Things That Are Just Annoying

[mlooney 3,417]

6 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

My condolences for the insurance/non-insurance suckage you find yourself in right now. At least it won't get worse.

 

Or better.  Meh, I can afford everything and still pay the bills.

[mlooney 3,417]

A completely unrelated annoying thing.  The "special" version of WINE that Eve online uses seems to crash X.  Doesn't reboot the box, just shuts off the window manager and log me off.  `uptime` shows that the box hasn't rebooted. 

I am less than gruntled by this.

[mlooney 3,417]

I just spilled a cup of tea onto the keyboard of the laptop.  After looking up how to disable a keyboard via the xconfig file, I seem to be working again with an external keyboard.  However the one I have put on it is my Cherry small size which is too small for real touch typing, so I am going to swap it out with the keyboard on the iMac.  I suspect for the month, or so I'm going to be swapping keyboards as I change machines.  This is less than optimal, but at least the guts of the laptop seem to be OK.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

21 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

At least it won't get worse.

Oh, no....please tell me you did not just say that!  :-(

I jest, really.  I don't believe in that sort of jinx -- it's bad luck to be superstitious!

[mlooney 3,417]

3 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

21 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

At least it won't get worse.

Oh, no....please tell me you did not just say that!  :-(

I jest, really.  I don't believe in that sort of jinx -- it's bad luck to be superstitious!

 

Meh.  As long as my doctor stays in Tulsa and GenScripts keeps their current business practice there isn't any thing that can go worse.

[mlooney 3,417]

I just took a multi-million ISK bath.  Should pay attention to how many of a thing someone wants, not just how much they are willing to pay for it.

An amusing thought came to me after this; we should give a few random "businessmen" say, a million ISK, put them in Jita, explain how the market mechanics work and let them go at it for a month.  As a control, have one of the current Eve players make an Alt with 1 million ISK.

Whichever one has the most ISK at the end of a month gets control of the other persons real life business.

[Scotty 1,061]

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

I just took a multi-million ISK bath.  Should pay attention to how many of a thing someone wants, not just how much they are willing to pay for it.

An amusing thought came to me after this; we should give a few random "businessmen" say, a million ISK, put them in Jita, explain how the market mechanics work and let them go at it for a month.  As a control, have one of the current Eve players make an Alt with 1 million ISK.

Whichever one has the most ISK at the end of a month gets control of the other persons real life business.

Chribba, nuff said.

[mlooney 3,417]

I am putting this here because we don't have "people that need a lart applied to their foreheads" thread.

Look, Mr OS X file system file locking module coder, this is Ms Dropbox low-level file access module coder.  Can the two of you get together and take a long lunch, maybe a movie or walk along a sandy beach or whatever.  But for the love all things Lawful Good, talk to each other about how you think file locks work, because one, maybe both, of you are snorting all the drugs because if Dropbox starts to deal with a folder the system comes to a dead stop when anything else tries to look at that folder.  Deadlocks suck all the suck

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

I was typing up my prescription list again.  And again I found myself wondering why the ℞ symbol isn't among the standard characters in my word processor.

[mlooney 3,417]

Never assume that any markup language converter will get tables anywhere near right.  Go in and hand code the damn things.  Much less heartburn that way.

[Don Edwards 548]

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

Never assume that any markup language converter will get tables anywhere near right.  Go in and hand code the damn things.  Much less heartburn that way.

Or use a spreadsheet. They are very good at getting tables right.

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

Or use a spreadsheet. They are very good at getting tables right.

Tables as in layout, not tables as in calculation.

[Don Edwards 548]

Spreadsheets are pretty good at string manipulation. I have a spreadsheet designed to produce wikicode for a table on the wiki site, from data that is loaded into the cells - so really all I have to maintain is the data, and then I can copy the complete wikicode from another column and paste it into the wiki.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

Shopping for a new cell phone.  Considering how much money I'm willing to lay down, they sure don't make it easy to give it to them.

All I want to know is, how much does your company charge for *one* line, per month, unlimited data, including taxes and fees, and how much data does that actually translate to before it gets choked down to dial-up speeds?  (Seriously, I asked one company and the slower rate is 128 kbps.)  Every company's web page seems to be overflowing with graphics and any actual information is carefully hidden.  Even the sites designed for comparing between companies have so little information per entry that you can't actually make any sort of useful comparison without going to separate pages over and over.

The other thing I'd like to know is how much I'd have to pay to get a smartphone from them.  This is carefully obscured by listing it as $X down plus $Y per month for Z months, and no hint whether taxes and fees are included there, nor how much memory for models with multiple options, nor whether there is any discount for new customers, loyalty bonus for existing customers, etc.

One company has a deal which requires you to give them your old phone in order to make use of it.  My phone was $30 used at least eight years ago.  Why would they give me what I think adds up to at least $150 (versus competing offers without the 'trade-in') unless they are going to get something out of it?  Like, say, all the personal information stored on a person's cell phone these days....

[The Old Hack 2,448]

3 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

One company has a deal which requires you to give them your old phone in order to make use of it.  My phone was $30 used at least eight years ago.  Why would they give me what I think adds up to at least $150 (versus competing offers without the 'trade-in') unless they are going to get something out of it?  Like, say, all the personal information stored on a person's cell phone these days....

Do you have an old-fashioned land line telephone lying around? Ideally an analog model with a dial. Try to foist that off on them. It probably wouldn't work but it would be a fun prank.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

Just now, The Old Hack said:

Do you have an old-fashioned land line telephone lying around? Ideally an analog model with a dial. Try to foist that off on them. It probably wouldn't work but it would be a fun prank.

Not a bad idea, that.  My mom once went to a car dealership that offered $1000 for anything you could drive in, and brought her old lawnmower.  Offered/threatened to get up on top of it and ride it into the office.  No, it wasn't a riding mower.  She got the "trade-in" allowance, but they declined to actually take the lawnmower.

[mlooney 3,417]

On 5/17/2017 at 10:10 PM, Don Edwards said:

Spreadsheets are pretty good at string manipulation. I have a spreadsheet designed to produce wikicode for a table on the wiki site, from data that is loaded into the cells - so really all I have to maintain is the data, and then I can copy the complete wikicode from another column and paste it into the wiki.

 

I have perl for that thank you.

[mlooney 3,417]

I just looked it up.  It's a violation of my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 7th amendments rights to play as an Alpha clone Minmatar.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

8 minutes ago, mlooney said:

I just looked it up.  It's a violation of my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 7th amendments rights to play as an Alpha clone Minmatar.

Now all you need to do is to also have it violate the Convention of Geneva and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and you'll be set.

[Scotty 1,061]

4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Now all you need to do is to also have it violate the Convention of Geneva and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and you'll be set.

I coulda swore that's what Amarr did. They did have the Minmatar as enslaved once.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

It is very annoying to receive a doctor's appointment reminder with no doctor's name attached. Seems like that would be a very efficient phishing method. In this case, it turned out to be a known doctor, but I was very careful with the data I entered to "recover my password."

It was for my cardiologist, BTW. I've got an appointment with him at 2pm on the day before my follow-up with the podiatrist. Mrs. Prof is going to love that.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

14 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

It is very annoying to receive a doctor's appointment reminder with no doctor's name attached. Seems like that would be a very efficient phishing method. In this case, it turned out to be a known doctor, but I was very careful with the data I entered to "recover my password."

It was for my cardiologist, BTW. I've got an appointment with him at 2pm on the day before my follow-up with the podiatrist. Mrs. Prof is going to love that.

Ouch. At least there's no major procedure ahead in the immediate future, I hope?

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

3 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Ouch. At least there's no major procedure ahead in the immediate future, I hope?

Not to my knowledge, thank goodness. Just a 6-month follow-up that had to be postponed due to all of the other crap that's been going on.

EDIT: And it's still going to be postponed. Mrs. Prof pleaded mercy, since she hasn't been able to work a complete work week in ages due to my appointments. I advised her it's still going to be at least around six weeks minimum before I can drive, if my back clears up at all. She reminded me of her coffee intake and lack thereof and warned me to back the [redacted] off.

[mlooney 3,417]

9 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

She reminded me of her coffee intake and lack thereof and warned me to back the [redacted] off.

I like her style.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

There is a limit to how much coffee a human may safely consume in an hour, day, month, year, lifetime, Sothic Cycle...