Micro-rant: WTF is it with TV shows announcing that “there’s only X episodes left until the season finale” instead of “there’s X+1 episodes left this season”?
Tonight I gave Mrs. J. a kiss and told her “You are so good-looking.”
A voice comes from the pocket of my pants, saying “Thanks. I like to think that beauty comes from within.”
:eek:
It’s the voice of Google Assistant on my cellphone, which somehow activated when I bent over to give Mrs J. the smooch.
What nerve! Now I have to figure out how to deactivate that presumptuous tart.
Google Assistant, that is. :mad:
I do tech support for instructional web conferencing as my job. We’ve had times when the instructor would call on someone by name and the assistant on their cell would activate in an attempt to ‘help’. 
I’d watch that sitcom!
I often wonder what life’s like in a household where they’re always yelling up the stairs for their daughter Alexa.
Hey, I’ll have to ask the neighbors if that’s a problem (their daughter’s named Siri).
“Siri! Did you Venmo Jimmy? A thousand dollars would be crazy, but maybe twenty.”
Repeat rant every snow season, what’s with the lazy bastards who don’t clear their windshields from snow? Peaking out of a hole the size of a basketball. Snow covering the back window, all lights.grrrr.
You adopted a cat during a rough patch in your life, and she really helped you with your issues. So sweet! But now you’re giving her away free to a good home, because there’s just no room for an animal in the “perfect, peaceful new life” The Lord has given you.
WTF. :mad:
Grrrrr!!!
Handy thing in Canada: in most jurisdictions here, drivers who fail to clear their vehicles of snow and ice are liable for a fine between $50 - $500 (In B.C. it’s $109). It seems like every season the radio stations, TV & print news outlets, and cops issue the public warnings and occasionally make an example of a self absorbed lazy entitled nitwit.
And then there are the people who drive a white car in a heavy snow storm, with no lights on.
There are laws about clearing vehicles completely before driving here in PA, too. But at least 25% of the drivers ignore that law completely. It makes me all stabby.
ETA: And if there’s any precipitation, they are supposed to have their headlights on. Lots of people ignore that, too. Hey! FUCKERS! I don’t care if you think you can see where you’re going just fine without your lights on, I CAN’T SEE YOU! TURN THEM ON, DAMNIT.
I posted here some years back about a non-cleared car nearly wiping out my windshield. A big SUV driven by a tiny woman (as I learned when I ran up to her car at the next stop light to let her know); a sheet of snow and ice flew off at speed and SLAMMMMMMMED into my windshield. I’m really surprised the windshield didn’t shatter.
I think your percentages are far too low, actually - around here I’m sure it’s more like 75% of drivers who fail to clear their cars.
Possibly this ought to be a separate thread: but how on earth are people who are receiving some assistance supposed to save up for something like a car (or repairs for the car they own)?
My daughter is living on her own in another state. She is working only part time. The reasons for this are long and valid, but basically she earns well below the poverty limit and would qualify for food stamps. Only, she has had several months where she was able to save most of her income - so she has more than the maximum saved up at the moment.
She doesn’t own a car. She would like to get one at some point - but obviously she can’t have enough money saved up to buy one (or even put a decent down payment). If she already owned one, that would be fine - but she wouldn’t be able to save up for the cost of things like repairs.
I get having asset limits - someone who has 50,000 in the bank but low income at the moment has less need of food stamps than someone with 2,000 - but this kind of rule makes it nearly impossible for someone to build up any kind of safety net / have the ability to look for a better job etc.
I live in a complex with quiet hours, 10 PM to 6 AM. My upstairs neighbors like to vacuum, run their washer, and/or play music or TV loudly between 1 AM and 3 AM. I left them a nice note (They weren’t home.) a month or so ago asking them to please turn it down late at night. The music and TV got quieter, but the vacuuming, washer, etc. continued.
I went to the manager. Said I didn’t want to cause any trouble but I really need to sleep. She sent them a text reminding them of quiet hours and listing all the forbidden stuff (all of which they did). Whew! Peace reigned! Until tonight. It’s only 10:30 here, but I don’t wanna listen to their blaring TV, and this doesn’t bode well. I don’t want to be the grouch who goes to the manager again, especially since round two is a letter from management saying “There have been complaints.” They live on the third floor, so they’d know it was me.
Why can’t they shut the frick up???
We had a couple of days of dense fog last week, visibility maybe 100 yards. I have a short drive to work, about five minutes, and saw probably half a dozen cars each morning with no lights on. They just suddenly appear in front of you out of the fog, which sucks if you happen to be turning in front of them. You’d think they’d get a clue that 99% of the other drivers on the road have their lights on.
My rant this morning is aimed at Microsoft. If you’re going to decide to start updating my computer, at least give me some clue that that’s what you’re doing. I came in to work this morning, logged in, and opened Outlook. I tried to respond to an email from late Friday afternoon and everything just froze up. I tried to close the email, I tried to close Outlook, I tried to open Task Manager… nothing. After waiting about five minutes, I decided to try to log out and log back in. It didn’t want to let me log out. Finally, about ten minutes later, I get the message “We’re getting things ready” and then a few minutes later it starts showing the update percentage complete. Half an hour later, I’m finally logged back in, although the computer is still sluggish as hell. If I would have known from the start that it was doing an update, I would have just gone and got some coffee instead of trying to figure out why my computer had frozen up.
It’s just more devious financial shit. They don’t have to pay out on checks that don’t get processed and there are plenty of people who won’t be sufficiently motivated by $25 to bother with it. If they credited accounts, everyone gets paid.
Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? Hopefully, because I’m not a conniving, profit-hungry douchebag.
And you can bet they had someone running the numbers/projections to be sure that the extra cost of mailing the checks would be more than covered by the number of people who wouldn’t cash them. Fuckers.
Why does UPS always do this? I have a delivery today. They send me the “Follow My Delivery” link so I can watch the truck (not) come. Hey, the truck is 1000 feet away on the next street!
Hey, why is the truck moving over to another part of town?
Hey, ho, I guess it will be the end of the day after all. 
There seems to be some delivery priority that does not care whether the truck’s route is the most efficient or not. And I’m always at the bottom.
This happens to me all the time, too. I think the issue is that UPS tries to never have the truck make a left turn.
YES! You are so smart and so right! Our check is still sitting in the “to deal with” pile, but at least we opened the envelope instead of assuming that it contained junk mail because we do all of our stuff with them online.
Dead Cat Don’t feel bad, I work for an evil, earth-raping oil company, and I didn’t figure it out either.
I think that most folks don’t think to actually TURN their headlights on is because of the daytime running lights and the automatic sensor that turns their headlights on for them. They are used to their car using the proper lighting for the conditions, so don’t bother to think about if they can be seen.
Fog and sometimes snow conditions defeat the sensors, so now people are driving around with their daytime running lights and NO TAIL LIGHTS in very bad light, but don’t know that they are a hazard to others and themselves.
Thinking and situational awareness are becoming rather uncommon.
Like the rebate checks, I’ve read surprising stats regarding gift card use:
Give Grammy Gertrude a Cabela’s card for Christmas, and she may never use it.
Let me tell you about the Borders card in my closet, with about $22 left on it… and a big stack of punched cards from a cute little coffee joint (a new owner came in and put up a sign “Not honoring any Coffee Cards”)
You guys’ll warn me when B&N’s about to go under, right?