April Annoyances (mini-rants)

My workplace’s crazy laugh lady goes OOOOOOOOO-HOO-HOO-HOO! over and over. Everything – whether it’s a full laugh, a chortle, or a tiny giggle – has the “HOO-HOO-HOO” base. And she’s not the wild, outgoing, fun lady in the office either.

My rant for today: why am I incapable of eating spring rolls without getting sweet and sour sauce all over any nearby surfaces??

There’s a little button in the upper right corner labeled “Autoplay” (with a little ‘i’ (which is unrelated, so it’s a stupid place for it) just to the right of the word. Click it to turn off Autoplay.

Wow. I guess not liking kettle-cooked potato chips meant I dodged a bullet.

Getting a little tired of the recent up-tick in scam phone calls.

I work at home, so I get one or two calls per day that follow the same pattern: first I hear a weird “bloop” sound, followed by a noisy connection to some boiler room in India.
Then some fellow starts asking for me by name.

I have a call blocker that works well (CPR Call Blocker) I hit the big red button and it hangs up on them and blacklists them in one motion. It’s up to 91 different numbers so far.

But that only works when I’m near that phone, and it only blocks them after they have called once.

I am seriously considering getting some Raspberry Pi kit and rolling up my sleeves and writing my own call blocker software that will do a better job of it: I want it to automatically search the web for the number (e.g. at 800notes.com) and display the results by the third ring, so I could plonk them before picking up. And it should be smart enough to be able to leverage my cell phone address book data as both a whitelist and a source of nicknames. As icing on the cake, it would be cool if I had a web interface where I could click a recent number and choose “submit to 800notes” so I can report it for others to see without manual transcription.

But, … you know … everybody who makes these calls knows that nobody wants to talk to them. Why should I have to deal with this nonsense?

I see that others have mentioned the toggle for Play Next.

What bothered me was all of the annoying popup crap that appears over the video.
There is controlled by “Annotations” on the gear menu for a video, and no matter how often I turned it off, it was back on the next time I viewed a video. But I never want to see them.

Then I found out a couple of things…

You can save the settings for autoplay and annotations if you are logged in to your Youtube account.

I resisted this because I don’t want every random video link I clicked on to show up in my viewing history, but there’s a fix for that too:

Once logged in, you can go to the Watch History and Search History tabs and click “Pause watch history” and “Pause search history” respectively. Your viewing habits will no longer appear in either history list until the day you go in and choose “Resume”

Mods: he apologized. Please disregard my report of bullying.

I faced a similar issue several months ago, when kaylasmom broke her shoulder. The reason for the policy that was hinted at was that refusing to divulge whether they had specific opioid-based drugs on hand made the store less likely to be targeted for robbery.

I’m not prepared to assess the validity of that explanation (although it doesn’t strike me as TOTALLY implausible). But I did spend one memorable evening driving around North OC and asking at every pharmacy until I found a Walgreens that could fill the 'scrip. Since then, I’ve made it a point to obtain the next scrip far enough in advance (a couple of days) of run-out day that I can afford to give the pharmacy some time to obtain it.

Also, attaching feathers to a goat might be on the kinky side, but it doesn’t evoke QUITE the horrifying image as the, ummm, official, SDMB-approved term.

I just want some damn ballet slippers that fit! And it’s my own damn fault.

I’m a middle-aged lady who took ballet from college age to my early 40’s. I haven’t taken class for about 8 years. I started wearing my old ballet slippers in kettlebell class, one day when my feet were cold (kettlebell is supposed to be done barefoot or in very flat shoes). Then I started taking ballet again. They still fit, but were developing holes. Still workable, but then the damn cat peed on my workout tote bag, and the slippers were rendered unusable. Seriously, this cat’s pee is so strong that the few drops that landed on the slippers turned them into near-HAZMAT toxic waste.

No biggie, time for new slippers anyway, right?

I went to my friendly ballet store, who carried a different model of the same brand, and to my surprise I was a size bigger. Fair enough, I’ve gained weight and I know my feet have changed. Armed with the knowledge of my new size, I order a few pairs of slippers on line and on ebay, both the new style and my preferred style.

The new style fits, but my toes cramp up on releve. My preferred style makes my toes happy, but they’re too big otherwise. I just can’t win. Too late to return them. Gah. This brand has always been consistent size-wise among the different styles, so I assumed that was still the case, silly me.

I’m this close to contacting a friend who runs a children’s/teen’s theatre/dance group, and asking if she wants some donations of unused and barely-used ballet slippers, and starting all over. In the meanwhile I don’t have a pair of decent slippers to wear to ballet and kettlebell class!

Yes, this is super, super mini. First world, middle-aged lady problems for sure.

I’m jumping in to say to talk about shoes and the problem with getting drugs. I don’t think that your feet are getting fat Hey Hey Paula. Your problem is that you have lost the fat pads on the bottom of your feets, so your feet have flattened. Yeah, it sucks. We gain weight where we don’t want it and lose it where we really need it. You have my sympathy. I used to have the perfect shoes, I could order a couple of pair online every year and they fit perfectly. Suddenly, they didn’t fit, my toes felt cramped, so I returned them and tried a larger size. Toes were good, but they slipped around the rest of my foot. This getting old thing just sucks.

As to getting drugs, that sucks too. I used to love ketamine. If I had a trap-wise cat that I really wanted to TNR, I could mix some in some food (of course, I was really careful when and how I used it, I didn’t want a drugged cat laying around for coyotes to find) and watch while it ate and then count. After about a count of 10, I could go after it, use my catch stick and flip it into a trap just as nice and neat as you see on Animal Planet. It was the best thing ever to use when I was transporting said feral cats to the vet. My vet used to sell me a BIG bottle of it for 10 bucks.

Vet also taught me to use a blow gun. Hurray, cat only got about 3 steps away before falling. (Catch stick, trap, trip to vet)

Then idiot druggies learned that it was a good thing to use on themselves or as a date rape drug and started breaking into vet offices to steal it. Now its a felony to have something that was really helpful for animals and even if I did get the rather expensive license needed, I doubt that I could find it anywhere in a 2 hour drive.

Stop doing that you fuckheads! Go smoke some pot and all will be good.

Gasps, pants, apologizes. I really did like that stuff.

Oh yeah, the reason I came in to rant…I took the baby gates back to the store. The nice girl at the return desk asked me if my GRANDKIDS learned how to open them because they have latches that would help.

I didn’t cry in front of her, I just told her that they weren’t working out in our home. Then I went out to the car and called hubs and cried. He’s such a supportive man, he promised to take me to a place in NM where I’d get carded for beer. He’s going to sleep in the guest room when he gets home!

So now I’m a drug seeker? Good lord.

:smiley:

This is what I do too, which is why I wasn’t totally out this time like I was the last time. And while it’s not totally implausible that they refuse to say if they have a particular generic of one type of opioid because they are worried about being robbed, I do have difficulty picturing a robber calling around to various pharmacies to find out what they happen to have on hand and asking for a specific generic.

Fortunately, I am blessed with as considerate husband as you are, as he dealt with the problem for me!

Dang, I did get it wrong! What is the official, SDMB-approved term?

Geez, a felony? I guess having to go thru a song and dance with various pharmacies every month or so is better than that! :eek:

Here’s what I don’t get. How likely is it that a current customer, with Rx records in their database for the requested drug, is a robbery risk? Why can’t they just ask for your information and look up to verify you’re getting it regularly and have bought some recently? Why can’t they give the information if they can verify who’s calling? Just like a bank, with your name and some other question someone who stole your Rx bottle wouldn’t know.

I’m certain people who need to know would prefer the name_challenge question far more than driving all over town to random pharmacies.

Ridiculous.

Exactly. I even called CVS corporate and got the same run around about how it’s “company policy”, when it would be so easy for them to just ask me my DOB like they do when I come in to pick up the RX. Guess they don’t need my business!

Heh. I’ve picked up my gf’s prescription (not a scheduled drug). The pharmacy tech knows us. I’m bad with dates, very bad. She asked my gf’s DOB and I was proud to know the month and year right away, but the date eluded me. I guessed three possibilities, but none were correct. She sold my the medication, but gave me a look. I have since written her DOB on a business card in my wallet.

I know opioid addiction better than 99.999999% of people on the planet. I know it as a physician who’s been scammed for opioid drugs by addicts, I know it as a physician who has done extensive training in addiction medicine and who treats opioid addicts, and I know it both as an active opioid addict who couldn’t stay clean and as a recovering one with decades of continuous clean time.

Not everyone who uses chronic opioids is an addict. Not even if they have withdrawal symptoms when they stop the opioid.

Many people who use opioids are habituated and not addicted. Big difference. I’ve got people with chronic pain on a stable dose of opioids that works for them over time and doesn’t need raising. If I stopped them, I am sure many would have some physiologic symptoms of withdrawal, which is absolutely normal and to be expected. Having withdrawal after long-term use of opioids does NOT equal addiction/chemical dependency. The latter is a pattern of maladaptive behavior around the use of the drug.

Some folks have legit pain, get decent relief with regular use of opioids, follow directions as to dosing, and don’t have addiction/chemical dependency. In fact, I suspect most people respond to opioids that way. But addicts don’t and they make all the bad press and ruin it for those normies. Mainly by misusing the drugs and dying from said misuse.

Sorry about that, normal folks.

I’m a Chronic Pain sufferer. I’m on Cymbalta and about once a year due to various issues (primarily my back), I get a prescription for Flexerill or something else. That prescription generally lasts me all or most of a year, because I usually only take half-pills when the pain is bad, and maybe a whole pill about twice a year when I’m in agony.

Personally, I would not want to take such things daily. I experience a lot of pain because I’d rather not always be on those drugs. But that’s me, and my self-martyrdom and sensibilities. I know pain, I know it intimately, and that’s why I’m not about to judge people who need harder stuff on a daily basis to live.

People who don’t experience constant pain have no fucking clue how it wears you down.

I agree that there is a certain level of laughter that is super annoying and anyone who thinks that we are just party pooping spoilsports is being rather sanctimonious at the least. I have a sister in law who has the most annoying braying laughter and I KNOW she is doing it for attention. she does everything for attention.

There is a difference between genuinely laughing because you think something is funny, even if it is an undignified laugh, and essaying the same barking laugh at everything, funny or not.

Also, did someone really just try to call someone else an addict over the Internet? :rolleyes:

Nope, not gonna do it.

If I did you would almost certainly look it up on urbandictionary and then your nightmares would be my fault.

This is one of those times when it really is better if you pick it up on the street…

No, a drug-seeker.

And it was the same person who evidently can’t see any daylight between being a party pooper, and being annoyed by annoying laughter.

No one gives a shit. It’s not about you. It’s about people living with chronic pain for whom you appear to have zero empathy. Fuck your sanctimonious, uneducated bullshit. I used to like you as a poster, but I don’t know what the Hell has happened to you.

Absolutely true. And about half the time the videos don’t even play because of some Flash update that my computer doesn’t have. I can usually get around it by toggling the Safari add-on that forces it to change to HTML5, but Honestly. Wouldn’t you think it was in YouTube’s best interest to make their site backward-compatible?