The one I’m seeing lately is a multi-lobed mold intended to allow you to make your own taco salad shells out of ordinary tortillas.
Because apparently draping tortillas over empty upside down bowls got too hard for some people.
I was thinking recently about frozen OJ. I remember as a kid watching my parents mix up a pitcher of OJ using a frozen cylinder of the stuff, and may have done it myself once or twice a long time ago. But why does anyone still buy it, when it’s so much easier to just buy a bottle of liquid OJ? It seems like one of those things they used to do before packaging improved. Like carrying your luggage, instead of rolling it.
Sometimes it’s cheaper, and you can stock up on it when it’s on sale since it lasts indefinitely.
IME, it’s almost always cheaper, since you’re not buying their water.
OK, can I just bitch here?
WTF idiot thought that keyless ignitions were good things for cars? WTF?
I’ve been trained, for over THIRTY FUCKIN’ YEARS, to pull out my key, unlock the door, stick the key in the ignition, and turn.
But with this stupid rental I pull out my “key”, unlock the door, reach to put the key in the ignition… but WAIT! There’s no ignition! It’s just a stupid-ass button which sends/reads (hell, I don’t know which) a signal to my key-thingy, which allows the car to start.
WHAT PROBLEM WAS THIS MEANT TO SOLVE??!!??!!
I now have my “key”, still in my hand, with a running car. Usually (and by “usually” I mean EVERY TIME I HAVE EVER DONE THIS) I leave the key in the ignition. Now I have to find someplace to put it.
WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO FIND A PLACE TO PUT MY KEY WHEN MY CAR IS ALREADY RUNNING? AGAIN, WHAT PROBLEM DOES “KEYLESS IGNITION” SOLVE???!!!???!!!
Then I get to my destination. I have to stop the car by pressing the button, THEN LOOK FOR MY GODDAMNED KEYS EVERY TIME I TURN OFF THE CAR! WTF!?!
Then there’s the trunk. It won’t open unless you have the key-thingy in your possession. Come home from the grocery, I turn off the car and, finding the keys, hand the thing to my wife who proceeds to open the front door. I go to the trunk and… can’t open the thing because YOU CAN’T OPEN THE TRUNK UNLESS YOU HAVE THE WIRELESS KEY ON YOUR PERSON! Even if the car is unlocked, all four doors wide open… you still cannot open the trunk without the keyless key thingy.
Jesus H. Christ, what a ballsup.
Some people bring reusable shopping bags to the supermarket, so they need something like this to make up for the lack of bags in their life.
I think it causes less stress on the starting mechanism because you don’t have to physically insert and turn it. Other than that I got nothin’.
Now imagine you drop your wife off somewhere and keep driving to your destination – where you of course park the car and switch it off, since who the heck stops to think, hang on a second: is the only reason it started up back at the house because of that key in her pocketbook? Are we both now stranded?
If the auto industry gets too many complaints about the keyless ignitions, they’ll just try to sell old-style key locks as an extra-cost option.
Many years ago my mother bought a pricey but nice washing machine, all the floor models above a minimum price point that year had digital controls some with touch pads and LCDs.
Three goddamn times she had to pay to repair or replace the digital panel and the chips because guess what? A washing machine left in a non-AC wet and humid garage with electronics vital to operating it CORRODES! Once anything went wrong with the panel or chips the machine was useless.
When she went shopping again years after that? Washing machines were all even in the high end once again purely mechanical, it was like they had gone backward.
Totally useless high technology.
Disposable Diapers:
They cost a fortune, are environmentally unfriendly, smell much worse than cloth diapers, and aren’t much more convenient than the alternative.
Seriously, we used disposables for about a week and couldn’t understand why anyone did so by choice. Although admittedly easy access to a washing machine is a necessity.
A couple of items for this list:
[ol]
[li]A popcorn-popping pan: My wife was tired of me using her good pans to pop popcorn. (I hate air-popped and microwave popcorn.) So for Christmas, she bought me a pan that had a sealable lid and a handle on top. The handle was attached to a shaft that had two wire whisks on the end that would push the kernels around the bottom of the pan as you heated it on the stove. This presumedly kept the popped kernels from scorching, much like the regular agitation method you use when using regular pans.[/li]
The trouble with this was, once about a layer of popcorn was popped, the torque on the whisk wires was too much, and they’d stop moving, even if you kept turning the handle. I’d end up shaking the pan anyway.
At least the package also came with three varieties of gourmet popcorn.
[li]Car autolock: When I bought a Mazda Protege ('98), the alarm/security system came with an autolock. About 10 seconds after starting, all the door locks would lock down. It would’ve been useful if I lived in a neighborhood where carjackings were extremely commonplace (like every street corner). Instead, it was a pain in the butt on at least three occasions.[/li]
a) Living in DC area (Maryland actually) in the winter, I liked to pre-warm my car before driving to work. I would usually wait the 10 seconds, hear the doors lock, then unlock them, get out, and go back in the house for about 5 minutes. But a couple of times, something was on my mind, and I’d get out of the car before the locks engaged. I’d shut the door to keep the warm air in, then CHUNK! The doors were locked. I had to climb through a window to my living room that I had fortunately left unlatched, but not before wrecking the hell out of the screen that covered it. It was also a window that was about 7 feet off the ground (mobile home).
b) Still living in Maryland, my family and I were visiting friends in Manassas, VA. At about 9 pm, I go out to warm the car before my wife and baby came out. I’m still talking to my friend as we go out to my car. I start it and get out, but leave the door open until I hear the locks engage. But before I can unlock them, my friend shuts my door for me. 
He then drives me the 35 miles back to my house in Maryland, where I use my wife’s house key (sadly, she didn’t have the spare car key) to get the spare car key, then back again to open my now-very-warmed up car.
[/ol]
Perhaps that’s just Mazda trying to teach you not to gratuitously burn gas. :rolleyes:
I never have to remove my key from my bag. My wife doesn’t have to burrow through her purse to find hers. It’s one of the best new features I’ve ever had on a car. I’ll never buy a car without it if I have the choice.
Just because something is confusing the first time you use it doesn’t mean it’s bad or useless.
This exact thing happened to my father. He picked up the wrong set of keys, to drop my mother off at work. The car started at home because she had the extra fob in her pocketbook, it didn’t start so well when my dad stopped at the convenience store to pick something up on his way back.
It’s bad technology. Sure, it provides a layer of convenience, but it encourages terrible key habits, namely not having any clue where your keys are.
It introduces failure points. It’s possible for the person driving the car to not have the fob on their person. It’s possible to accidentally leave the car running, since the driver is not required to turn off the car to get his fob back. I guess it’s possible to leave the car open to theft if the fob falls out of your pocket onto the floor. These things don’t happen with keys because you need to have the key in your hand to start, drive, and lock the car, you’re not relying on the fob to do it all by it’s passive, unnoticed, presence.
You have to remove the key, or at least reach for the thing, when you want to unlock the door, right? Or do you leave your car unlocked?
If your wife still has to burrow through her purse so she can unlock the car, what, exactly, has been saved?
Actually a lot of the keyless ignition/smart key systems will open if they detect the key too - either when you pull the handle with the key close or when you push a button on the door - for example see this: Smart key - Features of your vehicle - Kia Sorento owners manual - Kia Sorento - Kia Manuals under the locking section.
Auto car door locks are definitely a bad idea, it is always just a matter of time before it bites you in the ass.
Also bad were the auto shoulder seatbelts in the late 80s or early 90s IIRC. They were in the way, every time you’d close the door they would engage, but you STILL had to hook the lap belt so what was the point?
I had keyless ignition on a rental car too, I thought it was OK because I could just keep the key in my pocket. Also you just have to momentarily press the start/stop button, you don’t have to hold it down. The only bad part to me was getting into the trunk, it wouldn’t open until I turned the engine off or something like that, there was some confusion.
Huh? It seems all the examples here force users to pay attention where their keys are.