Minor things that bother you

[vdeane]

My new-ish neighbors have unlicensed dogs that like to jump the fence and crap in everyone else's yards.

One of them is a youngster and, even though he's apparently able to jump out over the fence, doesn't seem to know how to jump back in again.  Even if I charge the dog and shout, cornering him by the fence, he still can't figure out what to do.

Update:  Another of my neighbors has an air gun she's started shooting, in an attempt to scare the dog out of her yard.   

Perhaps next she'll try a sonic ray gun.

[webny99]

When a deleted email or draft shows up as unread in the deleted items folder.

[SSOWorld]

When a deleted email or draft shows up as unread in the deleted items folder.

Then read it.

[texaskdog]

I was not happy when this fellow showed up on our deck at 7:30 last night. We had the window open and I assume he smelled the bag of dry cat food we have inside just below the window to feed the feral cat who’s been coming for seven years now—he came right up and stood up to look in the window, though he ran for the railing pretty quickly when I got up to take his picture and then he jumped into the tree and disappeared. Bunch of neighbors saw him out there too. I suppose the one benefit of the weather getting hotter is that he won’t smell the cat food through the window because the window will be closed.

Maybe he IS the feral cat?

[1995hoo]

Maybe he IS the feral cat?

Don't think so.

[webny99]

When a deleted email or draft shows up as unread in the deleted items folder.

Then read it.

Of course I already have, that's why it's a minor thing that bothers me..

[J N Winkler]

I've run into one minor email-related annoyance with Gmail and Thunderbird:  Gmail keeping multiple copies of a draft email composed in Thunderbird (making it hard to scroll to and from other messages in the same email chain when threading is enabled in Gmail) unless I proactively compact the draft folder on Thunderbird.  These copies are generated when Thunderbird autosaves drafts to Gmail and there is seemingly no automated garbage collection, unless it has been added in a recent update.

I use Okular (which comes with the KDE software collection on Linux, but is available for Windows) for my PDF-viewing needs. Having used both it and name-brand Acrobat Reader on Windows, I find I prefer the less noxious interface in Okular. I rarely do much with PDFs other than view, fill out forms, and copy from them for pasting elsewhere, so I am not sure if it would be useful for what you do with it.

Thank you for the suggestion--I'm keeping it in mind.

I'm still sorting through the PDF-handling capabilities I really need.  So far I've determined I use PDF touchup occasionally, but still often enough that I don't want to do without it.  Acrobat Distiller has long been regarded as the gold standard for producing PDFs, but I've recently discovered the family network printer includes a print-to-file driver that produces PRNs containing Level 3 PostScript, which Ghostscript distills to PDF easily.  Otherwise, I now default to carrying out most PDF manipulation tasks (removing restrictions, extracting pages, unpacking portfolios, forcing version downgrades, etc.) using command-line tools, as those functions don't take over the PDF viewer while they are in progress.

[formulanone]

Frankly, PDF-derived language is a weird dialect of Jargon English. It's as if Adobe purposely chose words that already had a meaning, but decided to use them in a completely mysterious way, and without any context. Even the Acrobat clones (the patent on PDFs ran out over a decade ago) use the same verbiage, also requiring a glossary to re-translate what you'd like to perform and work backwards from there.

Making or performing minor editing of a PDF from a Word file either takes me 30 seconds or 3 hours, just to do something simple like set margins or combine pages is stupidly frustrating. It's one task I refuse to do off the clock, so to speak.

When a deleted email or draft shows up as unread in the deleted items folder.

Then read it.

This gets me about once every three months, though usually on my phone. You have find that needle in the haystack first, though usually deleting everything in Drafts/Junk/Spam/Deleted and then Mark All Read in Inbox helps it out.

[vdeane]

When a deleted email or draft shows up as unread in the deleted items folder.

Then read it.

Of course I already have, that's why it's a minor thing that bothers me..

Especially in the case of draft items.  If I made the draft, why is it unread?

On a similar note, Outlook now sends meeting updates that don't change the date/time/location (so things like attaching an agenda) to deleted items, bypassing the inbox completely.  I've been in meetings where people never saw the agenda because of this, and the only way to know anything was received is to see the unread item in the deleted folder... and that's something that can be very easily missed if one isn't meticulous about keeping their email organized, which most people aren't.

[Scott5114]

I use Okular (which comes with the KDE software collection on Linux, but is available for Windows) for my PDF-viewing needs. Having used both it and name-brand Acrobat Reader on Windows, I find I prefer the less noxious interface in Okular. I rarely do much with PDFs other than view, fill out forms, and copy from them for pasting elsewhere, so I am not sure if it would be useful for what you do with it.

Thank you for the suggestion--I'm keeping it in mind.

I'm still sorting through the PDF-handling capabilities I really need.  So far I've determined I use PDF touchup occasionally, but still often enough that I don't want to do without it.  Acrobat Distiller has long been regarded as the gold standard for producing PDFs, but I've recently discovered the family network printer includes a print-to-file driver that produces PRNs containing Level 3 PostScript, which Ghostscript distills to PDF easily.  Otherwise, I now default to carrying out most PDF manipulation tasks (removing restrictions, extracting pages, unpacking portfolios, forcing version downgrades, etc.) using command-line tools, as those functions don't take over the PDF viewer while they are in progress.

Fortunately, PDF creation is fairly straightforward and accessible on Linux, so I have a plethora of options for making new PDFs from scratch. Most major software that might reasonably be used to create a file for export to PDF, such as word processors or graphics programs like Gimp or Inkscape, have built-in functions to do so. For all others, there is a driver available (shown as "Print to File" on the list of available printers) that captures the PostScript sent to the CUPS printing subsystem (which is the same software stack used on OS X) and redirects it into a PDF.

Editing PDFs is more tricky, because there are so many ways they can be encoded and it can kind of be a crapshoot if the way they were done is conducive to the type of edits you want to make. A PDF version of a book, for instance, can vary from a one-to-one translation of the source file, with text-as-text to allow searching and embedded fonts to force proper display, to a version of the same with text converted to vector outlines, to merely being a compliation of flat image scans that makes even plain-text copy and pasting impossible without the use of OCR software (which I think Okular may incorporate to some degree). Software with the capability to open PDFs from editing handle these with varying degrees of grace.

I personally try to sidestep the issue by treating PDF as a write-only file format and providing files that I expect to be edited in an open file format suited to the purpose, like ODF, plain text, or SVG.

[Scott5114]

Applications that insist on you using the latest version, and put up a "there's a new update!" wall until you update. This causes a problem on Linux and other OSes that have their own software management system, because oftentimes it takes a few days between when the developers push a new version out and when the package-management people test to make sure that it works fine on the target system and release the update file. In the meantime, you have the choice of doing an end-run around the package manager (through the means of flatpak or installing the application outside of the package-management system, both of which have implications on the ongoing ability to update and manage the application as a part of the full system).

Likewise, developers that provide their application as a .deb file and neglect to recognize that RPM-based systems didn't go away just because Ubuntu became the most popular distro.

Yes, this is about Discord.

[bwana39]

I use Okular (which comes with the KDE software collection on Linux, but is available for Windows) for my PDF-viewing needs. Having used both it and name-brand Acrobat Reader on Windows, I find I prefer the less noxious interface in Okular. I rarely do much with PDFs other than view, fill out forms, and copy from them for pasting elsewhere, so I am not sure if it would be useful for what you do with it.

Thank you for the suggestion--I'm keeping it in mind.

I'm still sorting through the PDF-handling capabilities I really need.  So far I've determined I use PDF touchup occasionally, but still often enough that I don't want to do without it.  Acrobat Distiller has long been regarded as the gold standard for producing PDFs, but I've recently discovered the family network printer includes a print-to-file driver that produces PRNs containing Level 3 PostScript, which Ghostscript distills to PDF easily.  Otherwise, I now default to carrying out most PDF manipulation tasks (removing restrictions, extracting pages, unpacking portfolios, forcing version downgrades, etc.) using command-line tools, as those functions don't take over the PDF viewer while they are in progress.

Fortunately, PDF creation is fairly straightforward and accessible on Linux, so I have a plethora of options for making new PDFs from scratch. Most major software that might reasonably be used to create a file for export to PDF, such as word processors or graphics programs like Gimp or Inkscape, have built-in functions to do so. For all others, there is a driver available (shown as "Print to File" on the list of available printers) that captures the PostScript sent to the CUPS printing subsystem (which is the same software stack used on OS X) and redirects it into a PDF.

Editing PDFs is more tricky, because there are so many ways they can be encoded and it can kind of be a crapshoot if the way they were done is conducive to the type of edits you want to make. A PDF version of a book, for instance, can vary from a one-to-one translation of the source file, with text-as-text to allow searching and embedded fonts to force proper display, to a version of the same with text converted to vector outlines, to merely being a compliation of flat image scans that makes even plain-text copy and pasting impossible without the use of OCR software (which I think Okular may incorporate to some degree). Software with the capability to open PDFs from editing handle these with varying degrees of grace.

I personally try to sidestep the issue by treating PDF as a write-only file format and providing files that I expect to be edited in an open file format suited to the purpose, like ODF, plain text, or SVG.

The easy way to create a PDF without using a dedicated PDF client is to create it then use the print to PDF function from Windows (Generally I use Word to create simple documents. This works from almost any printable media though.)   Once you send a PDF, realistically it should need no changes beyond filling out blanks and getting digital signatures.  A PDF should be a READ only format once you create it.  A PDF done like this can be copied from and pasted. It is more than a simple image, but at the same time, not revisable either.

[SSOWorld]

On the topic of software updates.

Apple doesn't do automatic app updates unless you're on WIFI and charging the phone. 

Also if you go without being connected to WIFI for over 2 weeks your phone will complain that you haven't backed up your data to the cloud.

All because Apple wants control over your phone (or life)

[kkt]

All because Apple wants control over your phone (or life)

(or your data)

[1995hoo]

For those of you with kids, what age is normal for them to know how to use a knife and fork properly?

[kphoger]

For those of you with kids, what age is normal for them to know how to use a knife and fork properly?

It takes a while.  Probably around age ten, in my experience.

[formulanone]

For those of you with kids, what age is normal for them to know how to use a knife and fork properly?

9-10 for my kids. My son didn't seem to have the dexterity for using a knife and fork together until he was around 10. He still sometimes uses his fingers for the tiny bits, if we're not looking.

I blame more processed and prepared foods for that, but what do I know?

[1995hoo]

For those of you with kids, what age is normal for them to know how to use a knife and fork properly?

It takes a while.  Probably around age ten, in my experience.

Ugh. The kid in question who doesn't know how is 15.

[Scott5114]

What definition of "proper" are you going for? Are you measuring for proficiency or for compliance with arbitrary etiquette rules?

[Roadgeekteen]

The fact that you can't tell if others talk about you behind your back.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

The fact that you can't tell if others talk about you behind your back.

My experience in life is that everybody gets talked about behind their back. It sucks and almost everyone is also guilty of doing it, but it is what it is.

[1995hoo]

What definition of "proper" are you going for? Are you measuring for proficiency or for compliance with arbitrary etiquette rules?

How to hold them correctly so as to be able to cut one's food!

[texaskdog]

When people abbreviate time zones xST but meant xDT.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. It seems like literally 80-90% of people get this wrong. They'll say "Eastern Standard Time", without stopping to think for a second what standard means. If you don't want to think about it, just say ET, PT, etc.

This drives me nuts as well.   It was really bad about 15 years ago when I worked for a company with major offices in both Cincinnati and Indianapolis (which are only about 100 miles apart).   In the winter, we were all on EST, but in the summer, Cincinnati was on EDT, while Indianapolis remained on EST.  More people missed meetings because they did not understand the difference between EST and EDT.   In recent years, Indiana began observing DST, so I assume this problem has been reduced.

Every state should be required to be on the same time, completely

[texaskdog]

For those of you with kids, what age is normal for them to know how to use a knife and fork properly?

What I think is incredibly stupid is people cutting with their right hand, putting down their knife, eating with the right hand, etc.  Total lack of efficiency.  I learned early on to just cut left handed, it's not that difficult! 

[texaskdog]

When you drive behind a slowpoke you can’t pass, and feel relief up the road as you will be turning off the road so you don’t have to deal with it anymore.  However, the SOB decides to turn at that cut off as well, so you still with the idiot again.

Conversely when you know that road has an extra lane and you pass their sorry ass in about 2 seconds, and you look just to see whether they are old or stupid.