Minor annoyances

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Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Fri Jul 08, 2016 8:41 pm

I've posted minor annoyances in the rant thread in the past, but given that people have serious problems it always feels weird when I do. So I'm thinking maybe a thread for things that aren't bad enough to justify a rant but aren't chronic enough to be a pet peeve is in order. A thread for the sort of things that might end up reposted with the hashtag #firstworldproblems.

Today I was thinking that maybe I could recycle some of the stuff I post in the Adorable Obscure Critters thread to articles. Figured I might start with bats, because bats are awesome. However it turns out that for a lot of the neatest bat species, there are literally no free (in the sense of freely reusable) photographs of living animals. If you can find a free image at all it's either a textbook sketch or a stuffed specimen.

I mean, it's not terribly surprising that images of bats would be rare relative to other species. Bats are nocturnal, fast moving, and elusive, and a lot of the neatest species have restricted ranges and/or are endangered. The people who are able to get pictures are generally either field researchers or professional photographers, both of whom have incentives against making their stuff freely licensable. (Professional photographers of course make money by selling their images while academic culture discourages sharing things in a manner which would allow them to be used by for-profit entities.)

As Kate pointed out, I could simply link to the ARKive pages on those bats (if pictures of an animal exist, ARKive has them). But a picture is worth a thousand words, and I've gotten so used to being able to find pictures of anything I want on Wikimedia Commons that it's annoying to realize that there are no free photographs of living New Zealand lesser short-tailed bats or Kitti's hog-nosed bats or Madagascar sucker-footed bats I could use in an article.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Twistappel » Sat Jul 09, 2016 12:36 am

This is perfect. I just somehow managed to stab myself in the foot with a toothpick (it got lodged in the carpet and embedded itself in the side of my foot as I stood up), and needed somewhere to complain about it.

No, I don't know why there was a toothpick on my living room floor either. I'm just glad that the possibilities of whose mouth it could have been in are limited.

My foot hurts.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Sat Jul 09, 2016 12:41 am

Sister Morphine wrote:I'm just glad that the possibilities of whose mouth it could have been in are limited.

Seeing as you live in Memphis, my money's on Elvis. Since a ghost can't chew on a real toothpick, clearly Elvis lives and you need to call the Weekly World News stat!
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Paradox » Sat Jul 09, 2016 8:15 pm

"Curvy" as a synonym for fat woman.

Curvy is a body shape. A triangle is a triangle whether it's small or big. You can be curvy and thin, curvy and average, curvy and fat, or whatever. You can also be fat and not curvy.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Lindvaettr » Sat Jul 09, 2016 11:04 pm

Downtown in my town is next to a lake, so all the streets curve around it and are terrible for traffic. There's one particular intersection where almost everyone is going north, parallel to the lake. South leads to a residential area, west leads to lake parking, and east is a small winding street that usually has a couple 30 minute parking spots open, but otherwise is just a more roundabout, slower alternative to the main east-west road in that section of town, one block to the north. So almost everyone is trying to get on one the northbound lane of a single street.

There's no parking on this street. I usually come to the area from the east, and end up on the winding side street hoping to grab a parking spot, because the only more reliable place is a paid parking lot, and I'm normally only going to buy something fast, or pick up some food. If there's no parking spot, or if there is and I'm trying to leave, I have to take a right turn onto the crammed northbound road I mentioned above.

Unless you're from England, or some other lame country that drives wrong, a right turn seems like it should be easy. But it's not. There are always enough cars going straight on that road, past that intersection, that they fill up the entire road between there and the farther-north main east-west road, and enough people trying to cross that even if there's room to turn right, people are walking in the way.

I fucking hate this intersection. It must've been designed by an idiot. Every single time, it takes me several minutes of just sitting there hoping I'll be able to turn right. No one stops to let you turn. There's no arrow on the traffic light. You just have to sit. I detest it, and I hope the person who designed it so badly gets his neck disconnected.

I feel this way about all poorly-designed intersections. This is 2016. We have cameras and analytical software specifically designed to plan these things.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby DashaBlade » Sun Jul 10, 2016 12:37 am

My cats are psychic or something. They seem to know why I'm going into a particular room, and follow me around accordingly.

For example, if I head toward the living room to go outside, they stalk me. If I'm just checking to make sure the front door is locked, or if I'm planning to turn off a light or something, they don't. If I walk into the kitchen to wash dishes, they leave me alone, but if I'm going in there to get a sandwich, I can barely get into the room because the cats race ahead of me. Oddly, however, they also don't follow me when my intent is to refill their food bowl, and they don't come running until they hear the actual food hitting the bowl. Maybe it's because they've been fooled too many times by the sound of us opening the big container where we keep their food, because we were putting a new bag of cat food into it.

Still, it's odd and somewhat annoying that they know in advance exactly when human movements could be an advantage for them (tasty human food, an opportunity to slip out the front door before we can catch them).
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby SilverMaple » Sun Jul 10, 2016 3:35 am

I'm trying to order a bunch of computer parts online, but I completely forgot that my credit card has a relatively low monthly limit, which I guess I've exceeded thanks to a large purchase a couple weeks ago. Or at least that's why I assume my payments keep getting declined when I attempt to check out with it (I'm too nervous to call the credit card company and confirm my suspicion).

I don't have any other credit cards, so I tried linking my bank account to my PayPal account. It's going to take 3-5 business days to get confirmation that that's working, though, and I can't do anything with it until then. It's likely going to take a couple weeks for the other parts to get here once everything's sorted with PayPal, and I'm going to be just sitting here with a video card, a motherboard, and a webcam for the time being. So yeah, I'm pretty frustrated right now.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby FaceTheCitizen » Sun Jul 10, 2016 6:04 am

...
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Sun Jul 10, 2016 6:29 am

Geico always has unskippable YouTube ads. I watched them once to see why they were so determined to make me watch them. They're the sort of ad that thinks it's clever and really, really isn't. They're the Mixology or Cooper Barrett's Guide to Surviving Life of advertisements.

I'm happy with my insurance from AAA. But even if I were shopping around and Geico were the cheapest, I'd probably pick the second-cheapest option out of annoyance with their unskippable YouTube ads.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Irishjava » Mon Jul 11, 2016 7:33 pm

Fucking Hanzos. The number of times I've had an offensive Hanzo give lineup suggestions is maddening. Oh, you want me to change from Tracer, the only flanker we have, to fill in the composition gap YOU'RE CREATING BY PLAYING HANZO? It's almost like you should be the tank you're begging for instead of playing a character that's largely useless on attack. Fuck you, Hanzo.

...I mean, I'm annoyed by that a normal amount, right? Definitely not way more upset about that than a functional adult should be.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby BROWNRECLUSE » Mon Jul 11, 2016 7:37 pm

cmsellers wrote:Geico always has unskippable YouTube ads. I watched them once to see why they were so determined to make me watch them. They're the sort of ad that thinks it's clever and really, really isn't. They're the Mixology or Cooper Barrett's Guide to Surviving Life of advertisements.

I'm happy with my insurance from AAA. But even if I were shopping around and Geico were the cheapest, I'd probably pick the second-cheapest option out of annoyance with their unskippable YouTube ads.


Having been a GEICO customer since 2001, I am quite pleased with their service, and my rates have been consistently affordable.

But yes, their ads are insufferable. I'd probably not mind it if they brought back the Caveman part-time (I found that guy entertaining, just not enough to warrant a TV series), but everything else they put out can go suck the root.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby reallifegirl » Mon Jul 11, 2016 7:53 pm

I mentioned in the rant thread that the air conditioning at work was busted. Well, they did install a fix.

Now the office is 60 degrees and everyone's freezing.

Not a huge problem, but it's mid-way through July and everyone is walking around holding coffee cups because our fingers are going cold, and I find myself wishing I had a sweatshirt with me.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Mon Jul 11, 2016 9:39 pm

HEB had some cheap sausages hose-brand that I figured I'd try two kinds of: brisket and pork-and-venison. Both of them are gamey AF (and yes, venison is game, but it shouldn't taste gamey). There's a reason they're cheap I guess.

This highlights something I've noticed about HEB before: their meat sucks. First time I noticed this I resolved never to buy meat from them again, then I bought meat from them again and it was gamey again. So I resolved that I wouldn't buy fresh meat from them again and have stuck to that. I figured sausages would be fine, but clearly that was incorrect. Why is your meat so fucking gamey, HEB!?

Of course I hate wasting meat so I'm still going to try to eat them somehow. I'm thinking putting them in quesadillas with lots of pepper might do it.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby jbobsully11 » Tue Jul 12, 2016 2:34 am

BROWNRECLUSE wrote:But yes, their ads are insufferable. I'd probably not mind it if they brought back the Caveman part-time (I found that guy entertaining, just not enough to warrant a TV series), but everything else they put out can go suck the root.

Wait. You like the cavemen better than this? *shuns BR*

(I mean, I agree that they've overdone just about every ad campaign they've ever had, but seriously?)
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby DashaBlade » Tue Jul 12, 2016 4:26 am

cmsellers wrote:HEB had some cheap sausages hose-brand that I figured I'd try two kinds of: brisket and pork-and-venison. Both of them are gamey AF (and yes, venison is game, but it shouldn't taste gamey). There's a reason they're cheap I guess.

This highlights something I've noticed about HEB before: their meat sucks. First time I noticed this I resolved never to buy meat from them again, then I bought meat from them again and it was gamey again. So I resolved that I wouldn't buy fresh meat from them again and have stuck to that. I figured sausages would be fine, but clearly that was incorrect. Why is your meat so fucking gamey, HEB!?

Of course I hate wasting meat so I'm still going to try to eat them somehow. I'm thinking putting them in quesadillas with lots of pepper might do it.


HEB brand meat is just gross, sellers. The meat that isn't gamey is full of fat, tasteless, or disturbingly overspiced to the point where you know they're just trying to hide the rotten taste. You have to come to terms with this if you plan to continue to live in Texas. Either find name brand stuff or buy your meat somewhere else, because what you save in store-brand prices, you spend in Pepto Bismol for the after effects.
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