Minor things that bother you

[Beltway]

On the e-mail signature cards we use at work, "P" stands for "Phone".
This means that some people's signature cards have something like this:
C: 316-123-4567  |  P. 316-987-6543
That bothers me, because a cell phone is a phone.

A work phone is a phone.

No, I'm pretty sure a work phone is actually a type of carburetor.

No actually a short wave radio transceiver.

[Molandfreak]

On the e-mail signature cards we use at work, "P" stands for "Phone".
This means that some people's signature cards have something like this:
C: 316-123-4567  |  P. 316-987-6543
That bothers me, because a cell phone is a phone.

A work phone is a phone.

No, I'm pretty sure a work phone is actually a type of carburetor.

No actually a short wave radio transceiver.

Yeesh, I can feel the humor being sucked out of the room.

[Scott5114]

On the e-mail signature cards we use at work, "P" stands for "Phone".
This means that some people's signature cards have something like this:
C: 316-123-4567  |  P. 316-987-6543
That bothers me, because a cell phone is a phone.

A work phone is a phone.

No, I'm pretty sure a work phone is actually a type of carburetor.

No actually a short wave radio transceiver.

I think a work phone is a commune in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France.

[catch22]

I do not like this.  I do not like this one bit.

Neither does my wife after I pointed this out to her.

[1995hoo]

You know what?  If the police want me to walk on the sidewalk instead of the street, then they should start ticketing people who park their cars across the sidewalk.

Sidewalk parkers are a plague in our neighborhood, especially when the people who do it have their garages crammed full of household detritus. Some of them leave their cars protruding out into the street when they do it. I've always wondered how the guy one block over who does that with his Aston Martin would react if somebody hit it, except his street is a dead end and he lives down near the dead end so it's highly unlikely it'll be hit.

[D-Dey65]

A friend of mine from church is getting ready to sell a work van.  It's a combo passenger/cargo van, and he and his helper were trying to figure out how to get the seats back in.  After racking their brains, he finally asked ChatGPT for help.  Instantly, ChatGPT returned with not only instructions, but a diagram.  After looking at the diagram, they realized they were doing things entirely backward.  Problem solved!  Got the seats installed lickety-split.

Not everything about A.I. is bad...

You're right. I've seen A.I. doing both good and bad. Until the end of last year, there were two people who used A.I. to make alternate covers of existing well-known tunes. One channel had 1970's hard rock versions of songs like "The Humpty Dance," by Digital Underground and "Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats, 80's girlie techno-pop versions of "Black Hole Sun," by Alice in Chains, Pointer Sisters-type R&B versions of "Talk Dirty to Me," by Poison, and dozens of others. Then YouTube blocked the guy for copyright violations. In the meantime, this one young lady who runs the Old Time Nostalgia Channel, which has fake versions of old commercials and sometimes TV shows. It's not always 100% accurate, but it's still a lot of fun.

On the other hand, A.I. can get a lot of things wrong. I once sent ChatGPT a small copy of a drawing I made of some cartoon character I drew years ago, with the promise of making a "real life" version of the character. It got it all wrong. That's not as bad as it can get though. It can be used to con people into thinking that Ronald Reagan said the holocaust didn't happen (somebody tried that once) or that Jimmy Carter wanted us to surrender to the USSR in his second term.

[vdeane]

My local grocery store is doing a revamp and the new floor tile they're putting down looks like the stuff they were using 30 years ago.  I thought remodeled stores were supposed to look more modern, not less?

[thenetwork]

My local grocery store is doing a revamp and the new floor tile they're putting down looks like the stuff they were using 30 years ago.  I thought remodeled stores were supposed to look more modern, not less?

The current trend in my area is for stores to pull up the tiles and just polish the bare concrete below.

[D-Dey65]

I can no longer watch movies and TV shows from my Amazon page. My Kindle Fire doesn't go online, my FireTV stick doesn't work, and watching them from my PC requires a PIN number I didn't even know existed.

Their technical support department didn't do anything for me either.

[vdeane]

My local grocery store is doing a revamp and the new floor tile they're putting down looks like the stuff they were using 30 years ago.  I thought remodeled stores were supposed to look more modern, not less?

The current trend in my area is for stores to pull up the tiles and just polish the bare concrete below.

Yeah, that's standard for the Market32 locations, along with light brown tile, which makes the white odd.  The white looks like something I'd expect out of an old Price Chopper location (Market32 is Price Chopper's newer brand and what remodeled stores become).  Unless the brown is what happens when the white tiles get a bunch of that polish on them.

[1995hoo]

I can no longer watch movies and TV shows from my Amazon page. My Kindle Fire doesn't go online, my FireTV stick doesn't work, and watching them from my PC requires a PIN number I didn't even know existed.

Their technical support department didn't do anything for me either.

I'm somewhat disappointed to have received an e-mail that my Kindle will no longer be supported, and will no longer be able to download books, after the middle of next month. I've had it since 2010 (my parents gave it to me that Christmas) and it still works just fine other than the cellular capability having gone defunct a few years back because of the 3G shutdown. They did give me a 20% off code for a new one, at least.

[kphoger]

You know what?  If the police want me to walk on the sidewalk instead of the street, then they should start ticketing people who park their cars across the sidewalk.

Sidewalk parkers are a plague in our neighborhood, especially when the people who do it have their garages crammed full of household detritus. Some of them leave their cars protruding out into the street when they do it. I've always wondered how the guy one block over who does that with his Aston Martin would react if somebody hit it, except his street is a dead end and he lives down near the dead end so it's highly unlikely it'll be hit.

In our neighborhood, it's because the sidewalks are about 1½ car lengths from the garage if you have anything other than short sedans.

[1995hoo]

You know what?  If the police want me to walk on the sidewalk instead of the street, then they should start ticketing people who park their cars across the sidewalk.

Sidewalk parkers are a plague in our neighborhood, especially when the people who do it have their garages crammed full of household detritus. Some of them leave their cars protruding out into the street when they do it. I've always wondered how the guy one block over who does that with his Aston Martin would react if somebody hit it, except his street is a dead end and he lives down near the dead end so it's highly unlikely it'll be hit.

In our neighborhood, it's because the sidewalks are about 1½ car lengths from the garage if you have anything other than short sedans.

This sort of thing is more common where I live. There are some houses where you can fit two cars into the driveway. The townhouses across the street from mine, for example, have longer driveways because they were originally planned as non-garage units with assigned parking and so were set back further from the street to allow for the parking spaces. But the builder had a harder time selling non-garage units and therefore changed the plan. As a general matter, though, most of the driveways for houses with one-car garages are long enough to park one car in the driveway with some space left over, although some of them have minimal space left over.

[kphoger]

Here, it's more that the sidewalks could stand to be closer to the road.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/cmkhdhCeDLcZL8Xr8
https://maps.app.goo.gl/9FiCExDBc2gnVenV7

[D-Dey65]

I can no longer watch movies and TV shows from my Amazon page. My Kindle Fire doesn't go online, my FireTV stick doesn't work, and watching them from my PC requires a PIN number I didn't even know existed.

Their technical support department didn't do anything for me either.

I'm somewhat disappointed to have received an e-mail that my Kindle will no longer be supported, and will no longer be able to download books, after the middle of next month. I've had it since 2010 (my parents gave it to me that Christmas) and it still works just fine other than the cellular capability having gone defunct a few years back because of the 3G shutdown. They did give me a 20% off code for a new one, at least.

I don't remember seeing such an e-mail, so I should go looking for it. I'll bet whatever "discount" I get will be crap, and I'll have to take everything off manually before I get it onto a new one, and then reregister everything.

I will admit, I can still read from it. But I can't set reset the clock or calendar.

[1995hoo]

I can no longer watch movies and TV shows from my Amazon page. My Kindle Fire doesn't go online, my FireTV stick doesn't work, and watching them from my PC requires a PIN number I didn't even know existed.

Their technical support department didn't do anything for me either.

I'm somewhat disappointed to have received an e-mail that my Kindle will no longer be supported, and will no longer be able to download books, after the middle of next month. I've had it since 2010 (my parents gave it to me that Christmas) and it still works just fine other than the cellular capability having gone defunct a few years back because of the 3G shutdown. They did give me a 20% off code for a new one, at least.

I don't remember seeing such an e-mail, so I should go looking for it. I'll bet whatever "discount" I get will be crap, and I'll have to take everything off manually before I get it onto a new one, and then reregister everything.

I will admit, I can still read from it. But I can't set reset the clock or calendar.

The message came last Wednesday afternoon and it said they're discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier. Specifically, it says, "Affected devices include Kindle 1st and 2nd Generation, Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation."

[D-Dey65]

The message came last Wednesday afternoon and it said they're discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier. Specifically, it says, "Affected devices include Kindle 1st and 2nd Generation, Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation."

Mine is the Kindle Fire 3rd Generation.  I've been having problems with this for a little longer, though.

[1995hoo]

The message came last Wednesday afternoon and it said they're discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier. Specifically, it says, "Affected devices include Kindle 1st and 2nd Generation, Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation."

Mine is the Kindle Fire 3rd Generation.  I've been having problems with this for a little longer, though.

I have a Kindle Keyboard. I can't really complain per se that they're phasing it out. After all, I've had it for over 15 years and not many electronic devices last that long these days. That's why I said earlier that "I'm somewhat disappointed" to learn of the end of support. I had a problem a few years ago where for a while I was unable to download to it even via wifi, but I discovered that using a USB-to-MicroUSB cable worked as a workaround, and eventually it started downloading again. I thought the end was at hand a few years ago when that happened, so I guess its continued operation since then was sort of a nice surprise.

My Kindle can't access the Kindle Store anymore—they phased that out several years ago—so the keyboard feature has really been kind of pointless for a while. The main thing on which I'm torn now is whether to get the version with color support. I don't read comic books (or "graphic novels," to use the marketing term), but a lot of books I do read tend to have maps in the front. With my present device, my workaround is to download to the Kindle app on my iPad and view the graphics there. I could just forego a new Kindle and use my iPad or phone, but the actual Kindle devices are smaller and lighter and thus better for trips when I don't want to take my iPad with me.

[bugo]

Until the end of last year, there were two people who used A.I. to make alternate covers of existing well-known tunes. One channel had 1970's hard rock versions of songs like "The Humpty Dance," by Digital Underground and "Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats, 80's girlie techno-pop versions of "Black Hole Sun," by Alice in Chains, Pointer Sisters-type R&B versions of "Talk Dirty to Me," by Poison, and dozens of others.

That's theft, and I find it morally reprehensible. I'd be irate if somebody stole music, photographs or other things I created from me. AI=plagiarism. I hate AI with every fiber of my being. There's nothing good about it.

"Black Hole Sun" is by Soundgarden, not Alice in Chains. Those two bands sound nothing alike.

[bugo]

I'm somewhat disappointed to have received an e-mail that my Kindle will no longer be supported, and will no longer be able to download books, after the middle of next month. I've had it since 2010 (my parents gave it to me that Christmas) and it still works just fine other than the cellular capability having gone defunct a few years back because of the 3G shutdown. They did give me a 20% off code for a new one, at least.

'

There are sites like Anna's Archive on the open seas if you want to download books. Sure, it isn't exactly kosher, but if Amazon is going to do that to their customers, they get what they deserve.

[kurumi]

"Black Hole Sun" is by Soundgarden, not Alice in Chains. Those two bands sound nothing alike.

According to classic rock stations, both artists have released exactly one song, and they're not the same song:
* Soundgarden: Black Hole Sun
* Alice in Chains: Man in the Box

(inch-deep, repetitive playlists is another minor thing that bothers)

[JayhawkCO]

"Black Hole Sun" is by Soundgarden, not Alice in Chains. Those two bands sound nothing alike.

According to classic rock stations, both artists have released exactly one song, and they're not the same song:
* Soundgarden: Black Hole Sun
* Alice in Chains: Man in the Box

(inch-deep, repetitive playlists is another minor thing that bothers)

When I used to listen to the radio, I'd often hear Spoonman, Fell on Black Days, Rooster, No Excuses, Them Bones, etc.

[kphoger]

(inch-deep, repetitive playlists is another minor thing that bothers)

YouTube Music has a section called "Albums for you".  Most times, it includes the album I literally just finished listening to.  Come on, suggest something else, can't you?

[GaryV]

Come on, suggest something else, can't you?

No it can't. It uses the same algorithm that shows you ads for toilet seats after you have just ordered one from Lowe's. C'mon, how many toilet seats do you think I need?
 

[vdeane]

I went to register for a conference today.  Instead of sending the confirmation as an email like normal, they send it as a calendar invite.  I'd rather not have it that way, since I set up my own calendar events for these that incorporate drive time and whatnot.  Plus how am I supposed to remember to check there instead of searching for an email (which I would normally just keep in my inbox until the conference)?

Honestly, calendar invites kinda suck in general.  Sure, their purpose of allowing RSVPs is necessary, but I often like things formatted neater than others bother to and it's annoying.