It’s a long weekend, so I need to pause my alarm. I click the start, today, and click the end day, Monday. But now I’m not sure if ending Monday means it will play the alarm on Monday or not. Do I have to pick the day it restarts? The information it tells me is “the alarm will pause for 93hrs and 17mns,” which is completely useless info and tells me utterly nothing. Just tell me when the alarm will next be set off. What day, what time? Tell me that. Once again it’s an app designed by someone who doesn’t use it, and instead has been made for the imaginary human a socially deprived nerd clinically conjures.
This is a micro-rant.
I’m clearing out the overnight accumulation of email. I got one from the local dealership of my brand of car. Which is not where I bought it, but where I very occasionally get parts for it.
Anyhow, the email says my car phoned home and told them that it wanted a checkup & maybe an oil change. So they were contacting me to share this happy news. And how handy, they just happen to provide me a coupon good for $X. Which in turn suggests the suggested service would probably cost about $10X. Plus whatever else they can figure out to tack on.
Needing service X after mileage Y or every Z months in nothing new with cars; that’s been around since long before I was driving.
But somehow having my car call them to badger me really feels like an affront today. How dare it! 
And now a few emails later …
I’d retired. And so have a Medicare Part D prescription drug plan. I changed which insurer I use at year end 2024. Which changed which mail order pharmacy my insurer owns and therefore I use. I had several meds on auto-refill. So far so ordinary.
Of course when I changed over I had to get my doc(s) to send all new scrips to the new mail order pharmacy. Sigh. But just part of modern life. New scrips at new pharm are working great; stuff arrives on schedule w no issues.
But …
The old mail order pharmacy keeps sending me increasingly alarmed emails that I’m running out of this or that. And now that they’re all out, the pharmacy is sending begging emails for me to pleeeeease come back; Come back Shane!
Perhaps their email system could check to see whether I’m currently a policyholder with their parent insurance company? Naah, that’d be too hard. Spamming is soo much easier and generates soo much more goodwill for our company. NOT!!
A few months ago, my drug plan people decided they had to email, text, and then CALL me every time I got down to a month’s worth of pills. Of course it was a separate email, text and call for each Rx.
I think I’ve successfully blocked all of the above… for now.
(So I deserved it when I did run out of BP pills, and my doc dragged his feet approving a refill, but my pharmacy gave me a week’s worth of an ‘emergency’ advance.)
I’m shopping for a used car, and I’m torn… simple, easily-fixable car THAT DOESN’T TALK TO ME (or the dealer)?
Or all the newer safety features?
I saw a '60s VW Bug and got nostalgic for a car that I could diagnose (and even fix) by myself.
BUT I’m getting older, and I should probably have a car that beeps when I stray out of my lane (especially when there’s another car there… newer cars have huge blind spots).
Damn, I’d love a manual Honda Fit, but those safety features ONLY come with automatic transmission… WHY?
Because manual transmissions make about as much sense in 2025 as does a manual pull choke knob (1950s) or a manual spark advance lever (1920s). You don’t seem to lament the unavailability of those. Probably because you didn’t grow up with them.
See also
Some drivers enjoy the sense of control and direct interaction with the vehicle that a manual transmission gives them. I’m definitely not one of them but I can understand it. I’m surprised you don’t since you seem to regard a car as a “fun” thing that should be high-performance, and that’s exactly the typical mindset of the manual-transmission aficionados.
I just regard a car as transportation. I want it to be reliable and comfortable. And that includes the ability to shift gears for itself. I have no wish to do unproductive extra work for no good reason.
When I want the fun of grinding through the gears now I push a button and the auto-trans turns off its autoshifting and lets me do it by paddle switches. Which is pretty standard stuff on auto transmissions now; even those on non-performance cars. That’s also how most modern race cars do it. So if you want to pretend to be a modern day Mario Andretti, use your paddles, not your clutch foot.
Fun for a few minutes and a total PITA in traffic. Which is why the market for manual transmissions in the USA has cratered to damn near zero.
I’m not up on the latest tech from BMW and the like, but I associate paddle shifters with BMW’s DCT (dual-clutch automatic transmission) and personally I don’t like it. Or at least, I didn’t like it on a BMW M3 I drove once. Just give me a nice, smooth hydraulic automatic and forget about any manual mode. But then, I have an established reputation as a Luddite convinced that newer isn’t always better, and usually worse! 
I’m going to be very sad when my little 5 speed Mazda2 has to be retired. I love a stick shift and they’re getting very hard to find in cheapie daily driver. I don’t need or want high performance, I just like driving a stick.
I just read where a woman died in Paris after spending time in a leaky cryogenic chamber.
The article says she suffocated, which is horrible, but at least she didn’t die of ‘brain freeze’.
On a completely different topic, possibly better posted in CS, after watching the movie Dark Waters about how the DuPont chemical company polluted the world with PFOA, a toxic substance used in the manufacture of Teflon*, I’ve decided to abandon my non-stick crepe pan that I use for toasting buns (they turn out much better than way than in a toaster oven, which I don’t have any more anyway). Instead I’ve re-seasoned my old cast iron crepe pan about three times, and it now has a delightful non-stick sheen. I used it this morning and it’s every bit as good as new Teflon. It’s quite heavy and takes longer to heat up than the lightweight non-stick pan, but those aren’t big drawbacks and it’s somehow more authentic and natural.
* FTR, I understand that Teflon doesn’t actually contain PFOA, it’s just used in its manufacture, and even that stopped in 2010, at least in the first world. Lord only knows what goes on in third-world countries where most of these things are actually made. Regardless, Teflon and other non-stick coatings do have potential health hazards if allowed to get too hot. Trust me, I’ve accidentally done it, and the stench is nauseating and allegedly toxic. It’s fortunate that I don’t harbour any canaries! Whereas I don’t even have to move the cast iron pan off the hot burner after I turn it off. Cast iron doesn’t care.
Since my mechanic retired last month, I’m in the process of transferring my vehicle maintenance records into a spreadsheet so I can have an easy way of keeping track of all scheduled maintenance without having to rely on the shop. I started with my oldest vehicle; even though I’m missing about a year’s worth of records (from 1998, so it was probably just oil changes), I decided to add up the cost of all maintenance and repairs over nearly 27 years. It was a bit higher than I would have thought…but it’s worth every penny to have something that doesn’t beep, or contact the dealer, or need its firmware flashed. Of course I have something newer as a more frequent driver, but even that has the bare minimum of obtrusive safety features.
My challenges with salad dressing continue. This time I was looking in the fridge for Caesar salad dressing, and the stuff I found had expired, but there was a brand new unopened jar that I had no recollection of buying. I did recall buying a jar of Greek salad dressing, and it was nowhere to be found.
I can only conclude that when I picked this stuff up, I was in some kind of daze or trance and mistakenly got Caesar dressing when I meant to get Greek, but I got the last laugh on Fate because Caesar was what I needed. However, I worry that I’m losing touch with reality! 
So, you view that as a bad thing? In some ways, we are two very different people.
Yeah, what’s reality ever done for you?
.
Seriously, it’s an inevitable part of aging. Might as well get used to it… and DON’T beat yourself up about it.
No need to fear, oh noble pup!
That kind of thing has happened to me since I was a young person. My usual set up is the Greek and Caesar dressings (or whatever) are the same brand, similar color and packaging. And on the shelf right next to each other. And I want to buy two of one kind.
So I carefully pull one off the shelf, look at it carefully to ensure it’s the stuff I want, then grab the one next to it and put them both in my cart. Not noticing the other was mis-shelved and was really the other kind. Oops. The first I notice is when I’m stowing the groc at home.
Bought a lot of nasty creamy PB or the wrong flavor of yogurt that way over the years.
Loose nuts and screws at the hardware store are another great way to buy 5 the right size, and one misfiled one of the wrong size. Discovered only while up on a ladder back home.
Yes, same here; in the brand I prefer, all the jars look about the same except for some colour variations near the top of the jar.
What I’m enjoying about this particular event is the way that Fate, which always has it in for me, got outwitted. After throwing out some prepared Greek salad because I didn’t have the right dressing, I finally (I thought) got Greek salad dressing, but Fate made me get Caesar instead. What Fate had in mind was that I would pick up another Greek salad, then return home and discover my tragic mistake, and curse both myself and Fate. (Fate really enjoys being cursed – it’s what she* lives for.) But as it turned out, the store didn’t have any Greek salad, which Fate apparently didn’t know. Then yesterday I picked up chicken Caesar wraps that I like to dip in Caesar dressing, and lo and behold, the right dressing was there.
I assume that Fate is now really pissed off at having been thwarted, and is laying its plans for revenge. At the very least, I assume I’ll never have the right salad dressings again, ever!
* No misogyny intended – I assume Fate is a female just like Mother Nature, who also hates me. In fact, they might be the same mystical person.
I have just discovered that the Masterpiece Theater version of “The Last of The Mohicans” (1972) is available for free on YouTube! As a child, I couldn’t wait until PBS would broadcast a weekly episode.
I have some free time these days… and I am enjoying it immensely…!
https:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KkAB0-B7bw&t=2s
Reminds me of that famous Parkay margarine commercial from way back where Mother Nature gets fooled that it’s not really natural butter but rather man-made Parkay she’s tasting. And she takes her revenge. Leading to a quick cut of a poor cowering racoon.
I bet a dog of your breed could do a pretty good cower, trying to hide their noble head beneath their massive paws as lighting strikes all around.