How exasperrating is it to try and text someone who says something and then disappears?  Voice texting, btw, not fingers.  I went to Dallas today, got the pipe and heading back I couldn't get either dog nailed down for picking it up. Finally, the first dog I posted on my FB wall texted me - I had emailed her several times and finally just left my phone number - saying she really hopes I haven't passed by Tyler yet? No, I was still 30 miles out.  Got it done in a Walmart parking lot.  I wasn't exactly impressed their reasoning to get rid of this dog.  They don't want to take the time to finish house training it to pee outside.

Ooooookaaaaaay.  I'm not necessariliy looking forward to it, but they sell pee pads now you set down by the door in your bedroom, for example, and the dog hopefully pees on that.  I don't remember the rest of how to get them to pee outside, Addler wasn't house trained but he refuses to pee in the house, I had nothing to go through there.  This dog is still very young and has a lot of growing to do.  It did not like getting into the truck and it was attempting to get out of the closed door on the passenger side - a virtual impossibility but she tried anyway.  It would be a little difficult to bring a tractor trailer rig into my neighborhood - not impossible but  if I can avoid it, yes, avoid it.  So the new guy living here came and got her from a parking lot 2 blocks away.

Well the Dallas drive took all day long because it's not only 400 miles of driving, there was quite a bit of ridiculousness to go through just to get the truck loaded.  1st stop the will call. Well you walk through the door and there is a sign in stark, bold letters telling you to push the ringer and wait.  So I did.  Even though there were 2 forklift  drivers and a man walking around the floor and then a minute later even more employees - right there.  After 10 minutes of waiting and being ignored, I walked to the office. No one in there. Back to the waiting area, where I finally got irritated and pushed the ringer - a very LOUD ringer - and held the button down.  Yup, just like that, I did it.  What kind of customer service is it to have will call associates ignoring their customers?

So some dude with an "air" of authority appears around a corner some distance away, waving his hands at me while he walks into the office.  Ringer kept right on going.  He's in the office, waving his hands.  Ringer kept right on going.  Come over here and tell me something.  Yes sir, we know you're here, one moment.  Yes sir, what do you need. Something!  Finally some other dude comes up to where I'm standing and says: well, I see you like to hold down the ringer.  No, dude, I hit the ringer when I first came in here and you and those guys on the forklift completely ignored me.  He looks around, says he didn't even see me standing here. How could you not? We may EYE contact.  Whatever.  Then there was an issue with the Purchase Order which took an additional 15 minutes.

THEN, I am sent out of that yard to  a guard shack down the street.  Sit there and watch a safety video, fill out all kinds of forms and sign them and get my paperwork.  THEN I am sent to yet another gate off the main street.  If they wanted to make this any harder for customers to wade through their maze of gates - 3 of them I ended up going through by their instruction - well I dunno.

Well whatever.  An hour and a half to get 5 sticks of pipe and a fitting.  The only good thing about it is that by the time I got back to the yard, it was time to go home.  I'm surprised the manager didn't just waste another thousand dollars having a hot shot driver bring it over.  That's what they do. Instead of giving us some real gravy runs that we could do, they hire hot shot drivers to take materials down to Baton Rouge or Sulphur and other places, trips that could be made in a day in any of our trucks, we get the run, we get the hours and the company is saved a significant amount of money.

Anyway, I'm home with the new doggy, Addler is a bit jealous, he'll get over it with time, the new doggy a bit skittish, I would have rather have gotten the dog at the beginning of this coming weekend and had 3 days to work with it getting it settled in, but I didn't want to lose the opportunity to get it so here we go. Tonight? May be a very long night, who knows.

However, one good sign: Addler and Aspyn (I don't really like that spelling, I may change it to just plain Aspen) are playing.  So yeah, that is what I wanted to get this dog for, hopefully it will pan out.

Meanwhile, I still have the ac problem to deal with and frankly? It will probably wait until the weekend.  It's obviously been going on for quite a while now, the floor is water-damaged around the AC closet, the wood flooring is buckled up and it has been that way for a long time and getting worse.  I'm pretty sure the man of the house saw what was going on here and just did nothing about it.  Because I remember some time ago walking through there and seeing the floor buckled, but not near as much as it is now.  And then, finding out they have never had it cleaned since they moved in here.  Ugh. This sounds like it's going to turn into a project. My plans were to try and borrow the pressure washer this weekend, not spend it trying to fix a plumbing problem and trynig to clean coils while I'm at it.  But, I watched the dude doing it when it was done at my house - and charged a fortune to do it.  All he did, really was spray some stuff in there and then wait a while and flush it out with water.

But, the charge was probably worth it.  You see, they guarantee the AC is going to work for a year after that. So, they do have a stake in it.  But, funds are kinda tight right now after that water heater deal and a few other things that came up, I'm guessing minimum $250 for them to come out and clean that thing and who knows how much they would charge to fis the plumbing problem.  There are things I won't deal with on AC units because I don't have the equipment, but this is stuff I can do and being careful, I won't damage anything.  I remember long ago when I caught Mary, a former tenant in the Phoenix house, vacuuming the evaporator coils.  She was using a hard plastic tip and was smashing the fins in on the coil.  Uhhh, Mary, do you see what you are doing?

She got mad at me because she was "just trying to help me". Yes, but you are damaging the unit and when the air can't flow through those fins, the air doesn't cool and the volume of air is reduced.  You are suffocating the system by doing that.  Oh.  She thought I was stupid and didn't know what i was talking about.  My first rounds at dealing with AC was in cars long, long ago.  It's the same principle.  Liquid gets heated as it passes through the evaporator, it is pumped to the condensor outside which cools it and reverts it back to a liquid and then back to the evaporator - back and forth.  Now that I know the coils haven't been cleaned, I also know that that is what probably has clogged up the drain.

Oh well.  Just not looking forward to it.

Well, long day.  Call this one done.

So, I purportedly have a run to Dallas today and I also have a tentative pickup of a German Shepherd.  Neither of those things are set in stone, I never really know where they are sending me until they hand me the paperwork.  The whims of the warehouse dude change from day to day and though I have done my best to work with him, he still talks a bunch of trash about me behind my back.

But then again, he talks trash about all the blue collar workers behind their backs so at least I'm not alone in that grouping.  I take that back, he also talks ghetto about the inside salesmen.  One of which has deccided he can't take the new manager's crap anymore and is seekng emloyment in greener pastures.  I watch the manager giving him hell, frequently, over minor, small issues that don't warrant anger and vitriol in terms of a reaction.  

People are going to leave sooner or later and it's all going to come down on the manager's head.  The only people that won't leave are the outside salesmen because the gravy train is very nice right now, they are making money hand over fist and they aren't going to care what kind of bs they have to put up with.  However, we are now losing customers beacuse of the manager's reputation.  Yeah, he's been around for 25 years in this business and ran the store long, long ago when - they lost business then as well.

However, per my previous statement, I have also done my best to treat him with respect and simply brush off  the frequent railings such as yesterday monring when he started in on everyone first thing Monday morning.  This gives a little more credence to the theory being floated around that his wife wears the pants in his family and that he comes to work to take it out on everyone.  Because every Monday morning? It's the same crap.  

I identified the problem in the AC last night but have to take panels off and take a look at what it's going to take to repair it.  It's obviously a clogged drain, but why is the drain clogged? I texted her - the lady that owns the house - and asked when the last time was they had the coils cleaned?  They hadn't.  They're young, they don't know alot of this stuff, I am going to make sure they learn. Especially with the AC, preventative maintenance is worth it's weight in gold.  I don't even have to call it a guess, I know the coil is going to covered with dust and dirt and whatever has accumulated in there and I really prefer a professional AC person to come in and clean it - but they want so much money to do it.  

I've watched several videos on how to do it and really, I may just have to tackle the job myself.  Vacuum it first and then there is a special foam spray you can buy at Home Depot to spray into it, let it sit in there for a while and then wash out.  But first, fix the clogged drain problem, which could be a nightmare, who knows.  I just know what it costs to have AC professionals to come out and I would rather try myself and this is a drain problem, not an AC problem.  

Well, time to go to work!