Minor things that bother you

[kphoger]

Microsoft Office programs like to be "smart" when selecting text and "helpfully" end up selecting entire words, adjacent characters, etc. even when you don't ask them too.  The problem is, there is a reason I'm not asking it to, and it very frequently results in even more work for me as I need to retype entire words (for example, if I'm deleting the beginning part of a sentence and need to capitalize the word after the part I delete, I'd like to be able to select the first letter of that word and every word in the sentence before it and then type the capital letter as I do in ever other program, but in Office programs I have to either retype the whole word, or leave the word alone when deleting the rest of the sentence, hit delete, and then type the capital letter).  Why have companies not yet figured out that their attempts to make programs "smart" only makes them dumber?

One of mine is that, when double-click on a single word (or some such string of characters) within a sentence, programs like to automatically include the space after the word.  Most times, I do not want that space included.

[jeffandnicole]

Microsoft Office programs like to be "smart" when selecting text and "helpfully" end up selecting entire words, adjacent characters, etc. even when you don't ask them too.  The problem is, there is a reason I'm not asking it to, and it very frequently results in even more work for me as I need to retype entire words (for example, if I'm deleting the beginning part of a sentence and need to capitalize the word after the part I delete, I'd like to be able to select the first letter of that word and every word in the sentence before it and then type the capital letter as I do in ever other program, but in Office programs I have to either retype the whole word, or leave the word alone when deleting the rest of the sentence, hit delete, and then type the capital letter).  Why have companies not yet figured out that their attempts to make programs "smart" only makes them dumber?

One of mine is that, when double-click on a single word (or some such string of characters) within a sentence, programs like to automatically include the space after the word.  Most times, I do not want that space included.

While we're on Microsoft Office, a complaint of mine in the Enterprise version: Outlook, when it suggests autofill options for names, changes the color of the initials on a daily basis.  Today, KS may be purple.  Tomorrow, it may be Orange. The next day? Blue.  It should remain consistent.

[CtrlAltDel]

Microsoft Office programs like to be "smart" when selecting text and "helpfully" end up selecting entire words, adjacent characters, etc. even when you don't ask them too.  The problem is, there is a reason I'm not asking it to, and it very frequently results in even more work for me as I need to retype entire words (for example, if I'm deleting the beginning part of a sentence and need to capitalize the word after the part I delete, I'd like to be able to select the first letter of that word and every word in the sentence before it and then type the capital letter as I do in ever other program, but in Office programs I have to either retype the whole word, or leave the word alone when deleting the rest of the sentence, hit delete, and then type the capital letter).  Why have companies not yet figured out that their attempts to make programs "smart" only makes them dumber?

At least in my version of Word, this can be turned off:

[roadman65]

How authorities in Seattle didnt prosecute the woman who drove her car onto an active commuter rail line who not only endangered herself, but all others riding the trains.

Oh the GPS told me to drive on the tracks 30 feet above ground.  Okay mam, I understand. Just dont do it again.

[vdeane]

Either one of my DVDs or my DVD/Bluray player has stopped working.  It freezes at the 58 minute mark no matter what.  I could skip right to that point or even to a later scene and it will still freeze.  Everything after the 58 minute mark is completely unplayable, and all controls lock so the only choice is to stop playback completely (and the first time, I actually had to turn the player off as even stop wouldn't work.

I tried skipping to a late scene on another disc, and that worked for the brief moment I tested, but since I didn't stick with it long and I don't have another player to test the disc in question on, how can I tell what's going on?  And I don't get why a disc would suddenly go bad like this.  I've never had issues with playing it before.

[D-Dey65]

The bureaucratic nimrods at my car insurance company just sent both my mother and I letters demanding that we sign some cocakamamie, convoluted insurance policy change that has more doublespeak than 1984 by George Orwell. Neither one of us can make head or tails of what they're telling us.

[Route66Fan]

Either one of my DVDs or my DVD/Bluray player has stopped working.  It freezes at the 58 minute mark no matter what.  I could skip right to that point or even to a later scene and it will still freeze.  Everything after the 58 minute mark is completely unplayable, and all controls lock so the only choice is to stop playback completely (and the first time, I actually had to turn the player off as even stop wouldn't work.

I tried skipping to a late scene on another disc, and that worked for the brief moment I tested, but since I didn't stick with it long and I don't have another player to test the disc in question on, how can I tell what's going on?  And I don't get why a disc would suddenly go bad like this.  I've never had issues with playing it before.

It sounds like the DVD could have disc rot.

[D-Dey65]

Either one of my DVDs or my DVD/Bluray player has stopped working.  It freezes at the 58 minute mark no matter what.  I could skip right to that point or even to a later scene and it will still freeze.  Everything after the 58 minute mark is completely unplayable, and all controls lock so the only choice is to stop playback completely (and the first time, I actually had to turn the player off as even stop wouldn't work.

I tried skipping to a late scene on another disc, and that worked for the brief moment I tested, but since I didn't stick with it long and I don't have another player to test the disc in question on, how can I tell what's going on?  And I don't get why a disc would suddenly go bad like this.  I've never had issues with playing it before.

It sounds like the DVD could have disc rot.

I hope none of mine have disc rot. I remember a series of news stories from a few years ago about a lot of the ones made by Warner Brothers getting that.

I know one thing, for some stupid reason, every DVD copy of "The Three Amigos" stops part of the way into the closing credits for no reason. That's why I never got rid of my VHS copy.

[kkt]

How authorities in Seattle didnt prosecute the woman who drove her car onto an active commuter rail line who not only endangered herself, but all others riding the trains.

Oh the GPS told me to drive on the tracks 30 feet above ground.  Okay mam, I understand. Just dont do it again.

She was not DUI and they can make claims against her and her insurance for the monetary damages.  I don't think recidivism will be a problem with her.  Criminal charges are expensive and time consuming and putting her in prison would be a waste of space.

[kkt]

Ultra bright headlights.

Someone coming towards me on a 2-lane yesterday had lights so bright they blinded me even though it was the middle of the afternoon.  Hint:  other drivers will have a hard time judging distance from you if you blind them.

[vdeane]

Either one of my DVDs or my DVD/Bluray player has stopped working.  It freezes at the 58 minute mark no matter what.  I could skip right to that point or even to a later scene and it will still freeze.  Everything after the 58 minute mark is completely unplayable, and all controls lock so the only choice is to stop playback completely (and the first time, I actually had to turn the player off as even stop wouldn't work.

I tried skipping to a late scene on another disc, and that worked for the brief moment I tested, but since I didn't stick with it long and I don't have another player to test the disc in question on, how can I tell what's going on?  And I don't get why a disc would suddenly go bad like this.  I've never had issues with playing it before.

It sounds like the DVD could have disc rot.

How common is disc rot?  I heard that some WB discs have the issue, but I thought legit pressed discs shouldn't have that issue outside of those.  In this case, it's MGM/20th Century Fox.

I did a bit more checking, and it looks like proper playback resumes around the 1:07:00 mark.  Is there anything that can be done to fix the disc?

[Molandfreak]

Either one of my DVDs or my DVD/Bluray player has stopped working.  It freezes at the 58 minute mark no matter what.  I could skip right to that point or even to a later scene and it will still freeze.  Everything after the 58 minute mark is completely unplayable, and all controls lock so the only choice is to stop playback completely (and the first time, I actually had to turn the player off as even stop wouldn't work.

I tried skipping to a late scene on another disc, and that worked for the brief moment I tested, but since I didn't stick with it long and I don't have another player to test the disc in question on, how can I tell what's going on?  And I don't get why a disc would suddenly go bad like this.  I've never had issues with playing it before.

It sounds like the DVD could have disc rot.

How common is disc rot?  I heard that some WB discs have the issue, but I thought legit pressed discs shouldn't have that issue outside of those.  In this case, it's MGM/20th Century Fox.

I did a bit more checking, and it looks like proper playback resumes around the 1:07:00 mark.  Is there anything that can be done to fix the disc?

Is it a particularly rare release? You could try wiping the data side gently with a small amount of isopropyl alcohol on a microfiber cloth as a last resort, but I doubt it would fix the issue since it's a consistent problem.

[SSOWorld]

Ultra bright headlights.

Someone coming towards me on a 2-lane yesterday had lights so bright they blinded me even though it was the middle of the afternoon.  Hint:  other drivers will have a hard time judging distance from you if you blind them.

Projector headlights. These are quite bright and certainly make it look like high beams are on.

[vdeane]

Three more things:

1. Weather radar that lies.  If there's only one blob, there shouldn't be a second rain event after the first has passed!

2. Facebook is now hiding comments on post and the option to switch from "most relevant" to "all comments" has been removed.  It makes it impossible to follow conversations and I even had a case where I got a notification that someone had replied to a comment of mine, but both my comment and the reply where hidden!  I've also noticed that the number of posts seems sparser than before, like I'm missing something, and someone mentioned not seeing one of mine despite using the Friends view.  I can only assume that Facebook is hiding things because they plan to offer "see all posts/comments" as a feature of the paid version in the future and that they hope by taking it away now, people won't notice that they're asking people to pay for what used to be free.

3. I've lost track of the number of weeks recently where the start of (or even most of) the local news has been cut off by sports.  It's gone from something that would be concentrated in March and only happen occasionally to happening nearly all the time.  To make matters worse, Nextar now returns to the local news "already in progress", and they've made their stream require an account to properly view, even though it's free.  Since I don't believe I should have to create an account even though it's free, especially as I never needed one before, I'm stuck with the five minute preview and restarting a new Firefox private browsing session every 4-5 minutes, trying to time the restart with sections I don't care too much if I miss.  And to top it all off, the online stream is delayed by a full minute or two, making switching back to the TV once the sporting preemption ends a challenge.  One time the delay was longer than the commercial break I wanted to use to make the switch!  This also means that I can't watch on the TV, since these things make streaming to the TV a poor experience, I need to have the TV feed on to time out the switch, and their feed doesn't include ABC World News Tonight.  All of this is consistently ruining my Sunday dinner experience.  And the changes to their streaming, emphasizing online programming when not doing a live news broadcast, means that you can't just catch a replay whenever, either.

[Molandfreak]

Non-personalized ads. Although it's incredibly fucked up how Facebook and Instagram collect your information to present personalized ad content, at least the principle of being able to hide specific content you don't want to see is entirely free. Not true for Duolingo or some freemium games.

[Max Rockatansky]

I find it annoying when I write some lengthy blog and someone wants to argue over minor pedantry regarding a single sentence.  That happened with the rewrite of the CA 168/Piute Pass Highway blog I posted to our Facebook page today.  Specifically the contention pertained to the amount of detail and did/did not go into regarding the spurs of the Midland Trail west of Westgard Pass.  The Midland Trail has barely anything to do with the Piute Pass Highway proposal.

[LilianaUwU]

I find it annoying when I write some lengthy blog and someone wants to argue over minor pedantry regarding a single sentence.  That happened with the rewrite of the CA 168/Piute Pass Highway blog I posted to our Facebook page today.  Specifically the contention pertained to the amount of detail and did/did not go into regarding the spurs of the Midland Trail west of Westgard Pass.  The Midland Trail has barely anything to do with the Piute Pass Highway proposal.

Isn't being pedantic and nitpicky the one thing that's the most important about roadgeekery?

[Max Rockatansky]

I find it annoying when I write some lengthy blog and someone wants to argue over minor pedantry regarding a single sentence.  That happened with the rewrite of the CA 168/Piute Pass Highway blog I posted to our Facebook page today.  Specifically the contention pertained to the amount of detail and did/did not go into regarding the spurs of the Midland Trail west of Westgard Pass.  The Midland Trail has barely anything to do with the Piute Pass Highway proposal.

Isn't being pedantic and nitpicky the one thing that's the most important about roadgeekery?

I guess?  I rewrote the blog in question because I'm incorporating into a museum presentation.  The normals don't really tend to be all that enthusiastic regarding overuse of pedantry. 

I don't know, it might speak more to the direction our page is heading. Most of our followers nowadays that aren't traditional road enthusiasts.  We seem to be mostly drawing people who are into driving and history. 

FWIW, the person to whom I'm referring is a traditional road fan (non-forum member).  They don't mean anything malicious but they aren't getting that I find what they say to be often annoying.

[Scott5114]

It shall be unlawful in this State for any medical patient intake forms, surveys, questionnaires, or other such means of collecting information from a medical patient or their guardians, proxies, or assigns, to ask the same question or collect the same information (including the patient's name, address, or today's date) more than once per appointment. For each instance of a field being duplicated on such forms, the provider shall be required to credit to the patient 10% of the chargemaster price for services rendered, or $500, whichever is greater.

[TheCatalyst31]

It shall be unlawful in this State for any medical patient intake forms, surveys, questionnaires, or other such means of collecting information from a medical patient or their guardians, proxies, or assigns, to ask the same question or collect the same information (including the patient's name, address, or today's date) more than once per appointment. For each instance of a field being duplicated on such forms, the provider shall be required to credit to the patient 10% of the chargemaster price for services rendered, or $500, whichever is greater.

We'll call it the Health Intake Paperwork Prevention Act, or HIPPA for short.

On a more serious note, it's medically necessary to repeatedly confirm your name and date of birth even if it gets annoying, because they really don't want to mix up two patients. I suppose they could give you one of those scannable hospital bracelets for outpatient visits, but that might be more annoying.

[Scott5114]

It shall be unlawful in this State for any medical patient intake forms, surveys, questionnaires, or other such means of collecting information from a medical patient or their guardians, proxies, or assigns, to ask the same question or collect the same information (including the patient's name, address, or today's date) more than once per appointment. For each instance of a field being duplicated on such forms, the provider shall be required to credit to the patient 10% of the chargemaster price for services rendered, or $500, whichever is greater.

We'll call it the Health Intake Paperwork Prevention Act, or HIPPA for short.

On a more serious note, it's medically necessary to repeatedly confirm your name and date of birth even if it gets annoying, because they really don't want to mix up two patients. I suppose they could give you one of those scannable hospital bracelets for outpatient visits, but that might be more annoying.

Sure, and it makes some amount of sense when the form is on physical paper and thus there's a risk of a page getting separated and not knowing which patient it is or which packet it belongs to. (A stapler is a handy thing to own.) But these days I mostly fill these things out on the computer, and a lot of the time they are clearly a 1:1 digitization of the paper forms. Which means I get to fill out my name and address (surely the latter isn't needed on every one of these forms—does my psychologist want to punch it into Google Maps to see if my neighborhood is responsible for the answers to the depression questionnaire or something?) ten or fifteen times, and every signature line has a date field after, even though the server I'm submitting the form to should know perfectly well what the date is when I submit it.

It smacks to me of people just kind of ad-hoc creating a process by copying things they've seen before without thinking why they're doing it that way or who it's intending to serve, ending up with something that's disrespectful of everyone's time.

[kphoger]

Isn't being pedantic and nitpicky the one thing that's the most important about roadgeekery?

Technically, those are two things.  Pedantry and nit-picking, while related concepts, aren't entirely the same thing.  It's quite possible to be a nit-picker who isn't pedantic.

[Max Rockatansky]

Isn't being pedantic and nitpicky the one thing that's the most important about roadgeekery?

Technically, those are two things.  Pedantry and nit-picking, while related concepts, aren't entirely the same thing.  It's quite possible to be a nit-picker who isn't pedantic.

I can confirm the person I'm referencing is both.

[kphoger]

Isn't being pedantic and nitpicky the one thing that's the most important about roadgeekery?

Technically, those are two things.  Pedantry and nit-picking, while related concepts, aren't entirely the same thing.  It's quite possible to be a nit-picker who isn't pedantic.

I can confirm the person I'm referencing is both.

Well, you don't have to get all anal about it.

[Max Rockatansky]

Isn't being pedantic and nitpicky the one thing that's the most important about roadgeekery?

Technically, those are two things.  Pedantry and nit-picking, while related concepts, aren't entirely the same thing.  It's quite possible to be a nit-picker who isn't pedantic.

I can confirm the person I'm referencing is both.

Well, you don't have to get all anal about it.

Anal or pissy?  I tend think the latter has stronger feelings behind it versus the former.