I wonder if this is a difference between US and EU regulations. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one with an actual on/off switch. All of mine had some sort of tab that you would pull out or break to activate the detector, and after that it’s permanently on. These are the kind with a 10 year non-replaceable battery.
I seem to recall that my old 9V battery powered one had a switch that was held down by the battery when it was installed. I have no idea what purpose that served; I would think installing/removing the battery would have the same effect. Or maybe I’m confusing it with my CO detector, which plugs into a standard outlet but also has a 9V backup battery.
When we first moved into our new house last in May of 2024, we heard detectors beeping and couldn’t figure out which ones they were. Turned out they were the two main floor smoke detectors, which the previous tenants had taken down and stowed in a coat closet.
Finally got around to reinstalling them a couple of months ago and found out why. One is fine, but the other goes off every time we cook. Which is understandable if I’m frying bacon in a too-hot pan, but the last straw was when it went off while I was roasting potatoes. There was not the slightest hint of smoke.
That one’s back in a coat closet (with the battery out, so it won’t chirp).
My 10-year smoke detectors have the breakable tab to permanently disable them after they’ve reached their end of life. But they also have a button on the front to temporarily silence them if they get triggered by cooking smoke or whatever. I’m not sure how long they stay silenced after you press the button, but on the few occasions that I’ve needed to use it, it’s been effective long enough to let me finish cooking dinner.
I get infuriated by food products printed with ambiguous “best by” dates. I pulled out a bottle of Cholula sauce from my pantry on which is printed “BEST BY SEP2524SN”. Is that September 25, 2024 followed by “SN”, or is it September 2025 followed by “24SN”? (I’m pretty sure it’s not September 2524.) Why print those meaningless letters/numbers immediately after the date to confuse things anyway? There’s a line of numbers printed right below the date; if you need to print “SN” or “24SN” on the bottle, just put it on the line with the other numbers and leave the date comprehensible to the consumer.
I’m going with September 2025. I’ve never seen shelf stable products with an expiration date accurate to the day, only month and year. Refrigerated products like milk go bad faster, so they have a sell by date with day and month, but usually no year.
A vinegar-based sauce like that is going to last a very long time, probably well past the best-by date. As long as it doesn’t smell rancid (which some sauces with oils in them can, but Cholula doesn’t contain added oils), it’ll be fine.
Speaking of expiration dates, this blatant cash grab irritates the hell out of me:
The plastic carbonating bottles that Sodastream and Drinkmate use have “expiration dates” that are usually less than two years out from when you buy them.
So let me get this straight: all my life I’ve been hearing about how bad plastic is for the environment. Our landfills are full of plastic, and there’s a “plastic island” the size of Texas out in the Pacific. These plastics, they say, will take hundreds of years to break down. But these Sodastream bottles are only good for a year or two? Alrighty then!
They’ll take hundreds of years, or longer, to break down entirely. They may only take a couple of years, or less, to start leaching unpleasant things into their contents. Those unpleasant things aren’t broken down completely; that’s the problem.
I am the Printer Whisperer in this office, and it’s really pissing me off. Every time a printer puts out a message saying it’s out of toner, or out of paper, or just needs someone to press a motherfucking button, they come running to me. Some of them are doctors who are too important to communicate with a lowly printer, some of them are lazy good-for-nothing bastards, and some of them (bless their hearts) are just that stupid.
Someone just came to me because their printer was out of toner, and I told them that when toner is delivered, I put it right next to the machine it belongs to. Then I walked with her to the machine, picked up the box of toner which was sitting there, and together we followed the instructions that are RIGHT! ON! THE FUCKING SCREEN! And next time that printer runs out of toner, we’ll do it again. I would be embarrassed to be so fucking inept.
I used to be the Plotter Whisperer at my office. But now that everyone uses gigantic monitors to display their stuff instead of easels and paper maps, they need a Thumb Drive Whisperer, which is someone else.
You’re generous with your time and replacing toners for other people is annoying. I’ve heard of people being reluctant to remove paper jams too. One might think they have ten minutes to figure it out.
What state are you in? Because the last time we took a batch of hazardous stuff to the drop-off site, they took everything in my trunk except the old smoke alarms. They didn’t say anything so we didn’t realize it until we got home. We’re in California.
On the other hand, at one place I worked the admin wouldn’t let anyone else touch the printer. I tried to clear a paper jam, and she came over and ran me off, saying, 'I know you’ll break it, let me handle it." I figured after that, that the printer was her probllem, and whenever I had a printing problem I dumped it on her.
I once got my arm temporarily stuck in a printer. But it was an exrtremely poorly designed printer. The paper was fed by two rollers that were wide wooden dowels with wide rubber bands that fit the width of the dowels. Those non-permanent rubber bands would sometimes – one or the other – slip and the paper wouldn’t feed properly (the wooden dowels would slip on the paper instead of “sticking”). The only way to fix it was to reach through the paper compartment to the back where the dowels were to wrestle the band back on the dowel. I was doing this when the bangle I was wearing went on an angle under the bar the dowels were on. Once on the other side of the bar, I couldn’t reach with my other hand to flip my bangle under again because I was not straight-on to the printer (I could only reach the dowels if I was slightly on an angle).
It didn’t help that this printer was in a small cubby in a lonely part of the office.
I had to stretch my other hand in until I was just able to touch the bangle and get it under the bar. I was starting to sweat.
What the fuck help is that to me, as a prospective customer, when I see that hanging on your door? Why wouldn’t you write that as “Back at 4:30” like a sane person? I don’t know if you just put up that sign, or if you put it up 19 minutes ago. Just came across that one on Friday, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen an absent shopkeeper leave a note with that verbiage.
More like shaking my head at the incompetence than infuriated, but last night I received this email message from my county’s emergency services system:
[AGENCY] MAJOR ROAD CLOSURE in [LOCATION] between [POINT A] and [POINT B] due to [HAZARD]. Significant traffic delays expected. USE alternate routes until [TIME/further notice]. CHECK [SOURCE] for [updates/information] at [URL].
Thanks, I’ll be sure to take an alternate route if I need to drive between “POINT A” and “POINT B”.
