Minor things that bother you

[1995hoo]

... Central Laggard Time. ...

The shitstorm that would ensue when a radio or TV reporter pronounces "CLT" as a word makes me think this should happen. 

[wxfree]

Not all text or print needs to scream "I'm creative!" either. 

Quite the opposite.  I like letters that are clear and easy to read.  Especially for something I'm going to be reading for a while, like a book, newspaper, or magazine.  I don't care about pretty or creative when I'm going to be reading for hours.  I've seen excessive creativity, business signs which beautiful loops and swoops that are so pretty and creative, you can't tell what it says.  They're so creative, they made up a whole new alphabet.

[kphoger]

I knew someone who did an online radio show, so rather than just giving a time, he would follow with "Central Standard Time."  Always Central Standard Time, no matter what part of the year it is.  I tried to explain when to say Central Daylight Time, or just say Central, but he was someone who couldn't be corrected.

My old boss did that, and I attempted to explain it to him too.  Then he googled {what time is it right now in central standard time} to prove me wrong, and of course, with Google knowing that his location observed DST, it told him what time it was in Central Daylight Time.  But, to him, that proved him right.  He finally decided to call it "Central Standard Daylight Time" instead, and at that point I gave up all hope.

[1995hoo]

Not all text or print needs to scream "I'm creative!" either. 

Quite the opposite.  I like letters that are clear and easy to read.  Especially for something I'm going to be reading for a while, like a book, newspaper, or magazine.  I don't care about pretty or creative when I'm going to be reading for hours.  I've seen excessive creativity, business signs which beautiful loops and swoops that are so pretty and creative, you can't tell what it says.  They're so creative, they made up a whole new alphabet.

Heh. See this page discussing what typography. The two road sign pictures on that page illustrate your point extremely well. (I tried using img tags, but the images wouldn't display. The author probably wouldn't like it anyway.)

[kphoger]

I tried using img tags, but the images wouldn't display.

That's weird.  Same thing on my end.

[thenetwork]

Many county-maintained roads in Garfield County, Colorado use Bodoni font text on their street blades.

[interstatefan990]

Not all text or print needs to scream "I'm creative!" either. 

It's about laziness too. Calibri is basically sending the message: "I opened Microsoft Word, typed this document up, and printed it out in three minutes". Things can be aesthetically pleasing without needing to exude creativity.

[Scott5114]

My understanding, based on what I read somewhere, is that it was selected for use in directory paths because the standard slash had already been chosen for command-line delimiters (like "dir /p"), but that might not actually be correct.

That's pretty much it, yeah. Of course, this is only true on Windows, and the Unix people have been making fun of this decision ever since it was made. On Unix, command-line switches are hyphens (e.g. the Unix equivalent to dir /a is ls -a) and directory paths use normal forward slashes. This is also why URLs use forward slashes; Web servers typically ran on Unix (and nowadays on Linux).

On Unix, backslashes are used for "escape sequences" where they combine with the following character to represent something which would be awkward to input or which should be interpreted literally. So on the command line, different arguments are generally separated with a space, but if you want a literal space to be sent as part of an argument, you precede it with a backslash. (e.g. If you have files called "dog" and "pics" then ls -l dog pics would list both of them along with file permission info, size, and last-modified date, but if you have a single file called "dog pics" with a space you would need to type ls -l dog\ pics...which is why Unix people rarely put spaces in file names.) A literal newline can be represented by \n when hitting enter would count as a "submit" or signal the end of a command. All of this is nice because it means you very rarely actually have a backslash appear in finished work, since it usually just serves as a signal to a program to do something out of the ordinary.

[TheCatalyst31]

... Central Laggard Time. ...

The shitstorm that would ensue when a radio or TV reporter pronounces "CLT" as a word makes me think this should happen. 

I wonder if Charlotte reporters have this problem with their airport. I've certainly heard plenty of jokes about male pilots not being able to find it.

[kkt]

I am indifferent to whether July 4 falls on Saturday or Sunday, but I like it when it falls on either of them because it means I will get Friday or Monday, respectively, as the holiday. My office has adopted a somewhat ad hoc approach to the new June 19 holiday. Last year, June 19 fell on Thursday and July 4 fell on Friday, so we decided to work June 19 and then take July 3 off instead to get a four-day weekend. This year, with June 19 on Friday and July 4 on Saturday, we observed June 19 to get two three-day weekends. Presumably we will do the same next year (with the holidays observed on Friday, June 18, and Monday, July 5). I suppose in 2028 we might skip June 19 in favor of a four-day weekend again with July 4 falling on Tuesday.

NYS will give Monday off for holidays falling on Sunday but not Friday off for holidays falling on Saturday; instead we get a day of holiday leave which I'll be using later in the month to attend a bridal shower.

could you take that holiday leave on the 3rd if you'd wanted to?

[vdeane]

I am indifferent to whether July 4 falls on Saturday or Sunday, but I like it when it falls on either of them because it means I will get Friday or Monday, respectively, as the holiday. My office has adopted a somewhat ad hoc approach to the new June 19 holiday. Last year, June 19 fell on Thursday and July 4 fell on Friday, so we decided to work June 19 and then take July 3 off instead to get a four-day weekend. This year, with June 19 on Friday and July 4 on Saturday, we observed June 19 to get two three-day weekends. Presumably we will do the same next year (with the holidays observed on Friday, June 18, and Monday, July 5). I suppose in 2028 we might skip June 19 in favor of a four-day weekend again with July 4 falling on Tuesday.

NYS will give Monday off for holidays falling on Sunday but not Friday off for holidays falling on Saturday; instead we get a day of holiday leave which I'll be using later in the month to attend a bridal shower.

could you take that holiday leave on the 3rd if you'd wanted to?

No (as we got it on the fourth), but I do still have that floater from Lincoln's Birthday, so I could have made a four day weekend without touching vacation if I really wanted to (although with how light traffic has seemed to be this July, driving on peak travel days might not have been a problem).  But I didn't want to bounce to Rochester that often in a short period of time (200 miles of Thruway gets old fast) anyways.  Had I gotten a long weekend for it this year, I probably would have just gone and clinched the Champlain Parkway instead.

All this said, but many people actually don't use holiday leave at all.  It never expires, so many people just save it until they retire, then use it for a "vacation" after their last day in the office before they officially leave payroll.  Now, the risk of that is that holiday leave doesn't get paid out when you leave either, so if anything happens to make you leave unexpectedly early (such as the state having a layoff event, although the last time that came close to happening was 2011), it's just gone.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Yeah, Christmas on Tuesday or Wednesday is a pain because it just throws the work week into all kinds of off-routine mess where you might be in 2 non-consecutive days, or be off M-W and go back in Thursday for a lame duck end to the week.

[I-57/Route 66 Fan]

Wearing shoes in the house, with the exception of slippers.

[kphoger]

Many county-maintained roads in Garfield County, Colorado use Bodoni font text on their street blades.

Are they stuck in 1998?

Calibri is basically sending the message: "I opened Microsoft Word, typed this document up, and printed it out in three minutes". Things can be aesthetically pleasing without needing to exude creativity.

And, in most contexts in real life, the thing you're typing doesn't need to be aesthetically pleasing or send a non-laziness message to its reader.  In most contexts, it's just a way of producing words on paper.

Yeah, Christmas on Tuesday or Wednesday is a pain because it just throws the work week into all kinds of off-routine mess where you might be in 2 non-consecutive days, or be off M-W and go back in Thursday for a lame duck end to the week.

I love it, because I do most of my work on Mondays and Fridays.  The days in between are a lot less busy, so having them off as a holiday doesn't throw me off very much at all.

It's actually Thanksgiving that throws me off.  I have a deadline on Fridays that affects how many days' worth of work our company gets paid on time.  If I have Friday off, then I can plan ahead and get everything done on Thursday.  But, if I have both Thursday and Friday off, then I can't do that.  Because of this, I'm the only one at my work who goes in on Friday morning that week—just long enough to get that part of my job done, and then I clock out and go home.

[vdeane]

Vivaldi 8.1 appears to have dropped Manifest v2 following Chrome's lead, so now I need to switch from UBO to UBO Lite, which is less effective/capable (although still much more so than Vivaldi's built-in adblocker, which is just garbage), and can no longer hide elements on a permanent basis (and I had been using it for blocking the annoying blue "upgrade" button and adjacent AI button in gmail).

It's too bad Firefox doesn't have all the browser features that I have come to rely on.  In particular, the lack of a reading list that can sync between desktop and Android is a deal-breaker for me, as being able to pass links between my phone and laptop is very important for me.  It appears that the reason they don't have one is because of Pocket, but Pocket is not the same thing and doesn't function the same way - I've tried.

[gonealookin]

I use Brave as my primary browser.  I think it has the features that sound important to you.

[vdeane]

I use Brave as my primary browser.  I think it has the features that sound important to you.

I've heard that there are sync issues.  Have they improved those?  Although at the time I had both my desktop and a travel laptop in addition to my phone, so just being laptop/phone probably simplifies my situation by a lot since it removes a little-used third computer from the equation.

[gonealookin]

I use Brave as my primary browser.  I think it has the features that sound important to you.

I've heard that there are sync issues.  Have they improved those?  Although at the time I had both my desktop and a travel laptop in addition to my phone, so just being laptop/phone probably simplifies my situation by a lot since it removes a little-used third computer from the equation.

I haven't had any problem with Brave's sync.  I run it on my main laptop (Windows), my travel laptop (also Windows), my Android phone and a Chromebook (which I keep in the bedroom to use Chromecast on my non-smart old bedroom TV).

[Scott5114]

And, in most contexts in real life, the thing you're typing doesn't need to be aesthetically pleasing or send a non-laziness message to its reader.  In most contexts, it's just a way of producing words on paper.

I take the aesthetics as part of the message. If someone doesn't think it's worth their time to make the message aesthetically pleasing, it obviously wasn't a very important message to them, so it's not an important message to me.

It's too bad Firefox doesn't have all the browser features that I have come to rely on.  In particular, the lack of a reading list that can sync between desktop and Android is a deal-breaker for me, as being able to pass links between my phone and laptop is very important for me.

This sort of convenience feature is how Big Tech bribes you into agreeing to remain under their thumb. Your only choice if you want to avoid their control is to break the addiction to convenience.

I pass links between my devices by kicking text files (well, .md) between them.

[kkt]

I am indifferent to whether July 4 falls on Saturday or Sunday, but I like it when it falls on either of them because it means I will get Friday or Monday, respectively, as the holiday. My office has adopted a somewhat ad hoc approach to the new June 19 holiday. Last year, June 19 fell on Thursday and July 4 fell on Friday, so we decided to work June 19 and then take July 3 off instead to get a four-day weekend. This year, with June 19 on Friday and July 4 on Saturday, we observed June 19 to get two three-day weekends. Presumably we will do the same next year (with the holidays observed on Friday, June 18, and Monday, July 5). I suppose in 2028 we might skip June 19 in favor of a four-day weekend again with July 4 falling on Tuesday.

NYS will give Monday off for holidays falling on Sunday but not Friday off for holidays falling on Saturday; instead we get a day of holiday leave which I'll be using later in the month to attend a bridal shower.

could you take that holiday leave on the 3rd if you'd wanted to?

No (as we got it on the fourth), but I do still have that floater from Lincoln's Birthday, so I could have made a four day weekend without touching vacation if I really wanted to (although with how light traffic has seemed to be this July, driving on peak travel days might not have been a problem).  But I didn't want to bounce to Rochester that often in a short period of time (200 miles of Thruway gets old fast) anyways.  Had I gotten a long weekend for it this year, I probably would have just gone and clinched the Champlain Parkway instead.

All this said, but many people actually don't use holiday leave at all.  It never expires, so many people just save it until they retire, then use it for a "vacation" after their last day in the office before they officially leave payroll.  Now, the risk of that is that holiday leave doesn't get paid out when you leave either, so if anything happens to make you leave unexpectedly early (such as the state having a layoff event, although the last time that came close to happening was 2011), it's just gone.

We had one personal holiday each year, but it didn't carry over.  If we didn't use it by our anniversary date it was gone.  It was explained to me that decades before I started work there our birthday was always a paid holiday, but some people wanted to be able to take it at a different time for a religious or family celebration that didn't correspond to a state holiday.  For new employees who hadn't had a chance to save up annual leave or sick leave hours it was very helpful to have that day we could use even in the first months of work.

[tchafe1978]

Google Gemini. I'm sick of it popping up when I try to switch between apps on my phone. I don't want it, I don't need it, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it. I told it to fuck off a couple times, and it will respond, "this user seems to be very upset". Damn straight I'm upset because I can't get it gone.

[Rothman]

Google Gemini. I'm sick of it popping up when I try to switch between apps on my phone. I don't want it, I don't need it, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it. I told it to fuck off a couple times, and it will respond, "this user seems to be very upset". Damn straight I'm upset because I can't get it gone.

This does not happen to me on my Android phone.  Must be a way to turn it off.

[interstatefan990]

Google Gemini. I'm sick of it popping up when I try to switch between apps on my phone. I don't want it, I don't need it, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it. I told it to fuck off a couple times, and it will respond, "this user seems to be very upset". Damn straight I'm upset because I can't get it gone.

On that note, the way that all the social media apps these days turn everything into an AI search. I can't describe the level of bothered I feel when I go to the search bar to look up a page, and it pulls up a ChatGPT-style summary of whatever I searched instead of just displaying results.

[interstatefan990]

And, in most contexts in real life, the thing you're typing doesn't need to be aesthetically pleasing or send a non-laziness message to its reader.  In most contexts, it's just a way of producing words on paper.

Happy early birthday! Here's your cake:

[Rothman]

Google Gemini. I'm sick of it popping up when I try to switch between apps on my phone. I don't want it, I don't need it, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it. I told it to fuck off a couple times, and it will respond, "this user seems to be very upset". Damn straight I'm upset because I can't get it gone.

On that note, the way that all the social media apps these days turn everything into an AI search. I can't describe the level of bothered I feel when I go to the search bar to look up a page, and it pulls up a ChatGPT-style summary of whatever I searched instead of just displaying results.

Psst: -ai tag...