In this episode of 'Things That Piss Me Off'.........

[thekaj]

I worked retail at an authorized Apple retailer. One day a woman came in with a cheap iPod Shuffle ish looking MP3 player that she had bought at Walmart, that wasn’t working. I told her that since it wasn’t an Apple product and we didn’t sell it, I wasn’t sure how to troubleshoot it, but I gave some suggestions that didn’t fix it. So she said she wanted to return it. I said okay, she’d need to return it to Walmart. She asked why she couldn’t return it here. I reminded her that not only didn’t she buy it here, but we didn’t sell that item, so there was no way to know how much she paid for it, let alone enter it into our system, or do anything with it, other than throw it in the trash. She said that this was bad customer service. I repeated that she didn’t buy it from us, and that she was literally trying to get me to buy her broken MP3 player. She repeated that this was bad customer service, and walked off.

I just stood there, dumbfounded for a moment. In hindsight, a pithy response would have been to inform her that it wasn’t bad customer service, as she was never a customer. But again, I was too dumbfounded.

I’ve often fantasized about being a witness to someone unfairly torturing a retail employee, so I could lay into that person on the employee’s behalf.

 

[thekaj]

I live on a narrow-ish street. Some over-compensating fuckwit with a Dodge RAM Truck parked said penis-compensation directly across the street from my driveway, making it very dicey to back into MY driveway.

There has been a black Honda Civic, late nineties, early two thousand's vintage, parked, not moving at all, directly across the street from my driveway for about four weeks now. It's arrival coincided with an onset of ice, snow, and single digit temperatures. I believe it belongs to one of the relations of the recently divorced guy across the street. They take care of his place when he's deployed somewhere, like right now, as he's in the Air National Guard.

I'm fairly certain they picked that location, to park originally, as anywhere else runs the risk of ginormous pickup backing out of the nearest driveway, as opposed to the guy with two sports cars who can be seen taking diligent care of them regularly. I am, of course, far less likely to damage their car while they wait for the weather to warm up enough to do something about it too.

It's been nearly a month now though, move the freaking thing.

At least in my city, you can't leave a car parked in the same spot for more than 72 hours. Even on the residential streets. There's even an online form you can fill out to report vehicles. There was a truck on our street that literally had a healthy batch of moss growing under it, as it hadn't moved in years. So my wife reported it. It was moved into that person's driveway within a day. Where it's now reestablishing its moss spot.

 

[thekaj]

I've discovered that there's a West Seattle Left Turn.

Start to slow down 1/2 block from the intersection. 3/4 of a block if you're feeling saucy. You've already been going 20 in a 30 zone, but slow that shit down. You're going to be performing some serious maneuvers coming up, and you have no idea if there's black ice, an oil slick, or 5,000 banana peels up ahead.

As you approach the left turn lane, you should be going about 5 MPH. Don't touch your signal. Don't start to move over into that lane. Don't even look at it! Even the hint that you might be looking to turn left might signal a biker gang to attack you. The only exception to this is if a person behind you makes a move to enter the turn lane. Then be sure to drift over so that your tires are slightly over the line, so that you're slightly blocking that car, but not entirely making your plans to turn left clear.

You've now arrived at the intersection. You should be going 1.2 MPH even though the light is green. Start making your way into the left turn lane. For the love of God, do NOT cross over the stop line! Being in the intersection for more than 5 seconds will cause the sentry guns to blow your car to bits! Since you have just started your entry into the left turn lane, this means that you are now at a 45 degree angle, with 2/3 of your car still in the main lane, blocking all cars behind you. You're doing them a service by blocking their way forward. Yes, the light is green, but really, if everyone else wasn't in such a hurry to get places, they'd be happier people.

Turn on your left turn signal.

 

[thekaj]

Actual 4-way stops with near-simultaneous arrivals can be knotty and that is an OK time for some politeness or patience (yeah, there's the "first to arrive then clockwise" rule which nearly everyone seems to have forgotten or ignores). Otherwise, just fucking drive ya nitwit.

Northwest Profile #4

Sadly, filmed on the hill I used to live on. I don't what's worse in Seattle. The fact that there are a LOT of these, which no one knows how to handle. Or that there's even more uncontrolled intersections, where at least 80% of the drivers just think that they've got the right of way, no matter who's approaching the intersection. My wife always gets upset with me when I slow down at an intersection when I see another car coming, despite having the right of way. She seems to be under the mistaken assumption that everyone else knows the rule, and will stop, rather than just barrel through the intersection and T-bone me.

 

[thekaj]

In my little hometown, there's a road on the way to my house that's a long strait stretch, with a single T-intersection along the way. On several occasions between the ages of 16 and 18, I'd be driving along that road and see some old fart in their land yacht pull up to the stop sign on the intersecting road (my road had no stop through it). You could see them (and conversely, they could see me) a quarter mile away. They'd sit there. And sit there. And sit there. No other cars on either road. All the time I'd be watching them saying "don't you do it. Don't you dare do it!" And without fail, I'd get within 100 feet of the intersection, going the 35 MPH speed limit, and they'd slowly pull out. Also without fail, their reaction to me slamming on both the brakes and horn, fishtailing all the way, would be a look of utter shock. Because, despite the fact that they had sat there for 20 seconds, when they easily could have made the turn, that car that had been approaching all this time, not slowing down, nor signaling a turn, was going straight. I just never understood how these people would consistently wait to pull out until the lone car on the road was approaching the intersection.

 

[thekaj]

We got about an inch of snow overnight, which is about what our 3-year average cumulative total is. So...

Drivers who apparently think that the snow on their car is some sort of badge of courage that should be paraded around, meaning that when they get on the freeway, a giant pile of snow suddenly slides off and acts like a smokescreen for everyone behind them need to get locked in an ice cage to rot.

Drivers who hit a patch of ice and react by slamming on the brakes just need to pull over, hand their keys to a responsible third party, and take an Uber until the snow melts.

I'd complain about SUV drivers that barrel ahead on an icy road like it's bare and dry, because the commercial they saw of their vehicle plowing through a snow bank convinced them to make that purchase, but usually I pass them a mile later, as they've spun out into the median. So we're good.

 

[thekaj]

The only place I still write checks for is our on-campus cafe, to reload my badge with funds. For the longest time, you could only do checks or cash to load your badge. They then installed an ATM machine, but it charges something like $3 per withdrawal. They recently added the ability to reload your card online. There's something like a $5 fee per reload.

I still use my checkbook.

 

[thekaj]

I really enjoy the job application sites that are all "just upload your resume!" You do so, the next page is their automated attempt at pasting it into a form, and it failed miserably at it. So you spend the next half hour correcting the various errors, wondering why they didn't just skip the upload step. The last one I did added the extra fun of inserting random punctuation errors in job responsibilities, like randomly capitalizing words and adding commas where none existed in the resume. Since the job actually includes the need to draft and proofread documents, submitting an application that looks like it was punctuated by the average YouTube commentator seemed like a bad idea!

I'm actually hoping that it was a test. An easy way to weed out the people who didn't bother to check their work, when it's a major aspect of the job. But the reality probably is that it's just a shitty HR widget that they bought.

 

[thekaj]

I once got a notice that an Amazon delivery was going to be delayed AFTER I actually received the package. Turns out the first one they sent out somehow managed to not get counted as "shipped", so they then sent out another one. Took me forever to figure out a way to actually contact Amazon to let them know. It was a set of gardening gloves, so naturally they told me to keep both pair. A coworker got an unexpected gift from me.

 

[thekaj]

Alright, if you know that an update of the data in your app is going to take an hour or two in order to download via wifi (because you say so in the click-through), why the hell do you not code your app so that this can happen in the background? I have to keep the app on my screen that entire time? AND since it's a GPS navigation app, it's going to be sucking down battery power through a fire hose? Yeah, fuck you very much Garmin.

 

[thekaj]

EVERY F'ING NEWS SITE I VISITED TODAY IS AUTO-PLAYING VIDEOS. Special hatred (Grrrr ) to those F'ing pages which are headered by a giant auto-playing video which when you scroll past so you can read the article just resizes and follows you down page in the browser.

There's a wiki that I've been visiting lately that does this. Extra fun when on a phone, as the video is 1/3 the size of the screen.

At this point, on my work computer, I just permanently have headphones plugged in (but not in my ears), and at home, I default to having the sound muted. Way too many incidents of SUDDEN AUDIO FEED when browsing these days.

 

[thekaj]

I'm usually too polite when it comes to giving way to someone else. But as there's literally nowhere else to go, I will definitely get aggressive when someone pulls the stop at the end of the escalator routine. I prefer the loud and sudden "MOVE!!!" when nearly on top of the person. The more it makes them jump, the better. Usually I'll follow it up with the look of incredulous disdain when I move past them.

 

[thekaj]

As a runner/cyclist, and since we're on this theme, people in a group who will spread out across the entire width of the sidewalk, and refuse to bunch up to make room for someone coming the opposite direction.

I'll be running on this path:

Spoiler

and be faced with a group taking up the whole path. I'll get to one side, but there will still be the asshole who won't move over to let me through. So they'll get the sweaty shoulder to shoulder clip.

It's worse in downtown Seattle on a bike on the waterfront. I made the mistake last summer going down there during construction. They had a pretty wide path that was fenced in on both sides, so no chance of even moving entire out of the way, even if you wanted to. At several points, I was slowly moving along, only to come face to face with a pedestrian who assumed they could walk through me. They were incorrect.

 

[thekaj]

I have a coworker who's notorious for starting a chat session by saying hello, and then getting distracted for several minutes with something else, if not going completely silent for hours. My SOP for her is to reply back with a "hello", and if she doesn't say anything back within a couple minutes, close the window.

The worse ones are the people who will be typing up something for several minutes. So you're seeing the "so-and-so is typing" notice, and just waiting to see what they're going to say. Eventually you realize it's either going to be a wall-o-text, or they're on the 5th revision of a couple sentences. For people I know well, I'll eventually just ask them to hit return to send what they have, so I can start reading while they begin on the second chapter.

There's also the people who ask a question, and then while you're typing a response, you see that they've started typing again. So you're all, do I answer their question now, or wait for whatever else they're writing? Then they stop typing. So you start to type. But they start typing again, so you stop. And then they stop. So you start again. And then so do they...

 

[thekaj]

When you’re enticed by a headline suggesting you revisit a game from your childhood, and it’s about a game from the late-90’s.

 

[thekaj]

I don't understand how otherwise seemingly nice people can be so clueless about residential street parking courtesy.

Cardinal Rule #1 is of course, don't block a driveway. Followed closely behind by Rule #2 of: the spot directly in front of someone's house is THEIR spot. I'm sorry that you've decided that your 3 adult house needs to have 4 cars, but you've got your driveway, the spot directly in front of your house, space for two cars on the other side of your house, since you're on the corner, and because the neighbor across the street has alley parking behind their house, spots for at least two more cars right there! Why the everliving fuck do you think it's okay to habitually park in front of our house, when you KNOW we park there?

I'm not going to check, but I'm pretty certain the Hatfield and McCoy feud was the result of one person habitually parking their horse in front of the other family's homestead.

 

[thekaj]

That reminds me, people who don't move up in an intersection when trying to turn left without a dedicated left turn light. I know that in my state it's technically illegal. But when it's the only chance you've got to make a left turn, because there's a steady stream of oncoming traffic, inch your way out there, so at least ONE car makes it through that cycle! It's not like a semi truck is going to broadside you immediately when the light turns yellow.

Also, the law that makes it illegal to enter the intersection when waiting to make a left turn.

In addition, the people who end up blocking the box, because they pulled out to do a left turn, but didn't notice that the lane they're turning into is backed up, so even when they have an opportunity to go, they can't, and instead end up blocking at least one lane, thus making the stupid law necessary via the universal constant of "this is why we can't have nice things".

 

[thekaj]

After experiencing the wrath of an psycho aggressive driver a few years back, I got a windshield mount for my GoPro. That only lasted a couple weeks, as every time I got out of the car, I felt the need to take the thing down, so it wasn't a blinking "BREAK INTO MY CAR AND STEAL ME!" sign. I also would then need to clear out the memory card every other day. And I realized that I've had maybe 5 incidents of "I wish I had a camera to record that!" in my 25+ years of driving. So the low odds of me recording one now were outweighed by the daily setup needs.

 

[thekaj]

Yeah, one of my best feelings of satisfaction was when I was something like car #7 in a line of vehicles driving along on a one lane street. Car #8 was an asshole in some sports car riding RIGHT on top of my bumper. I swear, I could have taken my foot off the gas and he would have tapped me. But again, we're way in the back of this line of cars in a no-passing zone. I have fuck all to do with his predicament of being forced to drive the speed limit. This goes on for about 5 minutes, where I'm white-knuckling that he's right on my tail. Finally he decides there's enough space to pass (despite it not being a passing zone) and he rockets past all of us.

As this is about satisfaction, yes, just a few miles down the road, state patrol had him pulled over. I hope the trooper didn't get upset that I honked my horn in joy as I passed them. I couldn't help it.

Now an opposite feeling was one day I was sitting at a light, with a cop right next to me on my left. The left turn light goes green for the opposing traffic, and they start making their turns. As one semi is slowly making his turn, the light for us goes green. Fine, whatever. But then the semi behind him goes. Again, the light for us has already turned green, and there's no way the driver didn't notice his light is red. There was enough space. And after THAT, a woman in a minivan makes the turn behind him. Although granted, she was following close enough behind him that she probably didn't see that the light was red. Still, not an excuse. So we've been sitting there for a good 15-20 seconds with our light green, and three vehicles who have clearly run a red light. I'm all happy that at least one of them is going to get busted by this cop. I even wait to go forward, JUST so he could turn on the lights, and go around me to get them. Nope, bastard just cruises on forward. I was so pissed that there was finally a cop when you needed one, and he couldn't be bothered to actually enforce the law, even when it was inconveniencing him.

 

[thekaj]

Related annoyance - passing people who can't maintain a constant speed. Speed limit is 70, they're doing 65, and I move over to pass. So of course they speed up to 75. I can then either downshift and blow past them at 80+, or I can move back over to where I was behind them. If I pick the second (the non-jerk approach), they'll inevitably drop back to 65 once I'm back behind them. It's like being passed is a mortal insult and shall never be allowed, or something.

I think there's just an unconscious herd mentality that almost everyone has, that makes them match speed with the person next to them. It's why you end up with packs of cars on the freeway, with gaps of empty space in between. Although sure, there are people who consciously can't stand to be passed. I'll almost always just give it a bit more gas when I end up having someone decide to start pacing me, when I'm trying to get clear of them. If I'm going say 67, I'll bump it up to 72 for about 10 seconds. The other person seems to realize at that point that they're subconsciously speeding up, and they'll drop back down to whatever speed they were doing before, I'll get past them, and we'll both be on our merry way. Otherwise, either we'll both be the jerks taking up two lanes going the same speed, or as you say, you get back behind them, and invariably, they'll slow back down to the speed that made you want to pass them in the first place.

Things would be a whole lot better if more people used cruise control when driving long distances on the freeway. There will be times where I'll basically rubber band with a person, as they speed up and slow down to stay either ahead or with me. I just want to make a sign I can put up in my window that says "I've got cruise control on. I don't know what your problem is."

 

[thekaj]

Things would be a whole lot better if more people used cruise control when driving long distances on the freeway. There will be times where I'll basically rubber band with a person, as they speed up and slow down to stay either ahead or with me. I just want to make a sign I can put up in my window that says "I've got cruise control on. I don't know what your problem is."

Not necessarily. Standard cruise control doesn't behave the same across make/model/years. Additionally, they'll be creep from making turns and other physical factors. You'd basically have to maintain a cruising speed slightly less than the person in front of to ensure the gap doesn't close. If there's a decent amount of traffic, I feel like I'm always fiddling with the cruise control.

One of the features I really wish I had in my current vehicle was adaptive cruise control. Uses the sonar and/or cameras to make adjustments to speed and keep you a set distance from traffic.


-mhac³

True. Although what I was envisioning are the people who are going about 2-5 MPH slower than you, you get into the lane to the left of them, and as you get even with them, they match speed. And if you speed up a little bit, they'll continue to match speed. Only when you either gun it, so there's no question that you're accelerating, or you get well over their previous speed, do they suddenly realize what they're doing, and they throttle back to whatever they were driving at. Definitely not some issue of the cruise control variation. More likely something in our lizard brains that decides that matching the speed of the thing next to you is a good thing to do.

 

[thekaj]

I don’t understand how car UI designs could be so FUBAR. I need to reset the tire pressure sensor. So you press an info button to bring up the display menu, then use a directional button to move between the options, and press the enter button in the center to select the one you want. Totally makes sense. But when you get to the sub-menu, you no longer use those buttons to navigate. Those switch back to them controlling the radio. You have to use a different set of buttons to navigate. WHY?!? Who thought making you switch controls mid-navigation is in any way reasonable?

And the manual is awesome, as it tells you to press X button, X being some button not identified anywhere on that page, so you have to go back to the index to look up where that button is.

 

[thekaj]

Is it all that evil to get joy out of seeing someone jump when you honk your horn at someone who's clearly looking down at their phone? Because if it is, I don't want to be good.

And yeah, I've also received the one-finger salute from someone after doing the polite horn honk as we both sat at a green light. He got the angry horn after that. Neither gestures did anything constructive, but the first one did get him moving forward, so I considered it a win.

 

[thekaj]

The 9:15 am "your computer has received critical updates and needs to restart in the next 90 minutes." notice, that requires me to go through and make sure everything is saved and closed properly before restarting.

But that pales in comparison to the 10:30 am follow up "your computer has received critical updates and needs to restart in the next 90 minutes." notice. The FUCK? Was the first one practice?!? Yeah yeah, second update probably required the first one to be installed. Still, fuck you Windows.

 

[thekaj]

I'm trying to decide if it was just because I was doing my usual morning commute at 11:00 am, or if today is 4/20, but holy cow were there a lot of slow drivers. Just the whole gambit of slow people in general, slow drivers in the left lane, people slow to accelerate, and my favorite, at a stop light, the light went green, and the guy in front of me just took his foot off the brake to slowly move forward. So not that he didn't see the green. He apparently thought gravity should power his car at that point. Fortunately the bus behind me was faster on the horn than I was, and he found the gas pedal. But not before only HE made it through the next light. I HAVE to believe that one was MJ related.

 

[thekaj]

Getting a GDPR driven ToS change email or popup from every site I use or visit lately.

Yeah been dealing with those for the last few days as well so annoying.

I'm guessing this ranks right up there in the lifetime rankings of the people in companies that have to deal with privacy issues. In fact, I know it does, as the person in my company that deals with this is ready to nuke all of Europe just so she doesn't have to deal with it anymore.

 

[thekaj]

Today's good reason to cut someone: The US communications industry, which rewards loyalty with higher prices. If I pay next month's bill - I won't be, even if it means my only Internet will be from tethering to my phone - my Comcast bill will have risen 88% since I started the account two years ago.

The fucking comcast dance. They raise your price, you call to cancel, they set the price back to the previous level. It is douchebag "customer service." My Pinko-socialist heart wants single-provider internet market prices regulated as much as possible, preferably tied to median income in the area, with *massive* fines for corporate for shenanigans like throttling or not maintaining equipment. And, as for customer service, a phone response time of over 2 minutes should mean an immediate waiver of that month's payment.

Here's the kicker: I shopped for new offers while I was logged in - therefore getting "existing customer" deals - and they offered me the same bandwidth plus Basic TV for $15 less than they just billed me for Internet only.

How can you respond with anything but anger?

Yeah, we're adding home security to our bundle, and the woman quoted me the standard $15 less than what I'd pay if we bundled phone service. It would be a complete waste, and I have to assume that in 2 years, it'll just be another club over our heads that they use to jack up the price even more. So I declined. It's like negotiating with a crack dealer.

I've looked at other options in our neighborhood. Only other one is DSL. :facepalm: The super annoying thing is that I can literally throw a rock at the houses a block away that have fiber access. I'm hoping that means "soon" for us. Naturally, CenturyLink has been cruising through our neighborhoods knocking on everyone's door to promote their service. But they're non-committal about when they'll ever extend fiber to us.

 

[thekaj]

I really appreciated that by connecting a new bluetooth mouse last night, through a cascade of events, one or two of them might being self-inflicted, I ended up having to roll back my entire computer to an earlier backup. It was crashing on boot before the bluetooth keyboard was even connected, so it wouldn't respond to holding down keys to boot into a safe mode. Fortunately I had a spare USB keyboard handy to bypass that issue.

I just wonder how someone with little to no troubleshooting experience would have done. Still, spending the evening watching my computer erase and reinstall the previous backup (thank god only a few hours old) was not how I was planning on spending the night.

 

[thekaj]

I really appreciated that by connecting a new bluetooth mouse last night, through a cascade of events, one or two of them might being self-inflicted, I ended up having to roll back my entire computer to an earlier backup. It was crashing on boot before the bluetooth keyboard was even connected, so it wouldn't respond to holding down keys to boot into a safe mode. Fortunately I had a spare USB keyboard handy to bypass that issue.

I just wonder how someone with little to no troubleshooting experience would have done. Still, spending the evening watching my computer erase and reinstall the previous backup (thank god only a few hours old) was not how I was planning on spending the night.

Ouch.

So, you do full OS disk image backups? Or just data backups?

It's a Mac, so it's a Time Machine backup. Which, as I found out last night, while each version is just a change update, the restore is a full disk reimage, which was 2TB. :facepalm: It didn't help that I kept forgetting the measurements. I was all "oh it's already transferred 1 GB, this will go quickly! Wait..." Then "Alright, it's at 10 GB, that's like 10% of... no it's not..." I went to bed with 4 hours to go, got up this morning, and saw that it was still saying 11 minutes left. I was midway through my SON OF A BITCH, when it suddenly dropped to zero, rebooted, and finally made it all the way through the boot process.

Tonight I poke the "connect bluetooth mouse" bear again.

 

[thekaj]

There’s an ad running these days. I don’t even know what for, as it sends me into a rage. But it has a woman talking about how great her neighborhood is, with one of the points being that it has an awesome dive bar. At that point, it cuts to what is clearly a hipster bar, and I blank out. It’s like, listen motherfuckers, a bartender with a perfect handlebar mustache serving microbrew IPAs and cocktails from the distillery of the 30 year old retired Silicon Valley executive down the street does NOT a dive bar make!!! If the perfectly primped and manicured blond soccer mom is calling something the perfect bar, not something to run away from and douse herself in bleach, that’s the first clue that the place is NOT A DIVE BAR!

 

[thekaj]

There’s an ad running these days. I don’t even know what for, as it sends me into a rage. But it has a woman talking about how great her neighborhood is, with one of the points being that it has an awesome dive bar. At that point, it cuts to what is clearly a hipster bar, and I blank out. It’s like, listen motherfuckers, a bartender with a perfect handlebar mustache serving microbrew IPAs and cocktails from the distillery of the 30 year old retired Silicon Valley executive down the street does NOT a dive bar make!!! If the perfectly primped and manicured blond soccer mom is calling something the perfect bar, not something to run away from and douse herself in bleach, that’s the first clue that the place is NOT A DIVE BAR!

This article makes a pretty good argument for what a dive bar is: a no-frills bar that just "is". They say it "makes no effort"

You see, your true dive bar is not really making one. Or much of one. Or, perhaps a bit more generously, is not making much of an effort beyond the minimum required to service its guests with drinks. And that is it. That is the single, all-purpose litmus test definition for whether or not a bar is a dive.

I'm okay with that definition. Which means that the trendy bar, with the trendy 4-dozen rotating IPA's, and the trendy lumbersexual bartender is right out.

 

[thekaj]

I used to occasionally go to a dive bar with my sister and her coworkers near where they worked. It was dank, had the normal regulars, down to a "not even if she paid me" regular hooker, and actually had a pretty good burger. The clientele had been the guys on fishing boats that unloaded nearby. Then the neighborhood started gentrifying to the point where it's one of the most hipster places in the country. So the bar remodeled and went from completely authentic dive bar to completely ironic dive bar.

I guess I can't blame them for doing it. Know your audience, and all that. They almost certainly wouldn't have survived had they not changed. It just was sad to see the place exchange its real character with a glossy representation of it.

 

[thekaj]

When you accept the connection invite on LinkedIn from someone you knew back in college thinking "oh it's nice to reconnect!", and he immediately starts peppering you with messages about how he's doing freelance consulting work, and he's got some ideas he wants to bounce off you.

It's the 21st century version of finding out that the harmless meet and greet with an acquaintance is actually an Amway pitch.

 

[thekaj]

I struggle with Waze, since yeah, it seriously puts a strain on surface roads that were never designed to handle a bunch of idiots being led around by their phones. But it does come in handy when my wife and I are driving back from her sister's house, she gets antsy about how slow traffic is going, decides to take on navigator duties (sans navigation app assistance), and invariably attempts to direct me to a route that adds at least 45 minutes to the trip than had we just stayed on the freeway. Now Waze usually will back me up when she does her usual "we should get off here" suggestion, and I know it's a terrible idea.

 

[thekaj]

You know, I was finally okay with not getting an invite to the Royal WeddingTM, but had sworn off news of it. Then this morning, I turn on the news, and there’s this interview about how the bride’s father might not attend. Except they’re interviewing her half-brother’s ex-wife, who doesn’t actually know anything, but she’s speculating on it being health related.

And if the “let’s interview someone speaking out of their ass” angle wasn’t enough, the reporter then prompts her to give a shout out about her recently launched recreational marijuana company.

If it had aired on The Onion, I would have believed it more.

 

[thekaj]

Doing Disneyland this week. The little kids having meltdowns aren’t that bad. You know they’re just tired and overstimulated, with parents trying to get them to settle. It’s the after fireworks crowd, consisting mainly of un-chaperoned teenagers that make me want to rent a stroller to run them all down. Hmm, maybe they sell the cane from Up. I could remove the tennis balls and start swinging it.

 

[thekaj]

People who walk around, talking on the phone, with it on speaker. They hold it face-up about 3 inches from their mouth, yet still feel the need to shout into it.

My ex's entire family would do that.

Unspeakable rage, man. Unspeakable.

I don't understand why people do this? Is there some (to them) legitimate reason to do so? Are you afraid of the bacteria on the screen of your phone? Do you think the phone's radiation is going to give you a brain tumour? Or are you simply wet behind the ears? Why people, why?

Every time I've seen it, they're strutting around and saying Important Sounding Things obnoxiously so everyone nearby knows that they're an Important Person.

Yup. There was a guy doing that today. Standing in a rather public place, chatting away about financing some business deal. If I was concerned about making sure I was understood, I’d find a nice quiet spot, and have both the mic and speaker close to my face. But no, let’s take the call where a bunch of people are coming and going, and have it on speaker, so everyone can hear both sides of the conversation.

 

[thekaj]

I came to realize that I REALLY don't like using Waze when I'm unfamiliar with an area, and I'm trying to navigate rush hour traffic. Last week, we did a day at Universal Studios, while we were at Disneyland. This required a trip through or near downtown LA both coming and going. On the way there, we used Apple Maps, which did fine recommending a couple alternative freeway routes to get us there. On the way back, since we were having issues getting the audio to play nice with the rental car, my wife convinced me to use Waze.

What then happened was over an hour of it sending us on a variety of surface streets to cut a few minutes off the travel time had we just stayed on the freeway. And we're not talking "get off here and drive on a frontage road for 10 miles". It was directions that ended up doing things like "take a right here, then cut across three lanes of stopped traffic to take an immediate left at the next light, then another right, another right, and then left again, so you're back on the same road you were on originally, but we saved 30 seconds by bypassing that last block!"

I'm guessing there might be a setting to tell it to favor freeways, but it's definitely not on by default. And if they don't have it, they really ought to. I'm okay not saving 5 minutes in a 90 minute drive, if it means not doing a surface street tour of East LA.

 

[thekaj]

Our company thought it would be a brilliant idea to buy phone booth sized privacy booths for people to take personal calls without the need to either go out to their cars or try to sneak into a conference room. Not a bad plan, but they put zero effort into finding good places to put them. One got placed over in HR, right up against a friend's cube. So A) HR got annoyed that non-HR people would be wandering into a place where they need confidentiality, and B) my friend was pissed that suddenly she was going to be face to face with random people doing phone calls. I suggested to her that she just pretend that she could hear what they were saying, and make various shocked/disgusted/sad faces at the person in the booth.

The booth got moved out of there a couple days later. It definitely sucked for the facilities guys, as that booth did NOT look easy to move.

 

[thekaj]

Is it too late to be pissed off by everything?

If not, I am currently pissed off by everything.

Thank you for your patronage.

No, but if you want to get pissed off go drive through a major metro area, you'll find something to get pissed off about.

I live and work in the San Francisco bay area. There's everything from dumb fucking drivers to dumb fucking drivers of electric scooters on sidewalks.

Traffic/commuting is usually pretty low no the list of things that piss me off. Because I've gotten used to just how shitty it is.

Could have been worse. You could have been a Seattle-area driver this morning dealing with chicken feathers blocking the major North-South freeway. I hear it was pretty fowl.