Some Non-trivial Things That Annoy Me.

[Noclevername]

I think the bad idea was running the median nerve through the carpal tunnel, where it's susceptible to compression--the ulnar and radial nerves, which innervate the rest of the skin of the hand, have more open wiring runs and rarely get into trouble.
It reminds me of the probably apocryphal Final Anatomy Exam reputedly set by an eccentric professor. It consisted of a single three-hour essay question: "Given the ear of a Benevolent Creator, what modifications would you suggest to the human form to improve its efficiency?"

I'd give a human the ear of a benevolent creator. Beats the ones we have now.

I've had to have CTS surgery twice on both wrists. Poor design indeed! That's what happens when Marketing gets their hands on the designs of the Engineering department.

[Trebuchet]

We just got back from a medical appointment for my wife; a followup to the steroid shot she got for spinal pain a couple of weeks ago. It was in Bremerton, a 90 mile round trip for us. Which was made longer by a 45 minute wait for a submarine to go through the Hood Canal Bridge.
The appointment consisted of:
"How's the shot working for you?"
"Good, the back is feeling much better."
"Great. Give us a call when you need another one."
They could have done that over the phone, not even Zoom required.

[ozduck]

I'd give a human the ear of a benevolent creator. Beats the ones we have now.

I've had to have CTS surgery twice on both wrists. Poor design indeed! That's what happens when Marketing gets their hands on the designs of the Engineering department.

Thanks very much - that has really cheered me up Luckily only one wrist is involved so I can only be half as badly off as you!

And continuing on with the design problems. If large stones can form in the kidney shouldn't they have an outlet large enough for them to pass through?

We just got back from a medical appointment for my wife; a followup to the steroid shot she got for spinal pain a couple of weeks ago. It was in Bremerton, a 90 mile round trip for us. Which was made longer by a 45 minute wait for a submarine to go through the Hood Canal Bridge.
The appointment consisted of:
"How's the shot working for you?"
"Good, the back is feeling much better."
"Great. Give us a call when you need another one."
They could have done that over the phone, not even Zoom required.

My commiserations. With all that is going on at present you would think some thought would be given to alternative means for monitoring her condition. About the only good thing that came out of this current crisis is that the last consultation with my Kidney specialist was done over the phone. The whole consult was basically along the lines of "Still no change, keep a lookout for any new symptoms and if none appear talk to me in 12 months". Not only was the whole thing done with me sitting comfortably at home but I saved money on his fees.

[Jens]

"I heard that it will take a year for that Mars lander to get to Mars. I tell you what, the Space Shuttle was the best thing NASA ever did. It could go anywhere. If you took a Saturn V and launched ships to a third of the way to Mars for fuel, and another third of the way, we could get to Mars on the Shuttle in a week!"

--relative of mine overheard at dinner last weekend; I kept eating and said nothing. Nontrivial science ignorance.

Ouch! But I understand your reluctance to get involved...

[Solfe]

That's what happens when Marketing gets their hands on the designs of the Engineering department.

I had this terrible meeting where a marketing person asked an engineer and product designer if we could do something with a product. They both gave these very well reasoned answers as to why it could not be done. The marketing guy nodded and thanked them.

Three months later, after products hit the shelves, we started receiving questions on how a consumer would do the very thing that the engineer and product designer said was impossible. When the marketing, engineering, design and consumer relations teams broke up, I decided to call the last consumer who made this inquiry. They told me that there was in insert in the package with instructions on how to do this, but they didn't work. They took a picture and emailed it to me. Alarmed, I actually went to a store and purchased the product and found out there was 4 page, full color instruction sheet in the package.

When I called the team together and asked about it, the engineering and design team leaders went crazy. They both jumped up from the table and ran around the room swearing. The marketing guy calmly explained that they had put these sheets in 1 million of the products after the production run was complete. The engineer and designer started running and swearing faster.

Basically, the marketing team made up a set of instructions with images of features that did NOT exist in or on the product and hired staff unwrap and unbox one tenth of all the products we made then put this instruction sheet inside before sending the boxes out for repackaging and rewrapping. It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, it meant that 1/10 of our product were delivered late (costing more money) via an alternative transport method (more money) AND they had instruction sheets which made legally questionable claims about products.

Somehow, I managed not to jump and run around the room, swearing like the rest of the team. I got up and walked out. I never saw that marketing guy again, which was the only good to come out of it.

[Gillianren]

Today would've been the last day of faire. We're consoling ourselves with the fact that at least we wouldn't have to tear down on the hottest day of the year, but still.

[ozduck]

Today (17/8) we should have been getting into a car and heading off to Perth Airport to catch a plane for the first leg of a trip to Europe. We were due to fly Qantas to Singapore and then transfer to Finnair for another four flights. In light of what is happening in the world that caused this holiday to be cancelled our problems are minor but still annoying. We have had to cancel five flights and hotel bookings in four countries but luckily we have only lost about US$50 because of all these cancellations. In February I had just been about to book some non-refundable long train trips in Germany when I decided to hold fire for a little while in what proved to be a good decision.

We would have spent about three weeks travelling around Germany plus four or five days in each of Helsinki and Prague and then a stopover in Singapore for the last couple of days. The family reunion that we were going to attend in Berlin has been postponed for a year. But the way things are going there is still considerable doubt that our borders will be open by even then.

[Jens]

Today (17/8) we should have been getting into a car and heading off to Perth Airport to catch a plane for the first leg of a trip to Europe. We were due to fly Qantas to Singapore and then transfer to Finnair for another four flights.

I'm hoping you mean that you had one flight from Singapore to Helsinki, and then two flights to Germany and back, and then back to Singapore, rather than four Finnair flights just to get to your destination in Europe! That would be a brutal trip.

[ozduck]

I'm hoping you mean that you had one flight from Singapore to Helsinki, and then two flights to Germany and back, and then back to Singapore, rather than four Finnair flights just to get to your destination in Europe! That would be a brutal trip.

Sorry, I was trying not to be too long-winded but obviously I wasn't very clear. There was to be one Finnair flight Singapore - Helsinki. Then a few days later another Helsinki to Frankfurt and then the return flights were Dusseldorf - Helsinki - Singapore.

For those who might be wondering, the Finnair option is a fairly popular one with regular travelers from Australia to Europe. Their long haul flights are excellent and their short haul flights inside Europe are just like all the other European airlines i.e. pretty basic. Finnair don't actually fly into Australia but you can buy a Finnair issued 'codeshare' ticket out of Australia with the first leg on Qantas, Thai Airways or Cathay Pacific etc much cheaper than if you flew all the way to Europe on one of those airlines. We were going save around 35% by taking this option. Your baggage is booked all the way through to your destination in Europe with a seamless transfer in the excellent airports of Singapore or Hong Kong.

Helsinki is an excellent place to enter the Schengen Area in Europe. This means that the onward flight to countries like Germany or France is treated as a domestic flight at both ends. The Helsinki airport is set up precisely to cater for this sort of trip and is very well organised and efficient. Plus, Helsinki itself is a nice place to spend a few days. The flight from Singapore to Helsinki is only 12 hours compared to over 13 hours for e.g Singapore - Paris.

[Noclevername]

My sister has a pinched spinal nerve and has been in great pain for the last couple of days. Can't use her right arm. She might not be able to work.

[Extravoice]

My sister has a pinched spinal nerve and has been in great pain for the last couple of days. Can't use her right arm. She might not be able to work.

I wish her well. I had a similar experience several years ago. It felt like someone took a baseball bat to my arm. It didn’t require surgery, but recovery was excruciatingly slow, and I was out of work for about six weeks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ozduck]

My sister has a pinched spinal nerve and has been in great pain for the last couple of days. Can't use her right arm. She might not be able to work.

Sounds terrible, puts a few tingling figures in context. Hopefully it can be sorted out quickly.

[21st Century Schizoid Man]

The flight from Singapore to Helsinki is only 12 hours

I’ve taken that flight. The combination of three-letter airport codes is a bit comical

[ozduck]

I’ve taken that flight. The combination of three-letter airport codes is a bit comical

Ah , yes. From SIN to HEL - my wife was very amused by that combination.

[Swift]

Ah , yes. From SIN to HEL - my wife was very amused by that combination.

So if you did that roundtrip, could we say went to HEL and back?

[21st Century Schizoid Man]

So if you did that roundtrip, could we say went to HEL and back?

I can do better still, I went beyond HEL and still managed to return!

[ozduck]

I can do better still, I went beyond HEL and still managed to return!

Lets see how far we can stretch these tortured analogies.

We were so unfazed by HEL that we decided to make it twice as bad by Dublin (DUB) it! (We did actually fly HEL - DUB - HEL)

I will see myself out of the door.

[Trebuchet]

In the big scheme of things, this is trivial, but in my daily life it is anything but.
Around 3PM, the cable system couldn't find any signal. The internet still worked.
Around 3:20, I tried unplugging the main Tivo box, waiting a bit, and plugging it back in. After it rebooted, still nothing.
OK, I'll try calling the cable company. Very reluctantly, because the last time I did the guy was useless.
"Do you have an outage in my area?" "No sir, I don't see an outage."
After a while: "Does the internet work?" "Yes, I already told you that!"
Finally, we'd found something he could do something about! Very soon, the internet did NOT work!
"Thank you for now breaking the internet!" "Umm....."
"Try unplugging the modem from the power and the cable."
"Ok, there are three boxes you guys put under the desk along with a rat's nest of cables. Which one do you want?"
"Ummmm....."
"Let me help. One is small, white, and says "eero" on it. One is small, black, and says "Actiontech" on it. One is large, black, and says "Arris" on it. Which do you want?"
"Ummmmmmmm...."
He had not the slightest clue. Best he could do was offer to send a technician.
On September 18. Today is September 7. That's ELEVEN DAYS FROM NOW! And then he had to ask me a bunch of Covid questions before they can come out.

I did, subsequently, unplug the larger of those three boxes from the power and cable. Unplugging from the power does no good, because it has a battery in it for the VOIP phone. Which continued to work throughout and never gets any calls other than spam.

Tomorrow's task for me will be to follow each of those cables end-to-end and mark the ends with a colored Sharpie, then draw a schematic of all the connections.

Oh, in case you're wondering how I'm typing I turned on the mobile hotspot on my phone. We don't have, or normally need, unlimited data. I intend to send any overage charges to WAVE Broadband, although I don't expect they'll pay.

[schlaugh]

Just a long shot but I ran into something similar at my in-laws.

The fiber optic line enters the house through an exterior box full of blinking lights. A coax cable exits that box and enters the house. The fiber box is powered by something called an ONT. If we get power outages I sometimes have to go into the garage and unplug the ONT power and wait five minutes before plugging it back in. Fine. That has worked before.

But this week it didn’t and the fiber optic box outside had no winky blinky lights, even after several tries.

Then the second tech I spoke with told me to hit the tiny-almost-invisible reset button on the ONT to discharge the capacitors inside the ONT. And that worked. He apologized because the first tier response techs don’t always know to do that.

So you might see if there is a reset somewhere in that configuration which will help in the process.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

Just heard that there were two bank robberies today, people were at the atms at the time and gave good description. One bank the guy aid he had a gun and the other her pure was stolen.
And my letter s on my keyboard is being difficult to type.

[Trebuchet]

Hmm. There's a wiring panel in the pantry that a lot of stuff passes through, including the cable. There's some sort of signal booster in there for it. I should probably check that. However:
The VOIP never went off.
The TV has come back on. The moron on the phone did, about 40 minutes into the call, confirm that there was indeed a TV outage in my area. Had he just found that to start with, we'd have been done and he wouldn't have broken my internet.
The internet is still off, as far as I know. I'll disconnect from Verizon and try it again after I post, then come back and let you know.
My best guess as to the functions of the three boxes:
Cable from the wall goes to "Activetec". From there another coax cable goes to "Arris" and an ethernet cable to "Eero". It may, or may not be the primary cable modem.
"Arris" is the router. I guess. It has coax from "Activetec", another ethernet to "Eero", and a phone line to the phone.
"Eero" seems to be the WiFi range extender. It has Ethernet from both of the others. There's another "Eero" in the bedroom, presumably talking to it.

I'm a mechanical enginerd. I need stuff I can just look at and understand.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

Eero is a Wifi extender.

[DonM435]

Just heard that there were two bank robberies today, people were at the atms at the time and gave good description. ...

Now, if both descriptions sounded a lot like you, that would be an annoyance at best!

[Trebuchet]

Eero is a Wifi extender.

Why yes, I think I already said that!
Ok, sorry for being crabby. Dealing with incompetent morons working for companies to whom I am paying more than US$300 a month does that to me.

I did try calling them again, because previously their automated system offered to reset my cable modem after I already told them it was a TV problem. So I figured I'd try that again, except this time when I said it was an internet problem they said there was an outage in my area. The moron I talked to earlier probably didn't cause that. Probably. Maybe. Or maybe he did.

Since the cable is probably back on, I am now going to go watch British Antiques Roadshow, even though Grant doesn't much like Fiona Bruce.

[Van Rijn]

[...]
I did try calling them again, because previously their automated system offered to reset my cable modem after I already told them it was a TV problem. So I figured I'd try that again, except this time when I said it was an internet problem they said there was an outage in my area.

I’m not sure how you are set up, but on my Comcast system, older TV cable boxes don’t need a cable modem and can be (but aren’t always) functional during an internet outage. Newer cable boxes are plugged into ethernet cables rather than directly to a coaxial cable and do need working internet. VOIP also requires internet but sometimes it can be functional when full internet isn’t. If you have VOIP it is important to have a cell phone that gets good signal at home. If internet isn’t working I usually just look at the lights on the cable modem to see if it is their problem or mine (occasionally I have had to cycle power on a router and once found a router had been accidentally unplugged). Take a look at your cable modem’s lights when it is working normally. When internet is out there will almost certainly be fewer lights lit. If you do a little internet research you can find out what they indicate.

Usually if there is an outage here it will come back within minutes to an hour. On one occasion it took all night, and I later read there was a vehicle accident that caused some cables to be severed. It affected a wide area. If you have a cell phone you may be able to check their site for outage area maps and estimated time to repair (I can do that here).

[Trebuchet]

Still no internet this morning, except via the cell phone. TV working. However:

Please forget all my tech whining! Due to weeks of dry weather and high winds yesterday, there are wild fires all across my state. I'll have to look it up but it sounds like an entire little town near the Idaho border may be gone. That's actually non-trivial.

ETA: It just (finally) occurred to me to Google "Wave Broadband Outage". According to this site, it's not just me. Perhaps related to the wind.

[John655]

Still no internet this morning, except via the cell phone. TV working. However:

Please forget all my tech whining! Due to weeks of dry weather and high winds yesterday, there are wild fires all across my state. I'll have to look it up but it sounds like an entire little town near the Idaho border may be gone. That's actually non-trivial.

ETA: It just (finally) occurred to me to Google "Wave Broadband Outage". According to this site, it's not just me. Perhaps related to the wind.

I'm sorry to hear that.
Praying for Eastern Washington!

[Van Rijn]

ETA: It just (finally) occurred to me to Google "Wave Broadband Outage". According to this site, it's not just me. Perhaps related to the wind.

Wow, that looks widespread! I didn’t realize they had a presence in the Sacramento area. Presumably they have a limited coverage area here as I never heard of them. But it looks like the outage is from Washington to California. I’d guess they have fiberoptic trunk lines and something happened near wherever they originate.

[Gillianren]

The smoke from Eastern Washington has blown into our area. Weirdly, I saw a prediction for air quality for today that predicted unhealthy air for part of the Puget Sound Area and good air quality for another part--with a clear dividing line right around Olympia. I do not believe this prediction, and not just because we definitely do not have good air quality right now, and I don't think driving across town would change that.

[Trebuchet]

It isn't just Eastern Washington. There are fires all over the Puget regions as well. There's a gray haze over us and a smokey smell is beginning to penetrate the house. I hope it doesn't set off the detectors.

The little town in Eastern WA is -- or was -- Malden. Fortunately no injuries, as far as I know.