Hey June, don't make it bad (but you will) [Mini-Rant]

The BBQ Pit
#181

Yeesh. This is a strong reminder that when one sells a car, make sure you’ve got all the paperwork proving it, scanned and handy. Friends of ours donated one some years back, the place they donated it to re-sold it, and nobody registered it. So they got a bill for tickets and towing because it got abandoned somewhere. Luckily they had the paperwork.

When we donated our car to the school district last fall we immediately scanned the paperwork - and our DMV has a site where you can report that you no longer own the car. As a funny side note, though, we did learn more about its fate: a friend’s adult son whom we hadn’t seen in 10-15 years runs a used car dealership - and he bought this 22 year old Honda Civic from the school district - and spotted our name on the title history, so he messaged us. Quite a hoot - and a much nicer “you heard back from the car you got rid of” take than many.

#182

Similar thing happened to us. Donated a car which got fixed up and passed to some needy couple then ended up getting towed. Towing company sent us a notice that they had the car, which was no longer ours.

We still had a copy of the keys to the car at the time, I wonder what would have happened if we tried to retrieve it.

#183

I’m doing call center work right now (short term between real projects) and we have to copy SSN and phone number from one window into any of numerous others.

The phone number is displayed (555) 444-3322. In one of the places we have to paste, it MUST be 555-444-3322. And in the other, it must be 5554443322.

It’s displayed in an orange font that is, for some reason, especially hard for my old eyes to read (similar issue with some games - which will have something urgent in red type on a black background - can NOT read it).

And one of the places I have to paste the SSN is Excel - so I’ve had to figure out how to force Excel to display the leading zero.

#184

Since the other people hadn’t registered it, it was still legally yours - so I suspect nothing except you’d have had to pay a towing / impound fee. In the case of our 22 year old Civic, that would be more than the car was worth (seriously - it was worth maybe 400 bucks, and needed 2400 bucks in repairs).

#185

My own mini-rant:
PASSWORDS (and interwebs security in general)

I know why they need to be long and complex. I think this is a dandy thing. I use a password vault that will generate those, and even allow you to copy / paste from the vault into the web page.

BUT, some gripes on software and websites that make it so much harder to practice good password safety:

  1. Tools that don’t tell you their rules, and let you put in a bad one without complaining. I think it was at Verizon, where I kept changing the password because I couldn’t get in - 5 minutes after the change. I finally figured out that there was a length limitation. If you put in, say, a 16 character password, it would think that was fine and dandy - but would store only 12 characters (or the hash for same)> So “P@ssword12345678” would be fine when you did the change, but then you’d try to log in with that, and it would match your hash against the hash for “P@ssword1234” and throw an error. Another time, my company required us to make our Windows passwords extra long to encourage phrases. So I changed it to something like “Fourscore and seven years ago”. Which worked - for 24 hours, then I wound up getting locked out of my own computer and having to ship it to another city to get hacked by our tech support guys. Had I not had an ancient spare laptop, I would have lost a WEEK of work - due to following corporate policy. The problem (per the help desk person) may have been the spaces. So WIndows took the change - then no longer matched because it presumably just took “Fourscore” or whatever.
  2. Websites that don’t tell you about other limitations. I’ve run into ones that want special characters, but not ALL of them - and they don’t tell you which ones are OK.
  3. Sites that flat-out LIE about the rules. I tried to update my password on a server once and per the new rules, came up with something 15 characters - it said “14 or more”. Well, 15 is “14 or more”, right?
  4. Tools that make it impossible to use a password vault to paste in the code. Our email client is like that - so the password has to be something I can remember well enough to type. Another tool I use (a remote desktop tool) lets me paste in the password when I first connect - but when it times out later on (like at lunchtime), I have to manually type in the gibberish.
#186

Yeah the password BS. At work, to view our own status, timekeeping, schedule, pay stubs, it seemed like every third time I went to check them I get a pop-up “How about a new passoword?” suggestion. Which meant, jump through some more email/phone hoops or you can’t see any of this.

My reaction, more often than not said aloud: “How about you go fuck yourselves?”

#187

I have a mini rant. I love my daughters to death. They are my joy. But some days… Today I am feeling really sick, I think (hope) it’s just a really bad sinus issue (probably due to allergies) but my head is throbbing and is extremely congested. I am so dizzy that at times it feels like I’m on a carousel and I can’t walk, like I’m drunk. I’m still working (from home) as best as I can because I have nobody to cover me and people need IT consulting.

My youngest daughter (she will turn 7 next month) is home this week. Her school allows in-person learning but another student tested positive for COVID and their standard procedure is to send kids home for a week after that for safety. She comes into my little office literally singing “12 Days of Christmas” at the top of her lungs, badly and off-key. “Singing” is being kind; it was more like yelling.
Because she’s bored. I gently reminded her that I’m not feeling well and she left but my head is still ringing from that.

She is really a sweetheart, earlier today she was asking me if she could “get me anything” to help (short answer: no) so I’m not mad at her but damn. That was literally painful.

#188

I missed a very important psychiatry telehealth appointment today which I have been waiting for all week, to review the ADHD meds that are working for me and get on a higher therapeutic dose. Between the flu and trying to get work done and my baby and FIL visiting I just completely fucking forgot.

She’s not available again until July fucking 15th long after my meds run out. I don’t think she can legally prescribe more until she sees me.

I feel like a catastrophic failure of a human being. I don’t know why I’m taking this so hard but I actually cried about this. I’m afraid I’m going to run out of meds, she’s going to drop me or I’ll miss future appointments. I don’t want to go back to life without this medication.

#189

Most emphatically, you are not! You are a pandemically-stressed, WFH wife, daughter-in-law, mother of a toddler with unreliable child care who has been sick for over a week who also has been caring for a spouse and small child who are also sick. Please give yourself a break. You are doing great if you’re just pulling off one of those things while being a mom, much less expecting yourself to juggle all of them flawlessly.

She’s not going to cut you off. She may have to ‘see’ you before prescribing depending on the drug and the state but that is no worse than what you had to deal with before she started prescribing the med.

I’ve been in your bedroom slippers-it’ll be ok. PM if you’d like to know what I’ve figured out to reduce the chances of repeat appt. missing. Virtually all of it I learned the hard way, no reason you have to. Bet some other Dopers have some good ideas too.

#190

Yeah, Weasy… (get it? Because you’re wheezy?)

If your family is alive after you get through this, then you’ve succeeded as a wife/mom/human being.

I was running out of a prescription and the pharmacy had gotten a note that I had to see the doc first. I called my clinic and they connected me to “someone on the doc’s team” who said she’d get authorization for two weeks’ worth, which would get me through til my appointment.

Once before, my pharmacy just gave me a week’s worth in that situation, and made a note to give me 7 fewer tablets next refill.

#191

Irrelevant Video Tracker* (per an earlier M-R post):

Cracked
ABC
Medium

Feel free to add more as you encounter them. [*By which I mean videos embedded in an article which have NOTHING to do with the topic of said article. Bonus points if they actually label them w/ the article topic, but STILL actually have nada to do with it.]

#192

This post strikes me as being terribly meta.

#193

What are you talking about?

ETA: Ok, I’ve been rereading your post… I think you mean you’re ranting about a website with videos that don’t relate to the headline. But why not say that up front, instead of launching right into the middle of the rant?

ETA2: Oh, because you’re continuing a mini-rant from a previous thread… but you can’t count on us reading that thread.

#194

Because search failed to find the post I had made. [Failed search-fu]

Carry on.

#195

Not a great week, but I gotta say, after what one of my friends went through yesterday, I’ve added a whole new phrase to my lexicon: “At least it’s not asshole surgery.”

(He has a great sense of humor about it, with the kind of friends that will never let him live it down… Honestly I’d handle it with far less grace.)

#196

A friend of mine asked the doc afterwards “So, how do you think the surgery went, on the whole?”

#197

“It wasn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.”

#198

I second Bippity’s advice. I work in medical scheduling and hear from people who are in the same boat all the time. 95% of the time the providers can give you a partial refill to get you to the next appointment. It’s understandable. Sometimes life gets in the way.

#199

This time I actually have a rant. I ran across this sentence in today’s “Ask Amy” column about planning a quinceañera:

“You should meet with your ex and her husband, and the three of you should go over the details and the related costs of this important – and sometimes lavish — celebration (traditionally given for Latinx girls on their 15th birthday.”

Please note the bolded part. I don’t know if Ms. Amy or her editor put that in, but to make my eye stop twitching I must remind them that there is a perfectly fine Spanish word for that phrase: LATINA. Goddammit, people, when you’re referring to someone whose gender is known it is totally appropriate to use the gendered endings!

#200

Especially when that is a significant feature of their own language! Seems a bit “imperialist” to me to demand that a large chunk of the world’s population make major changes to their centuries-old language to please a small group of self-anointed elites from outside that culture.