had the same happen to some Timberland boots bought in 1992 … very little use … and some 10 years later I put them on and after a 50 steps or so something felt odd …
I looked back and noticed I had left breadcrumbs all over the sidewalk …
me too, not happy … needless to say, my last pair of Timbers …
I have a pair of wonderful astronomical binoculars, and my wife a great spotting scope to watch wildlife. They had areas that got gooey.
Isopropyl alcohol on a non-linty cloth. Took the goo off with some easy rubbing. Very easy rubbing. Don’t get too vigorous and be patient.
Viola! Smooth and non-sticky.
Be aware, though, if any text is imprinted on the gooey rubber it will disappear with the goo. I just covered the text with my finger and wiped around it. The small area the text was on stayed gooey, a small price to pay.
Same with me! The uppers were very nice suede, too, and they were comfortable in addition to being good looking.
The kicker was they disintegrated during a fucking job interview.
I didn’t get the job. 
Oakley Sunglasses! The rubber coating on the nose bridge and the earpieces turn to Glop rendering them virtually unusable. One pair I was able to cut them off and just go with the bare metal frames, but not ideal.
Another Stupid Product Design was on older Jeeps. To lock the front axle, a vacuum was used to slide a yoke and collar over the two sections of the axle blah blah blah. Fine. But the vacuum tube was a small diameter hard plastic, press fit into rubber. It quickly became brittle, and down around the front Diff, if you did any serious Off-Roading, it was quickly destroyed/disconnected by rocks or brush leaving you with the Thrill and Excitement of Unexpected One-Wheel Drive Performance!
Thankfully, you can permanently lock up the front axle with an easy modification involving a bolt and a couple washers.
Sheeesss designed for failure when you needed it most. I had an 84 CJ that just used the regular locking hubs.
I mIss manual hubs. My F-150 has an automatic system that uses vacuum to UNlock the hubs. This means that a vacuum leak, bad hose, bad solenoid or bad check valve can keep the hubs engaged, or worse, partially engaged–which ruins them.
The manual “turn this widget a few degrees” just worked.
problem is/was … 90% of the peeps were just too stupid for manual hubs …
they just put it in 4x4 and it did “a bit better” but not that much … of course it won’t … you need to lock those hubs or your frontwheels will keep freewheeling … on the driven half-axle
same for those shifter levers (x-case) … nowadays all dumbed down to switches on the dashboard.
75 Dodge Ram Charger Auto transmission. The neutral safety switch was a plug into the side of the transmission. With wires looping around where off roading would pull them loose. Leaving you in the woods with a vehicle that would not crank over.
Had to jump the starter solenoid several times until the problem was discovered.
I got a new Dutch oven. It’s a very nice pot, but has the worst lid I’ve ever seen. The lid is made of silicone. There are so many problems with it. First, it’s very floppy, so it’s hard to put it on the pot or take it off without it flopping into the contents. Second, the whole thing is silicone, including the handle, so the handle gets just as hot as the lid itself, making it impossible to pick up with your bare hands after it’s been cooking for a while. Related to that, third, the handle is a little nub about a half inch high, so it’s pretty much impossible to get a grip on it with a pot holder. I can’t believe the designer ever actually used this POS.
OK, this isn’t the stupidest, but it is the most recent one that triggered me to add it to the list.
I have an extra-large Philips air fryer. Love it to death. Unfortunately, before I knew I’d like it, I chose to buy the cheaper one with the mechanical timer. You know…you turn it right past 10 minutes, then back to where you want it. I don’t mind the imprecision of it, but the stupid knob has no marking on it for the pointer. The indicator is just a slightly raised ridge on the ridged edge of the knob. The knob is black, just like the unit itself. They couldn’t have put a dot on the knob, or made the ridge red or something? When I set it, I can use my finger to feel the indicator, but this is no help at all if I walk by and try to figure out if it has 5 minutes or 15 minutes left to go.
White-out correcting fluid or white nail polish is your friend. Just put a bit on the raised ridge.
Yes, it’s stupid you have to add that feature to their product. But it isn’t difficult. Just vexing.
I had a similar sort of problem years ago with an insulated “commuter cup”. The lid is black plastic and has one small vent opening and one larger “drink out of here” opening. The cup itself is circular cross section with no handle and the lip of the lid is also circular. Once you screw them together the only way to know whether you’re about to drink coffee or pour it out of the hole next to your mouth and onto your shirt & car is to look at it & locate the hole visually. You know: look for the black hole in the black lid in the dark car while you’re driving to work pre-dawn & still waking up. Greeeat.
I took a file and cut two deep grooves into the lip of the lid, one on each side of the drinking hole. If I can feel the grooves in the right place against my lower lip, it’s OK to tip up the cup. If not, rotate it some & try again.
Me also, this time on a nice expensive programmable “gaming” mouse that I used for work, the many programmable button were ideal for the engineering CAD software I was using. After a couple years, it suddenly turned into a sticky gloopy mess, with the residue gumming up the buttons turning it into useless junk.
What are you guys walking on? Don’t you know the floor is made out of lava?
Especially since the reason dutch oven lids are sort of concave in the first place is so you can pile coals on it.
Wow, I thought my remote control issue was bad! We have a remote-controlled stand fan that requires its remote to be pointed directly at a specific point on its stand. We also have a TV with a Roku attached, and we use the Roku remote to operate it and the TV. Now, that remote, why, it can turn that stand fan on or off when pointed nowhere near it! It’s intermittent, of course, so when it happens, you have to find the fan remote and make sure you’re in direct line of sight to turn it back off (or on).
This also works for keyboards when the little nubs wear out on the F and J keys. A you can feel a ‘dot’ of nail polish.
Schwinn used to be that way. Only Schwinn parts fit Schwinns, and Schwinn parts didn’t fit other brands.
Just discovered one: The “Low Fat” variant of ‘Coffee Mate’ powdered non-dairy creamer. I’ve been using Coffee Mate for decades as my go-to creamer, and I thought I’d give the low fat version a try. I don’t have a weight problem, but I figured every little bit helps.
I like my coffee brewed boldly strong, but sweetened and creamed to a light/medium brown color, and so two teaspoons of creamer did the trick in my 12 ounce mug. Using the low fat version requires a cubic yard of the stuff to yield the same result. ( OK, not an actual cubic yard, probably 8 spoonfuls, or about one-third of the cup’s contents ).
The thing is, there’s so little fat in the “orginal” formula, and both it and the low fat version have the same exact caloric content. So I end up using more of a product ( which BTW, doesn’t make the coffee taste as good as the original formula ) to get exactly one gram of fat less, but 4 times or more of the calories. The only good part ( cost ineffectivity notwithstanding ) is the canister of it gets used faster because I can’t wait to finish up this crummy product.
I couldn’t decide which thread to post this in. A coworker was using his speaker phone to make a colonoscopy appointment. None of that actually bothered me too much, though.
What did inspire me to post was the hold voice kept asking for “the first three initials of your last name.” I know dictionaries are descriptive not prescriptive, but words still have meanings, and that isn’t one of them.
I bet if we could have read the script, it was “you’re.”