Modhat: I added Mini-Rant to this title, closed the May one and merged the second June Mini-Rant thread into this one, the first one. Any complaints, take it up with the goats or hamsters or something.
Oh god my kid.
He doesn’t feel well. He will not stop whining. He won’t nap. He’s barely eating.
And it’s just not a good time. I’m not at my best. The sound of him whining is triggering some nasty concoction of rage and fear. Maybe it’s a side effect of my new stimulant meds or maybe some days just really fucking suck.
I just have to keep repeating I am the adult. I can handle this over and over like a goddamn mantra.
Three hours until bedtime. God I hope.
It’s my birthday month as well, marking 50 trips around the sun. I agree on the wear and tear being no fun. Bad back, sciatica, bad knees, all of it.
This is a dangerous time as I recall - the kid might fall asleep on his own for an accidental nap, and then you’ll never get him down for the night. Not that I’m purposely trying to scare you or anything. But we used to do a lot of poking, walking, singing, whatever to keep the damn kid awake.
Okay, this is a very first-world problem, but this is the thread for that, right?
I have been trying to replace my dress shoes with a pair as much like them as possible. I’ve been searching for literally years, because I have definite opinions as to heel height, style, color, etc. So about a month ago, the endless quest ended when I found just what I wanted on Amazon! I placed an order right away, and received the message that they didn’t have any in stock, but would email me when they shipped. So I wait several weeks. Finally, I contact the manufacturer and ask them if I should be worried. They respond that they haven’t made that shoe since 2009 and there is no stock anywhere. So what the fuck, Amazon? You already suck, and now you lie? You’re a lying, sucking, bastard, poo-poo head site! I hate you, hate you, hate you. 
Thank you, I should have done that originally.
What drives me nuts is when I’m using an app with a search function, and as I’m searching it starts making suggestions immediately. I type “A” and the damn thing freezes as it thinks, then suggests, “Apple? Aardvark? Android?” I type an “R” and it suggests, “Arkansas? Arbuckle? Arcade?” For fuck’s sake, stop playing guessing games and let me type you piece of shit. I wouldn’t mind except it freezes 5 seconds each time. It takes 30 seconds to type a short word I could type in 2 seconds.
I have a couple of streaming apps on my Xbox that pull that shit, and my cable’s on demand search does too. Is it too hard to make your shitty program wait for me to press the “search” button before you make a hundred wrong guesses?
Phew, I’m glad I got that off my chest. That’s been bothering me for a while.
That is shitty design. I’ve just started doing some GUI work, and suggestions are only popped up after you’ve typed at least 2 or more characters and paused for some amount of time (at least 0.5 secs but I tend to stretch that out a bit). Particularly for typing on something like an Xbox or Netflix where you are pushing a cursor around with arrow keys instead of a using a keyboard, if the response time is that slow I would probably through the controller through the screen at some point.
Have you ever tried searching Ebay or Etsy? I’ve had some pretty good luck finding no-longer-made items there, often never-used, even. I mean, this is America, we have a ton of random stuff just sitting around! 
iTunes. I mean, I probably don’t need to say any more, but now my phone won’t let me play most of my music. Either because 1) I bought CDs back when that was normal, including lots of music not available for purchase in iTunes, but apparently not the rights to play that music on devices I own; 2) I have dared to move countries, and when you do that all of your music explodes, or 3) I dared to buy some music from artists who don’t use iTunes.
Fine: what I’ve bought through iTunes is a sunk cost, and I can walk away, but how can I listen to my own music when I’m not at my laptop?
At one time it was okay. I’ve never been a fan but at least it once served a purpose. I swear that Apple has been incrementally sabotaging its own product over time, removing features and making it more difficult. I’m convinced that they want to be rid of it and they’re weaning people off of it, but don’t want to kill it while anyone still uses it.
Anti-rant for the thread title making me think of one of my favorite Beatles songs.
Not-rant: hey, @BippityBoppityBoo, come on over to the June mini-rants. 
Ok, I’m here. What do I do now?
Find something to gripe about, of course.
Overly helpful MMPers herding you aroud, for example.
As long as you don’t blow my cover with the eternally, relentlessly grateful and cheerful ones over there. Don’t even tell them that I think they’re relentlessly, eternally cheerful and grateful either.
If anybody starts badmouthing Apple iOS and iPhones here they’ll have to make it up to me. Go ahead and like your Androids and PCs just don’t rain on my parade. I don’t rain on yours. Rant enough?
The really fun stuff I’ll have to PM you. You first.
Huh? Almost all my music is ripped from CDs (or vinyl…I’m old). And then played (and organized) using iTunes. On my laptop and my iPhone.
I’ve been doing it that way for decades. With zero problems. I used iTunes and a CD/DVD drive to rip everything to 256kbps mp3 or AAC (or Apple Lossless in the case of Beatles Remasters).
Now, iTunes pisses me off in one respect. It won’t let me play music that my kids have bought using their own iTunes accounts. Sure, if I wanted to, I could ask my progeny to authorize my computer or phone to play their purchases, but I don’t want to encourage them to “cheat” (they’re learning that fine on their own).
Anyhow, how is iTunes checking an mp3 from your personal CD to see if they carry that artist? And is that really a function of some iTunes version I’ve never heard of?
Re-post in 25 years, and you’ll know how I’m feeling. Fortunately I’ll be long gone by then.
But happy birthday anyway.
Me too. I’ve been ripping to iTunes since the '90s, with not problem. And I have music from some very non-standard artists.
Well, kudos to you and the Mrs. for at least letting the little birdies grow up and fly away. My hosting of a starling family in my dryer vent, recounted in great detail in the May rant, had a similarly happy conclusion. But it was mainly the result of my procrastination in calling the Bird Men and the fact that they couldn’t show up for more than a week. By the time they got here there was nothing left but an empty nest and a Mama bird apparently in the grip of post-partum depression, who flew out of the vent in a rage as they attempted to clean it out. It was a scene that could have been spliced into Hitchcock’s The Birds to good effect.
Not lately. If I ever find the energy to shop again, I guess I’ll start there.