Minor things that bother you

[vdeane]

The fact that it's seemingly impossible to get a laptop without an OS preinstalled.  I run Linux and I prefer to set it up myself rather than take the manufacturer's configuration settings, but ever since ZA Reason went out of business, that doesn't appear to be an option.  Framework is the only other company I've seen that offers it, but that requires buying a DIY edition that you need to assemble yourself, and as I learned today, that's easier said than done.  Completely screwed up the bezel installation and now I have a destroyed bezel and probably damaged laptop that I can't even open/close correctly any more.  I'm VERY upset about this and it's left a bad impression of Framework, to be honest.  If they had actual pictures depicting how the bezel is supposed to sit I'm sure it would help a lot, but they don't, just a four-second long video that's over before you've even comprehended what you're looking at.  There's an evening and $1400 wasted.

In regards to paying bills online versus snail-mailing a check, I do all my bill-paying online. It is a rare occasion I fill out a paper check anymore. About the only time I do that is when going to the DMV once a year to renew my tag.

I do too, I just use my bank's online bill pay where possible instead of linking credit card/bank account information with a third party.

[roadman65]

Who the heck cares about Taylor Swift going to the Super Bowl?  WTF is the media ( again) making a big deal of it.

[Max Rockatansky]

My wife cared.

[1995hoo]

Who the heck cares about Taylor Swift going to the Super Bowl?  WTF is the media ( again) making a big deal of it.

You've posted about it in multiple threads. Sounds like you apparently care!

[Rothman]

Why the rant about Taylor Swift 24 hours after the game ended?  Football is over for the year.

[Bobby5280]

The fact that it's seemingly impossible to get a laptop without an OS preinstalled.  I run Linux and I prefer to set it up myself rather than take the manufacturer's configuration settings, but ever since ZA Reason went out of business, that doesn't appear to be an option.  Framework is the only other company I've seen that offers it, but that requires buying a DIY edition that you need to assemble yourself, and as I learned today, that's easier said than done.  Completely screwed up the bezel installation and now I have a destroyed bezel and probably damaged laptop that I can't even open/close correctly any more.  I'm VERY upset about this and it's left a bad impression of Framework, to be honest.  If they had actual pictures depicting how the bezel is supposed to sit I'm sure it would help a lot, but they don't, just a four-second long video that's over before you've even comprehended what you're looking at.  There's an evening and $1400 wasted.

I can't run Linux due to the graphics applications I use, such as those in Adobe Creative Cloud.

I don't think there are any notebook computers that are easy to assemble or dis-assemble. In the late 2000's I had a Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook whose monitor went kaput. Well, the cold cathode lamps failed. You could shine a flashlight into the display and still see the LCD stuff active. One of my friends sent me a higher resolution panel from a "decommissioned" Dell Latitude notebook. It had the same form factor and connections. I had to take apart most of the notebook to switch the displays. Obviously the monitor bezel had to be carefully snapped open, the keyboard had to be removed. Lots of tiny screws had to be removed. The process was a PITA. But it felt pretty good when I finished the work. I got about 3 more years out of that notebook before the motherboard failed.

[Scott5114]

I can't run Linux due to the graphics applications I use, such as those in Adobe Creative Cloud.

I would be surprised if there's anything Adobe Creative Cloud does that can't be done on Linux somehow. It's just that the procedures will differ, and might require a little more tech proficiency than using Adobe. But avoiding Adobe can save thousands of dollars, so in my view, it's worth it.

The sign company I work for does 100% of its operations with open-source Linux software. Granted, we send out EPSes to a different company that actually produces the signs, so it's possible that there's some Adobe function that somehow isn't available on Linux they use to turn the EPS into a sign. (And I'm guessing their printers don't have Linux drivers.) But all of the graphics work on our end is done in some combination of Krita, Gimp, or Inkscape, and then the SVG files are run through a bespoke Perl script to convert them into an EPS our manufacturer will accept.

[SEWIGuy]

Who the heck cares about Taylor Swift going to the Super Bowl?  WTF is the media ( again) making a big deal of it.

Celebrities shown at the Super Bowl?

I'm shocked.

[GaryV]

since converting to online payments has been that I don't have a reminder that a bill is unpaid in the form of the envelope sitting on my desk

Most online systems have the ability to schedule payment, which I use for the few bills I don't have on auto payment. For example, when my Visa bill comes via email, typically my largest outlay of the month, before I delete the email I schedule a payment for it and put that payment in Quicken so I know if there's enough money in checking to cover it. The bills I have on auto payment (utilities, other credit cards) all send me an email so I can record the payment. The ones I sometimes don't remember are the monthly payments for things like medical insurance, charity and IRA.

[ZLoth]

All I can say is that I picked up this Mini-PC last year with 32GB of memory and a Ryzen 6600H. It took a few minutes, but I cleared out Windows 11 and installed Proxmox (Linux-based). It is now sitting in a closet along my TrueNAS Scale server (which is also running Linux now after being upgraded from FreeBSD last year).

While I am still a Windows guy, I feel that the cost of Adobe's creative suite as a monthly subscription is much too expensive for how little I use it's tools. There are alternatives available that are "free" or "low cost" that fit my low-usage needs nicely. 

[JayhawkCO]

I can't run Linux due to the graphics applications I use, such as those in Adobe Creative Cloud.

I would be surprised if there's anything Adobe Creative Cloud does that can't be done on Linux somehow. It's just that the procedures will differ, and might require a little more tech proficiency than using Adobe. But avoiding Adobe can save thousands of dollars, so in my view, it's worth it.

The sign company I work for does 100% of its operations with open-source Linux software. Granted, we send out EPSes to a different company that actually produces the signs, so it's possible that there's some Adobe function that somehow isn't available on Linux they use to turn the EPS into a sign. (And I'm guessing their printers don't have Linux drivers.) But all of the graphics work on our end is done in some combination of Krita, Gimp, or Inkscape, and then the SVG files are run through a bespoke Perl script to convert them into an EPS our manufacturer will accept.

GIMP can do pretty much everything.

[roadman65]

Who the heck cares about Taylor Swift going to the Super Bowl?  WTF is the media ( again) making a big deal of it.

Celebrities shown at the Super Bowl?

I'm shocked.

It's just this Travis Taylor stuff is yawn time.

I say this about all the gossip about high profile couples.  They're ordinary folks like the rest of us, but media outlets portray them as royalty and have to follow them. I'm sure most couples don't like being exploited anyway.

[SEWIGuy]

Who the heck cares about Taylor Swift going to the Super Bowl?  WTF is the media ( again) making a big deal of it.

Celebrities shown at the Super Bowl?

I'm shocked.

It's just this Travis Taylor stuff is yawn time.

I say this about all the gossip about high profile couples.  They're ordinary folks like the rest of us, but media outlets portray them as royalty and have to follow them. I'm sure most couples don't like being exploited anyway.

Why are you acting like this is new?

Anyway, it's pretty easy to ignore.

[roadman65]

Who the heck cares about Taylor Swift going to the Super Bowl?  WTF is the media ( again) making a big deal of it.

Celebrities shown at the Super Bowl?

I'm shocked.

It's just this Travis Taylor stuff is yawn time.

I say this about all the gossip about high profile couples.  They're ordinary folks like the rest of us, but media outlets portray them as royalty and have to follow them. I'm sure most couples don't like being exploited anyway.

Why are you acting like this is new?

Anyway, it's pretty easy to ignore.

Read my post. I'm not acting like this is new. I'm pointing out the media is acting like it's new.  To me it's played out and to me hearing old news is a minor thing that bothers me

If I was a high profile person being followed by the paparazzi I'd tell them to stuff it.  Love is natural and why should mine be any different than you all

[SEWIGuy]

Who the heck cares about Taylor Swift going to the Super Bowl?  WTF is the media ( again) making a big deal of it.

Celebrities shown at the Super Bowl?

I'm shocked.

It's just this Travis Taylor stuff is yawn time.

I say this about all the gossip about high profile couples.  They're ordinary folks like the rest of us, but media outlets portray them as royalty and have to follow them. I'm sure most couples don't like being exploited anyway.

Why are you acting like this is new?

Anyway, it's pretty easy to ignore.

Read my post. I'm not acting like this is new. I'm pointing out the media is acting like it's new.  To me it's played out and to me hearing old news is a minor thing that bothers me

If I was a high profile person being followed by the paparazzi I'd tell them to stuff it.  Love is natural and why should mine be any different than you all

The media's been doing this for decades.

[roadman65]

Who the heck cares about Taylor Swift going to the Super Bowl?  WTF is the media ( again) making a big deal of it.

Celebrities shown at the Super Bowl?

I'm shocked.

It's just this Travis Taylor stuff is yawn time.

I say this about all the gossip about high profile couples.  They're ordinary folks like the rest of us, but media outlets portray them as royalty and have to follow them. I'm sure most couples don't like being exploited anyway.

Why are you acting like this is new?

Anyway, it's pretty easy to ignore.

Read my post. I'm not acting like this is new. I'm pointing out the media is acting like it's new.  To me it's played out and to me hearing old news is a minor thing that bothers me

If I was a high profile person being followed by the paparazzi I'd tell them to stuff it.  Love is natural and why should mine be any different than you all

The media's been doing this for decades.

Now you got it my dear Watson.

[SEWIGuy]

Who the heck cares about Taylor Swift going to the Super Bowl?  WTF is the media ( again) making a big deal of it.

Celebrities shown at the Super Bowl?

I'm shocked.

It's just this Travis Taylor stuff is yawn time.

I say this about all the gossip about high profile couples.  They're ordinary folks like the rest of us, but media outlets portray them as royalty and have to follow them. I'm sure most couples don't like being exploited anyway.

Why are you acting like this is new?

Anyway, it's pretty easy to ignore.

Read my post. I'm not acting like this is new. I'm pointing out the media is acting like it's new.  To me it's played out and to me hearing old news is a minor thing that bothers me

If I was a high profile person being followed by the paparazzi I'd tell them to stuff it.  Love is natural and why should mine be any different than you all

The media's been doing this for decades.

Now you got it my dear Watson.

So why do you think they do it?

[kphoger]

I would be surprised if there's anything Adobe Creative Cloud does that can't be done on Linux somehow.

shocker

I say this about all the gossip about high profile couples.  They're ordinary folks like the rest of us, but media outlets portray them as royalty and have to follow them. I'm sure most couples don't like being exploited anyway.

Ordinary folks?  You think Taylor Swift is ordinary folks?  Man, you and I must not hang out with the same sort of people.

[Rothman]

Who the heck cares about Taylor Swift going to the Super Bowl?  WTF is the media ( again) making a big deal of it.

Celebrities shown at the Super Bowl?

I'm shocked.

It's just this Travis Taylor stuff is yawn time.

I say this about all the gossip about high profile couples.  They're ordinary folks like the rest of us, but media outlets portray them as royalty and have to follow them. I'm sure most couples don't like being exploited anyway.

Why are you acting like this is new?

Anyway, it's pretty easy to ignore.

Read my post. I'm not acting like this is new. I'm pointing out the media is acting like it's new.  To me it's played out and to me hearing old news is a minor thing that bothers me

If I was a high profile person being followed by the paparazzi I'd tell them to stuff it.  Love is natural and why should mine be any different than you all

I believe you ordered this nothingburger to go.

[GaryV]

So why do you think they do it?

Why does media do anything? (Hint: it ain't because they're hoarding pennies.)

Ordinary folks?

They all put their pants on one leg at a time. (Except the story I heard about an astronaut once, putting both legs into the spacesuit. "Hey, we really are special.")

[mgk920]

Several years ago the USPS slowed long-distance mail down.  Some companies used that to shorten up their deadlines for 'though the Mail' bill paying with their date of paying being recorded as when the payment was received rather than postmarked, turning 'late fees' into a profit center.  A couple of decades ago, I mailed something to someone out west on a Monday afternoon from the downtown Appleton, WI Post Office (54911).  It was received Wednesday (2 DAYS later) in Thousand Oaks, CA.  I was impressed.

Mike

[kphoger]

I work in cable.  For each office we do business in, we have at least one account set up with that particular MSO for test/training purposes:  to plug various types of equipment in and train techs on them.  Years ago, we used to do business in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, but we pulled out in... I don't remember exactly when, but I know it was in 2017 or earlier.  Anyway, I found out last year that our training account down there is still active, even though the address (in Arlington) that it's linked to isn't even our building anymore.

How did I figure this out?  Well, I finally decided to actually read the monthly e-mail that I've always assumed was just junk, but which is in fact a real statement from the MSO.  Because it's a training account for one of the MSO's partners, it was set up to have free service.  So every month, we've been getting a bill for $0.00 for an account nobody uses.  And because nobody is actually affected by this goof, nobody cares to bother doing anything about it.  It's not costing us anything, it's not costing the MSO anything, it's nobody's problem.

[Bobby5280]

I would be surprised if there's anything Adobe Creative Cloud does that can't be done on Linux somehow.

It's a common misconception pixel-based image editing applications (such as Adobe Photoshop) are the same or that vector graphics apps (such as Adobe Illustrator) are all the same. The same applies to page layout apps and on and on. It is common for serious feature gaps to exist between rival applications. A complex logo created in Adobe Illustrator may fall apart utterly when opened in any rival, non-native application like CorelDRAW, Affinity Designer, Inkscape, etc.

Major companies almost always have their branding work developed using Adobe software, like Illustrator. These clients expect their branding materials to be reproduced accurately.

Hardly any professional level graphics applications run natively on Linux. Attempts to emulate them in a Windows shell within Linux will fail. That is certainly the case for Creative Cloud.

The sign company I work for does 100% of its operations with open-source Linux software. Granted, we send out EPSes to a different company that actually produces the signs, so it's possible that there's some Adobe function that somehow isn't available on Linux they use to turn the EPS into a sign. (And I'm guessing their printers don't have Linux drivers.) But all of the graphics work on our end is done in some combination of Krita, Gimp, or Inkscape, and then the SVG files are run through a bespoke Perl script to convert them into an EPS our manufacturer will accept.

The sign company you speak of must not be doing much in-house design work. I'd hate to have to use Inkscape to deal with any customer provided artwork. For vector graphics tasks, I do that hopping between Illustrator and CorelDRAW, using the best features in both applications. Whenever I launch Inkscape I feel like I'm getting sent back in time to the 1990's. Its UI is very dated and clunky. Affinity Designer has a nice and clean looking UI, but the app is pretty basic in its capabilities.

Regarding EPS, it is an outdated format with severe limitations, such as no native transparency support. Many features and effects Adobe Illustrator can natively bake into a PDF would be "flattened" or rasterized if saved into a version of EPS that could be opened in an app like Inkscape.

There is only one large format printing RIP application on the market available for Linux, and that's Caldera. Most of the others are Windows-only apps. You can load Adobe-generated PDFs into Caldera and it will output them just fine, thanks to the RIP having an Adobe-certified PDF print engine. But the Adobe-flavored artwork would have to be created on a Mac or PC. Linux-support for other common sign-making tasks is worse. Routing table software, such as Enroute, is pretty much Windows-only.

GIMP can do pretty much everything.

GIMP is a pixel-based image editor. Even just within that lane it does not match everything Photoshop can do.

[Scott5114]

since converting to online payments has been that I don't have a reminder that a bill is unpaid in the form of the envelope sitting on my desk

Most online systems have the ability to schedule payment, which I use for the few bills I don't have on auto payment. For example, when my Visa bill comes via email, typically my largest outlay of the month, before I delete the email I schedule a payment for it and put that payment in Quicken so I know if there's enough money in checking to cover it. The bills I have on auto payment (utilities, other credit cards) all send me an email so I can record the payment. The ones I sometimes don't remember are the monthly payments for things like medical insurance, charity and IRA.

The main problem that I have is that the "your bill needs to be paid" emails get mixed in with the deluge of email I get on a daily basis, so I don't even see them. It's also very hard to set up an email rule to e.g. separate those out to a separate folder, not least because NVEnergy insists on not putting their name anywhere on the email that says I owe them money (though they put their name all over their marketing and status-update emails).

The sign company you speak of must not be doing much in-house design work.

[checks the in-house design database] On Sunday, I submitted the 2,161st in-house design I've done for this company since October of 2021.

I'd hate to have to use Inkscape to deal with any customer provided artwork.

Most of what we do is vectorize designs from photographs. In the rare case that a customer comes to us with artwork, it's unlikely to be in vector form already. (Most of our customers seem to be dudes in their sixties that don't know much about computers. We get a lot of photographs of computer monitors and pen-and-ink drawings scanned into Word documents and things like that.)

It turns out that Gimp's Threshold tool can move mountains if you know what you're doing. And for everything else, there's Krita's Palletize filter mask.

Whenever I launch Inkscape I feel like I'm getting sent back in time to the 1990's. Its UI is very dated and clunky.

This is a feature. UI design has fallen off a cliff since 2010 or so. Developers seem to think their customers' brains overheat if they see more than a half-dozen options on the screen. Give me all the buttons, please.

For anything where the UI is just too clunky—like the EPS export screen, which has a lot of options that we need set the same way every time—because SVG is an open format, it is trivial to just bust it open outside of Inkscape and do whatever to it with a script. I can convert an SVG to a production-ready EPS by typing four characters on the command line, and I can convert the same SVG to a fancy customer-ready JPG by tying six letters. Let's see Illustrator do that.

Regarding EPS, it is an outdated format with severe limitations, such as no native transparency support.

We have an standing agreement with the manufacturer that process magenta is to be treated as an alpha channel. So if we want to make, say, a cutout US route shield, it sits on top of a 16½×16 magenta box, and the manufacturer knows to cut away the magenta to produce a cutout shield. I have not heard of this ever causing problems. (We do have a backup procedure for if we ever have a design that includes legitimately includes process magenta, but we've never had to use it.)

There are certain things we have to avoid to keep the EPS from rasterizing them. Semi-transparency is one of them. But the conversion script emits loud warnings if it ever has to rasterize something, and provides the coordinates of what it's rasterizing so that can be normalized to an opaque color. This is sort of annoying but rare enough that it's not worth paying Adobe to avoid.

[Bobby5280]

[checks the in-house design database] On Sunday, I submitted the 2,161st in-house design I've done for this company since October of 2021.

You did say the sign company you do work for doesn't actually produce signs in-house, correct? The production work is farmed out to another company, right? It would be interesting to know what computing platform(s) they're using.

The company where I work is a full service, custom sign manufacturing company. We design and build a lot of different things in house. We have four crane trucks for installing and servicing signs. Most sign companies that have been around for a long time like ours have Windows-based work flows. Some sign shops may have design workstations that are Mac-based. But then they're often having to port files over to Windows-based workstations for tasks like printing/cutting vinyl, routing parts, etc.

Most of what we do is vectorize designs from photographs. In the rare case that a customer comes to us with artwork, it's unlikely to be in vector form already. (Most of our customers seem to be dudes in their sixties that don't know much about computers. We get a lot of photographs of computer monitors and pen-and-ink drawings scanned into Word documents and things like that.)

It sounds like you're focusing on a specific niche market. We receive artwork from a wide variety of clients, big and small. Some of the artwork assets can be pretty junky. I've seen the examples you described many times. Customer artwork generated in Canva can be particularly annoying. Most people don't understand the difference between pixel-based graphics and vector-based graphics, or even what the hell a vector is.

Corporate artwork is demanding in its own ways. While the art files will be more professionally created the files will often demand you have the latest version of Illustrator or InDesign installed just to open them. It would be a gamble trying to import the PDF "fork" of an Illustrator file into CorelDRAW, Affinity Designer, etc without breaking artwork elements. If the artwork is "flat" (doesn't have a bunch of effects, unique gradients, meshes, etc) it will often have colors defined using Pantone spot color values.

This is a feature. UI design has fallen off a cliff since 2010 or so. Developers seem to think their customers' brains overheat if they see more than a half-dozen options on the screen. Give me all the buttons, please.

Inkscape hogs too much of the screen displaying its buttons, panels or tear-off tabs. The last couple of versions are slightly less bad about it. Adobe Illustrator uses a fairly minimal workspace in its stock installation. I always switch that out to its "Essentials Classic" workspace, which shows a lot more info, yet is more graceful how it does so. I do make a few additional changes to that workspace.

Another thing I like about Illustrator is its keyboard shortcuts. Its Pen tool has better keyboard shortcuts than any competing vector graphics app on the market. I can manually draw a path yet edit and move anchor points on the path while I'm still drawing it; I can toggle zoom in/out and hand-pan functions to carefully adjust my view of the path while drawing it. No need to click any tool bar buttons.

CorelDRAW has some of its own great keyboard shortcuts. The ones it has for aligning/distributing objects are unmatched by any rival app: R-L-T-B-C-E; add the shift key to the letters for distributing. CorelDRAW automatically locks in place the last object brought into a selection for any alignment tasks. Illustrator requires an extra click to lock a key object.

I can convert an SVG to a production-ready EPS by typing four characters on the command line, and I can convert the same SVG to a fancy customer-ready JPG by tying six letters. Let's see Illustrator do that.

Your version of "production ready" EPS may not be the same as mine. The SVG format doesn't natively support CMYK or spot colors. Is the converted EPS file still RGB or is it bluntly converted to CMYK? I can design something in Illustrator, save a copy of it outright as a PDF, load it into Onyx Thrive or RasterLink Pro (our two RIP applications) and it will print perfect. No need for command line tricks. However, Illustrator is able to run complex scripts. CorelDRAW can too. Illustrator has a well-established plugin architecture and arguably the most impressive collection of third party plugins available for any vector graphics app. I use Astute Graphics' suite of Illustrator plugins. Vector First Aid alone makes the suite worth it for all the time it saves me having to deal with issues in customer provided artwork.

We have an standing agreement with the manufacturer that process magenta is to be treated as an alpha channel. So if we want to make, say, a cutout US route shield, it sits on top of a 16½×16 magenta box, and the manufacturer knows to cut away the magenta to produce a cutout shield.

Chances are about 100% the manufacturer is taking the object with the "process magenta" color and changing its values for the actual print/cut work. If I want to print and cut graphics on vinyl I'll create a separate cut path and assign a custom spot color called "CutContour" to its line stroke. The stroke won't print; it will only load as a cut path to use after the print is laminated. If I want to print white ink I'll assign another custom spot color called "Spot1" as a fill to a given object. The RIP will give me options how to print the white ink (above or below the colored ink, or "sandwich" multiple layers of white and color). It's very easy to set up in Illustrator. It's not quite as easy, but still do-able in CorelDRAW.