Minor things that bother you

[kernals12]

Tongue in cheek: I went to a restaurant and saw they had French's... Ketchup. Then a few days later at WinCo I saw they had Heinz... Mustard. It's just wrong.

[Scott5114]

French's ketchup isn't bad. I'd rather have it than Hunt's.

[kphoger]

Customer service having been outsourced to overseas call centers where there's bound to be a language barrier between customer and agent.

My wife and I have a very complicated situation to get resolved with our Verizon Wireless account, with multiple interrelated issues.  I'm sure there are plenty of agents at the call center in India (or wherever it is) who could competently straighten everything out, but the first step of getting them to actually understand the situation is proving to be impossible, due primarily to the language barrier.  It's so much easier to talk to a store manager here in town, but there's only so much they have access to, so there's no way around having to reach out to the call center.

[kphoger]

Heh.

After my wife's 4,315^th call to customer service (and two prior visits to the brick and mortar store over the last week), here is our most recent text message conversation:

— I called the loyalty number again and got a seemingly native english speaker named Russ. He took care of everything. Hopefully going forward everything will be good.

— I'm pretty sure there aren't any people named Russ living in India.

[GaryV]

there aren't any people named Russ living in India

Ehh, there might be. At least that sounds like a valid "DBA name".

Reminds me of a co-worker's comment more than a decade ago. He said he'd get a male accented voice: "Hello, this is Donna."

[kphoger]

At least that sounds like a valid "DBA name".

Back when I was in the habit of answering scam calls, I would sometimes do this:

— Hello, this is Andy.  (thick Indian accent)
— Your name isn't Andy.  (followed by silence)

[Scott5114]

It's so much easier to talk to a store manager here in town, but there's only so much they have access to, so there's no way around having to reach out to the call center.

In that case, why is it you who has to talk to the call center, not the manager?

[JayhawkCO]

there aren't any people named Russ living in India

Ehh, there might be. At least that sounds like a valid "DBA name".

Reminds me of a co-worker's comment more than a decade ago. He said he'd get a male accented voice: "Hello, this is Donna."

I know this isn't what you meant by "DBA", but as someone who manages DBAs (database administrators) in India, this made me laugh.

[kphoger]

In that case, why is it you who has to talk to the call center, not the manager?

I also got the impression that there's only so far they're willing to go in the store for a problem with something we ordered online rather than in the store.

[Scott5114]

In that case, why is it you who has to talk to the call center, not the manager?

I also got the impression that there's only so far they're willing to go in the store for a problem with something we ordered online rather than in the store.

The manager gets paid to talk to Verizon employees, and I don't. If I have to call someone on the phone anyway, I figure I may as well call the manager's manager rather than playing grab-ass with some phone jockey who may or may not be capable of helping. Verizon's bureaucracy is Verizon's problem, not mine.

But then again I am the sort of person who only upgrades his phone once every ten years because that's preferable to dealing with the phone company.

[kphoger]

The manager gets paid to talk to Verizon employees, and I don't. If I have to call someone on the phone anyway, I figure I may as well call the manager's manager rather than playing grab-ass with some phone jockey who may or may not be capable of helping. Verizon's bureaucracy is Verizon's problem, not mine.

Oh, please don't get the impression that I'm disagreeing with you.  I was just sharing my observation.  If we had walked in and gotten a phone they'd sold us from the sales floor, then they'd probably go to the moon and back to make everything right.  But, before we ever went to the store, my wife was on the phone with customer service and that rep's supervisor;  they offered to simply ship us a new phone, an we decided it would be advantageous to just go to the store instead.  There may also have been an access problem at the store:  they can probably fix anything that they had the access to set up in the first place, but not necessarily something a different department did wrong.

But then again I am the sort of person who only upgrades his phone once every ten years because that's preferable to dealing with the phone company.

This wasn't an upgrade.  We were getting our middle son his first cell phone.  And it should have been the simplest thing ever:  order a new phone for shipment, then activate it.  But all sorts of things went sideways.  Reportedly, the phone number we were assigned somehow ended up being given to someone else entirely (as someone who works in the landline telecom industry, it baffles me that that could even happen).  Then neither of two other numbers they tried instead would activate either.  When we went to the store, he reclaimed the phone back into the system entirely, then reissued it to us fresh.  It activated and finally worked, so we went home.  Then, when we looked at our account and bill details, we saw that one of those other failed phone numbers was also associated with our account:  four cell phones, five phone numbers.  Our initial offer included free activation, yet this second number had an activation fee tacked on.  While all this was happening, my wife got a text message and e-mail offering $20 off per month per line on our account.  She called customer service again to try and sort everything out, reaching someone who could barely understand English in some Indian call center, as usual, and that rep just made the mess slightly different.  We ended up with a different one of the failed numbers associated with our account instead (the first one, I think), plus the $20 off was only applied to one of our lines instead of all lines, plus the activation fee remained on the bill for a number we never ordered in the first place.

This, when all we were doing in the first place was getting an additional phone.

So we went up to the store a second time, but they were busier, and the guy we got wasn't a manager.  He did what he could (or would), then gave us a direct number to the loyalty department, which he thought might be US-based.  According to a few Reddit threads I've looked at, there's no such thing as a loyalty department at Verizon, but I suspect it might just be a specific job role within the larger customer service department.  Anyway, when she called that number, she kept getting thick-accented half-incomprehensible agents, and her blood was starting to boil.  That's when I posted on here.  She gave herself some time to cool off, called back, and got Russ—who was very polite, understood our situation clearly at every turn, and was capable to straighten everything out.  Such a relief!

We're still going to check our account details for a little while, just to make sure...

[Amaury]

Windows 11's Photo Legacy Video Editor.

Since I got my first dashcam in February 2021 and started taking more regular drives—eventually getting a better dashcam in May 2022, which has night vision and better sound quality—I've been using Photos' Video Editor program to edit my videos with no issues. In October 2022, a new version of Photos came out, which, for whatever dumb Microsoft reason, removed Video Editor. Thankfully, the prior version, for those who preferred it, was still available for download for free in the Microsoft Store, so that's what I did. Once again, I had no issues. That is until almost a year ago now. I don't remember exactly when, but I think it's been just a little under a year now. I don't know if it's a problem with the Photos Legacy program as a whole or the Video Editor part of it, but it started randomly crashing on me.

The way I edit my videos is that after importing the files from the dashcam's SD card, I first make clips of varying length—which can be anywhere from five minutes to an hour—from my drive and upload them to my Facebook, naming them various things such as, "The Adventure Begins" or "Cruising through the Forest." I then edit my drive, taking out any still parts—parts where I'm pulled over at my drive destination at a park, for example, taking photos of my drive destination and not actually doing any driving—and save it. At a later time, I'll end up making a highlights video, where it's basically the individual clips I made put together, plus other parts of the drive that weren't made into clips because I couldn't figure out what to name them, especially for longer drives, where I've already used up a lot of names. And I like each clip from the same drive to have a different name. Or I can't name a clip "The Morning Commute" if my drive started in the afternoon, which has happened on a few occasions due to me waking up late, so I had to take a shorter drive to a different destination than what I originally had planned.

Anyway, it's gotten so bad now that I started using the Video Editor's backup feature, which is the closest thing it has to saving. It basically works the same, except instead of instantly saving or instantly opening, it has to export the video to a VPB file when creating the backup, which can take a couple of hours if a long drive, and likewise when importing the already created backup. That way I don't have to redo my edits, especially when I save my longer drives as two or more parts. I can't just CTRL + Z to undo and restore the first part and then delete the first part to save the second part, for example, because when the program crashes, it erases that temporary data, the same way it would if you closed and opened the program of your own free will. So, I was having to start from scratch and redo all my edits, which, when you've got a 12-hour drive, can get tedious. The random crashing pretty much only happens after a video is done saving. If I'm lucky, I can get two or three clips saved before it crashes. I don't care if it crashes while doing the clips since that's pretty easy to recover from. It's only annoying when trying to save the full drive. If it's a relatively short drive, the point is moot since there's only going to be one part to save, so if it crashed afterward, whatever, but when it's a longer drive that I split into two or more parts... There have been a couple of rare times where it crashed when first opening the program and while saving, but it's usually only after a video is done saving, regardless of length. It could be a 30-second clip. Clips that short are usually ones showcasing something like a close call with a deer.

Last year I tried Sony Vegas for $199, but I bought it more on impulse and later regretted it. Money down the drain. It had its own issues of being slow and freezing and was just way too complicated for what I wanted. I tried Clipchamp, which comes free with Windows 11, but I couldn't get that to work. I'm now looking at this other program called OpenShot, which looks promising and is free, so if it doesn't work out, no big deal. I don't really do anything special. When I'm making my clips, all I do is have text saying the route I'm on and either the county I'm in or the name of the highway I'm on. If I'm within a city boundary, I use the city instead of the county or highway name. And, of course, if I'm not on a numbered route, I just use the county or city.





That's my rant for the day of a mild annoyance.

[vdeane]

A couple things:

YouTube is now sending their search result links for many videos to playlists rather than just the video itself.  I now need to edit the URL most of the time to strip out the playlist.

Last week when I was in Maine, one of the hotels charged me for a night even though I had pre-paid via Hotels.com (and oddly, the amounts were different).  They never explained what happened, said they'd take the charge off, but it's taking a while and meanwhile I'm waiting for them to do so so I can pay my credit card bill.  Not to mention that my credit score just decreased, probably as a result of carrying the balance for this longer than usual, increasing my utilization percentage.

[kphoger]

I don't remember if I mentioned this or not...

Yes, I know this doesn't actually affect me in any way.  But it still bothers me.  Just being honest.

When people leave their windshield wipers on, even after it stops raining.  Also when people put their wipers on high speed but it's only light rain.

[Amaury]

I've noticed the same thing. I don't get people.

[kkt]

When the driver of the first car waiting at a red light doesn't pay attention and MOVE when the light turns green and it's clear.  If you want to stop and play on your phone, PULL OVER.

[kphoger]

Speaking of red lights...

It does not bother me when a driver who isn't turning right uses the right lane instead of the left lane when approaching a stoplight.  That's fine with me.  If I'm turning right, I can just wait.  No big deal.

But.

Yesterday, on my way home from work, a driver zoomed up in the left lane in front of a couple of us other drivers.  Then he forced his way into the right lane, so that he was second in line at the light.  The driver in front of him turned right on red.  But this guy wasn't even turning right at all.  The two of us that he'd zoomed in front of, however, were turning right.  So we both had to wait through three whole phases.  Why did he have to force his way into the right lane like that, if he was just going to go straight?

[JayhawkCO]

Speaking of red lights...

It does not bother me when a driver who isn't turning right uses the right lane instead of the left lane when approaching a stoplight.  That's fine with me.  If I'm turning right, I can just wait.  No big deal.

But.

Yesterday, on my way home from work, a driver zoomed up in the left lane in front of a couple of us other drivers.  Then he forced his way into the right lane, so that he was second in line at the light.  The driver in front of him turned right on red.  But this guy wasn't even turning right at all.  The two of us that he'd zoomed in front of, however, were turning right.  So we both had to wait through three whole phases.  Why did he have to force his way into the right lane like that, if he was just going to go straight?

Because a good chunk of our society has no awareness of their surroundings.

[Scott5114]

When the driver of the first car waiting at a red light doesn't pay attention and MOVE when the light turns green and it's clear.  If you want to stop and play on your phone, PULL OVER.

In Las Vegas it is part of the driving culture for nobody to move for a while when the light turns green. Too many high-speed red light runners to go when the light turns green. If anyone does that, they're probably a tourist.

[vdeane]

When the driver of the first car waiting at a red light doesn't pay attention and MOVE when the light turns green and it's clear.  If you want to stop and play on your phone, PULL OVER.

In Las Vegas it is part of the driving culture for nobody to move for a while when the light turns green. Too many high-speed red light runners to go when the light turns green. If anyone does that, they're probably a tourist.

Wouldn't it be more productive to just look both ways and go if it's clear rather than stay stopped every time?

[Scott5114]

When the driver of the first car waiting at a red light doesn't pay attention and MOVE when the light turns green and it's clear.  If you want to stop and play on your phone, PULL OVER.

In Las Vegas it is part of the driving culture for nobody to move for a while when the light turns green. Too many high-speed red light runners to go when the light turns green. If anyone does that, they're probably a tourist.

Wouldn't it be more productive to just look both ways and go if it's clear rather than stay stopped every time?

Given that some of the red light runners have been known to exceed 100 mph^[1][2], I'm not sure that would be sufficient.

[Max Rockatansky]

No amount of traffic light caution is going to save anyone from 103 MPH Challenger guy running a red light active for 29 seconds.

[Scott5114]

No amount of traffic light caution is going to save anyone from 103 MPH Challenger guy running a red light active for 29 seconds.

Of course, but who said drivers were rational?

[Scott5114]

Microwave dinners that have more steps than "put in microwave and set to X". If I'm putting it in the microwave for a while, taking it out, uncovering it, putting it back in for a while, stirring, putting it back in for a while—well, at this point I'm cooking, and if I'm doing that I might as well make something on the stove that's actually good.

[kphoger]

Microwave dinners that have more steps than "put in microwave and set to X". If I'm putting it in the microwave for a while, taking it out, uncovering it, putting it back in for a while, stirring, putting it back in for a while—well, at this point I'm cooking, and if I'm doing that I might as well make something on the stove that's actually good.

That's only a possibility if you're eating it at home.  If you brought it for lunch at work, and all they have is a sink and a microwave, then real stovetop cooking is out of the equation.