Really trivial stuff that bugs you

[Extravoice]

So does that mean you answered your own question?

No, but one of this board’s members did.
I just pretty-much asked the same question 15 years apart.

[Extravoice]

Dimming LED lights.

We have a handful of LED night-lights to illuminate your way around the house. After a few years, they have gotten quite dim. I hadn't realized how dim, until I replaced one with an identical model.
We also have a two-year-old LED bulb that is rated at 800 lumen (approx 60W equivalent) that has dimmed to the point of approximating a 15W incandescent. All of these lights had heavy use, and operated "dusk to dawn".

I disassembled the bulb, and all 15 LEDs were operating. I don't know if something wears out with the diodes themselves, or with the driving electronics, but it is annoying.

On the bright side (okay, bad pun), the LED light bulb contains some amazing mechanical (and probably electronic) engineering to make it look and feel like an old-style incandescent bulb. It is hard to believe it can be manufactured for the price I paid.

[Trebuchet]

Dimming LED lights.

We have a handful of LED night-lights to illuminate your way around the house. After a few years, they have gotten quite dim. I hadn't realized how dim, until I replaced one with an identical model.
We also have a two-year-old LED bulb that is rated at 800 lumen (approx 60W equivalent) that has dimmed to the point of approximating a 15W incandescent. All of these lights had heavy use, and operated "dusk to dawn".

I disassembled the bulb, and all 15 LEDs were operating. I don't know if something wears out with the diodes themselves, or with the driving electronics, but it is annoying.

On the bright side (okay, bad pun), the LED light bulb contains some amazing mechanical (and probably electronic) engineering to make it look and feel like an old-style incandescent bulb. It is hard to believe it can be manufactured for the price I paid.

It can't, in Western countries.

[pzkpfw]

By coincidence I was reading last night a tear-down review of three bulbs (a main point was to compare a cheap and an expensive bulb from one brand). The tear-downer had the same "how can they sell this at a profit?" wonderment. But he did estimate the bulk-cost of many of the electronic bits was a penny at most.

Worries me that there's so much in there, and many when they die will just go to a landfill.

In terms of life-span, most of them seemed to have at least one electrolytic capacitor in them, and they were agreed to be the weak link. Especially in the usual orientation (bulb down, electronics up), and in a semi-enclosed fixture, any heat will help degrade that cap.

[Noclevername]

This morning I broke my niece's favorite mug while washing dishes. And in cleaning it up, I cut my finger on the shards.

[Solfe]

This morning I broke my niece's favorite mug while washing dishes. And in cleaning it up, I cut my finger on the shards.

I hate it when that happens!

I collect coffee mugs. I have this one mug that is battered and chipped but since a coworker gave it to me, I keep using it. There is something super serious about a good cup of coffee in a mug with memories.

[Extravoice]

My father had a coffee mug that my mother bought him. He outlived her by 15 years, and used until the day he died. We buried it with him. More of a “makes me happy” story than a “bugs me” one, though.

[Solfe]

My father had a coffee mug that my mother bought him. He outlived her by 15 years, and used until the day he died. We buried it with him. More of a “makes me happy” story than a “bugs me” one, though.

If my wife buries me, I want to go with my Father's Day mug from Lake George. My wife bought it for me when she realized that we were in the middle of a vacation on Father's Day. For some reason it was mission critical for her to get me a Father's Day gift, even though I was on a wonderful vacation with my wife and kids. She was upset that it was such a "cheap gift". I guess she was right to buy it, because now I think of that trip every time I use the mug. It did make everything better and I say that to her every time I use it.

Not remotely annoying, but perplexing how my wife and I value things differently and somehow that just works. It's actually very nice, but unexpected.

[Trebuchet]

Sweet corn at the store, special! Four ears for $4.00.

That's pretty much piracy!

Think about it.

(Highlight below for spoiler)
A Buck-an-ear!

[ozduck]

Sweet corn at the store, special! Four ears for $4.00.

That's pretty much piracy!

Think about it.

(Highlight below for spoiler)
A Buck-an-ear!

You deserve to walk the plank for that pun!

[PetersCreek]

You deserve to walk the plank...

Build it and they will come.

[Gillianren]

Over the weekend, we'd decided to get a solar generator for emergencies. Not enough to power the whole house, but enough to keep a few devices and things going. Yesterday, we had a windstorm. Too bad we hadn't made the purchase yet . . . .

[grant hutchison]

This bench bugs me:

It's a nice idea, and someone has put a lot of work into it. But is that a bear with a tail or an otter with a snout?

Grant Hutchison

[Swift]

This bench bugs me:

It's a nice idea, and someone has put a lot of work into it. But is that a bear with a tail or an otter with a snout?

Grant Hutchison

Uh.... yeah. Weird beaver?

[Trebuchet]

This bench bugs me:

It's a nice idea, and someone has put a lot of work into it. But is that a bear with a tail or an otter with a snout?

Grant Hutchison

I need to take a picture of the life sized steel sculpture near Costco in Sequim. Based on the antlers it's supposed to be a bull elk. But without them it'd just look like a cow.

[ozduck]

This bench bugs me:

It's a nice idea, and someone has put a lot of work into it. But is that a bear with a tail or an otter with a snout?

Grant Hutchison

Looks like a fat Thylacine to me.

[Yowzagouzy]

When I tend to see any thing that has a color of purple kind of irritates me I don't know why.

[Noclevername]

Sweet corn at the store, special! Four ears for $4.00.

That's pretty much piracy!

Think about it.

(Highlight below for spoiler)
A Buck-an-ear!

Arrrr you finished?

[Trebuchet]

Now that I think about it, it seems like we should have been seeing sweet corn at several ears for a dollar by now. All I've actually seen is this partially shucked packaged expensive stuff. Perhaps I should look at a farm stand or something.

[Delvo]

Not anymore, but there's no thread with a past-tense title...

It bugged me that, during a certain range of years in which I did a lot of job-hunting, large employers had all started taking applications online but apparently didn't trust their own online systems and still required paper application forms in addition to that, apparently just to keep them on file forever and never use them. This resulted in a ritual in which I would apply online, get scheduled for an interview, go to the place at the scheduled time, and immediately be given a paper application to fill in first, to apply for the job that I'd already applied for and wouldn't be there if I hadn't. They actually scheduled extra time for each interview for this; when they and the applicant agreed on a time, they planned on the interview not beginning yet at that time but a while later when the applicant's pointless paper tedium was over.

Hey, I can convert that to present tense! It still bugs me that people & companies invent silly workarounds like that for their inadequacies at computing instead of just using their computers better. (I have a long history of becoming everybody else's unofficial computer technician wherever I go, no matter what my official job description is.) (And it also still bugs me that I not only had to go through that whole wasted era of my life but also still have to remember it... but that's not so trivial...)

[Extravoice]

Early morning temperatures and wind have been very conducive to my early morning bicycling over the past few days, but fog has put the kibosh on it.

[Trebuchet]

Twofer:
1. We listen to music at night from my wife's phone. Google killed off Google Play Music at midnight. I need to find a new player today.
2. I bought a different brand of bagels than usual because they were on sale. They are very thick and sliced badly off center so one side won't fit in the toaster.

[Solfe]

This is mildly amusing and just strange enough to be annoying. A while ago, my wife had cancer. 2531 days ago. When that happened, I started this slow chant of "one day at a time" and when I wake up, I simply add one to the number from the day before Nov. 19, 2013 was 2531. That makes sense to me.

However, at the same time, I realized that I can calculate durations forward. My son is shipping out to basic training on Feb 21, 2021. When he told me, I blurted out, "Oh, god. That only 124 days..." (That was Wednesday, so it's 120 days now.) When my boss went out on maternity leave, she asked what day she would return on. I shrugged and said, "No idea. You're working on the baby's schedule now." That made her laugh. (December 17th or 54 more days, actually. But only if she takes only the company's paid time off, but babies don't read company policy.)

There is no though process or computation that I am aware of. I am pretty bad a math and to be honest, sometimes I miss by a day because I don't know if I should count today or the last day in the figure. But I know the difference between the 3 possible answers. My answers are often good enough that no one questions a miss by a day.

That's weird. I wonder if everyone has this ability, but its so useless that no one willingly does it. Before my wife's illness, I never noticed this ability. Weird, annoying and sometimes stressful.

[Solfe]

Twofer:
1. We listen to music at night from my wife's phone. Google killed off Google Play Music at midnight. I need to find a new player today.
2. I bought a different brand of bagels than usual because they were on sale. They are very thick and sliced badly off center so one side won't fit in the toaster.

Youtube music is... sort of ok. It's not the same. For local files, I use DoubleTwist on my phone. It's nice but it has a one time cost. I've been using the free version for years.
I have no options for troubleshooting bagels. It's out of scope for my capabilities.

[Trebuchet]

Youtube music is... sort of ok. It's not the same. For local files, I use DoubleTwist on my phone. It's nice but it has a one time cost. I've been using the free version for years.
I have no options for troubleshooting bagels. It's out of scope for my capabilities.

Someone on my other forum suggested VLC. It's free and no ads so that's what we're using. I just wish I could figure out how to shuffle songs like I used to.

[Cruithne3753]

The word "anyway" does not have an s on the end. What's with "anyways"? OK as an affectation, but when used in serious discourse makes people sound instantly stupid.

[grant hutchison]

The word "anyway" does not have an s on the end. What's with "anyways"? OK as an affectation, but when used in serious discourse makes people sound instantly stupid.

It's a dialectical thing. Beside, it does no harm.

Grant Hutchison

[Gillianren]

The microphone on my headset isn't working. We have dollar store headphones with built-in microphones, but I really don't like them.

[Noclevername]

The word "anyway" does not have an s on the end. What's with "anyways"? OK as an affectation, but when used in serious discourse makes people sound instantly stupid.

Regional. I grew up with it. Also "youse" as the plural of "you".

[Solfe]

The word "anyway" does not have an s on the end. What's with "anyways"? OK as an affectation, but when used in serious discourse makes people sound instantly stupid.

It's a regional thing, very common to Buffalo, New York. Or more generally Western New York. It used to be far more wide spread, all the way to Ohio and Illinois. Back in the 70's, I read a style guide that proclaimed: "It's acceptable anywhere, except where it isn't".

Buffaloians have a habit of adding an S to words that shouldn't have them. "Anyways, anywheres, Federal's, etc". It's uncertain as to why it is so common here. We have a lot of stores that end in apostrophe S, such as Duff's, Budwey's Markets, and so on. But we also have places that end in just S, such as Federal Meats, Anchor Bar Wings, etc. In some cases, the S is either an addition or a deletion of letters. We even have gag debate if Mr. and Mrs. Federal ever owned a butcher's shop in Buffalo. There is a historical person named Federal on the lists, but they did boats not meats. That is amusing because it's a historian's nightmare because Federal Meats and Federal's Shops took out ads in Shipping guides at the end of the 1800s and early 1900s.

Another maddening thing we do is pronounce some A's and 8's almost the same. It causes considerable confusion where routes 20A and 28 met in a traffic circle at the foot of Main St, East Aurora. Ironic, because we don't pronounce any of the A's in "East Aurora" like "eight".

(I thought it was me, because I do it all the time, but I checked back over the past 6 months and it wasn't me. Oh, well.)