Minor things that bother you

[TheCatalyst31]

My wife uses ChatGPT for her Scentsy gig.

Two red flags in the first sentence.

Sorry if you don't think I deserve a wife.

I assume she meant more that Scentsy is a multi-level marketing company, which makes it extremely hard to make money on it because of how it's structured. (Unless your wife is mostly trying to get other people to sell the products for her, which would be scummy, but it didn't sound like it from your post.)

[LilianaUwU]

My wife uses ChatGPT for her Scentsy gig.

Two red flags in the first sentence.

Sorry if you don't think I deserve a wife.

I assume she meant more that Scentsy is a multi-level marketing company, which makes it extremely hard to make money on it because of how it's structured.

Yeah. That and ChatGPT use.

[Plutonic Panda]

When I click on this thread to see a new post but the page I am directed to has no posts yet it still shows on my unread threads feed. So I have to manually click "mark threads as read."

[vdeane]

When I click on this thread to see a new post but the page I am directed to has no posts yet it still shows on my unread threads feed. So I have to manually click "mark threads as read."

You missed posts then.  What's happening is that the database seems to be somehow corrupted and the "new" button is overshooting the actual new posts, which can cause you to land on a blank page (what happened here).  There are some threads that are more prone to it than others (this thread pretty much always does, though there was a brief reprieve a few weeks ago), but it's seemingly random with threads blipping in and out of having problems, so I now have to scroll up to the last read post of every single thread because I can't trust that the button will work properly in any thread (including going so far as to go back to the previous page to check if the first post of a page is new).  It's super annoying and it doesn't seem like it's ever going to be fixed.

I'm still convinced that it has something to do with moderators removing posts.  I thought it was just the Great Forum Incident from a while back, but some threads are newer than that, and if it was just that, it would be possible to build a consistent list of problem threads and get them fixed.  This thread was fixed a few weeks ago when Scott removed some posts and broke again when 71/74fan removed some more, so I suspect that not all mods/admins are doing it the same way.  The fact that we've been seeing more threads labeled [MOVED] in the board indexes (and that what happens when you click on them has changed) also suggests that there's been a change in the technical process of how the mods are removing posts.

Incidentally, this isn't even unique to the "new" button!  I've encountered the problem somewhat regularly on the "recent posts" links on the forum index, indicating that this is some issue with respect to post indexing.

[Plutonic Panda]

Yeah, you're right about some threads having more of an issue with it than others. This one in particular is by far and large the worst offender.

[Molandfreak]

Yeah, you're right about some threads having more of an issue with it than others. This one in particular is by far and large the worst offender.

579 pages in and there's bound to be several deleted posts, which I suspect are the culprit of the page discrepancy.

[Scott5114]

This thread was fixed a few weeks ago when Scott removed some posts and broke again when 71/74fan removed some more, so I suspect that not all mods/admins are doing it the same way.

I just made and then removed a dummy post, so we'll see if that does anything.

The fact that we've been seeing more threads labeled [MOVED] in the board indexes (and that what happens when you click on them has changed) also suggests that there's been a change in the technical process of how the mods are removing posts.

This is something that came in with the last SMF upgrade. When doing a thread move, there's a checkbox that allows us to automatically create or suppress a redirect thread. The upgrade added the option to create those when threads are merged as well, and they also now auto-delete after a period we can choose (I always leave it at the default, one week).

[hotdogPi]

"NEW" tries to send me to 3035673, which is between the two most recent posts. (This is how it usually how it works when it's bugged, not a freak occurrence.)

EDIT: Clicking something that claims to be 2907968 (a post from February 2024 that I just haven't read for a long time) takes me to actual 2908001.

[kphoger]

Weather Underground:  "Tomorrow's temperature is forecast to be MUCH WARMER than today."

It's only forecast to get 9°F warmer than the current temperature as I type this.  Seriously?  That's "MUCH WARMER"?

If it's 46°, overcast, and windy one day and then 55° and sunny the next day, that is the difference between windbreaker weather and T-shirt weather.

The wind and cloud cover don't factor into it.  All it does is compare the high temps.  Heck, if the second day's high is at 9am with temps falling dramatically over the course of the rest of the day, then it will still tell me it's going to be "MUCH WARMER", when obviously I need to be prepared for colder weather instead.

But anyway, my point is not that it isn't warmer.  It just isn't much warmer.

I assume she meant more that Scentsy is a multi-level marketing company, which makes it extremely hard to make money on it because of how it's structured. (Unless your wife is mostly trying to get other people to sell the products for her, which would be scummy, but it didn't sound like it from your post.)

Then you guys obviously think all MLMs are structured the same way and operate the same way.

That's not how Scentsy works.  If my wife isn't meeting her own personal sales targets, then it doesn't matter how well the people under her are doing, because she doesn't profit off of them if she's personally below goal.  There's no advantage to "mostly trying to get other people to sell the products" without actually putting in the work yourself as well.

[thenetwork]

You go into a C-store buying 1 simple item, like a fountain drink, with one person ahead of you.

First that person puts their item(s) on the counter, then stares at the array of tobacco products behind the counter for a half minute before picking their usual brand, then wants to spend over $50 dollars on various printed and scratch lottery tickets.

Then when the total comes up, the try to use 1 or more credit/cards which decline the transaction or they don't know how to use their plastic cards.

Then the resort to cash (which they don't have enough of), so then they either cancel their entire order or hold up the entire line more while they go out to the car and ask their passenger for extra money or their credit/debit card.

Meanwhile, I've already drank over half of the beverage I have yet to purchase...

Similar situations have happened in a larger retail store's express, self serve checkout lines -- minus the lottery and smokes.

[kphoger]

Similar situations have happened in a larger retail store's express, self serve checkout lines -- minus the lottery and smokes.

Day before yesterday at the grocery store, the customer in front of us at the conveyor-equipped self-checkout lane flagged down an employee to grab a pack of cigarettes for him as well.  That employee didn't know where the brand was, so he went over there with her to show her.  Look here, people:  Self. Checkout.

[kphoger]

Three applications at work think it's cute to put my initials up in the corner.

For one of them, my profile isn't just my name, though.  It starts out with a two-letter abbreviation for the state that it thinks is my home base, then an underscore followed by the name of our company (because we log into their system as a 3rd-party vendor), and a space and a hyphen and another space, and then finally my name.  So it thinks my initials are OM.  Every few days, I glance up there and try to remember whose account I'm signed in through whose initials are OM.

On another one, my account is set up with my name in Last, First format.  So it thinks my initials are HK.  Whenever I see that, my first thought is always 'Hong Kong'.  Which is not my name.

On the third one, my username starts out as Last, First.  Then a space, and in parentheses:  a three-letter code, followed by a hyphen, followed by the broad region I work in, followed by the word 'Region', followed by a hyphen and another three-letter code.  Somehow, out of that nonsense, it comes up with my initials being HR.  It apparently thinks my last name is actually my first name, and that my last name is Region?  I don't know...

[Rothman]

Three applications at work think it's cute to put my initials up in the corner.

For one of them, my profile isn't just my name, though.  It starts out with a two-letter abbreviation for the state that it thinks is my home base, then an underscore followed by the name of our company (because we log into their system as a 3rd-party vendor), and a space and a hyphen and another space, and then finally my name.  So it thinks my initials are OM.  Every few days, I glance up there and try to remember whose account I'm signed in through whose initials are OM.

On another one, my account is set up with my name in Last, First format.  So it thinks my initials are HK.  Whenever I see that, my first thought is always 'Hong Kong'.  Which is not my name.

On the third one, my username starts out as Last, First.  Then a space, and in parentheses:  a three-letter code, followed by a hyphen, followed by the broad region I work in, followed by the word 'Region', followed by a hyphen and another three-letter code.  Somehow, out of that nonsense, it comes up with my initials being HR.  It apparently thinks my last name is actually my first name, and that my last name is Region?  I don't know...

[Scott5114]

Three applications at work think it's cute to put my initials up in the corner.

...

This is why for the backend application I wrote for Signs by Jake, every user account has a username, and separate first name and last name fields attached to the account. In the corner, it says "Welcome, $FIRST_NAME." So if we ever needed to encode additional information in the username like your employer does, it would still say "Welcome, Kyle".

I was careful to set the system up this way because I'd already had plenty of experiences like yours. (Plus, what happens if someone changes their name, or the company hires two people with the same name? At one point, SBJ had three Joes either working for the company or as a vendor—fortunately they all had different last names, but one of them was common enough we could have easily had a duplicate at some point. Although that Joe used to mess things up fairly regularly, so Jake started calling him Jope after he typoed his name to that once.)

[kphoger]

(Plus, what happens if someone changes their name, or the company hires two people with the same name? At one point, SBJ had three Joes either working for the company or as a vendor—fortunately they all had different last names, but one of them was common enough we could have easily had a duplicate at some point. ...)

The system has room for that kind of thing.  When you boil it all down, I'm really just KyHoge to them.  That's the unique ID.  Someone else with my name would get a username like KyHog2 or something.  (Actually, I've been here long enough that it was before they switched to user IDs like C50611 or whatever, which is what such a hypothetical new person's ID would really look like.)  Well, for two of those applications, anyway.  The other one is Microsoft Office.

[bugo]

You go into a C-store buying 1 simple item, like a fountain drink, with one person ahead of you.

lottery tickets.

I used to work at a convenience store in BA, and customers would come in and buy a bunch of scratch off tickets. Instead of looking at the tickets to see which ones were winners, they would have me scan each ticket individually, which took several minutes. Most of the time, I was the only cashier, so this really held the lines up.

[bugo]

It apparently thinks my last name is actually my first name, and that my last name is Region?

Computer: "Welcome to the Identity Processing Program of America. Please insert your forearm into the forearm receptacle."
Computer: "Thank you. Please speak your name as it appears on your current federal identity card, document number G24L8."
Joe Bowers: "Well, I'm not sure if..."
Computer: "You have entered the name "Not Sure". Is this correct, Not Sure?"
Joe Bowers: "No, it's not correct."
Computer: "Thank you. "Not" is correct. Is "Sure" correct?"
Joe Bowers: "No, it's not, my name is Joe."
Computer: "You have already confirmed your first name is "Not." Please confirm your last name, "Sure"."
Joe Bowers: My last name is not "Sure"."
Computer: "Thank you, Not Sure."
Joe Bowers: "No, what I mean is my name is Joe."
Computer: "Confirmation is complete. Please wait while I tattoo your new identity on your arm." 

[kphoger]

I assume she meant more that Scentsy is a multi-level marketing company, which makes it extremely hard to make money on it because of how it's structured. (Unless your wife is mostly trying to get other people to sell the products for her, which would be scummy, but it didn't sound like it from your post.)

Then you guys obviously think all MLMs are structured the same way and operate the same way.

That's not how Scentsy works.  If my wife isn't meeting her own personal sales targets, then it doesn't matter how well the people under her are doing, because she doesn't profit off of them if she's personally below goal.  There's no advantage to "mostly trying to get other people to sell the products" without actually putting in the work yourself as well.

For what it's worth, in case anyone is interested...  Carrie has never tried to make Scentsy be a replacement for a real job's income.  She's been doing this for a number of years now, she has a team under her, but she's not driven to succeed the way some people are.  Months when she's just putting in the minimum amount of work, she makes about $150 in profit.  If she puts in more work a few days a week, then maybe two or three times that.  If she's working the business every day, then she might make $600 that month.  At least for her, $600 a month isn't sustainable for a number of reasons, but I've seen her bring in $400 from her Scentsy gig multiple months in a row.  It all comes down to how much or how little effort she's willing to put in at that point in her life.

All of that is pretty much independent of how well the people below her are doing.  If a certain number of them hit a certain benchmark, and if the whole team overall hits a certain benchmark, then she earns a little bit more percentage from their sales, but that's about it.  And if she doesn't hit her own benchmarks, then she doesn't really earn any percentage from their sales.

Sorry if that's not how you imagined it.  As I said, not all MLMs are structured the same way.  Some of them incentivize stock over sales, some demand really high numbers, some just don't even seem sustainable on the face.  But not all are like that.

It's her "real" job as a home daycare provider that pays the bills.  But, back on topic with A.I.:  when your extra income job is something you do outside of regular working hours, then having a tool to instantly shave a couple of tedious hours off a particular task, with no drop in quality, can be a godsend.

[vdeane]

For reference, I clicked the "new" button for this thread this evening and got the actual first new post.


When your university calls you four times in the span of a minute to beg for money.  And if that wasn't bad enough, blocking the number doesn't stop voicemails from being left (or emails being sent to say that you missed a call).

I suppose it would have been a good opportunity to see how much of the Sailor Star Song I can listen to before my phone sends the call to voicemail, but I was busy watching TV, so I instead had to get up and decline the calls.

You go into a C-store buying 1 simple item, like a fountain drink, with one person ahead of you.

First that person puts their item(s) on the counter, then stares at the array of tobacco products behind the counter for a half minute before picking their usual brand, then wants to spend over $50 dollars on various printed and scratch lottery tickets.

Then when the total comes up, the try to use 1 or more credit/cards which decline the transaction or they don't know how to use their plastic cards.

Then the resort to cash (which they don't have enough of), so then they either cancel their entire order or hold up the entire line more while they go out to the car and ask their passenger for extra money or their credit/debit card.

Meanwhile, I've already drank over half of the beverage I have yet to purchase...

Similar situations have happened in a larger retail store's express, self serve checkout lines -- minus the lottery and smokes.

Around here, being annoyed at people buying lottery tickets at Stewart's is a regional pastime.

On the third one, my username starts out as Last, First.  Then a space, and in parentheses:  a three-letter code, followed by a hyphen, followed by the broad region I work in, followed by the word 'Region', followed by a hyphen and another three-letter code.  Somehow, out of that nonsense, it comes up with my initials being HR.  It apparently thinks my last name is actually my first name, and that my last name is Region?  I don't know...

Maybe the initials are actually the first and last letter of your last name?

[wanderer2575]

My bank's (rhymes with "case," add a letter) website insists that I have to update my browser to the latest version.  Umm, I'm already on the latest version, the website is incorrectly not detecting that.

Round 2:  Fine, I'll use the bank's phone app.  Of course it uses two-factor authentication, so it sends a verification code -- to my phone, which obviously is already unlocked so I could log into the app to begin with.  I feel much more secure now.  :eyeroll:

[kphoger]

(rhymes with "case," add a letter)

I feel much more secure now.

At least you were able to keep the name of your bank a secret here on the forum.  That's something.

[Scott5114]

My bank's (rhymes with "case," add a letter) website insists that I have to update my browser to the latest version.  Umm, I'm already on the latest version, the website is incorrectly not detecting that.

My bank was doing that once, during a time when upgrading my browser would have been a total waste of time (couldn't update the browser without updating the OS, but the parts for a new computer were on order, so I would have had to spend a day upgrading the OS on a computer I was about to retire in a few weeks).

So I just told the browser to start reporting its version number as v10000.0. That was higher than the version number the bank thought was current, so it let me through just fine.

[GaryV]

Why don't these 3 words all rhyme?

Love
Move
Clove

[Plutonic Panda]

Why don't these 3 words all rhyme?

Love
Move
Clove

Eminem can rhyme just about anything with orange. I'm sure you can make those rhyme if you want to.

[jeffandnicole]

Round 2:  Fine, I'll use the bank's phone app.  Of course it uses two-factor authentication, so it sends a verification code -- to my phone, which obviously is already unlocked so I could log into the app to begin with.  I feel much more secure now.  :eyeroll:

But if someone figured out your username and password on *another* phone...