Minor annoyances

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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby CarrieVS » Thu Aug 22, 2019 9:05 am

cmsellers wrote:Doesn't Britain have a pretty decent rail system?


Yes and I would prefer it but train fares are also ridiculously expensive. I'm travelling the majority of the longest diagonal of England and over that distance it's significantly cheaper to fly.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Fri Aug 23, 2019 3:41 am

CarrieVS wrote:
cmsellers wrote:Doesn't Britain have a pretty decent rail system?


Yes and I would prefer it but train fares are also ridiculously expensive. I'm travelling the majority of the longest diagonal of England and over that distance it's significantly cheaper to fly.


That's so strange to me as an American. Over here the rail system is generally quite shitty, privatized to hell and back between various freight magnates with the passenger services having to wrangle between them for access, but quite cheap if you're transiting between major cities and don't mind it taking awhile.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Fri Aug 23, 2019 5:01 am

Cpt._Funkotron wrote:That's so strange to me as an American. Over here the rail system is generally quite shitty, privatized to hell and back between various freight magnates with the passenger services having to wrangle between them for access, but quite cheap if you're transiting between major cities and don't mind it taking awhile.

It's really not, though, at least not outside the Northeast Corridor.

As someone from near the Northeast Corridor, I frequently took advantage of trains. They were slower and considerably more expensive than driving, and I had to drive to Springfield anyways, but a lot more pleasant than driving all the way, at least if you're going to a big city where traffic and parking are issues. Even at peak times, I think they were usually somewhat cheaper than flying, however I would never dream of flying anywhere I can drive in under six hours, so I'm not sure about ticket prices for such short distances.

But the Northeast Corridor is the only part of the US where passenger rail service is generally profitable, and also the only part of the US where it's generally affordable. In fact ticket prices in the Northeast Corridor are severely inflated so the profits can be used to subsidize the rest of the country, and still relatively affordable.

I was annoyed by the inflated ticket prices in NE corridor until I looked into rail travel in Texas, and then I was really annoyed, because the subsidies still don't make passenger travel a viable option here. Not only do most trains run only two or three times a week in each direction and take about twice as long as driving over long distances and as much as four times as long over shorter distances, not only is it basically impossible to take a train from Austin to anywhere (rail travel from Austin means taking take the slow train to San Antonio and then waiting for hours or days), but if you're booking at least a month out, coach-class train tickets from San Antonio to anywhere are considerably more expensive than a coach-class plane ticket from Austin to the same destination.

Unless you're talking about jumping boxcars in which case, yes, carry on.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Fri Aug 23, 2019 5:06 pm

cmsellers wrote:
Cpt._Funkotron wrote:That's so strange to me as an American. Over here the rail system is generally quite shitty, privatized to hell and back between various freight magnates with the passenger services having to wrangle between them for access, but quite cheap if you're transiting between major cities and don't mind it taking awhile.

It's really not, though, at least not outside the Northeast Corridor.

As someone from near the Northeast Corridor, I frequently took advantage of trains. They were slower and considerably more expensive than driving, and I had to drive to Springfield anyways, but a lot more pleasant than driving all the way, at least if you're going to a big city where traffic and parking are issues. Even at peak times, I think they were usually somewhat cheaper than flying, however I would never dream of flying anywhere I can drive in under six hours, so I'm not sure about ticket prices for such short distances.

But the Northeast Corridor is the only part of the US where passenger rail service is generally profitable, and also the only part of the US where it's generally affordable. In fact ticket prices in the Northeast Corridor are severely inflated so the profits can be used to subsidize the rest of the country, and still relatively affordable.

I was annoyed by the inflated ticket prices in NE corridor until I looked into rail travel in Texas, and then I was really annoyed, because the subsidies still don't make passenger travel a viable option here. Not only do most trains run only two or three times a week in each direction and take about twice as long as driving over long distances and as much as four times as long over shorter distances, not only is it basically impossible to take a train from Austin to anywhere (rail travel from Austin means taking take the slow train to San Antonio and then waiting for hours or days), but if you're booking at least a month out, coach-class train tickets from San Antonio to anywhere are considerably more expensive than a coach-class plane ticket from Austin to the same destination.

Unless you're talking about jumping boxcars in which case, yes, carry on.


I've mostly only used trains in the Northeast, so that's mostly defined my experience of passenger rail so far. Sorry to generalize the whole country.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby jbobsully11 » Thu Sep 12, 2019 2:53 am

As I was leaving a store before work started, a song came on the radio that I like and haven’t heard in a long time. I guess it’s not that annoying, since I can always find it on Youtube.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:23 am

When we went to Redwood National Park in 2003, a haunting song came on the radio. When I got back to somewhere with internet several hours later, I googled some of the lyrics. But it was 2003, there weren't hundreds of websites with the lyrics to every song, and I couldn't figure out what it was. It bothered me for another five years, until about half a decade later, when I started listening to music on my own and it occurred to me that I might be able to find the song now, and then listen to it on YouTube.

Sure enough, I did, and ... me not being a teenager hearing it in a cathedral of redwoods, it wasn't quite as haunting as I remembered.

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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Pedgerow » Thu Sep 12, 2019 8:47 pm

jbobsully11 wrote:As I was leaving a store before work started, a song came on the radio that I like and haven’t heard in a long time. I guess it’s not that annoying, since I can always find it on Youtube.


It won't be the same. It's never the same. There's something about someone else wanting to play the music you like that just makes the experience infinitely better than if you just listen to it by yourself, alone. I discovered a song on the greatest website in the world for people who like foreign music, and I love it now. But even through a direct and deliberate recommendation like this, I bet you won't like it as much! You might even question my sanity for feeling so positively about two white Belgians releasing a reggae song in the 1980s!



That's a real minor annoyance, that good music sounds so much better when it's someone else playing it. Another minor annoyance is when a song you like isn't the original version, and you have to choose which you prefer. Everyone knows originals are usually best, but if you hear the second version first, then that's the original to you, right?

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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby jbobsully11 » Thu Sep 12, 2019 10:09 pm

Pedgerow wrote:
jbobsully11 wrote:As I was leaving a store before work started, a song came on the radio that I like and haven’t heard in a long time. I guess it’s not that annoying, since I can always find it on Youtube.


It won't be the same. It's never the same. There's something about someone else wanting to play the music you like that just makes the experience infinitely better than if you just listen to it by yourself, alone.

The unexpectedness and “I forgot how much I like this song” does make it better, but not by much, to me. But yes, I agree with what you wrote about hearing remakes before originals. I tend to like whichever version of a song I heard first, but not always.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Sat Sep 28, 2019 2:52 pm

I rented a heavy-duty auger from Home Depot to clear a clog in my sink. It didn't work, which is more of a rant if I have the effort to. The minor annoyance is that they didn't email me a copy of the rental contract until I returned it. I hope that's not a normal policy.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby jbobsully11 » Sat Sep 28, 2019 11:03 pm

My sister’s baby shower was today, and my mom made it sound like my brother and I weren’t really invited, though we had to bring a bunch of stuff. Some tomato sauce from a tray I was carrying spilled on my lap in the car, so that was fun. When we got there, we were told that we could have stayed if we wanted.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Fri Oct 18, 2019 12:19 am

I went to the grocery store today, and there was a woman having a conversation with her companion in the aisle. They were standing so that there wasn't enough space to go around either of them, but there was plenty of space to go between them, so I did exactly that.

The woman shouted after me "well, excuse you!"

Lady, you were kind of in the way, and rather than asking you to move, which would have interrupted your conversation and slowed my walk, I did both of us a favor and just walked on by. The only reason your conversation was interrupted is because you were offended enough to shout after me.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Fri Nov 22, 2019 9:58 pm

I have a new computer which is good, though the circumstances of my getting it are annoying. However all the USB ports are USB-C ports and I don't own any USB-C-compatible devices. This means I had to get an adapter. Everyone was sold out except Best Buy, where I got the last one. At which point I discovered that the adapter I got doesn't carry power, meaning I can't use it with my wireless mouse or with my external hard drive.

Thing is, if you have USB-compatible devices USB-C is great, because no matter which way you try to plug it in it goes in the first time. In a few years, all my devices will be USB-C compatible and I'll be very happy the industry made the move. But in the meantime, it's as annoying as fuck to deal with.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby jbobsully11 » Thu Dec 12, 2019 6:49 am

My phone chargers keep mysteriously disappearing (*cough* people keep taking them *cough*). I'm pretty sure there's one in my car right now, though I would like the other one I had back.

Oh, and a few days ago, I saw my ID badge for work somewhere that it shouldn't have been (in my house rather than my car). "Oh, surely I won't lose that by tomorrow morning," I thought. Now I can't find it. It can't be at work because I was able to swipe out. I just went through everywhere it was most likely to be, and a few other places. I hope it won't take as long to get a replacement as it did to get the first one (almost three weeks later than it should have been). And I had it after I got rid of my car, so I definitely didn't leave it in there.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Thu Dec 12, 2019 3:28 pm

Sorry, sully; I borrowed your badge for some wholly legitimate, totally-not-espionage-on-behalf-of-the-Chinese reasons, and won't be able to return it until I escape from this not-a-blacksite where I'm definitely not being detained.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby jbobsully11 » Thu Dec 12, 2019 11:18 pm

*shakes head*

You should have just used it to steal drugs from the warehouse. Er, no, not that either.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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