Minor things that bother you

[J N Winkler]

My current lifestyle would basically be impossible without good knives.  For dinner tonight I'm fixing broccoli pasta, which means I'll have to get out the paring knife to mince garlic and cut florets off the broccoli stalk, and then the chef's knife to cut the stalk into thin slices.

I did have a food processor that I occasionally used for salsa and for certain dishes, such as mousse anglaise, that require ingredients reduced to a fine pulp or powder.  But we don't have the counter space for one now.  When I fix salsa nowadays, I pull out a small motorized chopper to reduce the tomatoes, pepper, and cilantro to a pulpy mixture.  It's more of a hassle to clean than a knife since the bowl, lid, and blade unit all need to be washed and have cavities that are harder to reach into.

[kphoger]

My current lifestyle would basically be impossible without good knives.  For dinner tonight I'm fixing broccoli pasta, which means I'll have to get out the paring knife to mince garlic and cut florets off the broccoli stalk, and then the chef's knife to cut the stalk into thin slices.

Technically, you could buy minced garlic.  But yes.  We've cut up heads of broccoli twice in the last ten days or so.  (For what it's worth, we don't eat the stalks, but I save them to make vegetable stock with—as well as the tops of peppers, root ends from carrots, dried-out tops of green onions, bare stalks of picked parsley, old dried-out onion slices, hard murshroom stem ends, garlic cloves that have been in the house awhile, etc, etc, etc.)

[CNGL-Leudimin]

A minor thing that bothers me is how the freak wasn't that crazy Finn banned earlier. But now it's finally done.

[JayhawkCO]

My current lifestyle would basically be impossible without good knives.  For dinner tonight I'm fixing broccoli pasta, which means I'll have to get out the paring knife to mince garlic and cut florets off the broccoli stalk, and then the chef's knife to cut the stalk into thin slices.

Technically, you could buy minced garlic.  But yes.  We've cut up heads of broccoli twice in the last ten days or so.  (For what it's worth, we don't eat the stalks, but I save them to make vegetable stock with—as well as the tops of peppers, root ends from carrots, dried-out tops of green onions, bare stalks of picked parsley, old dried-out onion slices, hard murshroom stem ends, garlic cloves that have been in the house awhile, etc, etc, etc.)

I got a garlic press this year for Christmas and will never cut garlic again.

[kphoger]

I got a garlic press this year for Christmas and will never cut garlic again.

I've had a garlic press my whole life, but we hardly ever use one.  It's more work to clean all the bits out of the little holes when washing up than to just cut it with a knife to begin with.  And those little bits seems like a waste.

[hbelkins]

Well, Poiponen13 has at last been dealt with, so he is no longer a minor thing that bothers me.

Was he banned, or did he get a stern talking-to?

Banned.

The way to tell is to click "Members" and navigate to where that person's name would be. If the name isn't there, there are only two options: a rename or a ban, and in this situation, it obviously wasn't the former.

He was still showing up as of 24 hours ago, which is why I asked.

[hbelkins]

Here's something that perplexes me.

My music player is completely detached from my Facebook account. I do not have Facebook on my music player (an Android phone repurposed to be a SIMless music player a la an iPod Touch.

The last few weeks, I've been listening to a lot of old Judas Priest tunes.

Keep in mind that I'm using Rocket Player to play MP3 files and not using Spotify or Apple Music or any streaming services.

Why, then has Facebook started recommending a lot of Judas Priest pages and groups? Makes me wonder if it really can hear what's going on.

[J N Winkler]

I got a garlic press this year for Christmas and will never cut garlic again.

I've had a garlic press my whole life, but we hardly ever use one.  It's more work to clean all the bits out of the little holes when washing up than to just cut it with a knife to begin with.  And those little bits seems like a waste.

I have a similar garlic press (inherited from my grandmother) and gave up on it after one or two uses for precisely those reasons.  I've read of other designs that are supposedly easier to clean and will even remove the paper skin, but have never had enough confidence in those claims to try to find pictures of them.

[JayhawkCO]

I got a garlic press this year for Christmas and will never cut garlic again.

I've had a garlic press my whole life, but we hardly ever use one.  It's more work to clean all the bits out of the little holes when washing up than to just cut it with a knife to begin with.  And those little bits seems like a waste.

I have a similar garlic press (inherited from my grandmother) and gave up on it after one or two uses for precisely those reasons.  I've read of other designs that are supposedly easier to clean and will even remove the paper skin, but have never had enough confidence in those claims to try to find pictures of them.

Mine came with a silicone sleeve that gets the paper off. The press pretty much just rinses off with very mild brushing required.

[algorerhythms]

Why, then has Facebook started recommending a lot of Judas Priest pages and groups? Makes me wonder if it really can hear what's going on.

Do you use the app or the web interface for Facebook? The app, at least, does use the microphone to listen in (though I think on iOS it has to ask for permission first, unless it's found a way around that). I once experimented on this with a coworker during a boring evening at work. We were talking about work, and an ad for Edmund Optics came up on his app. Not that surprising, since we work with optics. At some point I mentioned some company's name (I forget what we were talking about then), and the next ad was for that company. So I started naming companies, and without fail, the next ad was for the company I named. At least until I said "Nike" and he got nothing but shoe ads after that.

Myself, I use the mbasic.facebook.com interface, with scripts blocked. Even then it never showed me anything from an account I actually follow on the "news feed", only random garbage. So I adblocked the news feed. Much better now.

[roadman65]

Why, then has Facebook started recommending a lot of Judas Priest pages and groups? Makes me wonder if it really can hear what's going on.

Do you use the app or the web interface for Facebook? The app, at least, does use the microphone to listen in (though I think on iOS it has to ask for permission first, unless it's found a way around that). I once experimented on this with a coworker during a boring evening at work. We were talking about work, and an ad for Edmund Optics came up on his app. Not that surprising, since we work with optics. At some point I mentioned some company's name (I forget what we were talking about then), and the next ad was for that company. So I started naming companies, and without fail, the next ad was for the company I named. At least until I said "Nike" and he got nothing but shoe ads after that.

Myself, I use the mbasic.facebook.com interface, with scripts blocked. Even then it never showed me anything from an account I actually follow on the "news feed", only random garbage. So I adblocked the news feed. Much better now.

Big brother is listening.

[Rothman]

a dozen cutting boards seems like overkill to me

I've had a couple of them since before we were even married.  I don't see the point in throwing them away if they still work.  The wood has warped enough that they don't lie flat on the counter anymore, but otherwise they're fine.  One or two of them have split, and all we have left is half, but that half makes a nice small-ish cutting board, so why throw it out?

Years ago, we bought a pack of flimsy plastic cutting boards—four or five in a pack.  We used them for years but, after years of knife cuts, they started to frequently get moldy.  Tired of bleaching them every so often, we bought a new pack of similar-type ones.  But we still have the old ones too, because why throw them away?

One or two of them—the biggest ones—have been Christmas presents over the years.

The huge tempered glass one...  I don't remember where that came from.  We only use it very rarely.  But I see no reason to throw it out.

Well, as long as you just want to use your available space just to keep stuff around, so be it.

[kphoger]

Well, as long as you just want to use your available space just to keep stuff around, so be it.

They're flat things.  They take up about a foot of storage space under the sink, total.  I think we'll be OK.

[thenetwork]

For the 3 or 4 months leading up to the actual event:  The dozens, if not hundreds of articles of NFL "Mock Drafts".

Why every single football-minded person has to come up with an obligatory mock draft list is beyond me.  And why just NFL football? 

[formulanone]

For the 3 or 4 months leading up to the actual event:  The dozens, if not hundreds of articles of NFL "Mock Drafts".

Why every single football-minded person has to come up with an obligatory mock draft list is beyond me.  And why just NFL football? 

For similar reasons that people make up a tables of hypothetical interstate renumbering, derive new route termini, write their own fan fiction, create their own artwork for established characters...The difference is that football is arguably the most popular pastime and for some folks, fills the void between inactivity and the actual excitement of the game.

Some of us only care about the 60 regulation minutes and any overtime and that's it; just as there's a majority of people who don't care if Highway ___ goes to ____ and ____, was created in ____ when ____ renumbered it due to ____.

[kphoger]

Microsoft Teams.  I mean, I don't like it in general, but that's not what I'm talking about.  It's that the program decides on its own every so often that I must want it open on my computer.  Every few weeks, I'll open up the computer in the morning, and there it is:  no other programs open, because I shut them all down at the end of the day.  Just this morning, I needed to go into the Task Manager and restart Windows Explorer to fix a glitch.  When it restarted, yep! there was Microsoft Teams opened up.

No.  If I want a program open, then I'll open it.  That's the way it works.

It is an option to uninstall Teams?  If not, I would try the following:

*  Check Task Manager for a setting that causes it to launch at boot, and disable it.

*  Check Task Scheduler for a task that launches it, and disable it.

Thanks.  I just went to Task Manager > Startup, and changed Microsoft Teams from 'Enabled' to 'Disabled'.  We'll see if that helps.

No help.  I've disabled Microsoft Teams in the Task Manager Startup tab more than once, and it keeps re-enabling itself.  Yesterday, I needed to restart Windows Explorer again and, when it restarted, Teams immediately popped open.

AARRGGHHHH

[1995hoo]

This afternoon I was reminded of how annoying it is when you get a shipping confirmation e-mail but then, when you hit the tracking info to see when you can expect delivery, all you get is "label created" and the package hasn't yet been tendered to the carrier, so it hasn't really shipped at all and there's no indication of when it actually will. On a semi-related note, companies that charge your card when you order instead of when your package actually ships are annoying because they then have no incentive to ship promptly.

[webny99]

This afternoon I was reminded of how annoying it is when you get a shipping confirmation e-mail but then, when you hit the tracking info to see when you can expect delivery, all you get is "label created" and the package hasn't yet been tendered to the carrier, so it hasn't really shipped at all and there's no indication of when it actually will.

Isn't this usually a short-term thing? Most companies that are shipping any significant volume have daily pickups with one or more freight carriers, so worst case scenario should be that it shows "shipped" according to the company in the morning (which is presumably what generates the email) and then not picked up by the carrier until that afternoon or evening.

If this state persists for over 24 hours, I certainly see your point, but I wouldn't expect that to be the case, and would view the email more or less as a second confirmation that it's shipping that day.

[Scott5114]

While I can see how that would be annoying, from the perspective of someone who does ecommerce for a living, there's really no good way to resolve any of those problems without causing more.

For example, whenever I pay USPS for the shipment, it generates both a tracking number and a label to stick on the box. My ecommerce system also sends the email to the customer at this time. Until USPS actually picks up the box and scans it, it will show "label created". I guess I could have an additional "USPS has picked up the item" button I can mash whenever that happens, but there's a pretty decent shot I'm going to forget to do that (especially if you order on, say, a Saturday evening, since USPS isn't going to get your package until Monday), which would result in you not getting any tracking number at all. Better to have it automatically happen at time of label generation then not at all.

Charging the card basically has to happen at the time of purchase, and not shipping. Otherwise, you'd end up with the scenario of the seller paying an employee to pick and pack the order, using a box that costs money, and buy a shipping label to apply to the box, then they charge the card...and the card declines. Now they've sunk a bunch of time, labor, and materials into an order they are never going to get paid for. (It's even worse for sellers who create custom products, since they'd basically be working on spec and get stuck with a finished product that cannot be sold to someone else.)

[1995hoo]

This afternoon I was reminded of how annoying it is when you get a shipping confirmation e-mail but then, when you hit the tracking info to see when you can expect delivery, all you get is "label created" and the package hasn't yet been tendered to the carrier, so it hasn't really shipped at all and there's no indication of when it actually will.

Isn't this usually a short-term thing? Most companies that are shipping any significant volume have daily pickups with one or more freight carriers, so worst case scenario should be that it shows "shipped" according to the company in the morning (which is presumably what generates the email) and then not picked up by the carrier until that afternoon or evening.

If this state persists for over 24 hours, I certainly see your point, but I wouldn't expect that to be the case, and would view the email more or less as a second confirmation that it's shipping that day.

It says the label was generated at 1:31 PM this past Tuesday. Seems to me they should have shipped by now if that's the case. If it hasn't shipped by Monday, they're going to get a rather pointed "tell me where it is or I dispute the charge" message.

[webny99]

This afternoon I was reminded of how annoying it is when you get a shipping confirmation e-mail but then, when you hit the tracking info to see when you can expect delivery, all you get is "label created" and the package hasn't yet been tendered to the carrier, so it hasn't really shipped at all and there's no indication of when it actually will.

Isn't this usually a short-term thing? Most companies that are shipping any significant volume have daily pickups with one or more freight carriers, so worst case scenario should be that it shows "shipped" according to the company in the morning (which is presumably what generates the email) and then not picked up by the carrier until that afternoon or evening.

If this state persists for over 24 hours, I certainly see your point, but I wouldn't expect that to be the case, and would view the email more or less as a second confirmation that it's shipping that day.

It says the label was generated at 1:31 PM this past Tuesday. Seems to me they should have shipped by now if that's the case. If it hasn't shipped by Monday, they're going to get a rather pointed "tell me where it is or I dispute the charge" message.

No disagreement from me there. Anything other than label creation and pickup by carrier on the same business day doesn't seem like good business practice.

Charging the card basically has to happen at the time of purchase, and not shipping. Otherwise, you'd end up with the scenario of the seller paying an employee to pick and pack the order, using a box that costs money, and buy a shipping label to apply to the box, then they charge the card...and the card declines. Now they've sunk a bunch of time, labor, and materials into an order they are never going to get paid for. (It's even worse for sellers who create custom products, since they'd basically be working on spec and get stuck with a finished product that cannot be sold to someone else.)

Depending on your lead times and what system you're using for credit card processing, pre-authorization is another possibility. That places a hold on the funds and gives you few days (typically 5) to ship the material and post the charge. If it's a custom, long-lead time product, the customer should have an understanding that they may need to pay for it (or at least a percentage of it) upfront.

[tchafe1978]

Hair dye. I hate hair dye. No, I don't care that peoplem dye their hair whatever color. It could be purple, pink, fuschia, or blue and green polka dots, I don't care. Anything goes these days in that regard. What I hate is when my wife and daughter dye their hair at home, and the mess that results. Hair dye stains everything, and when they dye their hair, they get splatters and drops everywhere in the bathroom. There isn't a surface that is safe. The sink, bathtub and shower, floor, walls, toilet. If it doesn't get cleaned up promptly the stains are permanent. Not to mention the towels get stained permanently as well. Almost makes me wish they'd pay the extra money to have it done at the salon. Almost...

[kphoger]

Speaking of hair color...

My wife has been going more and more grey around her temples lately.  She's not too happy about it, especially because it runs in the family to go basically total white.  Anyway, last time she was at the salon, she mentioned to her stylist.  Her stylist replied:  "You know what, a lot of people pay me a lot of money to make their hair exactly that color in exactly that spot."

So I guess that's a minor thing that bothers my wife, not me.  I think the grey looks hot.

[Scott5114]

Depending on your lead times and what system you're using for credit card processing, pre-authorization is another possibility. That places a hold on the funds and gives you few days (typically 5) to ship the material and post the charge.

Personally, as a customer, that would be more annoying to me than if they just charged up front. There's nothing I hate more than having to keep track of than a hold that may eventually come out of my account, maybe, at some indeterminate point. Please just take the money, and if something goes wrong, refund it, so I don't have to account for the money in every transfer I do until you charge me.

If it's a custom, long-lead time product, the customer should have an understanding that they may need to pay for it (or at least a percentage of it) upfront.

Haha, that's a good one!

In my experience, customers ordering custom, long lead time products usually start demanding tracking numbers twelve minutes after they order it.

[webny99]

Depending on your lead times and what system you're using for credit card processing, pre-authorization is another possibility. That places a hold on the funds and gives you few days (typically 5) to ship the material and post the charge.

Personally, as a customer, that would be more annoying to me than if they just charged up front. There's nothing I hate more than having to keep track of than a hold that may eventually come out of my account, maybe, at some indeterminate point. Please just take the money, and if something goes wrong, refund it, so I don't have to account for the money in every transfer I do until you charge me.

It's really just another way of saying "you have to give us your card information now so we have it, but we won't charge the card until the order ships". For credit cards, the transaction won't even show up until it posts, so the hold doesn't really affect anything unless it's for such a large amount that it nears your credit limit, and it seems unlikely that would be the case for a single transaction. I can see it being more annoying for a debit card, so that's one case where I would prefer to use a credit card.

In my experience, customers ordering custom, long lead time products usually start demanding tracking numbers twelve minutes after they order it.

To the extent this was serious, if that's really happening, either there was a misunderstanding about the nature of the product/service being provided, or you're targeting the wrong type of customer.