The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Our neighbor has intentionally altered his car's engine and muffler to emit a loud rumble, more than much larger trucks. He likes turn it on early in the morning and warm it up (when it's about 50f out) for ten minutes, to "go exercise." We have talked with his mother and the sheriff about this, but he hides from us, and will not talk. It bothers my husband more than it does me, I'm a heavier sleeper in general, but waking up to a pissed off husband does bother me a lot.
The internet says we could try playing the rumble all night long from a noise machine, but in addition to not wanting to spend the money, that seems like it would be worse. I don't want to spend the money, then have it be worse.
We could just wake up at that time in general (usually the alarm is set to an hour later), but would continue to feel angry about having to make that change for someone we dislike, so wouldn't help that much.
Any suggestions? Would a cinderblock wall help?
Lol. I lived in an apartment once with a neighbor like this, and our walls were practically paper thin. What I did was find a playlist for all of the loudest, most annoying, longest music on YouTube, download the files, wrote a script to automate the playback, and ran it on my JBL speaker at the maximum volume and placed it at the wall ‘right’ by their bedroom when they went to sleep. They stopped shortly thereafter. It’s unfortunate that people respond to pettiness, I’d already asked them nicely if they could just lower the volume. I wasn’t asking them to turn anything off. Then they started blasting it. Sometimes you got to take matters into your own hands.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't have any advice but I fucking hate people like this, having lived next door to a cunt who also liked to idle his car fifteen feet away from my bedroom window for twenty minutes on weekend mornings so that he doesn't damage his precious 2020 camaro. Fortunately I made enough money that I was able to upgrade to a mildly richer and more exclusive neighborhood with fewer antisocial personalities.
I guess that's my advice - make more money and leave. That's the only way to deal with noise ordinance violations in the USA in my experience.
More options
Context Copy link
The following sequence of events might be funny.
(1) Antagonist starts truck and goes back inside his house.
(2) Protagonist walks outside, sets up a folding chair on the government-owned grassy verge between the sidewalk and the street-parked truck (or on the government-owned grassy verge near the driveway-parked truck), and sits down.
(3) Antagonist hides inside his house.
(4) Protagonist remains comfortably seated, and summons a police officer to come and listen to the noise.
(5) Either antagonist emerges to be confronted by the protagonist and the officer, or his truck runs out of gasoline.
We are exurban, and the houses have moats, in the form of fenced yards with dogs that go all the way around their house, such that there isn't a way to do neighborly things like knock on the person's door and yell at them.
I suppose someone could try sitting in the road, and then they couldn't leave while the person's there without talking to them, but if the sheriff came, it would probably be the the person sitting the road who would be in trouble for it, and the neighbor would just continue their behavior thereafter, nobody's got time to sit in the road each morning even if it's allowed. It's unclear whether the early morning revving is technically illegal or not, since acquiring this neighbor, I have noticed that these vehicles are A Thing, and I hear them every now and again, here and there.
There still should be a government-owned grassy verge right next to the driveway where it meets the road, so that there is no need to sit in the road. Even if there's no government-owned sidewalk to mark an obvious boundary, you presumably can check your county's GIS website (or the county's tax map in conjunction with Google Maps) to determine the exact spot where the neighbor's land ends and the government's land begins.
You presumably can check your municipality's noise ordinance. (Though I vaguely remember hearing somewhere that many municipal noise ordinances have been found unenforceably vague in recent years. If you feel like taking a long shot, you could nag your municipal government to enact an enforceable noise ordinance.)
There is an irrigation ditch, owned by the water association, and I could certainly stand in the ditch as he drives past, or in my own driveway, which merges with his, it just doesn't seem very useful. He already knows we don't like it.
Yeah, the sheriff department said that we could try calling their help line each morning, and maybe they'll come check it out. It just seems annoying for both us and them when nothing will probably come of it. They said they can, if they come when he's still here, pull out a decibel counter, if he doesn't notice them and turn it off or something. One time they came to check on him, and he went completely dark and silent for three days, which surprised me and seemed disproportionate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link