It’s hard to convey tone in text, and I guess I failed. That was pretty much the point of my post. I just always think of that story when people say “car alarms never work,” because this one time in all my years…
In other words, that one event was the exception which proves the rule. 
I’ve never heard anyone complain about gas pumps. What’s wrong with gas pumps? 
Mine is about that old too, and it’s no-frills from top to bottom, but then again, I rent, and that’s what they gave me. (And when they replaced the 40-year-old model with hinges on the verge of rusting through, my electric bill went down by about $20 a month even though I changed nothing else.)
Anyway, one of my fellow library volunteers is married to a onetime 3M engineer, and there’s some kind of Rube Goldberg prototype Scotch tape dispenser that she brought in, because she never could figure out how to use it, and we don’t use it there either. It has a lever that’s supposed to dispense and cut off a length of tape, and it usually jams. And that’s why it remained a prototype.
Has anyone mentioned those clamshell packaging knives which are sold encased in, you guessed it, clamshell packaging?
What about Capri-Sun juice pouches? The straws are just for laughs, apparently.
Those can often be opened more easily with a can opener. Really.
This one’s kind of whimsical, as the product really can’t be taken too seriously. It’s a credit card sized multi-tool, purchased from a Last Minute Gifts! end cap at Dollar Tree. It has several sizes of wrench openings, a short ruler, a corner shaped to be used as a screwdriver or pry bar, a saw blade, and a knife edge. The main problem with it is that if you try to use the wrench part, you’ll lacerate your hand on either the saw or the knife.
My wife purchased a Toyota TRD a few years back that’s designed to be an offroad machine. She messed up the windshield and it was $1,200 to replace it but thankfully we had insurance. Last time I replaced the windwhield on a car it was only about $300-400. But my truck didn’t have an advanced driver assistance system and hers does so the cost of repair is quite a bit more. I’ve heard of similar problems with some vehicles and their bumpers. They’ve got advanced technology in there, which seems ludicrous for a part of your car designed to get hit, and it’s quite expensive to make repairs.
Ultima VII: The Black Gate, when it was first released for DOS in 1992, used a bizarre proprietary memory management system that could only recognize and make use of 640kb of RAM. That was all well and good when it came out, but it made it impossible to load on Windows 95 or any subsequent OS - you had to boot your PC from a DOS boot disk and find graphics, sound, and mouse drivers that would fit into 640kb along with DOS and the game itself.
It wasn’t until the mid-2000s that fans created a frontend that allowed it to launch on modern PCs without having to verse yourself in the Deep Magic.
I’ve never thought of opening a Capri-Sun pouch with a can opener. And you’re probably correct!
If you live in the part of the country with vapor recovery nozzles that makes using them much harder.
If you live in the part of the country where they turn the auto-shutoff sensitivity up very high that makes using them much harder / more tedious.
If you live in the part of the country where they disable the auto-shutoff feature completely that makes using them much more tedious.
If you live in the part of the country where self-serve is illegal, you don’t have a reason to complain about gas pumps but you do have a reason to complain about paying $0.50/gal extra to pay somebody else to complain about gas pumps.
If you live in the part of the country with none of those things, count your blessings. You get to bitch about gas prices instead. 
Well, it’s not ideal. But the sensors actually DO need to sense outside the car, which means they need to be mounted next to the exterior of the car. Some companies protect them better than others, but they are always somewhat vulnerable.
They decrease the number of collisions, though. So most of them save money (from the perspective of insurance companies) even if they increase the cost of the collisions that do occur.
I really like those. It took me a little while to get used to them, but there’s so much less stench while pumping gas. After I got used to them I found myself pumping gas in a state that hadn’t mandated them, yet, and that’s when I became a believer.
I have had auto-shut-offs that were too sensitive, but I haven’t run into that in quite a while. I think they must have found a solution to whatever the issue was.
Where I live, gas pumps have none of these things. At least, at the gas stations where I generally fill up.
And my state, according to AAA, currently has the 4th lowest average gasoline prices in the country.
(Of course, pot is still illegal, and we have some of the country’s dumbest GOP leaders in our legislature.)
LOL - maybe the pointy end of a “church key” can opener? Anyway, I meant the plastic clamshell packaging.
The pump nozzles don’t have that little thing that covers the car’s gas intake that helps block the fumes?
Nope. I think I know what you’re talking about, as I’ve experienced them elsewhere. Those things suck.
Yeah. I appreciate their value, but they’re a bit of a nuisance.
BMW figured this out at least as early as 1997. See ‘Bad Santa’ for evidence.
They can’t all be winners. But I’m Besotted.
The juice packets for Juicero, the $699 internet connected juice press, which cost $7 for a single 8 oz serving, could easily be squeezed out by hand and also quicker than using the machine itself.
How about those high-end bicycle locks that could be picked with a ballpoint pen?