September 2026 – Complaint Hub

Something very creepy from Facebook

I am, unfortunately, still on Facebook. I shouldn’t be, but nevertheless I remain. Recently, Facebook did one of the most disturbing things it’s ever openly done to me.

As you may know, I have two daughters. Since many of my Facebook friends are friends because we met through school, many of them ALSO have daughters. As you may also know, it is very traditional to post pictures of your children on the first day of school. So I click the like button on a lot of these photos, because I am congratulating my friends on being one year closer to their darling babies leaving them forever… I mean on getting the dirty little leeches out of the house again after a long and grueling summer of them being around, ALL THE TIME… I mean… Never mind.

As I was saying, I hit “like” on a lot of back to school photos. One day I saw a picture of two girls smiling on the porch that I didn’t recognize. “Oh, must be someone I don’t know well and haven’t seen in a while”

No.

Facebook decided to post to my feed a public photo from some person I’ve never heard of. And it kept doing it. It had decided that what I “liked” was teenage girls smiling on porches.

I forgot I can math

When preparing a budget proposal for a client condo association, I have to propose an amount to contribute to reserves. If you want to be able to get a loan under Fannie and Freddie guidelines, the condo association for a long time had to contribute 10% of total condo fees to reserves (so if you have $9000 in expenses, $1000 to reserves, $1000 = 10% of $10,000).

This year it’s going up to 15%. I’d been guessing – $5,000? No, that’s 14.77%. $5100? That’s 15.36%. $5050? You get the idea. It’s annoying.

Then I remembered algebra. I literally majored in math in college. My favorite class was Fundamental Concepts of Algebra. So I got out a piece of paper (actually an envelope from a Verizon bill out of the recycle bin) and worked it out. It took a minute to shake the cobwebs off but I quickly determined that if you set the reserves at (3 * expenses)/17 gives you 15% of the total. This is amazingly simple and I can’t believe it took me this long to work it out.

Stay in school, kids.

No one wants hot sauce on the ceiling

September 2019. Nearly completed my recovery from the torn Achilles in March. I am fixing breakfast, having finished a bottle of Sriracha the day before. Sriracha, I will note, is THE BEST hot sauce for eggs. Other hot sauces are better in different situations, but Sriracha is the best complement for eggs. I will not be taking questions.

I unscrewed the cap of the bottle to remove the seal, and something looked amiss…

A bottle of Sriracha. The cap is off but the seal is still on. It is bulging ominously

I decided that was probably not okay and ate my eggs without hot sauce. I left the bottle on the cutting board to deal with after breakfast. This was a mistake.

Halfway through eating, there was a loud noise from the kitchen.

A splatter of Sriracha on the ceiling, shown through the pot rack

Mind you, the cutting board is standard counter height. The ceiling is about 10′, so that hot sauce was propelled at least 6′ straight up before it hit the ceiling.

Bottle of Sriracha on the cutting board. The seal is nowhere to be seen. Sriracha has spilled

The aftermath. I had to go to the store to buy a new bottle. Thankfully we had not yet entered the Global Sriracha Shortage and this was a relatively easy task.

Jon Renaut posted on Facebook 9/3/2019: PSA - if your bottle of Sriracha has a bulging seal, I do not recommend eating it. Or leaving it on the counter while you eat breakfast. Now I'm off to get a ladder so I can clean Sriracha off the ceiling

This is another in my Saved from Facebook series. Someday I will have saved all my banger content from there and I can ~~delete my account~~ remain there like a sucker anyway.