparted a “Failure Is NOT An Option!” “Press On Regardless!” mindset. I believe that mindset has produced some life-damaging consequences, and I have worked to let it go.
But it is also a resource that’s proven its worth.
In that moment I was able to pause, take a deep breath, and collect myself. I could step back physically, emotionally, and mentally to reflect, for just a few seconds, on the situation and my environment.
“The Solution Is Always Right In Front Of You”
Ironhorse often remarks that he can always find the resources to fix a problem he is dealing with if he just looks around where he is standing. [I reply that he’s right, but only because we are slobs and leave all sorts of stuff strewn about our habitat].
But he IS right. An essential component of intelligence is tool improvisation. It’s an intelligence we are losing here in the “developed” world, but you can see it everywhere in less developed nations.
So I took stock of my surroundings. There were tools everywhere.
The car had crashed into a pine tree, but it was a loner in a grove of eucalyptus. Eucalyptus trees shed hardwood branches of all sizes and shapes continually, and these were everywhere. (Along with their bark, which was actually part of the problem; the stuff burns like matchbooks).
A promising spar lay nearby. It was long enough to provide high tangential speed, heavy and hard enough to shatter glass. So I grabbed it and started busting out the windows. I began with the rear hatch, then hit the two rear passenger windows. I didn’t smash the driver’s window. (The fire was too close to work there anyway, and I didn’t think showering the driver in broken glass while clubbing him in the head would help matters).
I had hoped that this would at least dissipate the smoke. That way the driver could breathe, and I could see what I was dealing with. While the smoke did begin to disperse, it was agonizingly slow. And whatever smoke did escape just added to what was produced by the blaze. I was already trying to catch air farther from the car, and breath as little as possible when I was close.
Plan C
I looked through the broken rear window but could see nothing. For a moment I contemplated crawling in through the back hatch and trying to extract the driver bodily. Then I thought of my daughter. Maybe it was just a justification for my flagging courage; I can’t say. But in any case, I ruled that option out.
The eucalyptus spar was still in my hand. It was six or seven feet long. I put one foot on the bumper, leaned in through the hatch, and began to prod and tap where the driver should be. “Grab the stick! You have to grab the stick!!! GRAB THE STICK!!!” I shouted.
I was fishing for the driver.
Fishers Of Men
Almost immediately I felt resistance and weight on the spar! I was elated! Now pulling, firmly but slowly, I was able to draw the stick back, maybe a yard.
Then suddenly it went slack.
I leaned in through the back of the hatch as far as I could. Through the clearing smoke I could barely make out a hand reaching towards me, the arm vanishing into smoke! It was just close enough to grab! I reached out and caught it by the wrist, and then pulled forcefully. The driver slid easily through the car towards the rear hatch! Now I could see a man’s head and shoulders, and I was able to grab him bodily and lift his torso out through the hatch.
It was a young man. His eyes were very wide, and vividly, brightly blue. He was in a daze.
As I struggled to pull him through the window, his jeans caught on broken glass. After a couple tugs I looked over to the man still on the phone with emergency services and barked angrily for him to give me a hand! He snapped out of his stupor and helped me unhook the driver. We pull him the rest of the way out and laid him on the ground, then dragged him away from the flames.
He lay on his back, eyes still wide and blazing blue, staring straight up at the sky. I was yelling, “Is there anyone else in the car!?” but he was completely unresponsive.
Help Arrives
I ran back around to the passenger side to see if the smoke had cleared enough to get a look inside. The fire wasn’t so bad there yet, so I could get pretty close. But as I ran to the door I heard someone shout, “Use the fire extinguisher!”
I stopped and glanced around. Again, “Use the fire extinguisher!”
I was looking about wildly. I couldn’t even tell where the voice was coming from, let alone where this fire extinguisher was supposed to be! The shout came again. I saw, through a thicket further away off the shoulder and close to some residences, a man standing, holding a fire extinguisher over a fence. I ran over and struggled through the thicket to him.
Grabbing the fire extinguisher, I made my way back to the car. But I was in complete exhaustion by this point.
Fortunately, a few other people had stopped and gathered at the scene. Someone was already running towards me to take the fire extinguisher from my hands. He grabbed it and darted towards the fire on the passenger side. I fell to my knees, completely out of breath.
Leave It to the Professionals
Just then, a voice over a loudspeaker ordered, “Step away from the vehicle!” I looked up to see a sheriff’s deputy exiting a squad car. I got up and began to slowly walk back towards my car.
I saw the young man who was second on the scene, who had called 911 and helped pull the driver out of the rear hatch, and we immediately embraced.
As I was leaving, I had the presence of mind to snap the photos you see here. More cars had pulled over, and a young couple was standing outside their vehicle. They gave me a bottle of water to drink as I tried to catch my breath.
Before I left, I spoke with another couple who had arrived to help just before the sheriff’s deputy. They were walking away from the scene, and I asked if there had been another passenger in the car. They assured me that there had not.
I snapped a couple more photos from a distance. Looking at them later I could see that the driver was well enough to move. One picture shows him sitting on the curb by the sheriff’s car, far from the fire, attended by another passerby.
By this point the fire was climbing up into the trees. I got in my car and drove off, hoping that the fire department could reach the scene before the whole grove began burning out of control.
Aftermath
I was fortunate to get out with only a couple, very minor scratches.
My biggest concern was that I immediately began to develop unpleasant respiratory distress. By the next day I felt like I was slipping into a full Covid relapse. Through my first week of illness, I had experienced no respiratory issues. Now I was coughing, and I had a dreadful taste in my mouth. I was afraid that the smoke combined with Covid might have messed up my lungs. I went to the doctor to get checked out, but the doctors told me not to worry, and sent me home.
Later on, I wondered why I had been unable to break the window with my keychain spike. Inspecting it, I discovered that the tip, originally sharp to a point, had been flattened by pounding against the glass!
Apparently, aluminum just isn’t hard enough for this purpose.
So – Don’t carry an aluminum spike if you are expecting to be able to break a window with it! It will not work!
submitted by dirtsmith to TrueStoriesOnly [link] [comments]
Seven minutes elapsed from the time I pulled over, to the moment I left the scene.
[I know, because I was calling 911 as I ran to the car, and the call log shows 7:43pm. The time stamp from the last shot (taken right before I drove off) was 7:50pm].
In California, Smoke Always Gets My Attention
It was a Sunday evening in the Spring of 2022. My girlfriend and I had both spent the week laid up in bed with our first rounds of Covid. I was driving home from the office. I had gone in on the weekend to grab my computer, so I could work from home the next week. The day was warm and I had no intention of interacting with anyone, so I was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of (ridiculously light and short) swim trunks that I only wear around the house.
It was just getting on towards dusk. Up ahead, where the road began to curve, a puff of smoke drifted from the trees on the right shoulder. At first I thought it must be a fire from a homeless encampment (not uncommon). This is California, and we had been suffering from terrible wildfires, so a fire in the trees would be bad.
There were few cars on the highway. It was easy to slow way down and get a good look as I was passing. I had my phone out with 911 punched in, ready to alert emergency response as soon as I knew what was happening.
As I drew abreast, I saw a vehicle up against a tree. Smoke filled the interior, drifting out from under the hood.
The driver side door was closed and there was no one outside the vehicle. I knew someone was trapped.
The Long Seven Minutes Begin
I had already slowed significantly and I immediately pulled off the shoulder, dialing 911 as I got out of my car. I grabbed my keys before I shut the door (which turned out to be fortuitous). Running to the crash, my 911 call failed; it sounded like a busy signal or something. I wondered if I was in a bad service area (totally possible on that stretch of road), so I pocketed my phone, cursing.
As I got to the crash I saw what looked like molten fire dripping from the bottom of the engine. And now smoke was pouring faster from under the hood. The car was slammed right up into a pine tree.
I ran to the driver side door and tried the handle, but it wouldn’t open. The interior of the vehicle was just FULL of smoke; it was basically opaque. I was yelling to anyone inside, but there was no response.
Moving around the car trying each door, I found they were all locked. At the passenger side, I could see NOTHING through the window. Flames now rose from the front left corner of the vehicle into the pine tree, the fire licking the branches.
Running back around the vehicle to the driver side, I saw that another guy had pulled over. He was out of his car and had his phone out. I figured I wouldn’t need to worry about calling 911 again.
Peering closely through the driver side window, I realized I could just make out an arm resting against the door! I began shouting more forcefully and banging on the window. But there was no response.
Then I remembered that I had my keys in my pocket. And that I had an aluminum spike on the ring that I was using for a key chain. It’s the sort of thing they sell as an emergency self-defense weapon and tool. I had always just assumed it was something you could use to break glass if you were ever trapped in a car.
The Wrong Tool For The Job
I grabbed the spike and swung it hard against the window. But it didn’t break! I hit it again, harder. And again, and again, and nothing happened. But the impacts were very sharp and very loud. Loud enough to awaken the driver, who began to move and call out. The voice was muffled, and I couldn’t understand the words. I was yelling “Open the door! Open the door! You have to get out!”
I could see and hear some activity as the driver attempted to get the door open, without success. More faint shouting, but I couldn’t make out the words. The smoke was beginning to make breathing difficult for me, and I couldn’t imagine what it must be like inside. And the driver had been breathing nothing but smoke since before I even arrived on scene.
Stepping back from the car to try and collect my wits, I saw the other fellow standing closer now with his phone to his ear and his lips moving. He had to be connected with police dispatch. Looking back at the car, the fire was concentrated on the driver side corner, but it was moving back towards the interior, through the tree branches, the underbrush, the engine compartment itself. I could feel the heat from the fire even from a distance, and my poolside outfit offered zero protection. Within moments I would be unable to work from beside the driver’s door.
I felt terrible anxiety. For a second I wondered if I would have to stand there and watch while someone burned to death in front of me. It was a horrific feeling. I wouldn’t be able to handle witnessing that in complete helplessness. Should I find myself in that position, convinced there was NOTHING I could do to help, I knew that I would simply run as far and as fast as I could.
Preparation
I was raised in a very stressful and physically grueling trade, with my high-intensity Type-A father (a.k.a. “Ironhorse”) for a boss. We’ve each left the field decades ago, but to this day we both have occasional PTSD dreams about it. It was the sort of environment that routinely forced you to take immediate action under stress to prevent a bad situation from rapidly deteriorating.
Oh yeah, and the pay was lousy.
My best friend worked with us a bit during the summertime, while we were both in high school. He went on to the army, and maintains that nothing in boot camp was as hard as what we dealt with regularly.
In short, it sucked.
But it did shape me, for better and for worse. It imparted a “Failure Is NOT An Option!” “Press On Regardless!” mindset. I believe that mindset has produced some life-damaging consequences, and I have worked to let it go.
But it is also a resource that’s proven its worth.
In that moment I was able to pause, take a deep breath, and collect myself. I could step back physically, emotionally, and mentally to reflect, for just a few seconds, on the situation and my environment.
“The Solution Is Always Right In Front Of You”
Ironhorse often remarks that he can always find the resources to fix a problem he is dealing with if he just looks around where he is standing. [I reply that he’s right, but only because we are slobs and leave all sorts of stuff strewn about our habitat].
But he IS right. An essential component of intelligence is tool improvisation. It’s an intelligence we are losing here in the “developed” world, but you can see it everywhere in less developed nations.
So I took stock of my surroundings. There were tools everywhere.
The car had crashed into a pine tree, but it was a loner in a grove of eucalyptus. Eucalyptus trees shed hardwood branches of all sizes and shapes continually, and these were everywhere. (Along with their bark, which was actually part of the problem; the stuff burns like matchbooks).
A promising spar lay nearby. It was long enough to provide high tangential speed, heavy and hard enough to shatter glass. So I grabbed it and started busting out the windows. I began with the rear hatch, then hit the two rear passenger windows. I didn’t smash the driver’s window. (The fire was too close to work there anyway, and I didn’t think showering the driver in broken glass while clubbing him in the head would help matters).
I had hoped that this would at least dissipate the smoke. That way the driver could breathe, and I could see what I was dealing with. While the smoke did begin to disperse, it was agonizingly slow. And whatever smoke did escape just added to what was produced by the blaze. I was already trying to catch air farther from the car, and breath as little as possible when I was close.
Plan C
I looked through the broken rear window but could see nothing. For a moment I contemplated crawling in through the back hatch and trying to extract the driver bodily. Then I thought of my daughter. Maybe it was just a justification for my flagging courage; I can’t say. But in any case, I ruled that option out.
The eucalyptus spar was still in my hand. It was six or seven feet long. I put one foot on the bumper, leaned in through the hatch, and began to prod and tap where the driver should be. “Grab the stick! You have to grab the stick!!! GRAB THE STICK!!!” I shouted.
I was fishing for the driver.
Fishers Of Men
Almost immediately I felt resistance and weight on the spar! I was elated! Now pulling, firmly but slowly, I was able to draw the stick back, maybe a yard.
Then suddenly it went slack.
I leaned in through the back of the hatch as far as I could. Through the clearing smoke I could barely make out a hand reaching towards me, the arm vanishing into smoke! It was just close enough to grab! I reached out and caught it by the wrist, and then pulled forcefully. The driver slid easily through the car towards the rear hatch! Now I could see a man’s head and shoulders, and I was able to grab him bodily and lift his torso out through the hatch.
It was a young man. His eyes were very wide, and vividly, brightly blue. He was in a daze.
As I struggled to pull him through the window, his jeans caught on broken glass. After a couple tugs I looked over to the man still on the phone with emergency services and barked angrily for him to give me a hand! He snapped out of his stupor and helped me unhook the driver. We pull him the rest of the way out and laid him on the ground, then dragged him away from the flames.
He lay on his back, eyes still wide and blazing blue, staring straight up at the sky. I was yelling, “Is there anyone else in the car!?” but he was completely unresponsive.
Help Arrives
I ran back around to the passenger side to see if the smoke had cleared enough to get a look inside. The fire wasn’t so bad there yet, so I could get pretty close. But as I ran to the door I heard someone shout, “Use the fire extinguisher!”
I stopped and glanced around. Again, “Use the fire extinguisher!”
I was looking about wildly. I couldn’t even tell where the voice was coming from, let alone where this fire extinguisher was supposed to be! The shout came again. I saw, through a thicket further away off the shoulder and close to some residences, a man standing, holding a fire extinguisher over a fence. I ran over and struggled through the thicket to him.
Grabbing the fire extinguisher, I made my way back to the car. But I was in complete exhaustion by this point.
Fortunately, a few other people had stopped and gathered at the scene. Someone was already running towards me to take the fire extinguisher from my hands. He grabbed it and darted towards the fire on the passenger side. I fell to my knees, completely out of breath.
Leave It to the Professionals
Just then, a voice over a loudspeaker ordered, “Step away from the vehicle!” I looked up to see a sheriff’s deputy exiting a squad car. I got up and began to slowly walk back towards my car.
I saw the young man who was second on the scene, who had called 911 and helped pull the driver out of the rear hatch, and we immediately embraced.
As I was leaving, I had the presence of mind to snap the photos you see here. More cars had pulled over, and a young couple was standing outside their vehicle. They gave me a bottle of water to drink as I tried to catch my breath.
Before I left, I spoke with another couple who had arrived to help just before the sheriff’s deputy. They were walking away from the scene, and I asked if there had been another passenger in the car. They assured me that there had not.
I snapped a couple more photos from a distance. Looking at them later I could see that the driver was well enough to move. One picture shows him sitting on the curb by the sheriff’s car, far from the fire, attended by another passerby.
By this point the fire was climbing up into the trees. I got in my car and drove off, hoping that the fire department could reach the scene before the whole grove began burning out of control.
Aftermath
I was fortunate to get out with only a couple, very minor scratches.
My biggest concern was that I immediately began to develop unpleasant respiratory distress. By the next day I felt like I was slipping into a full Covid relapse. Through my first week of illness, I had experienced no respiratory issues. Now I was coughing, and I had a dreadful taste in my mouth. I was afraid that the smoke combined with Covid might have messed up my lungs. I went to the doctor to get checked out, but the doctors told me not to worry, and sent me home.
Later on, I wondered why I had been unable to break the window with my keychain spike. Inspecting it, I discovered that the tip, originally sharp to a point, had been flattened by pounding against the glass!
Apparently, aluminum just isn’t hard enough for this purpose.
So – Don’t carry an aluminum spike if you are expecting to be able to break a window with it! It will not work!
- Dirtsmith
2024.04.29 05:47 Leebo Question about diy ceramic and ppf
I just got my HOV stickers and bought the ppf for them. I didn't do my research and put the ppf+sticker on the car..
Problem is, I coated with Griots ceramic 3 in 1 spray wax a couple months ago and then yesterday put Blask 13 sleek perfect.
I've been reading not to do ppf over ceramic. Am I hosed and need to remove the ppf/sticker before I drive tomorrow or is the diy ceramic not as smooth and the ppf would actually adhere? I just don't want to lose the stickers.
submitted by Leebo to Detailing [link] [comments]
Problem is, I coated with Griots ceramic 3 in 1 spray wax a couple months ago and then yesterday put Blask 13 sleek perfect.
I've been reading not to do ppf over ceramic. Am I hosed and need to remove the ppf/sticker before I drive tomorrow or is the diy ceramic not as smooth and the ppf would actually adhere? I just don't want to lose the stickers.
2024.04.29 05:45 Alcide0104 DIY a box for groceries with hydraulic gas strut lift support. https://vadania.com/ #vadania #hardwaretools #cabinethardware #homedecor #housedesign #homedesign #kitchendecor #kitchendesign #remodeling #woodworking #woodwork #woodworktools #lifeidea #lifetip #diy
 | submitted by Alcide0104 to woodworkwithslides [link] [comments] |
2024.04.29 05:35 appalwodkd How difficult is it to self install an intercooler
I wannna buy a race or street one (any rec?) but is it DIY-able? I have like average knowledge of car parts etc.
Also, how visible is it? I don’t want it to be very obvious looking or look out of place, if that makes sense
submitted by appalwodkd to ecoboostmustang [link] [comments]
Also, how visible is it? I don’t want it to be very obvious looking or look out of place, if that makes sense
2024.04.29 05:34 TheBrianJ It was in my darkest hour when Lady Luck came to me
At the time, I was sitting on the side of the road, on the outskirts of town, across the street from a dive bar that reeked of desperation and depression. And the only reason I wasn’t inside was because I had just been thrown out.
Let me back-up. I’m not gonna tell you my name, but if you live in or near Las Vegas, chances are you’ve heard of me. The king of the strip. The luckiest man in the luckiest city. The guy you want at your table. When I was a kid, it seemed like a harmless quirk; always hitting the ladders and missing the chutes, the perfect draws in Candyland, something for my parents to wow their dinner guests with when there was a lull in conversation. It was around middle school when I realized I could use my luck to my advantage. My school got bit hard by Magic the Gathering fever and while everyone else was doing their damnedest to craft the perfect deck, I was the one who was winning by drawing the perfect card at the perfect time. Made back my lunch money a few times over that year.
College wasn’t my thing, but neither was staying in town; at that point everyone knew to not play any games with me because I’d always end up winning. But I had bigger ambitions. I had gotten a taste for being the victor and now I was hungry for more. So when I turned 21 I hit the road, with a whole new world of unsuspecting people just waiting for me. Hustling isn’t exactly a difficult science; you pretend you don’t know what you’re doing, fold a few hands, then when they raise the stakes and propose a few big money games, you wipe the floor with them and move on to the next town. I lost a few teeth along the way to some sore losers, but with the money I was making it was never too hard to pay for dental work, ice packs, and aspirin.
But that wasn’t enough. I was ready to go big. And the glitzy lights and siren song of jackpots drew me to Las Vegas. Yeah, cliche place, but when you have my luck, the old adage “the house always wins” doesn’t mean jack. That’s when I started making real money, putting my luck to good use full-time. Every pull of a lever, push of a button, throw of the dice… it all came my way. Sure, I got a bad hand or a crap throw often enough, but by the end of the night I always left with more than I started. First few months I was there, I got dragged into back rooms to be interrogated by a bunch of stiffs in tight suits more times than I could count. They were convinced I was cheating. But they never found anything on me: no extra dice, no hidden cards, no cameras, nothing. I told them the truth; that I was just lucky. They didn’t like that answer, but with no proof, they would send me on my way, telling me not to come back for the day. I learned to pace myself: switch up where I was gambling each night, don’t win too much, stop when the dealer was starting to sweat.
Even with those restrictions, I was making more than enough to not just survive, but thrive. Got a nice little penthouse at the top of one of the hotels, spent my days gambling and my nights partying. Slowly, people started to learn my name, follow me around, and want to get close to me. They all were hoping to sap up a little bit of my luck. And the crazy thing? They did. When I was at their table, suddenly everyone’s hands were coming up in their favor. I watched grown men fight over the chance to sit at the slot machine next to mine. I wasn’t just a great gambler, I was the great gambler. The guy who got whispered about when I walked by. The Luckiest Man In Vegas. Hell of a title.
In the back of my mind I always thought one day my luck would peter out. I wasn’t expecting it to be so dramatic.
It started at the poker tables that morning. You know how unlikely it is to get four 2-7 offsuit draws in a row? But there they were, taunting me. The casino always gave me free drinks when I hit a cold streak, but the taste of defeat wouldn’t leave my mouth. Bad day for the tables, I figured, and moved onto the slot machines. Didn’t hit a single payout for an hour. I was starting to sweat; was this some kinda prank by the casino, rigging the games to take me down a peg? Even the lowliest gambler doesn’t have a day this bad. Insulted, I took my business down the strip.
But the next casino didn’t fare much better either. Snake eyes, 0s and 00s, couldn’t hit 21 to save my life. I began to hear the whispers; some of my regular hangers-on, worried that their cash cow was having a dry day. They started moving to other tables, hoping not to catch whatever dark cloud was hanging over my head. After I got two sevens and a lemon, I decided my day would be better spent in bed. It’d give my luck a chance to recharge.
When I swiped my card on the key reader and the light flashed red, I knew something had to be up. I stormed straight down to talk to whoever was working the front desk; I knew them all by name, so getting this sorted out shouldn’t have been a problem. So imagine my surprise to see some new girl behind the desk who didn’t believe me when I told her what was happening. She told me the system said I hadn’t paid my rent that month; I told her I had dropped the check off a week ago, like I always do. There was no record of it in the computer though, and she trusted it more than she trusted me.
Things went south quickly. I suppose I could have just waited for a shift change to talk to someone I actually knew, or given them a call to get this sorted out. But I was already having a bad day, and her attitude was pissing me off. So maybe reaching over the counter to grab her by the hair wasn’t the smartest idea, but the way those two guys the size of tanks grabbed me and threw me out of the building wasn’t called for if you ask me.
I was making a mental note to start looking into a new place to stay when my cell phone rang. It was my bank, telling me that there had been a lot of “suspicious activity” in my account, and that my cards were being frozen until they could sort it out. I definitely turned a few heads on the street with the string of obscenities I screamed into the phone, but I’m pretty sure they hung up on me halfway through; I would have checked, had I not thrown my phone to the ground and shattered it. I checked my wallet to see how much cash I had on me to make it through the day; I really shouldn’t have been surprised to see an empty space where the neat stack of 100’s usually sat.
The rest of the day was kinda a blur; attempts to contact anyone I knew were met with dial tones and busy signals, and in the mood I was in I got stopped from entering all my usual casinos because they said I “looked like I was there to cause problems.” Can’t say I blame them, but it wasn’t doing my demeanor any favors. Do you have any idea how pathetic it is to ask tourists for a little cash to spend at a gas station slot machine? They all thought I was some poor sap in way too deep, rather than the celebrity they should have been treating me like. By the time the sun went down, I had made my way out of town and plopped myself down at the aforementioned dive bar, and their one lowly, pathetic penny slot. I had found a penny in the gutter outside. This was it: the end of this horrible day, the clouds clearing, the path back to being on top of the world. I put the coin in and pulled the lever.
Watermelon. Bananas. Bell.
I stared at the machine. I swear, those stupid little symbols were laughing at me. I saw red, reared my hand back, and punched the machine as hard as I could; next thing I knew, a few of the regulars were hauling my ass out the door and across the street, throwing me into the ditch and telling me to stay out.
And so there I was. Luckiest man in Vegas, sitting on the side of a road. Everything I had in life, gone in the span of a day. No idea on how to get back to where I was… or even if it was possible anymore. My luck had finally run out, and it had run out hard.
That’s when I heard her voice.
“Whoof, you look like you’re having a rough day,” she said.
“Lady, you have no idea how much I don’t wanna talk right now,” I said back. I expected that to be it; people were quick to move on in this city when it was clear you were in no mood. Instead, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
“Aw, don’t be like that,” she cooed. She had the tone of someone who wasn’t used to consoling people, but was trying her hardest.
I looked over at my visitor; she had on a sparkling red dress like she was headed for the fanciest club in town—odd given how far we were outside the city—and a matching red derby hat with a wide brim and feathers sticking out the side. You know those old ads you’d see for Vegas with some perfect-looking woman dressed to the nines inviting you to come throw your life away? She looked for all the world like she had just stepped right out of one of those, but with a sincere smile that somehow clashed with the rest of her look.
“What do you want?” I seethed, looking her up and down.
She sat down beside me.
“So, um,” she said, casually scratching the back of her head as she searched for the right words. “I don’t know how to tell you this—”
“Oh my god just say it and go away,” I snapped at her.
She nodded. “Alright. I’m… Lady Luck.”
Judging by her reaction, she noticed my eyes rolling. “Cute nickname. Tell me what you’re selling, so I can tell you no and to fuck off.”
“No seriously! I’m her.” She leaned forward a bit, staring me down intently.
This lady wasn’t gonna leave me alone, I figured. “Alright,” I said. “I’ll humor you a bit. Prove it.”
“Uh…” she mumbled, glancing around. “Kinda hard to prove luck… Oh!” She pointed at the bar across the street, where four people were exiting, three of whom looked like they were about to collapse and one who was clearly ready to end the night. “Okay, see the guy in the gray shirt?”
I nodded. “Designated driver, I’m guessing.”
“Good guess,” she said. “And he’s gonna get rewarded for that.”
Two of gray shirt’s friends had already been piled into the car by him, and he was struggling to get the third to follow suit. Like a cartoon, the friend fell straight down to the ground, leading to a world-weary groan from gray shirt. Just as he was leaning down to help his friend up, a truck passed by with its brights on. As the light hit his car, there was a momentary glint from around the driver’s seat. Abandoning his friend, gray shirt reached towards where the glint was; when he pulled his hand back, I could see the tears in his eyes as he held his clenched fist close to his chest.
“The hell…” I muttered.
“Alonzo lost his wedding ring six months ago,” she said, happily leaning back on her hands and surveying the scene. “If his friends hadn’t decided to go out tonight, if he hadn’t been selected as the designated driver, if Marty hadn’t fallen out of the car at just that moment, if that truck hadn’t driven by at that moment, he might have never found it.” She gave me a sheepish grin. “I’m really proud of this one! Love it when luck can give someone a story to last a lifetime.”
Everything she was saying was absurd. But the way Alonzo was cradling his hand, carefully placing something onto his finger, a smile brighter than any of the lights in the city… I was in enough of a terrible mood to buy it.
“Alright, fine, whatever. You’re Lady Luck. So what?” I said. “You come here to gloat? Brag about ruining my life?”
“Nah, I don’t like bragging,” she said. “I wanna apologize. I’ve been watching, today’s been way worse on you than I expected it to be.”
“Expected?” I looked her dead in the eyes. “You knew this was gonna happen?”
“Well, yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s my whole job to know. But I figured I owed you an explanation.” She turned to fully face me, sitting cross-legged like she was a teacher in a kindergarten class. “How do I put this… everyone in the world has a set level of luck when they’re born. It determines how likely forces beyond your understanding will intervene to make something happen, for better or for worse. Follow me?”
“No.”
“Yeah, didn’t think you would.” She mulled something over in her mind, trying to find the right words. “Okay, so someone is born, and their luck is ‘zero.’ That means anything in their life that comes down to luck is just that: luck. Complete random chance. But if someone has, say… ‘one,’ maybe they’ll be a biiiiiiit more likely to end up with positive results. Or if it’s ‘negative one,’ a bit more likely to end up with negative results.”
“So our lives are determined by stupid video game stats?” I scoffed.
“Not everything in life; in fact it’s only luck. It’s kinda an intangible, a mystical thing, you know? There’s nothing you can do to increase or decrease luck, it just is.” She gave me that sheepish smile again. “Sorry, I’m really not used to explaining this to people.”
“I can tell.”
“So here’s where things get a bit more complex.” She held her hands out in front of her, trying to diagram something that wasn’t there. “There’s only a set amount of luck in the universe. New luck can’t just be conjured from nothing, it’s gotta be distributed amongst everyone and everything. When someone dies, their luck is spread out among the rest of the world; when someone is born, everyone gives them a bit of their luck. So in general, things stay pretty stable. Got it?”
“I think so?” My inflection reflected my confusion. “Lot to think about, but everyone just has their own luck. Got it.”
“Annnnnnd this is where you and I come in.” She continued to smile; it was starting to get to me. “I’ve been doing this job for a looooong time. I’m good at it, but think about how many living things have ever existed. Having to balance all that luck is tough! And, well… I was bound to make a mistake eventually.”
At the word ‘mistake,’ I felt my eye twitch. “What do you mean, mistake?”
She put her hand on my shoulder like a guidance counselor telling a student they’d never make it to college. “Look, I’ll be blunt: you were born with waaaaaay too much luck. You ended up with more than a city’s worth.”
Hearing her say it was like a gut punch and an eye opener all at once. “Sonofabitch,” I mumbled, looking up at the sky and taking it all in.
“What, are you surprised?” she asked.
“Nah, it just… hits different when you actually hear it from someone.” I didn’t say anything for a minute; I just gazed at the stars above me. She went quiet too, giving me the space I needed. Once I was ready, I had to ask the next obvious question. “So, why today? I’ve been lucky my whole life, and then you come by and take it all away from me in a snap? Just wander on in and treat me to the worst day of my life?”
Her smile faltered; she shifted uncomfortably, clearly not thrilled at the prospect of answering the question.
“Well?!” I shouted at her.
“That’s why I’m apologizing!” She shouted back. “I only noticed the error today, so I had to correct things. And the best way to do that is to rip the bandage off, metaphorically speaking. Take all that extra luck and distribute it among everyone else. But yeah, considering the day you had, that was probably a mistake on top of another mistake, so I owe you an apology. This one is on me.”
I wasn’t sure how to react, but I certainly wasn’t feeling positive about her apology.
“‘On me?’” I said through gritted teeth. “That’s all you got for me?”
“I know I’m not good at this, but I can count the number of people I have had to apologize to on one hand, so please cut me a little slack,” she said.
“Cut you some slack?!” She winced when I shouted. “You ruined my life, then expect me to forgive you? Give me my goddamn luck back!”
“I can’t do that, it wouldn’t be fair to everyone!” She stood up; I quickly jumped up to meet her there. “But the worst of it is over now, you’re basically at zero from now on. I’m already having to break a rule to set things straight, do you know how much worse it would be if I—”
“Zero’s not good enough!” I grabbed her by the lapels of her dress. “You give all of it back right this fucking instant!”
“Let me go!” she yelled.
I saw red. Before I knew what I was doing, I drove my head forward; there was a sickening thud as our heads made contact, and she went down immediately. Blood started to trickle down from her forehead, the same color as her dress. I went into auto-pilot and dropped down.
“GIVE IT BACK!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I curled my hands into fists and drove them down into her face. “GIVE ME MY LUCK BACK!!”
Over and over and over, I brought my hands down on her. With each hammer, I felt something more give; another vicious crack, another splatter of blood, another tooth flying to the side. By the time a minute had passed and my senses were returning to me, the woman under me was unrecognizable; a red pulp of blood and bone that would make a medical examiner run from the room in horror. I breathed heavily, staring down at what I had just done, at the lifeless figure below me.
And then… she was fine.
She didn’t magically heal herself, her body didn’t reform and attach itself back together, there wasn’t even a spark or a sound. One moment she was a corpse, the next she looked as pristine as she was when she had come to me minutes ago. She stared back up at me, a mixture of annoyance and disappointment on her face.
“Seriously!?” She yelled.
My only reaction was to fall back, trying to process what I was seeing. She casually stood up and brushed dust off of her dress.
“I-I-I, I’m—” I stammered.
“I APOLOGIZED! I was genuinely sorry for what I put you through! I was trying to make good, and you ATTACK me?!” She put her hands on her hips like a disappointed parent. “See, this is why I don’t like talking with people; you’re all such assholes!”
“B…but…” was all I could get out. She reached down and took me by the shirt, pulling me up to my feet. The smile was gone; there was an intensity burning in her eyes.
“Fine. You want your luck back? You got it!” she said. “Boom. It’s yours again, congratulations. But you know what? You only get it for one more week. Then, it’s over. Got it?!”
I wasn’t about to argue with her. I nodded. “One more week, one more bad day, then all this luck stuff is over. Got it.”
She shook her head. “No. I gave you the chance to do it all in one day, and you decide to get all violent.” The smile returned; this time, combined with the look in her eyes, it terrified me. “You thought I ripped the bandage off badly by doing it in one day? Let’s see what happens when we do it in a minute.”
She shoved me away and turned to leave. I hit the ground, the dust kicking up around me.
“W-wait!” I said, scrambling back to my feet. “Can’t we—”
She was gone. There was no indication that anyone had been there besides me. I looked around frantically, but other than the bar across the way, I was alone.
I’m not sure how long I stood in silence, but eventually all I could do was turn back towards Vegas and start walking. No sooner had I done so then the street lit up and a truck pulled alongside me. The driver rolled the window down.
“Heyo, need a lift into town?” he asked. I nodded, and he pushed the door open and patted the seat.
“Thanks,” I muttered as I sat down.
The moment I closed the door the pitter-patter of rain echoed outside the car, turning into a near-torrential downpour in seconds.
“God damn, it’s really comin’ down!” the driver laughed as he turned his windshield wipers on high. “I usually don’t take this road neither, but my usual route’s backed up. Lucky I came this way or you’d be soaked right now, huh?”
That word rang in my head and I nodded again. “Yeah. Lucky.”
When he dropped me off at my hotel, one of the usual workers was at the front counter. He offered me a sincere apology about the mix-up earlier, said that the new girl hadn’t been told about me yet, and that they found my check behind a desk in the back. They left me champagne and a free gourmet meal for the trouble, but I left it out and collapsed into bed. The next day I went to the bank, where I was greeted with another apology; a clerical error was to blame for my cards being frozen, but now everything had been restored. They even increased my credit limit as an apology.
Things returned to normal for me. The dice were hot, and the hands were hotter. My luck was back. I should have been ecstatic.
But I wasn’t. I was empty.
I’ve been in a haze since then. Because every time I hit a jackpot, every time I get a win, every time someone hands me a free drink, I can see her. Out of the corner of my eye, she’s standing there, watching me with that same smile. But when I turn to look at her, she’s gone.
That was seven days ago. I’m sitting in my penthouse right now writing this. Over the last hour, the lights outside my window have faded, leaving the strip looking an eerie black. There’s no noise either. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Vegas quiet.
A few moments ago, I heard a soft knock at my door and a woman’s laughter.
Lady Luck has come to collect.
submitted by TheBrianJ to nosleep [link] [comments]
Let me back-up. I’m not gonna tell you my name, but if you live in or near Las Vegas, chances are you’ve heard of me. The king of the strip. The luckiest man in the luckiest city. The guy you want at your table. When I was a kid, it seemed like a harmless quirk; always hitting the ladders and missing the chutes, the perfect draws in Candyland, something for my parents to wow their dinner guests with when there was a lull in conversation. It was around middle school when I realized I could use my luck to my advantage. My school got bit hard by Magic the Gathering fever and while everyone else was doing their damnedest to craft the perfect deck, I was the one who was winning by drawing the perfect card at the perfect time. Made back my lunch money a few times over that year.
College wasn’t my thing, but neither was staying in town; at that point everyone knew to not play any games with me because I’d always end up winning. But I had bigger ambitions. I had gotten a taste for being the victor and now I was hungry for more. So when I turned 21 I hit the road, with a whole new world of unsuspecting people just waiting for me. Hustling isn’t exactly a difficult science; you pretend you don’t know what you’re doing, fold a few hands, then when they raise the stakes and propose a few big money games, you wipe the floor with them and move on to the next town. I lost a few teeth along the way to some sore losers, but with the money I was making it was never too hard to pay for dental work, ice packs, and aspirin.
But that wasn’t enough. I was ready to go big. And the glitzy lights and siren song of jackpots drew me to Las Vegas. Yeah, cliche place, but when you have my luck, the old adage “the house always wins” doesn’t mean jack. That’s when I started making real money, putting my luck to good use full-time. Every pull of a lever, push of a button, throw of the dice… it all came my way. Sure, I got a bad hand or a crap throw often enough, but by the end of the night I always left with more than I started. First few months I was there, I got dragged into back rooms to be interrogated by a bunch of stiffs in tight suits more times than I could count. They were convinced I was cheating. But they never found anything on me: no extra dice, no hidden cards, no cameras, nothing. I told them the truth; that I was just lucky. They didn’t like that answer, but with no proof, they would send me on my way, telling me not to come back for the day. I learned to pace myself: switch up where I was gambling each night, don’t win too much, stop when the dealer was starting to sweat.
Even with those restrictions, I was making more than enough to not just survive, but thrive. Got a nice little penthouse at the top of one of the hotels, spent my days gambling and my nights partying. Slowly, people started to learn my name, follow me around, and want to get close to me. They all were hoping to sap up a little bit of my luck. And the crazy thing? They did. When I was at their table, suddenly everyone’s hands were coming up in their favor. I watched grown men fight over the chance to sit at the slot machine next to mine. I wasn’t just a great gambler, I was the great gambler. The guy who got whispered about when I walked by. The Luckiest Man In Vegas. Hell of a title.
In the back of my mind I always thought one day my luck would peter out. I wasn’t expecting it to be so dramatic.
It started at the poker tables that morning. You know how unlikely it is to get four 2-7 offsuit draws in a row? But there they were, taunting me. The casino always gave me free drinks when I hit a cold streak, but the taste of defeat wouldn’t leave my mouth. Bad day for the tables, I figured, and moved onto the slot machines. Didn’t hit a single payout for an hour. I was starting to sweat; was this some kinda prank by the casino, rigging the games to take me down a peg? Even the lowliest gambler doesn’t have a day this bad. Insulted, I took my business down the strip.
But the next casino didn’t fare much better either. Snake eyes, 0s and 00s, couldn’t hit 21 to save my life. I began to hear the whispers; some of my regular hangers-on, worried that their cash cow was having a dry day. They started moving to other tables, hoping not to catch whatever dark cloud was hanging over my head. After I got two sevens and a lemon, I decided my day would be better spent in bed. It’d give my luck a chance to recharge.
When I swiped my card on the key reader and the light flashed red, I knew something had to be up. I stormed straight down to talk to whoever was working the front desk; I knew them all by name, so getting this sorted out shouldn’t have been a problem. So imagine my surprise to see some new girl behind the desk who didn’t believe me when I told her what was happening. She told me the system said I hadn’t paid my rent that month; I told her I had dropped the check off a week ago, like I always do. There was no record of it in the computer though, and she trusted it more than she trusted me.
Things went south quickly. I suppose I could have just waited for a shift change to talk to someone I actually knew, or given them a call to get this sorted out. But I was already having a bad day, and her attitude was pissing me off. So maybe reaching over the counter to grab her by the hair wasn’t the smartest idea, but the way those two guys the size of tanks grabbed me and threw me out of the building wasn’t called for if you ask me.
I was making a mental note to start looking into a new place to stay when my cell phone rang. It was my bank, telling me that there had been a lot of “suspicious activity” in my account, and that my cards were being frozen until they could sort it out. I definitely turned a few heads on the street with the string of obscenities I screamed into the phone, but I’m pretty sure they hung up on me halfway through; I would have checked, had I not thrown my phone to the ground and shattered it. I checked my wallet to see how much cash I had on me to make it through the day; I really shouldn’t have been surprised to see an empty space where the neat stack of 100’s usually sat.
The rest of the day was kinda a blur; attempts to contact anyone I knew were met with dial tones and busy signals, and in the mood I was in I got stopped from entering all my usual casinos because they said I “looked like I was there to cause problems.” Can’t say I blame them, but it wasn’t doing my demeanor any favors. Do you have any idea how pathetic it is to ask tourists for a little cash to spend at a gas station slot machine? They all thought I was some poor sap in way too deep, rather than the celebrity they should have been treating me like. By the time the sun went down, I had made my way out of town and plopped myself down at the aforementioned dive bar, and their one lowly, pathetic penny slot. I had found a penny in the gutter outside. This was it: the end of this horrible day, the clouds clearing, the path back to being on top of the world. I put the coin in and pulled the lever.
Watermelon. Bananas. Bell.
I stared at the machine. I swear, those stupid little symbols were laughing at me. I saw red, reared my hand back, and punched the machine as hard as I could; next thing I knew, a few of the regulars were hauling my ass out the door and across the street, throwing me into the ditch and telling me to stay out.
And so there I was. Luckiest man in Vegas, sitting on the side of a road. Everything I had in life, gone in the span of a day. No idea on how to get back to where I was… or even if it was possible anymore. My luck had finally run out, and it had run out hard.
That’s when I heard her voice.
“Whoof, you look like you’re having a rough day,” she said.
“Lady, you have no idea how much I don’t wanna talk right now,” I said back. I expected that to be it; people were quick to move on in this city when it was clear you were in no mood. Instead, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
“Aw, don’t be like that,” she cooed. She had the tone of someone who wasn’t used to consoling people, but was trying her hardest.
I looked over at my visitor; she had on a sparkling red dress like she was headed for the fanciest club in town—odd given how far we were outside the city—and a matching red derby hat with a wide brim and feathers sticking out the side. You know those old ads you’d see for Vegas with some perfect-looking woman dressed to the nines inviting you to come throw your life away? She looked for all the world like she had just stepped right out of one of those, but with a sincere smile that somehow clashed with the rest of her look.
“What do you want?” I seethed, looking her up and down.
She sat down beside me.
“So, um,” she said, casually scratching the back of her head as she searched for the right words. “I don’t know how to tell you this—”
“Oh my god just say it and go away,” I snapped at her.
She nodded. “Alright. I’m… Lady Luck.”
Judging by her reaction, she noticed my eyes rolling. “Cute nickname. Tell me what you’re selling, so I can tell you no and to fuck off.”
“No seriously! I’m her.” She leaned forward a bit, staring me down intently.
This lady wasn’t gonna leave me alone, I figured. “Alright,” I said. “I’ll humor you a bit. Prove it.”
“Uh…” she mumbled, glancing around. “Kinda hard to prove luck… Oh!” She pointed at the bar across the street, where four people were exiting, three of whom looked like they were about to collapse and one who was clearly ready to end the night. “Okay, see the guy in the gray shirt?”
I nodded. “Designated driver, I’m guessing.”
“Good guess,” she said. “And he’s gonna get rewarded for that.”
Two of gray shirt’s friends had already been piled into the car by him, and he was struggling to get the third to follow suit. Like a cartoon, the friend fell straight down to the ground, leading to a world-weary groan from gray shirt. Just as he was leaning down to help his friend up, a truck passed by with its brights on. As the light hit his car, there was a momentary glint from around the driver’s seat. Abandoning his friend, gray shirt reached towards where the glint was; when he pulled his hand back, I could see the tears in his eyes as he held his clenched fist close to his chest.
“The hell…” I muttered.
“Alonzo lost his wedding ring six months ago,” she said, happily leaning back on her hands and surveying the scene. “If his friends hadn’t decided to go out tonight, if he hadn’t been selected as the designated driver, if Marty hadn’t fallen out of the car at just that moment, if that truck hadn’t driven by at that moment, he might have never found it.” She gave me a sheepish grin. “I’m really proud of this one! Love it when luck can give someone a story to last a lifetime.”
Everything she was saying was absurd. But the way Alonzo was cradling his hand, carefully placing something onto his finger, a smile brighter than any of the lights in the city… I was in enough of a terrible mood to buy it.
“Alright, fine, whatever. You’re Lady Luck. So what?” I said. “You come here to gloat? Brag about ruining my life?”
“Nah, I don’t like bragging,” she said. “I wanna apologize. I’ve been watching, today’s been way worse on you than I expected it to be.”
“Expected?” I looked her dead in the eyes. “You knew this was gonna happen?”
“Well, yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s my whole job to know. But I figured I owed you an explanation.” She turned to fully face me, sitting cross-legged like she was a teacher in a kindergarten class. “How do I put this… everyone in the world has a set level of luck when they’re born. It determines how likely forces beyond your understanding will intervene to make something happen, for better or for worse. Follow me?”
“No.”
“Yeah, didn’t think you would.” She mulled something over in her mind, trying to find the right words. “Okay, so someone is born, and their luck is ‘zero.’ That means anything in their life that comes down to luck is just that: luck. Complete random chance. But if someone has, say… ‘one,’ maybe they’ll be a biiiiiiit more likely to end up with positive results. Or if it’s ‘negative one,’ a bit more likely to end up with negative results.”
“So our lives are determined by stupid video game stats?” I scoffed.
“Not everything in life; in fact it’s only luck. It’s kinda an intangible, a mystical thing, you know? There’s nothing you can do to increase or decrease luck, it just is.” She gave me that sheepish smile again. “Sorry, I’m really not used to explaining this to people.”
“I can tell.”
“So here’s where things get a bit more complex.” She held her hands out in front of her, trying to diagram something that wasn’t there. “There’s only a set amount of luck in the universe. New luck can’t just be conjured from nothing, it’s gotta be distributed amongst everyone and everything. When someone dies, their luck is spread out among the rest of the world; when someone is born, everyone gives them a bit of their luck. So in general, things stay pretty stable. Got it?”
“I think so?” My inflection reflected my confusion. “Lot to think about, but everyone just has their own luck. Got it.”
“Annnnnnd this is where you and I come in.” She continued to smile; it was starting to get to me. “I’ve been doing this job for a looooong time. I’m good at it, but think about how many living things have ever existed. Having to balance all that luck is tough! And, well… I was bound to make a mistake eventually.”
At the word ‘mistake,’ I felt my eye twitch. “What do you mean, mistake?”
She put her hand on my shoulder like a guidance counselor telling a student they’d never make it to college. “Look, I’ll be blunt: you were born with waaaaaay too much luck. You ended up with more than a city’s worth.”
Hearing her say it was like a gut punch and an eye opener all at once. “Sonofabitch,” I mumbled, looking up at the sky and taking it all in.
“What, are you surprised?” she asked.
“Nah, it just… hits different when you actually hear it from someone.” I didn’t say anything for a minute; I just gazed at the stars above me. She went quiet too, giving me the space I needed. Once I was ready, I had to ask the next obvious question. “So, why today? I’ve been lucky my whole life, and then you come by and take it all away from me in a snap? Just wander on in and treat me to the worst day of my life?”
Her smile faltered; she shifted uncomfortably, clearly not thrilled at the prospect of answering the question.
“Well?!” I shouted at her.
“That’s why I’m apologizing!” She shouted back. “I only noticed the error today, so I had to correct things. And the best way to do that is to rip the bandage off, metaphorically speaking. Take all that extra luck and distribute it among everyone else. But yeah, considering the day you had, that was probably a mistake on top of another mistake, so I owe you an apology. This one is on me.”
I wasn’t sure how to react, but I certainly wasn’t feeling positive about her apology.
“‘On me?’” I said through gritted teeth. “That’s all you got for me?”
“I know I’m not good at this, but I can count the number of people I have had to apologize to on one hand, so please cut me a little slack,” she said.
“Cut you some slack?!” She winced when I shouted. “You ruined my life, then expect me to forgive you? Give me my goddamn luck back!”
“I can’t do that, it wouldn’t be fair to everyone!” She stood up; I quickly jumped up to meet her there. “But the worst of it is over now, you’re basically at zero from now on. I’m already having to break a rule to set things straight, do you know how much worse it would be if I—”
“Zero’s not good enough!” I grabbed her by the lapels of her dress. “You give all of it back right this fucking instant!”
“Let me go!” she yelled.
I saw red. Before I knew what I was doing, I drove my head forward; there was a sickening thud as our heads made contact, and she went down immediately. Blood started to trickle down from her forehead, the same color as her dress. I went into auto-pilot and dropped down.
“GIVE IT BACK!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I curled my hands into fists and drove them down into her face. “GIVE ME MY LUCK BACK!!”
Over and over and over, I brought my hands down on her. With each hammer, I felt something more give; another vicious crack, another splatter of blood, another tooth flying to the side. By the time a minute had passed and my senses were returning to me, the woman under me was unrecognizable; a red pulp of blood and bone that would make a medical examiner run from the room in horror. I breathed heavily, staring down at what I had just done, at the lifeless figure below me.
And then… she was fine.
She didn’t magically heal herself, her body didn’t reform and attach itself back together, there wasn’t even a spark or a sound. One moment she was a corpse, the next she looked as pristine as she was when she had come to me minutes ago. She stared back up at me, a mixture of annoyance and disappointment on her face.
“Seriously!?” She yelled.
My only reaction was to fall back, trying to process what I was seeing. She casually stood up and brushed dust off of her dress.
“I-I-I, I’m—” I stammered.
“I APOLOGIZED! I was genuinely sorry for what I put you through! I was trying to make good, and you ATTACK me?!” She put her hands on her hips like a disappointed parent. “See, this is why I don’t like talking with people; you’re all such assholes!”
“B…but…” was all I could get out. She reached down and took me by the shirt, pulling me up to my feet. The smile was gone; there was an intensity burning in her eyes.
“Fine. You want your luck back? You got it!” she said. “Boom. It’s yours again, congratulations. But you know what? You only get it for one more week. Then, it’s over. Got it?!”
I wasn’t about to argue with her. I nodded. “One more week, one more bad day, then all this luck stuff is over. Got it.”
She shook her head. “No. I gave you the chance to do it all in one day, and you decide to get all violent.” The smile returned; this time, combined with the look in her eyes, it terrified me. “You thought I ripped the bandage off badly by doing it in one day? Let’s see what happens when we do it in a minute.”
She shoved me away and turned to leave. I hit the ground, the dust kicking up around me.
“W-wait!” I said, scrambling back to my feet. “Can’t we—”
She was gone. There was no indication that anyone had been there besides me. I looked around frantically, but other than the bar across the way, I was alone.
I’m not sure how long I stood in silence, but eventually all I could do was turn back towards Vegas and start walking. No sooner had I done so then the street lit up and a truck pulled alongside me. The driver rolled the window down.
“Heyo, need a lift into town?” he asked. I nodded, and he pushed the door open and patted the seat.
“Thanks,” I muttered as I sat down.
The moment I closed the door the pitter-patter of rain echoed outside the car, turning into a near-torrential downpour in seconds.
“God damn, it’s really comin’ down!” the driver laughed as he turned his windshield wipers on high. “I usually don’t take this road neither, but my usual route’s backed up. Lucky I came this way or you’d be soaked right now, huh?”
That word rang in my head and I nodded again. “Yeah. Lucky.”
When he dropped me off at my hotel, one of the usual workers was at the front counter. He offered me a sincere apology about the mix-up earlier, said that the new girl hadn’t been told about me yet, and that they found my check behind a desk in the back. They left me champagne and a free gourmet meal for the trouble, but I left it out and collapsed into bed. The next day I went to the bank, where I was greeted with another apology; a clerical error was to blame for my cards being frozen, but now everything had been restored. They even increased my credit limit as an apology.
Things returned to normal for me. The dice were hot, and the hands were hotter. My luck was back. I should have been ecstatic.
But I wasn’t. I was empty.
I’ve been in a haze since then. Because every time I hit a jackpot, every time I get a win, every time someone hands me a free drink, I can see her. Out of the corner of my eye, she’s standing there, watching me with that same smile. But when I turn to look at her, she’s gone.
That was seven days ago. I’m sitting in my penthouse right now writing this. Over the last hour, the lights outside my window have faded, leaving the strip looking an eerie black. There’s no noise either. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Vegas quiet.
A few moments ago, I heard a soft knock at my door and a woman’s laughter.
Lady Luck has come to collect.
2024.04.29 05:12 robp1976 Suspension upgrades
Just purchased a 2024 f250 lariat. Ride is pretty stiff. Is it possible to get the caddy ride with a leveling lift. Looking at carli and readylift kits. Any suggestions?
submitted by robp1976 to superduty [link] [comments]
2024.04.29 05:11 jiiiiimbo_- Need Advice/Help with Engine Problems
Hey guys,
A month ago, I took my car (22 RS 3, 7k miles) to the dealership because I started to hear this noise coming from the around top of the engine: before video.
The dealership agreed the noise was abnormal and was likely lifter tick. They did the following things:
Regarding number 2, the dealership told me TAC, who they were in regular contact with, told them the metal in the oil is regular break-in material. The dealership told TAC that the oil was changed at 2k and 5k, but they still said it is normal to have metal in the oil.
Just wondering what you guys think this is. Piston slap maybe? Do you think I should bring it back to the same dealer? I moved across the country while the car was at the dealership, so I am carless at the moment.
Thanks
submitted by jiiiiimbo_- to Audi [link] [comments]
A month ago, I took my car (22 RS 3, 7k miles) to the dealership because I started to hear this noise coming from the around top of the engine: before video.
The dealership agreed the noise was abnormal and was likely lifter tick. They did the following things:
- Performed a compression test and got the following results: 137psi, 143psi, 150psi, 150psi, 150psi.
- Drained the oil and found "the oil to be contaminated with fine metallic particles with larger particles at the bottom of the oil filter housing."
- Inspected cams and rocker rollers for any markings/scorings and found nothing.
- Replaced all hydraulic lifters with new ones.
Regarding number 2, the dealership told me TAC, who they were in regular contact with, told them the metal in the oil is regular break-in material. The dealership told TAC that the oil was changed at 2k and 5k, but they still said it is normal to have metal in the oil.
Just wondering what you guys think this is. Piston slap maybe? Do you think I should bring it back to the same dealer? I moved across the country while the car was at the dealership, so I am carless at the moment.
Thanks
2024.04.29 05:04 jiiiiimbo_- Lifter Tick or Piston Slap?
Hey guys,
A month ago, I took my car (22 RS 3, 7k miles) to the dealership because I started to hear this noise coming from the around top of the engine: before video.
The dealership agreed the noise was abnormal and likely lifter tick. They did the following things:
Just wondering what you guys think this is. Piston slap maybe? Do you think I should bring it back to the same dealer? I moved across the country while the car was at the dealership, so I am carless at the moment.
Thanks
submitted by jiiiiimbo_- to MechanicAdvice [link] [comments]
A month ago, I took my car (22 RS 3, 7k miles) to the dealership because I started to hear this noise coming from the around top of the engine: before video.
The dealership agreed the noise was abnormal and likely lifter tick. They did the following things:
- Performed a compression test and got the following results: 137psi, 143psi, 150psi, 150psi, 150psi.
- Drained the oil and found "the oil to be contaminated with fine metallic particles with larger particles at the bottom of the oil filter housing."
- Inspected cams and rocker rollers for any markings/scorings and found nothing.
- Replaced all hydraulic lifters with new ones.
Just wondering what you guys think this is. Piston slap maybe? Do you think I should bring it back to the same dealer? I moved across the country while the car was at the dealership, so I am carless at the moment.
Thanks
2024.04.29 05:02 dtgoo Which manual copper pipe propress tool is better? DIY Purposes
I need to redo some copper piping in my bathtub and looking to use propress fittings (first time)
Which crimping tool would be best for just DIY pipe work at home? Does anyone have experience with either? One is hydraulic and the other is just one pinch to crimp. They both have very similar reviews, but the hydraulic is $50 cheaper right now.
Amazon link to Hydaulic press
Amazon link to manual press
submitted by dtgoo to Plumbing [link] [comments]
Which crimping tool would be best for just DIY pipe work at home? Does anyone have experience with either? One is hydraulic and the other is just one pinch to crimp. They both have very similar reviews, but the hydraulic is $50 cheaper right now.
Amazon link to Hydaulic press
Amazon link to manual press
2024.04.29 04:56 Racin100 Cow pastures: what is my path to a smooth ride?
I want a cart for a pit vehicle for some events that are usually held with parking on bumpy cow pastures. I've been on some lifted carts that are ROUGH rides.
Is there a brand that has suspension that is easier to modify for bumpy terrain and not just for looks?
I don't care what it looks like, or how tall it is, or how fast it goes. I just want one that can go across a cow pasture at low speeds without feeling like a sports car.
submitted by Racin100 to golfcarts [link] [comments]
Is there a brand that has suspension that is easier to modify for bumpy terrain and not just for looks?
I don't care what it looks like, or how tall it is, or how fast it goes. I just want one that can go across a cow pasture at low speeds without feeling like a sports car.
2024.04.29 04:26 Particular-Sir6265 1st truck
 | Just grabbed an 08 1500 4.8 with 130k Any common issues I should expect to see? submitted by Particular-Sir6265 to Silverado [link] [comments] Picture isn’t great but paint on the hood is starting to fade, any DIY tips/tricks to help with that? Anyone have a radio recs with Apple CarPlay? |