It’s a cloth wall-hanging with velcro in the slots for “day”,“date”,“season” etc and more velcro round the side in the places to store the excess months/days/years/whatever.
I got one for my 3-year-old and one for her cousin. It’s a wonderful little educational tool EXCEPT THAT (as you can see in the picture) all the elements of the date are AT LEAST 50% taller than the rectangle which is supposed to hold them.
Notice, in particular, how the example picture makes sure to have a date which is in summer, and weather sunny? That would be because they’re the shortest season and weather symbols on the thing - try making it work for winter on a windy day and see the snowman and the kite (either of which could take up both those slots without half trying) duel to the death.
What kills me is that it’s otherwise so well made, and this would be a really simple problem to fix - just stick the seasons and weathers in pockets like the year, and you’d have masses of space to extend the main section down as far as needed, without even having to make the thing any bigger. But Somebody Just Didn’t Think.
Actually, the rack isn’t for towels. It’s for rubber floormats, the kind that keep people from slipping in the shower. When you’re done with the shower, you pick up the mat and let it dry on the shower rack - this way it won’t mold/mildew.
I visited a friend in her new house this weekend and found out that the built-in towel bar is also very good for clocking your head. :smack: -->but substitute “end of towelbar” for palm and you have my happy happy good morning wakeup call.
I have the same cellphone troubles. Mine is not a flip-phone, so I guess I got what deserved, but why is there no way to lock the keys? Otherwise it’s always calling people by itself.
I have a spatula that has a handle that cane be removed. It’s not supposed to be, it can only be removed with a great deal of effort. But that means all kinds of nasty stuff gets in the tiny gap into the handle. So you have to pull it off to wash it all the time - which defeats the purpose of making it extra hard to puill off.
I currently love my cupholder but I’ve had the problem where you couldn’t put the car in park in a previous car.
My voicemail machine at home drives me crazy these days. Say I go away for a week’s vacation. Two Saturdays for example. Well it doesn’t tell me which Saturday the message was left! It simply says “Saturday, 2 PM”. How frustrating is that? I know you can figure it out by context but it’s still annoying. Not to mention I screen all my calls so sometimes I’ve heard all the messages once already. Can I delete them all at once? Hell no! I have to hit delete for every message.
I can top that by a little. There’s a B&B that where I regularly used to stay. The old owners were very nice. All of the rooms were non-smoking, but they looked the other way for me and GF. Hey, we were regulars, and their best customers. But with the new owners, we tried a stealth smoke. Before we even put them out, there was a note slipped under our door. Typed and printed on letterhead. Explaining the no smoking policy. I can live with the policy. What I can’t live with is the intense scrutiny. I go on vacation to relax, not to pass muster.
Breakfast with the old owners was great. Pancakes, omlettes, muffins – stuff like that. Hey, I like to eat healthy, but not on vacation. New owners? Yogurt parfait, Every. Fucking. Morning.
And they have a new policy that they will only replace your towels every three days.
What does this luxury cost? Two years ago, it was $185 per night. I now see that they’ve jacked it up $245.
But I’m here to talk about clocks. When they redecorated, they put a clock in every room. Not one clock actually worked. Decorative, non-functional clocks.
Stupid POS Chinese Haier-Brand microwave. Coulda got another Malaysian Samsung, but I thought I would save a few bucks.
This junker beeps one tiny beep when using its kitchen timer function yet nags quite loudly every 15 seconds after it’s stopped cooking/reheating and you don’t reset or pop open the door.
We pressure-cook a lot of stuff and this is the first ,and hopefully last microwave timer I’ve seen that doesn’t allow you to program your minutes in advance. Program,say,4 minutes to boil potatoes and the program disappears in 5 seconds if you don’t hit START. I don’t want to hit START until the weight starts rocking, but this POS makes me program in 3:55
(to accomodate the delay involved in having to set the timer right when the weight rocks instead of setting when the pot is placed on the burner and having my setting held indefinitely till I need it).
The timer, once it starts, only shows the countdown for 5 seconds. To get the countdown back for another 5 seconds, you have to hit TIMER each time. Every other micro with an LED readout that I’ve owned kept the countdown displayed start-to-finish.
You can’t silence the button beeps, which BTW are louder than the timer beeps.
Most micros have an add-time function that allows a one-touch addition of one-minute intervals --handy when you see that your “average " corn-popping time called for on the bag isn’t enough to half inflate the bag. But this thing makes you hit” reset "after the original time is up and then add time with the keypad and hit ON again.
Hmmm. Weber gas grills. I’ve been looking for a new one (that isn’t the size of a stainless steel Buick) and the Webers seem decent. But…the control knobs are located on top of one of the horizontal wings. You know…where I’d be wanting to put plates of things down on top of? I don’t know if this was just a brain-damaged design decision or if some other manufacturer had patented the “knobs on the front face of the grill” approach, but it cost them a sale.
This is annoying, but I actually know the reason why. You aren’t supposed to hang things off the stroller because it could tip the stroller over if it is too heavy. I know this from experience (I caught him before he hit the ground, never fear ) It doesn’t take much weight, either.
Here’s another one for clock radios. I have one now that I like except the display is so freaking bright I have to turn it away from the bed. That sucks because I want to be able to see what time it is in the middle of the night, however I don’t want a beam of light shining directly at my face while I try to sleep. I had to move that clock into the living room, where it seriously is bright enough to serve as a nightlight. The one I got to replace it has an adjustable brightness level, however it lights up in such a way that you have to be looking at it straight on to distinguish the numbers from the background. It is really bizarre. When I am lying in bed I see the lit up display but I can’t make out the numbers so I have to sit up in bed. What is apparently so hard about clock radios?
I would also add about 2/3rds of all packaging to this list. Easy open my ass. Why more things can’t be resealable is my other pet peeve. Chips and cereal, I am looking at you. Put them in a Ziplock type bag.
The most common badly designed item I incur is the lock on the door of a public toilet. Half the time the lock does not fit into the groove because it is not properly aligned, forcing you to hold the door closed with one hand while sitting on the pot.
I’ve noticed this in movie theaters, schools, libraries, and many other places where you’d go to a bathroom like that. I guess it isn’t so much a design flaw as it is a flaw on the part of the people who measured and installed the locks. But seriously, how can this be SO common?
Yes, mine does exactly this. I have it set so that the radio comes on, fairly quietly but enough to gently wake me up but not have to open my eyes, then the actual alarm goes off 15 minutes later.
Even worse than that. 25% x 25% = 6.25%. And, in practice, usually even less than that, since there are usually two of these mystery doors in each set, one of which is unaccountably locked at all times. So at each stage you have a 1 in 2 chance of getting the right door, then a 1 in 4 chance of opening it the right way, then the same again at the second set, giving you a 1 in 64 chance (1.56%) of getting through the entrance without looking like a putz. :rolleyes:
I have a white sports bra. It is not the kind intended to be worn solo as an exercise top. It is not a prestigious status brand. Yet, for some reason, the manufacturer has embroidered their logo in dark blue on the front. This means the bra can’t be worn tastefully with white or light-colored shirts.
Well why the hell was my grandma putting towels on there! The crazy thing is that she was one of the few people I’ve ever known who even had one of those mats.
Why do you need it though? It’s just two more numbers. Maybe they haven’t bothered because people don’t use personal checks as much as they used to.
I nominate public restroom TP dispensers–just certain ones. I’m talking about the ones that have sloping tops so you can’t put your keys, wallet, and comb on them without having them fall right to the floor. Why on earth did they make the tops sloping when flat ones would have been so much more practical.
Another design flaw that really irritated me was my mother’s TV and remote control’s tiny dark grey lettering with black on black buttons scheme. I was her live in caregiver for several years, and with her bad eyesight she was always calling for me in to fiddle with it for her. It was hard for me sometimes to tell what the buttons on the TV did ( at least I could hold the damned remote up to a light ) unless I brought a flashlight, much less her. Oh, and all the buttons were identical as well; not even an odd shaped or large one for the volume and channel changing.
And from the apartment building I lived in some years ago, there was the over the stove kitchen fan that didn’t actually connect to any sort of vent or even a filter. And then there was the outdoors drainage system with an exit higher in elevation than the intake.
I like my DVD player–it was inexpensive, yet it plays things in all kinds of weird formats, which is cool. It’s durable, light and small. However, there are two things about it that get right up my nose–first, the remote does not have an on/off button. You can open the DVD tray, or close it, but you can’t turn the effing thing off without going over there and hitting the button. Also, the remote is a dark charcoal grey and the miniscule lettering for the fifty billion tiny buttons is in a charcoal grey one shade lighter than the rest of the remote. Go ahead, read the button labels, I dare ya! It’s taken me three years to memorize where the subtitle, FF, RW and main menu buttons are–the rest of the functions are a complete mystery. Nearsighted SO, on the other hand, loves to show off by using the zoom and chapter advance and other fancy schmancy functions. Someday he will smirk while doing so and then we’ll see whether he can recall from memory where the “remove remote from ass” button is!
My laptop has fabulously designed outer hinges that started cracking within a few months of purchase. I suppose one day the screen will fall right off and then where’ll I be?
Get a seam ripper (used in sewing) and very carefully slit the stitches in the embroidery, then pull the strings out. I say “very carefully” because you can slit cloth as well as thread with a seam ripper.
Ooooooo my goddamn DVD player. We went cheap on the new one and shouldn’t have.
Doesn’t remember the scene you were on after you turn it off.
Has an auto shut-off setting which can’t be adjusted.
Doesn’t show the time on the top, by which I mean time remaining in the movie or anything like that.
I blame my SO, but he so obviously feels bad about choosing it - I leave all electronic choices to him - that I don’t even have the heart to complain. But I hate it.
) It doesn’t take much weight, either.