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

10thDoctor

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Being able to push emergency alerts to all cell phones is generally good. Overriding do not disturb can make sense. But pushing out a flash flood warning at 4:30am just pisses me off.
*grumbles and tries to go back to sleep*

Um. Why? That's actually even more important of a time to push out the alerts.

Yeah, I agree. I may live on top of a hill, but I'd like to know if my area is flooding so that I know which roads to avoid on my commute. Plus, my neighbors at the bottom of the hill may find the alerts useful, and I'd rather get woken up than have their phones not go off.
 

hanser

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Being able to push emergency alerts to all cell phones is generally good. Overriding do not disturb can make sense. But pushing out a flash flood warning at 4:30am just pisses me off.
*grumbles and tries to go back to sleep*
Um. Why? That's actually even more important of a time to push out the alerts.
Yeah, I agree. I may live on top of a hill, but I'd like to know if my area is flooding so that I know which roads to avoid on my commute. Plus, my neighbors at the bottom of the hill may find the alerts useful, and I'd rather get woken up than have their phones not go off.
Yes, the ideal time to be interrupted about your 7-8am commute is at 4:30am, even though a lot of the localized flooding may have already cleared. Definitely want to make sure to override the Do Not Disturb settings in that case. ;)
 

10thDoctor

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719
Subscriptor++
Being able to push emergency alerts to all cell phones is generally good. Overriding do not disturb can make sense. But pushing out a flash flood warning at 4:30am just pisses me off.
*grumbles and tries to go back to sleep*
Um. Why? That's actually even more important of a time to push out the alerts.
Yeah, I agree. I may live on top of a hill, but I'd like to know if my area is flooding so that I know which roads to avoid on my commute. Plus, my neighbors at the bottom of the hill may find the alerts useful, and I'd rather get woken up than have their phones not go off.
Yes, the ideal time to be interrupted about your 7-8am commute is at 4:30am, even though a lot of the localized flooding may have already cleared. Definitely want to make sure to override the Do Not Disturb settings in that case. ;)

Well, I'd rather be woken up and be briefly annoyed rather than have my neighbors down the hill not be woken up and get caught unawares.
 
Flooded roads aren't quite the same thing as flash flooding. Still you got a push alert so it had to have been a big risk in your area. I wish the push alerts could differentiate between where I am (home or elsewhere) and when the alarm on the phone is going off. If I'm home and the alarm is set two hours from now don't send me an OMGWTF amber alert. I can't tell you where the dark gray four door car is with the missing kid.

On that note has anyone gotten one of those OMGWTF alerts when driving?
 

thekaj

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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. :rolleyes:
 

Scotttheking

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Being able to push emergency alerts to all cell phones is generally good. Overriding do not disturb can make sense. But pushing out a flash flood warning at 4:30am just pisses me off.
*grumbles and tries to go back to sleep*
Um. Why? That's actually even more important of a time to push out the alerts.
Yeah, I agree. I may live on top of a hill, but I'd like to know if my area is flooding so that I know which roads to avoid on my commute. Plus, my neighbors at the bottom of the hill may find the alerts useful, and I'd rather get woken up than have their phones not go off.
Yes, the ideal time to be interrupted about your 7-8am commute is at 4:30am, even though a lot of the localized flooding may have already cleared. Definitely want to make sure to override the Do Not Disturb settings in that case. ;)

Well, I'd rather be woken up and be briefly annoyed rather than have my neighbors down the hill not be woken up and get caught unawares.

To quote the Washington Post:
The squall line moved across the region from west to east after midnight Monday morning. Thunder and lightning woke many people up. Those that managed to sleep through the crashing and banging were probably jolted awake by cell phone alerts when a flash flood warning was issued for the western and then northern suburbs.

I don't live in the western or northern suburbs. And it took 2 hours to fall back asleep. Had to kill most of my day to take a nap. *shakes fist*
 

Drizzt321

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Well, that's somewhat fair perhaps then. Probably they just said X metro area, send. To ensure full coverage of anyone that may possibly need to know.

Those Amber alerts at 4am though... I appreciate the need to get the info out asap, but damn it's annoying for the vast majority of people who aren't on the roads. On the other hand, if it helps recover even one child safely I'll put up with it.
 
Well, that's somewhat fair perhaps then. Probably they just said X metro area, send. To ensure full coverage of anyone that may possibly need to know.

Those Amber alerts at 4am though... I appreciate the need to get the info out asap, but damn it's annoying for the vast majority of people who aren't on the roads. On the other hand, if it helps recover even one child safely I'll put up with it.
Depending on your phone, you may be able to configure at least some of the emergency alert settings. On Android, it's in Settings -> Sound -> Emergency Broadcasts. The only category I have enabled is "Show extreme threats", which is basically just tornadoes in our area.

After the last one that woke my wife and I up at 2:30AM, we disabled Amber alerts on our phones. That was an unpleasant way to discover that Amber alerts would hit our phones.

Around here, they also display the Amber alerts on both digital billboards and the DOT traffic signs. I feel like that's a more targeted way to blast an alert.
 

SunRaven01

Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
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Moderator
Along the lines of other vehicles matching speeds, I find this annoying myself. Not so much that they're matching my speed, but because a lot of people position themselves on my rear corner panel which is normally on someone's blind spot*. My kid is just learning to drive and I've pointed this out before in order for him to be aware that people tend to do this and it is a potential hazard.

* I adjust my mirrors to eliminate blind spots. For years I did it like I had always been taught, adjusting them down so you could see down the side of the vehicle. It wasn't until listening to Click and Clack, the Tappit brothers (Car Talk for the uninitiated), that I realized I was doing it wrong. (Jeeze, this was the late nineties or early '00 I think)

Car Talk mirror .PDF

Many years ago, someone here (maybe you?) posted this method and I swapped and can concur: it is fantastic. I actually use my side mirrors more now because you can see things that are actually useful to you.
 

hanser

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Not an annoyance, but more of things that make you go "WTF?"

My wife and I were driving home, and we got to a light that had a green right turn arrow. It had been green for going on 10 seconds, and still the car hadn't moved. We got up behind them, and I gave a light honk. I immediately get two middle fingers through the sunroof: one from the driver and passenger. Just to be clear: the fingers went up before the car moved, and before they looked up at the light. (I could see clearly through their rear window.)

Uh, OK. If that's your first reaction to a light honk, you're probably a terrible driver. (And yes, you can glare at me for the next five minutes. I am indifferent to your feelings on the matter.)
 

end

Ars Tribunus Militum
1,564
Not an annoyance, but more of things that make you go "WTF?"

My wife and I were driving home, and we got to a light that had a green right turn arrow. It had been green for going on 10 seconds, and still the car hadn't moved. We got up behind them, and I gave a light honk. I immediately get two middle fingers through the sunroof: one from the driver and passenger. Just to be clear: the fingers went up before the car moved, and before they looked up at the light. (I could see clearly through their rear window.)

Uh, OK. If that's your first reaction to a light honk, you're probably a terrible driver. (And yes, you can glare at me for the next five minutes. I am indifferent to your feelings on the matter.)

This kind of behavior is incredibly common these days. Not necessarily the fingers, but the lack of response to a light turning green. Stopped at a red light? Time to interact with my phone, text my friends, post to social media, etc, etc. I swear that this contributes in a major way to gridlock around my office as a much smaller number of cars can make it through an intersection per light cycle.
 

helel ben shachar

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Not an annoyance, but more of things that make you go "WTF?"

My wife and I were driving home, and we got to a light that had a green right turn arrow. It had been green for going on 10 seconds, and still the car hadn't moved. We got up behind them, and I gave a light honk. I immediately get two middle fingers through the sunroof: one from the driver and passenger. Just to be clear: the fingers went up before the car moved, and before they looked up at the light. (I could see clearly through their rear window.)

Uh, OK. If that's your first reaction to a light honk, you're probably a terrible driver. (And yes, you can glare at me for the next five minutes. I am indifferent to your feelings on the matter.)

This kind of behavior is incredibly common these days. Not necessarily the fingers, but the lack of response to a light turning green. Stopped at a red light? Time to interact with my phone, text my friends, post to social media, etc, etc. I swear that this contributes in a major way to gridlock around my office as a much smaller number of cars can make it through an intersection per light cycle.

This. I have some very short green left turns going into and getting away from my office. Over the course of the last decade ( :eek: ) I've noticed more and more people who's attention is focused on their laps when waiting for the light to turn.

So much so that I'm actively looking at the drivers head in front of me. I hate to be that guy, but if I catch someone sitting on a green or not noticing the car ahead of them is moving because their focus is somewhere other than the driving situation at hand, I'll give a quick honk.


@sunraven: Yeah, I think I posted something Car Talk and mirrors a number of years ago, so you're probably right.
 

10thDoctor

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Not an annoyance, but more of things that make you go "WTF?"

My wife and I were driving home, and we got to a light that had a green right turn arrow. It had been green for going on 10 seconds, and still the car hadn't moved. We got up behind them, and I gave a light honk. I immediately get two middle fingers through the sunroof: one from the driver and passenger. Just to be clear: the fingers went up before the car moved, and before they looked up at the light. (I could see clearly through their rear window.)

Uh, OK. If that's your first reaction to a light honk, you're probably a terrible driver. (And yes, you can glare at me for the next five minutes. I am indifferent to your feelings on the matter.)

Man, I really hate it when people don't pay attention. Though if I'm not in a hurry, don't have anywhere to be, and there's nobody behind me, I'll sometimes just wait to see how many cycles it takes for them to notice that the light actually changes instead of giving a light honk. I think my personal best is two cycles so far.
 

Paladin

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Now that my car is past the 5 year mark and well past paid off, I am almost (*almost*) hoping for some idiot looking at their phone to hit me and do significant damage, enough to get a new bumper or to just total the car. I could use the write off check and motivation to get something new. ;) :D

I've always had a habit of watching other drivers' eyes and head orientation as an indicator of what they are going to do next/soon. It works great for that. It also works great to know who to watch out for because they are more absorbed in their phone than driving.
 

thekaj

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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.
 

Paladin

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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.
I'm pretty sure at this point, the common usage of the middle finger is, "I'm a massive idiot but too insecure to take it in stride and just live my life as best I can, so I'm blaming you for pointing out my failing."

It does occasionally see use as a well justified version of, "Look, you messed up. See this finger? It means you messed up and you know it, and I know it, and I know you know it." But that is pretty rare. It's usually used in the first case.
 

blahpony

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I've always had a habit of watching other drivers' eyes and head orientation as an indicator of what they are going to do next/soon. It works great for that. It also works great to know who to watch out for because they are more absorbed in their phone than driving.

In my MR2 club, we called that the Spyder sense. The non Spyder MR2 got to use it too. :D
 

Ecmaster76

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Bought a new vehicle in December

Few weeks ago guy in a parking lot forgets to put his car in park, lets off the brake, and bashes the front of mine

Yesterday, sitting in traffic, a woman on a motorcycle decides she's going to ride between my lane and the curb to get past everyone. Scuffs my mirror with the handle bars and keeps going without even glancing back

Fortunately I don't have mind bullets so no one was hurt.
 

thekaj

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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.
 

SandyTech

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People who expect their full backups to be instantaneous. You're backing up 780ish GB of mail from an old EqualLogic storage array to a slightly older EqualLogic. Even if they were new, 780ish GB of mail ain't exactly small either FFS.

And another thing that's pissed me off today is people who don't seem to grasp that yes, proper business grade storage isn't cheap. Sure, you can go to Newegg or Amazon and pick up an 8TB NAS for $1200. But does that NAS come with 24/7/365 support, 4 hour replacement parts? What happens when that NAS pops a PSU, how long is it going to take Buffalo or Net Gear to ship a replacement? What're you going to do in the mean time? How many times has someone lost everything when their silly Synology shits the bed all of a sudden. A quick Google search says many. But if horror stories like that don't convince you, nothing seems likely to. Go ahead, it's your data, and every fuckup is billable hours for me.
 

SandyTech

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That's why those people shouldn't be in charge of IT.

The person making these decisions is the CIO for a multi-million dollar international company.

Print out the emails with them saying "no way, buy the cheap stuff" which includes your warning. Shove it in their face if/when the inevitable happens.

Oh yea, and don't forget incremental versioned file backups, so you can restore yesterdays version when they accidentally overwrite it with the wrong data.

I did one better. I have a letter signed by the customer's CIO acknowledging the risks to their data and holding me harmless for liability in the event the NASes they're buying fail and loose their data or don't perform particularly well. Even loaded up with SSDs, their old EqualLogics can handle more IOPS than these stupid 4 bay Buffalo NASes they're buying with 100% more reliability.
 

WDReinhart

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Sure, you can go to Newegg or Amazon and pick up an 8TB NAS for $1200. But does that NAS come with 24/7/365 support, 4 hour replacement parts? What happens when that NAS pops a PSU, how long is it going to take Buffalo or Net Gear to ship a replacement?

The world needs a good RAIR (Redundant Array of Inexpensive RAID-boxes) controller. Two Buffalo NASes in a mirrored pair, with a 3rd as a cold spare would still be cheaper than NetApp. :high:
 

Drizzt321

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Sure, you can go to Newegg or Amazon and pick up an 8TB NAS for $1200. But does that NAS come with 24/7/365 support, 4 hour replacement parts? What happens when that NAS pops a PSU, how long is it going to take Buffalo or Net Gear to ship a replacement?

The world needs a good RAIR (Redundant Array of Inexpensive RAID-boxes) controller. Two Buffalo NASes in a mirrored pair, with a 3rd as a cold spare would still be cheaper than NetApp. :high:

Cold spare? If you're mirroring just have the 3rd one in so it's live. Can improve read times while providing even better HA. Plus, if 1 fails, during the rebuild after replacing you can put 1/2 the load on the remaining 2 so in theory there's less likelihood of either of those failing.
 

Bamboozled

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Spectrum....that should be enough but a little elaboration

1. My building had a bulk contract that I was part of
2. Building told me that the contract was ending
3. Called Spectrum to see what I needed to do, nothing, I was told
4. Several days later, called again with the same answer
5. A week later, as the cut-off date was approaching, actually went into their office to speak to a human
6. "You are all set, nothing needs to be done" it was verified
7. Cut-off date comes around and internet, TV, and phone are all dead
8. Your account is closed they said
9. So set me up and transfer all my S/N to the new account
10. No can do, you have to come in and swap all the equipment
11. Fine, but I want like for like
12. No can do, that was Time Warner; we are Spectrum, different better equipment
13. Not really, phone modem is 3x the size, DVR/cable same size but no display and can only simultaneously record half the number of shows
14. Ok, all done and get my first bill
15. My fault, I paid into the old account
16. Get a past due notice, realize the mistake and Spectrum CS says they will transfer the funds
17. One week later, get another past due notice
18. Call CS and they say they will transfer the funds, this time for real
19. Last week, get a disconnect notice for unpaid bill and, separately, a check for the monies in the old account
20. Deposit check and pay past due so we are all good
21. Today, Spectrum stopped payment on the check and shows a balance due that is different from the balances that I supposedly owe
22. Bank says that there will be a charge for the stopped check

Obviously not the end of this story.
 

Technarch

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I'm actually dealing with this conundrum right now. I need a decent RAID for migration scratch space and for localized storage of critical CAD files (that are already being backed up offsite). There's this massive hole between consumer-grade desktop NASes and even the cheapest SMB option from NetApp or EMC. Does anyone have any suggestions?
 

Drizzt321

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I'm actually dealing with this conundrum right now. I need a decent RAID for migration scratch space and for localized storage of critical CAD files (that are already being backed up offsite). There's this massive hole between consumer-grade desktop NASes and even the cheapest SMB option from NetApp or EMC. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Probably better to take this out into Other Hardware or such forum... but do you need a separate appliance box? If not, grab 2 or 3 8+TB drives, throw them into your machine (assuming you have the SATA ports) and use the Windows RAID1 to copy it onto there. Or you can use external TB/USB3 cases and do RAID1 over those so you can move it to another machine.

Cause copying over lots of data over 1Gb network is painful. Better direct attach, but need TB or USB3 at a minimum.
 

thekaj

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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. :mad: I HAVE to believe that one was MJ related.
 
I live in a nice enough neighborhood, but about 4 miles south of me is total ghetto. Stupid ass drivers are slowly starting to piss me off more and more. Did turn signals suddenly become optional equipment on autos here in the US? Has it suddenly become legal to drive 55 in a 35, or 15 in a 35?

Stupid ass drivers just piss me off. And if I'm on 2, even more so. That's why I stick to back country roads when I want to hop on my motorcycle.