Modern Vespa

You honestly can't trust any manufacturer at this point. People have changed....Not much anyone can do. Make the best decision you can on what to buy and be prepared to be disappointed.

This is why I retaped all of the harnesses and changed the spring clamps to stainless steel lined aerospace type .

My last 2013 300 was very well made compared to the 2025" 310

What a joke of China parts , profit before quality.

GB

This reminds me of working on early to later '70s Harleys. There was a saying at the time - "Harley-Davidson builds the bike, you do the final engineering."

I remember from back when I was a kid: Ford was "fix or repair daily" and Fiat was "fix it again Tony".

Also "Found On the Road Dead". (FORD)
Also "I'd rather push a Chevy than drive a Ford".
And so on ad naseum.

Very Expensive Scooters Poor Assembly.

Blasphemy!

Very Elegant Scooters People Adore.

scary shit

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/meta-ai-support-chatbot-gave-hackers-access-to-notable-instagram-accounts/

Hackers duped Meta AI support chatbot to steal celebrity Instagram accounts

Meta's AI support chatbot proved unusually helpful to hackers looking to steal and resell notable Instagram accounts—the hackers simply asking the bot to change the accounts' associated email addresses while using VPN to mask their true locations.

Good work little buddy. Now do bank accounts.

The end really is nigh.

If jess adds any ai to mv ....

MVbot will deal to it.

People wanting help, and then they are not there.

while trying to get my cat off the street an idiot comes around the corner and tries to run us both over and then opens her window and tells me to get off the street.

bitch

Wow! That's might neighborly of her. Unreal.

Hmmm...so you have them down there, too. When I was there, everyone was super nice. I guess things change over time.

maybe covid birthed a lot of karens

People are people no matter where you go.

As was once said: If assholes could fly, this place would be a freakin' airport.

Engineers who will create file and folder names in a zipped folder that are so FREAKING long that when I try to unzip them I get an error for "Path too long".

You don't need the opening to "Tale of Two Cities" in your filenames.

That sounds like an engineer who I knew from work. He did the same thing. His name was Warren Pease.

I hate the Torx bolts used on the front disc and rear ABS tone wheel. They're a pain in the nine assholes to get them off, most I had to destroy. Thankfully I had ordered a bunch beforehand…

bastards.

another ticket.

cruising at 60 and sped up to 68 to catch the orange light.

🤬🤬🤬

Scooter Scum you are.

takes one to know one

(tl;dr: at bottom)

As I'm sure I've mentioned previously, I work in the printing department of a large public school district.

Recently, our governor pushed through a law in the state legislature allowing school vouchers: essentially, parents can get a voucher from the state to help offset the cost of sending their child to a private school. The funds for the vouchers come from the funds that would have gone to the public school district their child would have attended had they enrolled in the public school system. This has resulted in two things: reduced enrollment and reduced state funding for the public schools. (I kept this as apolitical as I could, and simply stated facts.)

The 2025-2026 school year ended on 31 May. At 10 am on Monday, 1 June, our department had a meeting with the Executive Director of Procurement (my boss's boss), a Director of Human Capital Management, and two Assistant Directors of HCM. They started the meeting by thanking us for our hard work in getting all of the graduation materials printed and delivered on time. Then came the bad news.

Due to reduced enrollment and subsequent funding cuts, our department isn't included in the budget for the 2026-2027 school year. Effective 5 pm that day, we were all placed on Administrative Suspension with full pay. This Suspension ends on 31 August, 2026. We have until that date to either find another position within the school district or another job outside it. If we fail to do either, our employment officially ends on 31 August. If we file for unemployment after that, the school district will not oppose it. Also, it's not severance. We still get our paychecks every two weeks, we just don't have to work for them. If I find a job that starts in July, my pay from the school district will stop once I start at the new job, so I won't be able to get double pay.

Things piss me off about this:

• We are what's known as an Enterprise Fund. This means we can actually generate a profit by charging for our services, even though we are part of a non-profit entity (a public school district). Granted, we're limited to making less than 10% profit over an entire fiscal year, but still. From discussions I've had with my boss, the Director of the department, we've been producing profit for the last three years. In other words, our revenues have exceeded our budget costs. "Not being in the budget" shouldn't be a thing for us. We don't cost the district anything.

• Now I have to look for a new job.

• My entire career plan that I've been working towards for the past 2 years is now shot to shit. There's no Director of Graphics and Printing position in the school district anymore. And the whole reason I got the degree I did (BA in Graphic Design) was that it tied in directly to becoming Director. I do NOT want to be a Graphic Designer.

On the plus side (if one can call it that), because I have a BA, I'm that much more hirable than I would be without one, and I'm getting paid to sit at home with the cats, doing my schoolwork for my MBA, and doing laundry and other home upkeep things.

tl;dr: I'm losing my job as of 31 August 2026, due to budget reasons, and have June, July, and August off from work with full pay.

Awww shit.

Are you really required to tell them if you find employment during that time?

Ethically, yes.

And if I find a job within the school district, or with another school district, they'll know.

Part of me wants to milk it until the last minute. For example, find a job, but put off the start date until the end of August, if possible. Especially if the new job doesn't pay as well as the old one.

I did find a posting for a position working at a local university doing essentially the same thing that I was initially hired to do with the school district, but I'd be taking a pay cut of about 20%. And it would require "some Saturday hours."

I don't think we have ever communicated directly but I have been reading your posts, often about large format printing which I always find fascinating.

It looks like times are tough for you right now.

I wish I could help you but that sems unlikely.

I wish you luck and I think you will land on your feet.

Your ethics should match theirs.

When that happens in politics the country goes to hell in a hand basket.


(Hopefully not too political a comment).

Can we use a pet carrier or top box?

It'd have to be a small country - maybe Hobbit size

I feel for you and what's going on. Print is a dying medium. I worked in it for well over 30 years. Use this time to explore all your options. Not for profits are very difficult to work for depending on what your expectations are. Be positive. Good Luck!!!!

For that reason right there ... your situation sucks.

If you are hirable, as it seems you are, I would spend as much time scoping out jobs for the remainder of your paid leave and go with the best option at the last minute. Get your resume out on the job sites and start taking requests. With your education and experience, you should be very marketable.

I turn down job offers from my Indeed resume almost on a weekly basis. Like it or hate it, it's a good network for employment.

I don't understand this either. If you are profitable, why the cut? Is the school district going to go with an outside source?

That's the part of working for a non profit. They don't "earn" a dime of their money. It's either tax dollars or donations. They don't care if your department is not costing them anything. The whole mindset is different from a for profit company. I saved my "department" from being eliminated for the entire 30 years I worked there. I remember one memorable meeting with the CEO, CFO, and all the heads of various departments where I presented that I saved $150,000 a year on an ongoing expense and all I got from the CEO was "does anyone have any questions for Bob?"...They couldn't care less. 22 months after I retired they closed.

Thanks, everyone, for all the positive thoughts. Because it's a school district, and they don't understand how businesses work.

The vast majority of the higher-ups in the district have only ever worked in academia.

One example: the director who hired me (and retired about 4 years ago) got his degree in Architecture, and was initially hired by the district to work in the communications department. At that time, the Graphics & Printing department was a sub-department of communications and was considered a support department like every other department. Then they converted it to an Enterprise fund and moved it under the procurement department. At some point, he became the director. At that time, he was told that due to the non-profit status of the district, he was limited to a 10% annual profit. When I was first hired, I had an external customer order blank envelopes. I called him to ask how much I needed to mark them up. He said to find out the cost from the vendor, then add 10%. I knew this was wrong, that a 10% markup does not yield a 10% profit. So I asked if he was sure about that (in a polite way). He said, "Yes, we can't profit more than 10%." I later found out his entire work history was working for the school district, except for a couple of summers during college when he was a bartender. He had no real qualifications to run a printing department expected to make a profit.

Since he left, I've learned more about how things work at the levels above the Director, so it doesn't surprise me that they've made this short-sighted decision.

And yes, they'll have to outsource everything. The thing is, they'll spend more money doing that than if they kept us. Mainly because most vendors will charge rush fees for the short production times that the district expects.

Graduation programs are a good example. We had to produce commencement programs for 8 Saturday ceremonies and 7 Sunday ceremonies. Both days, the first ceremony began at 8am. We didn't get approved art to begin production until Friday, around 10am. I ended up working until almost midnight that night, as did my supervisor. He and two other coworkers worked all day Saturday to complete the Sunday programs, and he had to go back for a few hours on Sunday to finish one for that afternoon. An outside vendor could do that, too, but would charge 2-3x what we did.

Stupid is as stupid does. I worked for a supervisor, head of engineering, that would let a project sit on his desk for most of the lead time before giving it to me. Never failed that we worked major overtime to make delivery on time. And he took credit for my ideas when it was time to apply for patents. As things evolved, I became his supervisor. Turns out he was completely useless. Never able accomplish even the simplest task.

OFG

As has been said: I'm not totally useless. I can always be used as a bad example.