Nah, the pic is dated February, 1949. What I showed you was a modern real computer, one that I actually worked with. When the university I was at bought it, they had to install a power substation to support it. It had more than a couple of microscopic tiny buttons and a stupid touchscreen. It was worth around $10 million in today’s dollars. You definitely could not put it in your shirt pocket or misplace it. It was, in short, a real computer. It could, however, make and receive phone calls.
I’m sorry to hear about your unfortunate dental condition. That’s a hell of a thing to have to live with. I don’t blame you for postponing extraction and dentures; I’m sure I’d do the same, and in fact postponing as long as possible is probably a good idea. I’m sure your dentist has considered all the options but I’m surprised that capping the teeth with a veneer wouldn’t at least partially alleviate the problems.
I don’t remember if my phone will let me access saved emails when I’m offline (due to no data plan). The QR code is right in the email so if it does, I wouldn’t have had an issue in the first place. Anyway, screen shot taken and saved just in case. By the time I was ready to haul my lazy ass out the door it was getting close to rush hour and Staples is some distance away, so instead I said fuck it and mixed myself a Caesar. I have until Feb 1 and the new shoes are on their way regardless.
Very strange thing with Amazon. Late last night the size I wanted was listed as both “sold by” and “shipped from” a third party seller. I prefer to have stuff shipped directly from Amazon so I thought I’d wait a few days. But just on a whim, I checked again about an hour later and it was suddenly back to “sold by Amazon” and “shipped from Amazon”. And this was in the middle of the night. Their warehouses must be beehives of activity at all hours!
I save airline tickets, QR codes, etc in my iPhone wallet. Makes life simple.
OTOH …
My GF does as you do. Just the other day the venue refused the screenshot and wanted the live page; too easy to distribute the screenshot & let others in supposedly.
In a different SNAFU the same weekend she’d bought tickets for a us and a group who were driving separately and arriving long after we were admitted. She had to forward that E-ticket to them via the venue website so they could get in. Of course all she had was a pic she’d saved of the final pay page of the website. Which was a 3rd party site, not the venue site. Of course any links in the pic are dead; it’s a pic of a webpage, not a live webpage.
Cue huge flail to locate the actual venue site, then figure out how to get to the ticket-vending site w/o buying more tickets, then retrieve her ticket without an account at that vendor, etc.
Keeping the original webpage link and the email they sent w the tickets and all the live links is IMO MUCH better than a dead screenshot.
I don’t quite understand this and the other problem you describe. In my experience all e-tickets, whether printed at home or displayed as a static image on a phone, carry a barcoded serial number and are good for the admission of one person. They’re in the system as either valid or not. Once scanned when the person is admitted, they’re no longer valid for admission. Simple.
So any IT dude / dudette would expect. I’m just reporting what I’ve experienced.
The official app for US minor league bsseball even has an animation on the page adjacent to the barcode and the ticket-takers are instructed to watch for the moving animation to thwart duplication.
A legit problem is a design where one barcode represents not one single-seat admission ticket, but rather one purchasing event of perhaps multiple admission tickets.
In the venues where specific seats aren’t assigned to specific purchasers that’s a not-crazy design decision. But alno means each barcode is good for n admissions, but not n+1.
Sure, and I always have the original too.
What I’m trying to avoid is being “that guy” who holds up a line or whatever while I’m screwing around with my phone.
If they are forcing the issue with some stupid insistence on a live link (which I’ve never heard of before and makes zero sense because this is just an alternative to a paper ticket or receipt which won’t have a live link either), then they are the fuck-ups holding up the line and rather than suffering with social anxiety, I get to watch them be the dumbasses.
In either case, job done.
I too hate to be that guy.
For a return I’ll fire up my phone & get into the e.g. Amazon app & get to the QR code page, then get out of the car and walk into the e.g. UPS store or Whole Foods or …
All the silliness w GF happened just this last weekend and it made an impression. She does pretty much everything on her phone, except email. That mostly lives on her PC.
Color me confused, but she’s a grown-up and totally worth her few foibles. In this case it was all dumb IT that played badly w her habits.
As a retired IT guy I’m maybe extra sensitive to the practical need to take active countermeasures to offset stunni gly stupid / bad IT decisions. Normies don’t seem to notice the issues I grind teeth over.
I hear you. Bad IT logic drives me nuts and makes me want to shake somebody.
(._. ) That sucks. I’ve already lost one of mine; went to two dentists, an endodontist, and an oral surgeon over the course of many years trying to save that tooth. All had different opinions as to why it kept producing bursts of pain despite no signs of infection, and all but one agreed that the tooth couldn’t be saved. (The one outlier turned out to be absolutely horrible at his profession, and he may have actually made the problem worse.)
It’s currently 8PM.
“Arriving today by 10 PM”
Status?
“Ordered”
Okay, Amazon.
Well, it’s now two hours later. Did you get it?
In my experience, Amazon rarely screws up, but “Arriving today by 10 PM” is the default message on the day delivery is due when it’s not actually out for delivery yet and Amazon has no idea yet when it will be. As I’m sure you know when it’s actually out for delivery you get a time estimate, initially a four-hour window, sometimes less. I hope you got your package today but I’m guessing you probably didn’t.
Gotta love Amazon’s “guaranteed delivery date”. To their credit they almost always meet it and usually deliver sooner than the initial estimate, but the concept of a “guarantee” is meaningless marketing bullshit.
To my utter shock, it now says:
Delayed, not yet shipped
Huh. Last time I had to schedule an appointment for an extraction, the dentist gave me a prescription.
The worst thing about receiving deliveries is that I obsess over tracking everything! That reminds me, I need to go check my email…
The last couple of concerts I’ve gone to, with tickets purchased through TicketMaster, they require a scan from the actual app, not a screenshot. And yeah, I was that guy holding up the line – I had the app open, had the tickets pulled up and ready to display, and when we got to the front of the line the TicketMaster app decided to spontaneously go back to the home page, and I couldn’t get back to my “upcoming shows” tab. It took me a couple of minutes of fumbling with my phone to finally get the tickets pulled up again. So fuck TM for making things more difficult than they really need to be. If an airline can get me on a plane by scanning a screenshot, you ought to be able to get me into a concert venue.
I believe Ticketmaster was able to put tickets in the Apple Wallet, which is just as legit as the link in the app.
I dislike their prices and how much of a pain in the ass it is to order tickets, but I have to say once I’ve received the tickets it has been pretty convenient afterwards.
To change the subject, I am sick. Not be in the hospital sick but stay home multiple days from work sick. Doc says I have walking pneumonia. I feel horrible. I thought I would start feeling better soon, seeing as I’m on day 3 of 5 of my antibiotics but I’m really struggling and now it’s starting to feel like I also have a sinus infection. I’m so tired of this shit. First I can’t walk because of stupid plantar fasciitis and now I can’t breathe properly. Fuck this shit.
Another Neighborhood Facebook Post
As I have said, I joined a Facebook group when I moved into my new neighborhood. Today, I saw another example of stupidity there. The poster was wondering where to go to report an incident of police brutality and where to go to get security camera footage of the event. All that is fine and if they left it at that, they would have my sympathy and concern.
The poster described what had happened. They lead by calling the police “pigs”. This may have been warranted, but I would not open with it as it poisons the well. They then described coming upon the scene mid beating. Which is an admission that they do not know what happened, who started the violence, whether the violence the cops were currently using was excessivee etc. The said there were three cops and one guy. They said that one of the cops used a taser on the man they were beating. He begged them not to do it. I wasn’t there. I do not have access to any footage or to an unbiased witness. If I saw a cop about to use a taser on me, I would also ask them not to do it- regardless of whether or not the situation actually called for it.
The next sentence was an admission of true and utter stupidity. The poster said they tried to pull one of the cops off the man. So you see a situation in progress, jump to the conclusion that the three cops must be the villains and are ready, willing and eager to use violence without any need for it. What do you do in this situation? You perform what could easily be construed as interfering with police officers doing their duty, or even assault. You grab a cop you consider a danger and try to physically move him. Brilliant.
I can of course understand wanting to stop what you consider police brutality. But you if you see it happening, you get badge numbers or better yet pull out your smart phone and start recording. Grabbing any cop and trying to move them is monumentally stupid. If you have decided that a cop is dangerous, filled with hate and rage it is even more stupid to grab them and try to move them.
Being a white guy who grew up in the suburbs, I had a good relationship with cops growing up. I have been stopped for no reason other than ‘fitting the description’ a total of one time. I have heard from black men who grew up in Philly, that they made sure to always carry ID because cops would routinely stop them while they were walking in their neighborhood. The police clearly viewed them as the enemy. This caused the men I talked with to view the police as the enemy. I realize that I have a very different perspective from the person who posted.
Still, grabbing a cop who is with two other cops and in the process of commiting an act of violence is excedingly stupid.