I am really impressed by the United States Postal Service. Wow. My sister (in the US) mailed something to me (in China) way back on 3 April 2024. The clerk at the post office told her the item should take “six to ten days, on average”. Since that’s the average, I have to say some lucky soul got their stuff beamed over Star Trek style. Why do I say that? Because I don’t have the thing yet and it’s 1 May 2024! So if it’s 10 days average and I haven’t gotten mine for over 20 days, that means someone got theirs instantaneously.
Yes, I know where it is because there’s a nifty tracking number for it. Good job, USPS on getting the thing to China just in time for a five-day holiday. Yeah, that thrills me no end to see “Will attempt delivery next business day” when I check the tracking section of the USPS site.
Didn’t I recently see that Trump flack, Postmaster General DeJoy, getting raked over the coals by a congressperson about how horrible the USPS service is? Well, congrats, Postmaster General, you now have one more data point on the negative side.
I’m furnishing a otherwise empty new place I’m moving into next week. Tried to select all in-stock items, but accepted the fact a few things would take an extra couple of weeks to be delivered.
Found out today that an item that was supposedly in-stock and would be delivered in the first tranche the day after I get my keys, is now backordered to “August”. And this was a major part of finishing out the living room, not just some random minor bric-a-brac.
Damnedity-damn-damn!
I expect this will be the first of many mini-rants from me this month. All more or less on this theme of furnishing and moving and …
What’s with people who eavesdrop on a conversation, then dive in with both feet?
A brewery we like has a fun run on the last Sunday of the month. It is dog and kid friendly, and participants get a free beer afterwards. My gf does the 5k (she has run competitively and is good) with Kizzy. I walk (fast) the mile course with the other seniors and kids. I usually finish first or second.
It’s an “in joke” with the bartenders that I always “win”, finishing before my gf. After my “run” I’ll be enjoying a beer when my gf comes in, hot and sweaty, a bit winded. I get into her face and taunt her about how I won. The bartenders participate, taking my side. It’s funny (to us).
Last Sunday we did the fun run as usual. When I was taunting my gf, some stranger who finished the 5k after my gf joined our conversation, attempting to correct our “misunderstanding” and explaining that 5k is a longer distance than a mile. I argued strenuously, saying I have metric tools at home, so I know how it works. My gf hang-doggedly admitted that I always beat her to the finish. The bartenders also supported me.
The eavesdropping guy actually got a bit angry before shaking his head and walking away.
Word Headers and Footers. Whoever programmed these things needs to be punished severely.
But also pitting the goddamn archaic and awful templates my company makes us use. This place operates like it’s 1994 and everything is so much harder because of it. I like the work, I hate the way we work.
It’s also aggravating that you have to use the dropdown menu twice to get “[page] of [pages]” into a footer. There should be keyboard shortcuts for that.
While on the subject of Windows, maybe they could consider getting rid of the painfully obsolete file attributes. “Car Phone”, really? “Assistant’s car phone?” Gahh!
This one document given to me as a template was so fucked and I don’t have time to fix it even if I knew how so…I put a text box on the bottom of each page and manually entered the page (11, so not too tedious). It’s a one-time, specific report, that’ll get printed to pdf, read by exactly two other people, digitally signed, and archived for eternity. It looks fine when printed and I don’t care.
I’ll make a new template properly another time, so, like…never, probably, given my work load.
I’m guessing star-trek-paramount showed up because of my talking about something getting beamed Star Trek style. The other one is a complete mystery to me.
That’s what I’ve done… since the '80s. This should be in an “Embarrassing Confessions” thread: I spent my whole professional life using and teaching Aldus Pagemaker, Adobe Pagemaker, QuarkXpress, and InDesign.
I was so lazy that I assumed that figuring out how to paginate that one document a month that needed it, would take longer than just making a text box and entering the page number.
I did automate it slightly by having that text box on the Master Page, so it was there, and in the right spot, on every page. But I really should have learned it some time in the last forty years!
(Since I used and taught Most of Adobe, and lots of other Graphic Design apps, I have a dozen of those “shouda learnt” experiences…)
Some tags they’ve automated. Others are 100% manual by either the OPs themselves or by @What_Exit retroactively applying them them as a (highly!) dedicated public service.
Our Doper public seems to have the learning skills of a 200 year old blind tortoise, so WE is kept busy putting tags on nearly every thread in the forums they Mod.
I went with “worked up” because May 1st is International Worker’s Day. I like your proposed name, too. You should try for next year’s May mini-rant thread!
On the way home this afternoon, I saw a group of fuckwits about to conduct a balloon release next to a busy highway. Balloon releases are idiotic enough already (where in the hell do they think the balloons go??), but right next to traffic??
Also, my neighbor’s far-too-numerous grandchildren have been in his backyard beating the crap out of each other for about two hours. I was about to post asking why children have to SCREEEEEEEEEECHH nonstop, but then I saw one child attempting to pick another child up by the hair, so…yeah. This should get really interesting when they start driving.
