Minor things that bother you

[jeffandnicole]

Earlier this week my boss gave us all today off. Until he cancelled that around 4:45 last night because of work he failed to complete. He promised we'd be done by noon, in part because he wanted to attend Good Friday church services. I told my wife I fully expected today to turn into a full work day. It's now 1:05 and I'd be very surprised if we're done before 5:30. Not that I had anything in particular planned today, but it's mildly annoying to be given multiple promises of time off that are then cancelled because someone else isn't able to get his work done.

That's one asshole of a boss. 

[1995hoo]

So we got the one thing out at 4:00 (the one with a due date of today). At 5:10 he decided he would not be able to finish the other one today and said we'll deal with it Monday.

So I was pretty much right last night when I told Ms1995hoo that today would turn into a full work day. At least, unlike a Friday deadline last spring, we didn't wind up working until 10:00 tonight. (No doubt today being Good Friday made the difference there.)

[JayhawkCO]

So we got the one thing out at 4:00 (the one with a due date of today). At 5:10 he decided he would not be able to finish the other one today and said we'll deal with it Monday.

So I was pretty much right last night when I told Ms1995hoo that today would turn into a full work day. At least, unlike a Friday deadline last spring, we didn't wind up working until 10:00 tonight. (No doubt today being Good Friday made the difference there.)

Thank God. Pun intended.

[thenetwork]

So we got the one thing out at 4:00 (the one with a due date of today). At 5:10 he decided he would not be able to finish the other one today and said we'll deal with it Monday.

So I was pretty much right last night when I told Ms1995hoo that today would turn into a full work day. At least, unlike a Friday deadline last spring, we didn't wind up working until 10:00 tonight. (No doubt today being Good Friday made the difference there.)

Thank God. Pun intended.

Years ago, I worked for a company that said my job was to be an outside sales job.  They flew me to San Antonio for two weeks of training -- which just happened to coincide with NIOSA, which is the equivalent of a post-Lenten Mardi Gras -- only to return home to find out that the job was pretty much a sweat-shop inside-sales, telemarketing cold calling job.

If that wasn't bad enough, the odds were 50/50 that at the last minute (within 2 hours of Lunch time) any given lunch hour would become a mandatory Lunch & Learn in a corner of the building's cafeteria. 

Needless to say, after my 90 day probation, I was let go as I missed one sales quota out of 5.

Not too long after I left, rumor has it this company forced the workers to continue working and making calls the day of 9/11.

But man, did I have a blast on the Riverwalk on the company's dime!!!

[roadman65]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/54480415@N08/52789528820
The fact that TexDOT is so careless with mounting signal heads.

[J N Winkler]

Today brings two minor things, both language-related.

*  The word learning as a countable noun that is pluralized.  The first time I read it, it came from a person who leans too heavily toward jargon, but now I have seen it in a Guardian article, albeit in a quote:  "The learnings from the Covid-19 vaccine development process have informed our overall approach to mRNA research and development."

*  Over the past few weeks, I have been working with construction contracts for Czech and Polish motorways.  Much of the documentation comes in zip archives localized to one or more Eastern European encodings rather than Unicode.  As a result, I get mojibake in file and folder names:  for example, the Polish phrase "stałej organizacja ruchu" (literally "permanent traffic organization," i.e., the permanent signs and markings to be installed as part of the project) often appears as "staêej organizacja ruchu" in file and folder names.  And, of course, they all extract with these defective names.  There appears to be no fix other than for the provider to use a zip utility that defaults to Unicode (7zip apparently does so) or for the recipient to temporarily change his or her system to the locale of origin and reboot, which is IMO far too disruptive.

[JayhawkCO]

*  The word learning as a countable noun that is pluralized.  The first time I read it, it came from a person who leans too heavily toward jargon, but now I have seen it in a Guardian article, albeit in a quote:  "The learnings from the Covid-19 vaccine development process have informed our overall approach to mRNA research and development."

Eh, I can come up with several gerunds that make sense to pluralize. They're not common, but they're not that bad either.

"The findings of a committee."
"The linings of these coats."

Etc.

[J N Winkler]

Eh, I can come up with several gerunds that make sense to pluralize. They're not common, but they're not that bad either.

"The findings of a committee."
"The linings of these coats."

Etc.

Those have been around for decades if not centuries.  Learnings is much more recent and seems an unreasonably clumsy synonym for lessons.

[JayhawkCO]

Eh, I can come up with several gerunds that make sense to pluralize. They're not common, but they're not that bad either.

"The findings of a committee."
"The linings of these coats."

Etc.

Those have been around for decades if not centuries.  Learnings is much more recent and seems an unreasonably clumsy synonym for lessons.

Gotcha. I thought you were talking about plural gerunds in general. Disregard.

[CtrlAltDel]

Eh, I can come up with several gerunds that make sense to pluralize. They're not common, but they're not that bad either.

"The findings of a committee."
"The linings of these coats."

Etc.

Those have been around for decades if not centuries.  Learnings is much more recent and seems an unreasonably clumsy synonym for lessons.

Gotcha. I thought you were talking about plural gerunds in general. Disregard.

The language person in me feels compelled to point out that in the examples given neither "findings" nor "linings" are gerunds. A gerund structure is more like, "Finding money on the ground is good luck," or, "Lining your pockets with moss is a terrible idea," where it's the actual action that is being described. Regular nouns that originate in the -ing forms of verbs are fairly common, such as "building," "ending," "warning," "meaning," and so on.

[J N Winkler]

I should also add that I have no objection to learning as a mass noun--e.g., in the phrase "lifelong learning."  It's the use of it as a pluralized countable noun that irks me.

[CtrlAltDel]

It bothers me that the number pad on my keyboard doesn't have a comma (,) or a caret (^), both of which I use when typing numbery stuff.

[kphoger]

I have a Canon all-in-one printer, mostly because it breaks the HP hegemony we had for a while and maybe-kind-of-slightly a Canon fanboy. The kids have an Epson and it's alright. Admittedly, the Canon has a slightly greater thirst for ink than the HPs I've had in the past but it's also never told me the ink cartridge was expired.

I still have to print things for work because most projects require a printed checklist because the clients have a tendency to be old school, I prefer a printed airline ticket because apps misbehave when flights change/cancel, and I sometimes require printed border-crossing documentation. But it's okay because work covers the ink costs.

Hopefully our printer is old enough to not even get firmware updates...

Well, our printer finally bit the dust yesterday anyway.  In its place, we bought an Epson EcoTank, with refillable ink.  I think it's a model ET-2850.

[kphoger]

It bothers me that the number pad on my keyboard doesn't have a comma (,) or a caret (^), both of which I use when typing numbery stuff.

That would be nice.  But, then again, it's supposed to be like an adding machine, right?  Those don't have commas or carets.

[thenetwork]

I prefer Android phones over iPhone as on an android, the main keypad has both the letters AND the numbers, so you don't have to SHIFT ARROW between the two.

And androids also allow you to long-hold the letters as a short cut to commonly used symbols and long hold the numbers for common fractions ‐‐ again, saving you the hassle of toggling back and forth via the Shift Arrow key.

[CtrlAltDel]

It bothers me that the number pad on my keyboard doesn't have a comma (,) or a caret (^), both of which I use when typing numbery stuff.

That would be nice.  But, then again, it's supposed to be like an adding machine, right?  Those don't have commas or carets.

That depends on how far back you're willing to go.

[kkt]

Well, our printer finally bit the dust yesterday anyway.  In its place, we bought an Epson EcoTank, with refillable ink.  I think it's a model ET-2850.

Does it phone home if you're using a suspected 3rd party ink cartridge?

[jeffandnicole]

Well, our printer finally bit the dust yesterday anyway.  In its place, we bought an Epson EcoTank, with refillable ink.  I think it's a model ET-2850.

I have this printer and have been very happy with it. The only thing I miss is a feeder to scan pages.

[mgk920]

Well, our printer finally bit the dust yesterday anyway.  In its place, we bought an Epson EcoTank, with refillable ink.  I think it's a model ET-2850.

I have this printer and have been very happy with it. The only thing I miss is a feeder to scan pages.

I was happily using a canon four color ink jet printer until Canon decided to deep-six it by discontinuing its print heads several years ago.  I guess that they weren't making enough in revenue by selling replacement ink tanks (they were piece-o-cake easy to refill) . . .  'm still mad at them for doing that.)

Mike

[kphoger]

Well, our printer finally bit the dust yesterday anyway.  In its place, we bought an Epson EcoTank, with refillable ink.  I think it's a model ET-2850.

I have this printer and have been very happy with it. The only thing I miss is a feeder to scan pages.

We discussed spending the extra money for a model with a feeder.  But we agreed that working around that is pretty easy.  We hardly ever have to scan multiple pages at a time, so we'd really only ever need it for two-sided scanning/copying.  That's rare enough for us, that it ended up not being worth the extra money.

[kphoger]

Well, our printer finally bit the dust yesterday anyway.  In its place, we bought an Epson EcoTank, with refillable ink.  I think it's a model ET-2850.

Does it phone home if you're using a suspected 3rd party ink cartridge?

It doesn't take cartridges at all.  As I said, it has refillable tanks.

[mgk920]

Well, our printer finally bit the dust yesterday anyway.  In its place, we bought an Epson EcoTank, with refillable ink.  I think it's a model ET-2850.

Does it phone home if you're using a suspected 3rd party ink cartridge?

It doesn't take cartridges at all.  As I said, it has refillable tanks.

The Canon printer that I had (mentioned above) also had no electronic parts in its ink tanks, only a visual sensor to know when to replace (refill) it.

Mike

[JayhawkCO]

It bothers me that I can't use the number row on my keyboard to type special characters, i.e. "í". My laptop doesn't have a number pad and I don't like having a Bluetooth external one.

[J N Winkler]

It bothers me that I can't use the number row on my keyboard to type special characters, i.e. "í". My laptop doesn't have a number pad and I don't like having a Bluetooth external one.

This is easy to fix by setting one of the international keyboard layouts (Windows has separate ones for US and UK English) as the default on your system.  This allows you to use the AltGr (right-hand Alt) key to add accents (both acute and grave), umlauts, circumflexes, etc. to vowels, tildes to n, and so on, which makes it possible to enter most Western Latin characters with diacritics without having to enter codepoint references using Alt+NumLock.

I use the UK International keyboard layout and it's actually been quite a while since I typed a codepoint reference for a letter, though I do so fairly often for ° and §.

[kphoger]

... I do so fairly often for ... §.

I use it so rarely that it's hard to remember the alt code.  So, instead, I use an easier-to-remember one:  alt+987654321123456789.

And the one for ¶ is just one before it, so...  alt+987654321123456788.

Now you know!