# Rant, Write, and Boo (July Mini-Rants) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Tags:** monthly-mini-rant\ **Created:** [July 1, 2026, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327 "2026-07-01T07:38:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2026, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/201 "2026-07-17T22:52:19Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > Also, I have a clogged pore (“zit”) on the inside edge of my NOSE, Oh, dang. Just reading that made me curl myself around my whole face. Ouch. You have my deepest sympathy. ---
**Author:** ![WolfpackJeep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpackjeep/32/2921_2.png) [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2026, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/202 "2026-07-18T00:16:58Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > Also, I have a clogged pore (“zit”) on the inside edge of my NOSE I got one of those one that ended up looking like a big blackhead. I was desperate enough to carefully push on the edges of it, and managed to get out a thing that looked exactly like a blackhead plug, but had a uniquely vile smell. It healed quickly, and I haven’t had a problem since. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2026, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/203 "2026-07-18T12:18:37Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > Also, I have a clogged pore (“zit”) on the inside edge of my NOSE, and I would like to submit a complaint to management. Damn thing hurts, and since I work in a food kitchen I can’t exactly mess with it. Food service? Zit? There’s only one thing for you to do; declare a [food fight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZN4r8p6KbU&t=100s)! ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2026, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/204 "2026-07-18T12:50:14Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > My WAG is that they want to make sure that it’s really eczema this time, and not something else that’s more serious or at least different that might be made worse by the cream But then they always allow me repeat prescriptions without needing to see it again… Incidentally, I did get a reply to the email I sent yesterday saying they’ll forward the prescription request. They also said they’ve sent me the link to the patient registration page. 1. that wasn’t the issue; I can access the page fine, it’s just that it says ‘submitted’ and then nothing happens, the person who ‘will get in touch’ doesn’t, and 2. I haven’t actually received said email with a link anyway. Yes I’ve checked my spam folder. I have no idea why they need me to fill in a form which is just my name and address (and the patient’s name) and my email address (and the patient’s email address) and my relationship to myself, in the first place. It seems like something that should just be a tick box when registering. ---
**Author:** ![chela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chela/32/21582_2.png) [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2026, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/205 "2026-07-18T16:32:22Z")
New exterior door installed yesterday. Love it, just what I wanted. Installation went great, signed off on project (plus interior service door and two windows ) Seals looked tight, no daylight peeking through until today when the sunlight was no longer blotted out by wildfire smoke. Why is there a gap at the bottom of the door large enough to see daylight through? Is that normal? Dreading the Lowe’s process to correct this, already fed up with 8 weeks of moving targets regarding delivery delays. Bummed out. ---
**Author:** ![romansperson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/romansperson/32/17100_2.png) [@romansperson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/romansperson)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2026, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/206 "2026-07-18T20:12:14Z")
Goddamn motherfuckin pharmacy. There’s a certain generic manufacturer that they aren’t supposed to fill my prescription with. They know this – my doctor requested it and it’s in my file. Now for the second goddamn time they’ve done just that. And unfortunately, after all the runaround the first time they fucked up, I figured they’d do it right this time – the pharmacist assured me that the note is in my file. So I didn’t check the manufacturer of the new Rx I picked up 3 days ago until today, when I needed to start taking it (yep, that part is totally on me, but really, how hard is this?? Do they not read any of this, or is it that they just don’t care??). Of course, I called them and the tech said there’s nothing they can do – they don’t have any of that Rx in stock from another manufacturer and the pharmacy manager won’t be in until Monday – she said I’d have to talk to him, which sounds like bullshit to me (the pharmacist on duty fixed this last time). Great customer service, guys, thanks. Fortunately for me, I have a smaller Rx for the same drug that I fill when I am going out of town. I have transferred that Rx to a different pharmacy and we’ll see if they can manage to not fuck this up. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2026, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/207 "2026-07-18T22:20:04Z")
> [@chela](#): > > Seals looked tight, no daylight peeking through until today when the sunlight was no longer blotted out by wildfire smoke. Why is there a gap at the bottom of the door large enough to see daylight through? Is that normal? To the best of my knowledge, if you can see light then air can pass through which defeats the purpose of door seals. When my refrigerator was frosting over the freezer side, I used a flashlight to confirm that the ice cube dispenser door wasn’t sealing. I replaced the door and that fixed the issue. Since it’s an exterior door, I imagine you’ll want to address it, probably before the winter comes. Since it’s at the bottom of the door, you might be able to add more weather stripping for a cheap and easy fix if Lowe’s won’t cover the fix. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2026, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/208 "2026-07-19T03:05:53Z")
went for a run this morning, not sure if it was that I haven’t been running & am therefore out of shape, that I was tired, that it was humid (before the rain came in), the Canadian smoke in the air (we were still in the red this morning) or some combination of the above but my watch was screaming at my that my HR was too high & I was running like $#!+; packed it in a bit early. Then I did a deep dive into the HR settings on the watch - generic rule of thumb is your HR is 220-[age]. I am a bit higher than that, but still in the ballpark. Although it didn’t feel like it, it was telling me I was at my max HR, yet when I looked at the results my HR never got above Zone 4 (of 5). Ummm??? I looked at the watch & discovered that my max hr was 207; my kids have a lower max than that! Also, Garmin, why do you reset fastest mile every month? It’s not that big of an accomplishment to get your fastest mile the first time you run for the month. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2026, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/209 "2026-07-19T12:12:27Z")
> [@Spiderman](#): > > I looked at the watch & discovered that my max hr was 207; my kids have a lower max than that! You’ve got one hell of a resume for a 13yo. 🤪 > [@Spiderman](#): > > It’s not that big of an accomplishment to get your fastest mile the first time you run for the month. Gamification requires frequent rewards. If you only got fastest mile when you set a new personal best, well, that wouldn’t happen very often. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2026, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/210 "2026-07-19T14:35:09Z")
We’re back home, finally, from our vacation with our grandson. Our flight home yesterday from Seattle to KC was supposed to leave at 5:30pm. We had planned to check out of the hotel around 11, leave our luggage, get an Uber to someplace we could do some shopping for a few hours, then head back to the hotel in time for a 3pm shuttle to the airport. I got a text message about 9:15am saying that our flight was delayed nearly two hours\* and would be leaving at 7:20. So we scrapped Plan A and decided to head straight to the airport and see if we could get on a different flight. Unfortunately all of the other flights had connections where either one leg or the other was full, so we pretty much spent the entire day camped out at SeaTac and didn’t get into KCI until nearly 1am. Then we had to fetch our luggage, get a shuttle to the parking lot, then a nearly 1 hr drive home. Finally got to bed about 3am. \* Not because of Canadian wildfires, but our plane was coming from Anchorage AK and had some mechanical issue that needed fixing. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2026, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/211 "2026-07-19T23:24:02Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Gamification requires frequent rewards. If you only got fastest mile when you set a new personal best, well, that wouldn’t happen very often. I see the exact opposite; why should I try to work hard & beat my best time when I only need to wait a week & I’ll get a new ‘Fastest Mile’; it’s a participation trophy & you get (at least) 12 of 'em a year. I don’t want the (virtual) clutter! ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2026, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/212 "2026-07-20T00:00:27Z")
Super-rational people like you and I are not the target market for gamification. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2026, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/213 "2026-07-20T19:42:32Z")
I signed up for electronic notification for my dental insurance quite a while ago. What did I get? A snail mail invoice. It took my several tries to get to my account settings (got several “we are experiencing issues” messages), but did verify. There appears to be no way to do email, and the AI chatbot is useless. I will let it slide this month, but if I get another one I will go full Karen. Yes, I could just toss the paper invoice, but it is the principle – you’d think they would want to save the money to print and mail an invoice. Brian ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2026, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/214 "2026-07-20T19:45:49Z")
My cell phone _should_ go dark when you hold it to the side of your head, like when talking on it, as a, you know, phone. Despite pressing the button on the side to turn the screen off, it turned back on & then somehow my ear was in the right (wrong?) position to put in on airplane mode & disconnect my call… **3** times. 😠 If I had been waiting in some company’s queue & lost my place in line that would have been a 🤬 icon. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2026, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/215 "2026-07-21T04:48:27Z")
Might I suggest earbuds? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2026, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/216 "2026-07-21T06:00:00Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Super-rational people like you and I … This pedantic canine wishes to have a mild growl at you. In the above-quoted sentence fragment, the versatile word “like” functions as a preposition. So just as one would say “to me”, or “for me”, one must use the objective case here – “super-rational people like you and **me** ”. Extreme nitpickers might try to argue that “you and I” is a noun phrase whose individual components don’t have to conform to the objective-case rule. My rebuttal is that they’re full of shit, at least in the vast majority of cases. I can tolerate “me and Jennifer are going to the movies” as being (barely) acceptable in colloquial speech because “Jennifer and I …” invites questions like “and will Jeeves be accompanying you, sir?”. But “… like you and I …” is just a grammatical bridge too far for this pup. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2026, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/217 "2026-07-21T09:58:32Z")
Lemme guess … MetLife. I swear they still use punchcards internally for everything. There is nearly no 21st century invention they use. Except ever-increasing prices. They seem to lurve that 21st century invention. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2026, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/218 "2026-07-21T12:07:10Z")
No, it is Humana. I do notice that there is “communication preferences” which is set to paperless, but there seems to be a separate “billing preferences” – I get an error trying access to that, so maybe that is still set to paper??? Brian ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2026, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/219 "2026-07-21T15:14:34Z")
**Never!** In order: - I don’t find them comfortable - I’ve seen (& heard too many stories of one getting lost) 1. I was at a trail race, one fell out of some woman’s ear; she knew where it fell…mostly; the question was which one of the hundreds of leaves on the ground did it bounce under. 2. Someone was cycling, it fell out & bounced right down the sewer drain; he could see it but not retrieve it. Therefore, I will only use larger, over-the-ear ones or interconnected ones. - They look stupid. I had a set of over the ear ones; unless you put them in the case _just right_ they would drain the battery & then not be usable next time I went to pull them out. Doesn’t matter if I’m more careful because the whole case, with them in it went MIA. I’ve had a couple Shokz Bone phones but they eventually snap & I’m tired of replacing a not-inexpensive item. If my phone wasn’t being stoopit it wouldn’t be an issue. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2026, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327/220 "2026-07-21T16:20:30Z")
I was supposed to go away to an event this (long) weekend; leave Thurs morn & get back home Sun evening. Hotel was covered by the event, along with dinners Fri & Sat. It was going to cost gas for the travel out there, three lunches & one dinner on the way. I like fast meals on the road, which tend to be less expensive. IOW, this was going to be a very inexpensive weekend. Now we are not going. I thought about going out for the meeting, but it’s a lot of driving for two hours, would end up with probably two nights of hotels & all meals. It’s not that I can’t afford it, but it wasn’t budgeted for that. Additionally, with some other things on the schedule for this year, I don’t have a lot of vacation time left. Therefore, I cxl’d & will be home. The super downside? Sunny & low 80°s; absolutely _perfect_ weather for a road trip. 😭 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rant-write-and-boo-july-mini-rants/1031327.md?page=12)