Really trivial stuff that bugs you

[Gillianren]

Pipe cleaners are good for cleaning under keyboard keys.
As I quit smoking around the turn of the century, I don't have too many of these left around the place.
I guess that you can buy 'em at Arts 'n' Crafts shoppes, but the packaging will probably say "Pipe Cleaners" / "Note: not suitable for cleaning pipes."

I have some, in fact, that I bought last year to make a Mary Poppins doll for Irene for Yule--they're the handles on her carpet bag.

[Trebuchet]

I just had simultaneous scam calls on my cell phone and the house phone.

[ozduck]

I just had simultaneous scam calls on my cell phone and the house phone.

If only you could have 'linked' the calls so that they could have talked to each other.

[Solfe]

I listen to this podcast called SafCoCast. It's about the Traveller role playing game. The actual name of the podcast was "Super Adventure Friends and Company", but they have been rolling with the abbreviated name for about half their episodes now.

When I ask my Google Home to play it, it picks out a nice podcast about insurance. Presumably because of the insurance company named "Safe Co." Of course, there is a twist. Google Home picks random podcast about insurance every time I ask for "SafCoCast" but for whatever reason if I try to find that insurance podcast myself via Google Search or specifically request it by name, I can't find any information about it. Like it never existed. I wonder if Google has a repository of old and failed podcasts kicking around in it's DB someplace. It'd be funny if it wasn't so annoying.

[Extravoice]

The news in these parts has been hyping upcoming shortages of goods, which I highly suspect will trigger hoarding.
Self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Trebuchet]

The Audi station wagon next to my car at Safeway yesterday had the entire back end full of paper products.

[Gillianren]

My best friend braved Costco last night. She'd offered to pick me up flour if there was any--I was legitimately running low, as our household goes through a lot of flour. She said they were out of flour, toilet paper, baby wipes, and sanitizer.

[Swift]

If only you could have 'linked' the calls so that they could have talked to each other.

[schlaugh]

I went to Costco today to take advantage of early-entry old fart hours...and bagged two unicorns! A pack of Costco toilet paper AND paper towels. Both of which we needed.

[Trebuchet]

I just discovered I posted my simultaneous scam calls in "read that again" instead of here, as intended. That bugs me.

[PetersCreek]

I just discovered I posted my simultaneous scam calls in "read that again" instead of here, as intended. That bugs me.

Scroll up. I fixed it for ya.

[Extravoice]

Scroll up. I fixed it for ya.

Well, now we know who contributed during the pledge drive.

[Spacedude]

What bothers me lately is trying to find a new TV that has a non-reflective screen. 14 years ago we bought a new JVC 40" HDTV ($800 back then) and it still works great, but after 14 years we figured that it may die soon and we wanted something new and a bit larger screen. So we started looking at Sam's, Best Buy, Walmart, etc. for the latest models and after a close look realized that all of the new brands have screens that reflect back lighting such as lamps and windows located behind the viewer. Our TV room is in our large Florida room which of course is well lit from most all directions. A good screen test is to take a small flashlight to these stores and shine it at an angle on the screen to see if it's mirror like, our JVC diffuses the light, the new tv screens don't.

We are now on our 2nd TV ready to return it, they all have good pictures but the backlighting reflections are ridiculous. Our old JVC has a matted or translucent type of screen which eliminates any and all reflections, but these new models (and we looked at 15+ brands) have screens made of a plexiglass type material which is almost glass like in it's reflective qualities. I'm returning the Sony we bought and we'll just keep looking until tv maker goes back to the old non-reflective screen, if ever, ugh.

PS, I miss dumb TVs too :-(

[schlaugh]

You’d probably find the new OLED TVs to work well - but not for the pocketbook.

[Extravoice]

Some clever programmer decided that the right-hand scroll bar of MS Word 2016 should disappear if the mouse hasn’t moved I a few seconds.
Want to know how far you’ve gotten while reading a long document? You’ll have to wiggle the mouse to find out.

[Extravoice]

PS, I miss dumb TVs too :-(

While working at the David Sarnoff Research Center in the early 1990s, a colleague commented that “In the future, we’ll have to wait while our TVs reboot.”
Welcome to the future.

[Trebuchet]

We had -- still have, actually, though it's not in use -- a VIZIO TV that used to reboot itself on a regular basis. And just yesterday, after a power outage, we had to wait for the cable box to reboot.

[schlaugh]

We had -- still have, actually, though it's not in use -- a VIZIO TV that used to reboot itself on a regular basis. And just yesterday, after a power outage, we had to wait for the cable box to reboot.

Sometimes my Whirlpool microwave reboots itself. And it’s not even running when it does so.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[Swift]

While working at the David Sarnoff Research Center in the early 1990s, a colleague commented that “In the future, we’ll have to wait while our TVs reboot.”
Welcome to the future.

The TV reboots a lot faster than the cable box, so the box is usually the rate determining step, such as after a power failure.

[Gillianren]

The school's power went out during class yesterday. The kids whose power did not also go out (from what I understand, a downed tree during our 40 mph gusts took out a grid) sat around freaking out for no good reason for about ten minutes until one of the parents called the school and found out that class was canceled for the rest of the day. About ten minutes after that, I got a text from the school that class was canceled for the rest of the day.

I had therapy for the first time in years yesterday afternoon, to my great delight and relief. Especially given I didn't get the e-mail for the Zoom meeting until after I'd gotten a call from my new therapist saying he'd been under the impression that I would be coming into his office instead of by doing it by Zoom.

[Extravoice]

The local power company has decided that now is a good time to “randomly” dispatch a technician to my home to inspect the thermostat*.

I’m sure the tech is as thrilled about entering random customers homes during a pandemic for such a trivial task as I am in having him/her.

They will be greeted with a house with open windows.

*The thermostat belongs to the power company, and can temporarily disable the air conditioner during peak load periods.

[Trebuchet]

The local power company has decided that now is a good time to “randomly” dispatch a technician to my home to inspect the thermostat*.

I’m sure the tech is as thrilled about entering random customers homes during a pandemic for such a trivial task as I am in having him/her.

They will be greeted with a house with open windows.

*The thermostat belongs to the power company, and can temporarily disable the air conditioner during peak load periods.

That's kind of strange sounding, to me.

[Extravoice]

That's kind of strange sounding, to me.

Behold the power of bureaucracy?

[Van Rijn]

The local power company has decided that now is a good time to “randomly” dispatch a technician to my home to inspect the thermostat*.

I think I would be “randomly” unavailable.

*The thermostat belongs to the power company, and can temporarily disable the air conditioner during peak load periods.

Huh. We have something like that as an option but I think their hardware goes outside on the compressor. The fan inside would keep running. I never wanted it, because while it does give a discount on electricity, they wanted to shut it down for a fairly long time on the hottest days of the year. I prefer to be comfortable.

[schlaugh]

It bugs me that this "bugs you" thread takes forever and a day to load. Harrumph...

[Solfe]

Some clever programmer decided that the right-hand scroll bar of MS Word 2016 should disappear if the mouse hasn’t moved I a few seconds.
Want to know how far you’ve gotten while reading a long document? You’ll have to wiggle the mouse to find out.

My Chromebook has a nasty variation on that. The scroll bars get smaller when the mouse is idle and they don't get bigger until you click on them. "Use the force, man!"

[Extravoice]

My Chromebook has a nasty variation on that. The scroll bars get smaller when the mouse is idle and they don't get bigger until you click on them. "Use the force, man!"

I presume these efforts are intended to declutter the screen, but I find them of little (or negate) value.

On a related note, my office computer was processing something in the background, and briefly got amazingly slow. This gave me a chance to see what a new Excel window does when opening. Way too much CPU effort goes into making something that normally happens in a fraction of a second look “smooth”.

[DonM435]

Since I used one (1) MS One-Note function once (1ce), MS Word would like to save all of my documents to some One-Note storage location by default, while, I, being old fashioned, want to save it on the disk right here. I found there was a "Save" section with a setting that permitted you specify saving to "Computer" by default. Couldn't dislodge One Note from the top on the list offered, nor shred it entirely, but I can now save one step in saving things.

[grant hutchison]

Since I used one (1) MS One-Note function once (1ce), MS Word would like to save all of my documents to some One-Note storage location by default, while, I, being old fashioned, want to save it on the disk right here. I found there was a "Save" section with a setting that permitted you specify saving to "Computer" by default. Couldn't dislodge One Note from the top on the list offered, nor shred it entirely, but I can now save one step in saving things.

It's possible to uninstall One Note from the command line. The satisfaction is immense.

Grant Hutchison

[Trebuchet]

I consistently type "ration" when I want "ratio". Did it just now in another thread but fortunately caught it. I'm an engineer. "Ratio" was a word I typed frequently. "Ration", intentionally, never. What's up with that?