August. A lot has happened since then. Not really life-changing, I’ve just been busy with work, and life in general. I’m still working, but I have stopped riding. Back in October my derailleur on my mountain bike broke. It now only shifts between 1-7 and clicks like crazy. If I had a bike stand I could probably fix it, but I don’t want to. I got this bike just to get around when my car got repossessed a few years back. I plan to buy a Trek in the near future and get back out there. The problem now is last time I rode it was kind of warm, October, and now it’s crazy cold in the mornings. It’s not my favorite weather, but I want to get in shape and that means committing to riding in most conditions. Maybe snow days I’ll take off.
In later news, we’re suing our former landlord. We left the place looking nice and in good condition. We had plenty of issues there we didn’t create, but left it looking nice. We asked for the security back sending the letter after we moved, certified and regular mail, it got signed for, and nothing came. We paid rent on time every month for 5 1/2 years, even during the rent moratorium during the pandemic to the tune of almost $115,000. Our security was $1700, but even though she’s the one that didn’t renew our lease, she felt entitled to it. So we’re suing. Wouldn’t you know it, she counter-sues claiming $5,000 in damages when we moved out. So now she’s going to look like a bully in court when she can’t prove any such claim. People suck.
That’s not to sound ominous or anything, especially now with the virus….I just meant I migrated this site to a regular wordpress blog a few years ago. I actually forgot this was still up here, so I wanted to post again to redirect people in case they stumble upon this. The new site is www.tipthedriver.com
Anyway, I hope everyone is healthy, I hope we all keep our calm, we can get through this together, and it’ll just be one of those great stories we tell around campfires or at bars.
Okay, so I’m not sure if I should really qualify it as starting any more than I would posting here that I’m going to get better at updating this blog. I’m not. Don’t believe me if I write that. My life is hectic. I’m married, for one, so half my time I’m doing stuff with my wife. I also wok crazy hours doing the Uber thing. I should probably be out right now, but I really hate being out early. I hate the sun right now. A little after 12, when it starts heading the other direction, I can deal with it. Till 5 or 6 when it seems to be right in your face driving. So, my wife went to Peru for two weeks and a few days recently. She just got back last Tuesday. So in that time I did a lot of cleaning, paid some bills, took a lot of time off for myself, and one night, I sat down and started the first chapter of my book. I get distracted really easily, so I probably wrote about 2,000 words and stopped. And, depending on the time of day, I can’t really type for some reason. Like right now. I think I’m doing about 40wpm. I just woke up an hour ago, and I’m still tired. I usually type between 100 and 150 wpm. Yeah, fast. I can actually one hand type about 40wpm. I’m doing it right now. Okay, now I’m back to two hands for not much improvement.
So my goal today is to do Door Dash and Uber. I need to do DD every so often to keep my account active. Uber I do all the time. I did some car repairs. New spark plugs, I put in new calipers in the back myself. New discs and pads all around, new tries, I put new headlights in so I could have projectors. That may have been a mistake. I don’t know. The lED headlights I have I got for free to try them out. I had been using them as fog lights. My new housing unit uses the same size for low beams so that’s where they are right now. But they’re really dim and I had to create an adapter on my own to go from 9006 make to h11 female. That was fun. I just ordered new bright LEDs. If that doesn’t work I’ll switch to HIDs again for my low beams. See? I just got distracted again. I was looking up prices, posting an add for my old headlight assemblies free, checking emails, and now I think I’m gonna go eat something 😛
I probably should have backed up the work I did the last few months. That was really brilliant of me to forget to do. I have a backup of my blog, but it’s from November, somehow. So, I’m back on Godaddy. They’re not the cheapest, they don’t have the best service, they don’t have the best features, but it’s comfortable, and their tech support is 24/7 and always fixes my issues. I like that. I just installed like 50 plugins, so I have to go through all of those at some point and make sure the settings play nice with each other, and delete the crap I don’t use. I’ve been blogging since 2009, but, quite honestly, I haven’t been paying much attention to what the plugins can do. The biggest thing that annoys me is prior to moving to 1&1,I had like 30,000 visitors a month. My page was ranked pretty high, and it wa worth some money. Switching lost me all of my traffic. Switching back lost me traffic again. So I’m staying with Godaddy. My wife thinks it’s a waste of money, but I like blogging.
So since July, I’ve been driving for Uber. I like it. I also do some of the other services like DoorDash, which I might do tonight. In the summer I was making about $50 an hour doing this. I kind of burned myself out and got lazy. I’ve mostly been doing UberEats, the food delivery side, just to avoid people. But I’m going to get back into the passenger side of it. And I’ll focus on cities closer to NYC so I get those good airport trips and Manhattan rides. Those pay $60-$100 depending on the distance and time. Plus, I get to walk around Manhattan when I go into the city. I can’t pick up there since I don’t live in NY unless I get the taxi license. That’s way too much hassle, so I’m not doing it. I went out for a few hours for lunch doing Eats, and I’ll go back out in a little bit doing more of that, then more passengers later. Right now, I think I’m going to watch a show, so I’ll ttyl. Soon, though, I promise for real this time.
Yeah, been doing that since July. I had to quit that pizza place, working 50 hours a week to make $500 is just nuts. Then you deduct gas and everything else and it’s like “what the hell am I thinking?”. Granted, if you’re at a really busy restaurant it’s not a bad gig. You can make $200 a day if you work all day. But I can make that in 4 hours now, so why work the extra 8 hours doing that nonsense?
So Thanksgiving Eve I made some mistakes. I took a few surging at 2.2 when I was in an area surging at 5.5 because I’m way too quick to hit the accept button. I need to focus more. I also need to learn to sleep more so I don’t get tired while I’m out. And I have bad habits like playing with my tablet while I’m in the car. I need to learn to drive. When I do drive it’s much easier to focus and the day goes by quick. I meet a lot of cool people doing this job. Anyway, I was really just editing some script on here, so I’ll try to remember to post tomorrow.
I quit working at the pizza place I was working t in Trumbull. Now I’m doing ridesharing. Yaaaaay! The pay is much better, but it’s really hard to be disciplined, and it’s hard dealing with drunks and ungrateful people all the time. The stupid score we have to maintain is just nuts. College students and drunks think four stars is a good rating, but what they don’t realize is four stars is low enough to get you fired. You need above a 4.6 or you get deactivated. Every time I take college students I regret it. I started out a 4.86 tonight and now I’m back to 4.83 because of asshole college students who want to feel powerful. And that power comes at the price of people’s jobs, and longer wait times for them. It’s stupid. They pay a third of what they would with a taxi and should be grateful, but are entitled assholes instead. The safest time to do the job is early in the day, like 5am-2pm. You can get all the same volume, all the same distances, with none of the shitty ratings. It’s amazing these companies don’t realize they’re penalizing drivers for making them money late at night.
I’ve looked EVERYWHERE and I can’t find a single site backup from before. Other than the one from 2017. I don’t know which is more likely, that I was just lazy and stupid about it, or misplaced it. I suppose the xml file could exist under another name, but I question what I would’ve renamed it. I checked everywhere, and I even looked at my emails. i sometimes send files to myself as a way to back them up.
Godaddy is still basically saying “Fuck You” as far as a site backup goes. They claim they only keep a backup for 30 days. I’m calling bullshit on that. I bet if it were a law enforcement issue they’d somehow “find” the backup. They’re doing it out of spite for not wanting to pay $15 a month for a non-monetized wordpress site. I should’ve stuck with these guys here or maybe even 000. It just seems really petty and spiteful.
So, in case you’re wondering: NO, I do not recommend GoDadday for hosting.
So Godaddy tells me yesterday that despite what they said in my BBB complaint that they do not actually have a site backup for me. So they lied, and all that work I failed to update is gone. I really don’t know what happened to it. I thought I made manual copies but so far all the ones I checked all seem to be missing the whole last year. Not to mention the fact that I can’t seem to get the xml file to load the right way and it looks like shit on here. I’m going to have to ask these guys how to get it to install the right way, but either way, it looks like all that work is gone. I’m beyond frustrated by it. I had dozens of posts. I am really bad at making regular posts to my site, so losing those is a huge blow to me. I keep saying I’m going to do this more, but i get distracted so easily. I ague with trolls on Facebook and Twitter, I’m looking at porn, I’m playing online games, I’m downloading tv shows: II’m doing everything but writing. The good news is I work for Uber and Lyft so I have lots of new stories to post about. But right now I need to go out and work. I do have a camera, now, too, so maybe I can post some of the videos.
Yeah, been doing that since July. I had to quit that pizza place, working 50 hours a week to make $500 is just nuts. Then you deduct gas and everything else and it’s like “what the hell am I thinking?”. Granted, if you’re at a really busy restaurant it’s not a bad gig. You can make $200 a day if you work all day. But I can make that in 4 hours now, so why work the extra 8 hours doing that nonsense?
So Thanksgiving Eve I made some mistakes. I took a few surging at 2.2 when I was in an area surging at 5.5 because I’m way too quick to hit the accept button. I need to focus more. I also need to learn to sleep more so I don’t get tired while I’m out. And I have bad habits like playing with my tablet while I’m in the car. I need to learn to drive. When I do drive it’s much easier to focus and the day goes by quick. I meet a lot of cool people doing this job. Anyway, I was really just editing some script on here, so I’ll try to remember to post tomorrow.
When I started this blog I had really good intentions with writing something new every day since every day I’d have a story from work. But life got in the way. I do have stories every day from work, but some of them wound up in my notes for the book I’ve still never written, and some of them wound up being the reason I didn’t want to write anything when I got home. They’re all just excuses at the end of the day, though. I should’ve made time.
In the last 7 months, I moved to Stamford for what was a great job, had a nice place on the water, and for a little while I was doing really well. I was working 12 hours a day every day for a few weeks, and when it tapered off, I still had a schedule that was around 65 hours a week. I was loving it. Just salary alone I made about $600 a week. My tips roughly doubled that number. So for a few weeks I was making $1,000 or more. Then they wanted me to start going home during the afternoon from 2-5. That lost me about $150 in pay and a little more in tips and about $100 a week in tips Suddenly I was making $750 a week. NOt bad, but not as good as a thousand. Then they stopped advertising and it got really slow in the mornings. I’d average 1-3 deliveries and about $20 in tips. It wasn’t worth it to me to stay mornings when I could be looking for something else during the day. So I told them I needed to stop working mornings. It was slow enough they could do it. So my pay shrank another $150 and my tips dropped another $100 or so. Down to $500 a week. Then nights started getting slow. Friday and Saturday they’d get slammed but the rest of the week sucked. So I quit. I got a job at a place in NY just across the Stamford line at another pizza place. That didn’t work out either. I made it 7 months at Tomato Tomato, I made it one week at this place. The owner was too high strung. He’s one of those, “No talking! If you’re leaning you’re cleaning!” types. I’m sorry, but I’m risking my life in this shitty weather to deliver your pizza. Shut the fuck up about talking to my fellow employees.
Later that night I saw an add for a Mexican place near where I lived (I never give the name of where I currently work). So I went to it on the way home and filled out an app. The next day I stopped by, met the owner and he said to come back after 5 and talk to his manager. So I did, and I was hired on the spot =) I have pretty good luck getting in the door places. BUT, since then, I got married!!!!!!!!!!!!! I met a beautiful girl named Mercedes, we dated for a while and it just felt right. Neither one of us had a lot of money so we did something very small that may as well have been eloping. My sisters and their husbands were there, and her best friend (our current roommate) was there. We spent the “honeymoon” at her family’s in Virginia. Again, no money. Lol, I owe her a nice honeymoon, or at least a much better time. Afterward, we moved from Stamford back to Bridgeport where it’s much less expensive. Our place is nice, first floor, by the water, but we both really miss Stamford. It’s SO expensive out there, but so much to do.
So now my dilemma is how to find a job out here. Jobs out there are plentiful, but I don’t want to keep driving back and forth, and during inclement weather it’s an issue. Plus, I figured I’m spending about $600 a month in gas thanks to the Jeep I now have. I miss my Rav4. Never ever trade a Toyota for a Jeep. Really bad move on my part. So I’m hopeful I can find something out here because as much as I like the people I work with, it’s costing too much and I don’t have enough hours. I can always go visit them, but I need a job out here. That’s it for now. ~
So, since we last spoke, I did move. I moved to Stamford. Yaaaayyy!!! I’ve been working there for over a year now and driving back and forth from Bridgeport really sucked. Sure, it was only half an hour away, but still. I had to spend like $20 a day on gas to work out there. Why didn’t I get a job closer you ask? I tried. I looked everywhere near me, but the only thing I found were places like McD’s. No thanks. My last apartment was terrible. I hated it, my cats hated it, and living with those two losers was horrible. Worst 2 months of my life. I found a place right on the harbor in a good area less than a minute from work for $1250. It’s kind of pricey, but it’s carpeted, has two little balconies, it’s big inside, and in a really solid building that looks like it could take a direct hit from an EF-5 and still be standing. My cats love it, I love it, and I think my girlfriend loves it. Oh, did I not mention that? I have a sweetie. It’s official: I’m taken 😛
It’s been so long I don’t know what to write. The hours went down a little at this place, I work 12 to 2 then 5 to 10 6 days a week now. Sooooo my pay went down a little, too. I was making like $730 a week those first two weeks, but now I’d say I’m down to about $600 or so. Maybe a little less. It depends. Some nights suck, but it’s new, I’m being patient. A new round of ads is coming out next week or the week after wit a bunch of specials for delivery only, so maybe that’ll help. I’m trying to get the dog-walking thing going during the day again. It didn’t really work out last time, but there’s plenty of places near here to get a few customers. I did a website: http://www.iwalkdogs.net If I get ONE customer a day every day I’ll make like $450 minimum, $750 max a month just from that one dog. It’d depend on the type of walk they selected. Anyway, I’m hopefull, but I need to do more with the site and marketing.
Aaaanddd, I’m still doing college classes. Four of them. I’m way behind. As a matter of fact, that’s what I was doing before I started to write this, so let me get back to it. Oh, yeah, still working on the book. Not really. I need to write it. The easiest part of the process has me stalled. That just figures, right?
The place where I moved is barely acceptable. It was cheap and in a good area, but I literally have an 8×8 room. I have a queen size bed, so guess how much room I have to move around? Next to none. Plus, one of the roommates seems to be allergic to water and rarely bathes. The other one’s allergic to doing dishes or cleaning so we have ants and flies. My cats seem happy enough, but I want to move by the end of summer, hopefully to Stamford. I have a cutie coming from Peru and I need to have a new place so she has somewhere nice to spend time with me. I’m still working at the same place, and have a bit more hours. Still trying to get the book written and work on the doggie daycare idea (a pizza place is too much to start right now). And I also bought a new website to blog from: www.hastalapizza.net so look for my rants there, too.
I know I haven’t put a new post up here in a while, but it hasn’t been as long as my usual gaps. Only two weeks this time. Part of it’s this keyboard. I really need to get one of the clackity ones I love. I hate this thing. The keys are all just a hair closer or further fucking up my typing. Not to mention that someone broke the tabs that let you angle it so there’s that, and the spacebar sticks. Anyway, I’m moving. Evicted, actually. That’s what happens when a driver, writer, whatever has no job or not enough hours to pay bills. My roommate moved out a few months ago so I don’t have that money, but i really don’t make enough anyway. I’m trying to get a spot near where I am right now. I don’t want to have to borrow money, but I might. If I had to I suppose I could sell my car, but that creates all sorts of new headaches. Besides the fact that I really like my car. I really don’t want to sell it. And there’s the mall thing I still want to do in a few months. I might need to sell my car then to get extra cash. I have a few things in the works that will get me some money. I borrowed an extra $9,000 for school, but I don’t get that till September. Half anyway, the other half i get in the spring. I figure I need $10,000 to be safe so I’m a ways off. My sis wisely said I should do a cash flow analysis so I’ll have to do that one of these days and see how much I need to have exactly. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I don’t feel like typing, just wanted to let you know what I’m up to.
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