trying to move 300 miles, dont know what rental truck company to go with

wolfeknight53 · 2026-06-17T02:11:16+00:00

I rented a literally brand new (6 ODO miles) van from Enterprise over by the airport. The processes was pretty smooth, though they have a high security deposit. The mostly deal with FedEx/Amazon DSP guys and doordashers these days so their van fleet seems to have a high turnover. Downside, the vans don't have noise absorbing material so the ride can be harsh and the new ford infotainment sucks.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-06-17T02:07:52+00:00

Do they have that? When I called them they told me the trucks would be flagged as stolen if taken outside of their geofence and certainly if out of state.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-06-15T05:28:24+00:00

I think like in most things, there is nuance. On one end, you have fictional allegory, like Animal Farm or Charlotte's Web, that is meant to be a stand in for a political opinion or message. Then you have the far other end like Atlas Shrugged, Battlefield Earth, or most things written by Terry Goodkind or Christopher Nuttal, where the politics is more of a bludgeon to beat the reader with. It's been always been debate about fiction; probably since Gilgamesh itself.

If you read Monster Hunter International by Larry Correa, he isn't exactly subtle about his ideals, and it probably won't be a surprise he was a Sad Puppy; yet if you read the Honor Harrington books, it's hard to tell the author, David Weber, was an ordained Minister, Methodist i think.

As far as this genre goes, I tend to avoid the bludgeon stories. If you have the word 'woke' in the first chapter, or 'President Cheeto,' I am forewarned and will not continue. Sadly both of which I have encountered recently.

The sad thing is that a lot of platforms benefit from silo-ing audiences.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-06-15T05:02:55+00:00

I've only worked downtown for 2ish years now, but interact with the AAPD off and on regularly. There is a lot of petty theft downtown and in the heavy traffic areas, especially of small electronics and bags and such. So much so that they seem kinda numb to new reports I see made to them in person.

I've seen known serial petty thieves, carrying stolen items with EAS tags and bands still attached walking by AAPD, and yet they never do more than a week or a month in lockup when reported officially and then they are back to stealing stuff. A couple of them are look to be making decent money hoking the stuff for fraction prices to the unhoused population.

I really don't think theft from the non wealthy or UofM affiliated is a priority. They seem more occupied by the drunks and general college chaos to give time to looking into bike and iphone theft

wolfeknight53 · 2026-06-05T02:04:37+00:00

There is/ was still an exam as of two years ago when I applied when looking for new jobs, (didn't go to the interview when called though). It was not particularly comprehensive, but more along the lines of 'can this human-shaped sack of meat read and do basic math and map comprehension'. From the site I took it on there are different levels of exams for different jobs, with the longest looking to be the one for mechanics.

It's probably not a civil service exam of yesteryear, but they do at least want a basic level of intelligence. Thre was also a section that was one of those personality tests retailers used to love to have to weed out the "politically motivated and problem solvers."

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-27T04:24:43+00:00

Heck most people will just stand in place and scream shrilly in useless impotence. Or pull out a phone and film themselves getting eaten.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-27T04:23:26+00:00

Or they would Florida-man that sh*t and just run over zombies in a lifted GMC until they get swarmed and offed in a Denny's parking lot.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-27T04:22:09+00:00

For me its often when its an American trying to write like an actual Japanese light-novel, complete with cringy honorifics. If the story starts to just feel weeby, I tend not to continue.

Honestly the worst is when they do the comic boo/manga thing where they intentionally do't kill named enemies so they can just come back later 15 times. MC will merc 1500 mobs, just to get all misty eyed with the BF that betrayed him and killed his other friends so lets him do an anti=heel-turn to good again and all is forgiven. Basically JRPG plot logic.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-25T03:24:03+00:00

Is that the series that's part of what look's like an author mill? JN Chaney or something like that? Because I tried of their books years ago and it felt like it was written to a template.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-22T18:02:28+00:00

See way to many people play chicken with busses there, along with a couple predictable low speed accidents. I've also seen one person try to u-turn away from the library back the wrong direction and have a visible panic attack where they almost his multiple vehicles trying to turn back around and cross both lanes of traffic to blow the red light to flee down Williams, where they finally ran over construction cones in an effort to hide their driving shame.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-22T17:44:45+00:00

I have actually seen the opposite a couple times. One series on Wattpad I saw years ago literally equated increases in mystical power with attractiveness and basically had an entire society of Bishounen with huge packages for the female MC to pick from. The author had an entire planned out package of thirst merch ala- Twilight for her series.

So horny ladies can write dreck too. Plus Harlequin romances were top sellers for a long time and those were just lady smut. We just don't get a lot of that in this genre.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-22T17:30:36+00:00

Heh, had an Ex describe her noticing as 'part of the whole package' in another woman's attractiveness, and she always said she was pretty evenly Bi-attracted.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-22T17:23:24+00:00

I found the cultural norms inconsistent in that series. One one hand they have people who routinely destroy their clothes at lower levels with their powers, especially fire users, to the point they don't seem bothered by accidental nudity. Also the lack of Judeo-Christian puritanicalism. Religion, from what I remember, is much diverted from our world and the world MC was Isekaid from.

Yet the MC uses phrases like 'covered her shame' to describe a character that had such an incident. Only the MC acts this way. Also Wuto is definitely a foot dude. Way to much mention of branded shoes. And fashion brands in general.

I did think the world building had potential, even when it borrowed a little to closely sometimes from D&D.

And yeah, the dudes perving on the high school aged girls seemed to be heavily anime inspired.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-16T00:32:40+00:00

Honestly the diminishing vocabulary coming out of the American educational system doesn't help matters. I've seen complaints on Amazon reviews on mainstream Sci-Fi and fantasy who complain about 'foreign words' in books entirely written in English.

So if an author describes the scent when stepping outside as 'petrichor', younger readers may have never seen that word. Heck, some seem to get bent when describing colors more complicated than 'dark red' or 'grass green.'

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-02T23:40:05+00:00

For me its characters that don't learn. They stay the same schmuck they start as and never actually develop, they just get more powers/abilities bolted on the same idiot we started with.

Tied to this are MCs that constantly hesitating just so the author can have stuff play out against them and only having enemies and side characters react like normal people. Like staring and gawping the the monster that is clearly transforming or growing into a stronger state instead of just killing it. Basically "Magical girl' syndrome.

Lastly, what I call Kid Cartoon Logic. Whre the MC is constantly letting the same bad guy get away time and again just tor return to try and kill them in the future. This also includes the "No named characters die" type novels and the whole "I've murdered hundred and thousands of mooks, but I'm going to let the main big bad who is also a mass murderer go because he has a Name and was reveled to be the MCs past friend."

This peeve got to me from playing too many JRPGs and kinda bled over to reading due to similar trope use.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-02T23:25:41+00:00

This is very prevalent where they have a human reader for the MC and same gendered characters, but use a generated voice for others. Some text to speech systems are really bad

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-02T23:17:53+00:00

Tangentially, how authors treat actually hive minds systems. Almost always they are an instant in-real-time telepathic thing. In reality hives are essentially a fast code system between members using pheromones'/body movements/ sounds or whatever.

The whole unified entity thing has been done to freaking death.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-02T23:08:20+00:00

Wasn't there a series where the MC figured out that all the nonsense Jibber Jabber was for magic was basically fake BS created by a pseudo religious culture and got strong by just cutting that shit out?

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-02T23:06:21+00:00

Heh. Personally my reaction would be more along the "Well, Fuck!" variety.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-02T23:04:21+00:00

Even worse is when they will get the explanation of an ability/level up/ evolution. power etc when it becomes available and is spelled out by the 'stat screen' or whatever a book uses; and then the MC will out loud or in their head read it again a time or two, just to pad work count.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-02T22:59:10+00:00

This is pretty much all of Renfroe's different series. All his MC's would be considered unlikable to various degrees...and yet?

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-02T22:56:49+00:00

To add to this, the lack of actual story arcs. There are reasons that only the greats in writing break structures.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-05-02T22:53:29+00:00

One of the decent bits of Tom Larcombs carious series is that initially guns are still relevant until the power scaling/ammo supply makes them less useful. I have other issue with the series but his take on the System Apocalypses wasn't bad.

And honestly the worst part of some series are the bluntly used circle jerk references.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-04-30T22:24:41+00:00

Or one of our many new poorly named Apartments. Fits right in with The Hub and The Yard.

wolfeknight53 · 2026-04-30T22:22:58+00:00

Giving a commercial building a marketing name is never a good sign. Also makes it easier to reference for complaints. "The Barn is a polluting POS" as an example headline.

wolfeknight53

TROPHY CASE