Oh those pet peeves

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Friday
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Friday » Wed Mar 14, 2018 7:59 pm

Some days I forget that I am living in a Philip K Dick novel.

And then I start gassing up my car and the fucking pump starts blasting fucking commercials at me.


Yeah, the first time I encountered that shit I stood staring at the pump for a solid minute, wondering if I could transport myself into an alternate reality by sheer force of will alone
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Friday
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Friday » Wed Mar 14, 2018 8:00 pm

It turns out, yes, but in this one Trump won, so that plan backfired
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Thad » Wed Mar 14, 2018 8:12 pm

Friday wrote:
Some days I forget that I am living in a Philip K Dick novel.

And then I start gassing up my car and the fucking pump starts blasting fucking commercials at me.


Yeah, the first time I encountered that shit I stood staring at the pump for a solid minute, wondering if I could transport myself into an alternate reality by sheer force of will alone


I started hammering the "NO" button on the touchpad.

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Joxam
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Joxam » Wed Mar 14, 2018 11:36 pm

Do yours offer you the 'chance to print off coupons' like ours do?
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Mongrel » Thu Mar 15, 2018 12:15 am

Not quite the same peeve, but our local gas (Ultramar) station, which I am SUPER loyal to because they're one of the three chains have the high-octane ethanol-free gas I require* and are literally 2 blocks from our apt, regularly gives out 10-use discount cards I can't use because they have a 25 litre minimum (my tank has a bone dry max capacity of 20L/5 Gal, but in practise I can't put in more than about 17L/4+ Gal, and that's filled right to the very top).

I called Ultramar to see if there was anything they could do, like a lesser discount, and they basically told me to go take a hike. They don't even have a points card (they do have a credit card... but it doesn't earn gas points, WTF?). I guess I could take a gas can or something. But that only works if I leave home, gas up, and go home again. It doesn't really work if I'm on my way out, or coming back from somewhere... which is literally every time I go out.

I'd fucking love it if the damn pumps gave out coupons. Well, coupons I could actually fucking USE.

*Only Shell, Ultramar and Petro-Canada have that guaranteed for the high-test gas and Petro-Canada's version is actually overpriced overkill. What's funny is that gas companies here aren't allowed to advertise if they have ethanol-free gas, so the gas that DOES have ethanol usually says "may contain up to 10% (or whatever %) ethanol" and the ethanol-free gas is left unlabelled.
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Yoji » Thu Mar 15, 2018 12:50 am

Advertisements in general already make me hate society and everything in it. I've joked that when I get my cyberbrain in 2030, the first app I install will be the one that replaces all posters and billboards with pictures of kittens and/or lingerie models.

Thad wrote:Some days I forget that I am living in a Philip K Dick novel.

And then I start gassing up my car and the fucking pump starts blasting fucking commercials at me.

If a gas station pump ever greets me with a geisha popping a birth control pill, I will from there on turn off every screen I encounter. With a 5-pound pickaxe.
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Thad » Thu Mar 15, 2018 1:17 pm

Joxam wrote:Do yours offer you the 'chance to print off coupons' like ours do?

I don't think so, but it's not like I was sticking around.

I kind of regret that I didn't put the pump away and drive off to go find another gas station as soon as it started, which I think will be my approach if I ever encounter this again. Until, inevitably, someday every gas station is doing it and I don't have the option of finding one that isn't.

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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby mharr » Thu Mar 15, 2018 3:16 pm

This seems ripe for some modern cypherpunk equivalent of 10 PRINT "JON IS AWESUM "; 20 GOTO 10

You know these things are on the public internet, and running something with bulletproof security like XP Lite.

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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Büge » Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:46 pm

mharr wrote:This seems ripe for some modern cypherpunk equivalent of 10 PRINT "JON IS AWESUM "; 20 GOTO 10

You know these things are on the public internet, and running something with bulletproof security like XP Lite.


That reminds me of the time I was on the bus and I noticed that the Presto card reader was bugged. The screen showed a WinXP desktop with an error message.
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Thad » Fri Mar 16, 2018 12:11 am


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beatbandito
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby beatbandito » Mon Mar 26, 2018 12:45 pm

I'm remaking "I Spit on Your Grave" except instead of going after rapists it'll be people who make spreadsheets in word instead of excel.
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Silversong » Tue Mar 27, 2018 8:39 am

beatbandito wrote:I'm remaking "I Spit on Your Grave" except instead of going after rapists it'll be people who make spreadsheets in word instead of excel.


Will you spare those of us who were only following our boss' orders?

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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby beatbandito » Tue Mar 27, 2018 9:25 am

Only following orders, eh?
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Thad » Mon Apr 09, 2018 12:52 am

Thad wrote:Atheists in fantasy settings where gods clearly and unambiguously exist.

The other day I watched an episode of SHIELD. Somebody asked if Ghost Rider was an Inhuman; somebody else responded that he says he isn't, he got his powers by making a deal with the devil. Fitz scoffs and says that's impossible; Coulson says he's inclined to agree.

These are guys who, between the two of them, have met no fewer than three literal Norse gods, and last season fought an ancient demon that could reanimate and possess corpses. But they roll their eyes at the guy whose head turns into a flaming skull when he claims he got his powers from a figure from Abrahamic mythology.

Now, the show did address how you can be an atheist in the MCU early on; Fitz/Simmons had a conversation where they said Thor and Loki aren't really gods, they're aliens who the Norse mistook for gods. And that's fine! "Magic is just science we don't understand" is a time-honored trope for dealing with rationalism in a fantasy setting.

But even allowing for that, their response to Ghost Rider's "deal with the devil" claim shouldn't be to dismiss it out of hand. The conversation should be something like, "Well, he could be lying, or he could be wrong about where his powers came from. But it could also be that the 'devil' he's referring to is Loki. Or possibly there's another alien who knows science we don't understand and has a penchant for making ironic deals with people."


They're still doing this fucking shit.

I'm a week behind on SHIELD; I just watched the episode where Coulson explains to Hale that he's been to the future, and she dismisses him out of hand, saying he's either delusional or messing with her.

This is in the context of a conversation where Hale is trying to convince Coulson (a character who died and then was resurrected) to contact Daisy (one of many characters who are descended from people who were subjected to alien experimentation and who gain superpowers after being exposed to a mist that puts them into stone cocoons) to put her into a device which will amplify her powers, using an element called Gravitonium to try and duplicate the effects of the injection that granted super-strength to a kid from the Bronx, who defeated a Nazi scientist with an alien artifact and then was frozen for 70 years and revived in the present day. Hale believes Daisy is necessary to fend off an impending alien invasion, and that Daisy is a better candidate than her own daughter, who was genetically engineered by a secret society created to worship an alien intelligence that possessed people's bodies until said alien intelligence was shot into space. (Hale is also aware that humanoid robots exist, and that the major cast of the show spent the back half of last season inside the Matrix.)

But time travel? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?

Just once I would like to have a character on SHIELD faced with some farfetched scenario say "You know what? That sounds pretty implausible, but I remember that time a Norse god led an alien invasion into midtown Manhattan, so what the hell, I'm listening."

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Friday
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Friday » Wed Apr 11, 2018 7:43 pm

It's weird because I have sort of a reverse example, and one of the few things that bothered me about Firefly:

Near the end of the show, they find out River might have powers and Mal calls a shipwide meeting and is like "I think she might be a reader" and Wash is like "uhhh are you seriously saying she's a psychic? come the fuck on" and his wife Zoe says "honey we live on a spaceship."

Okay, sure.

But you know what? In 700 years or whatever, if and when human beings actually do live on spaceships, it would still be perfectly reasonable to doubt the existence of people who can read your fucking mind.

Like, the presence of people living on spaceships does not automatically grant a pass to every sci-fi trope, sorry.

The way Mal says "reader" instead of "she's a psychic who can read minds" does sort of imply that maybe there have been rumors about this kind of thing maybe? But I need more than that in terms of background and worldbuilding before I can accept that people wouldn't be incredulous about mind-powers.

Anyway, it was just Whedon showing off about how genre-savvy he was as a writer. "Haha, you THOUGHT my characters would doubt the existence of super-powers, but Zoe knows this is a sci-fi show!"
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Mongrel » Tue May 15, 2018 4:03 pm

Getting ghosted on fucking Craigslist sales.

Seriously, is it that hard to just make up some bullshit reason that you're not coming or don't want to buy whatever it is, so I'm not waiting all afternoon for someone who never shows or answers any further emails? Even when sometimes there have been 15-20 messages exchanged working out prices, details, and pickup times?
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Joxam » Wed May 16, 2018 5:39 pm

So I ordered a computer from Ibuypower and through it all the service has been great and fast. They send you updates for every step of system build, through parts selection, assembly and testing phases. Its nice as hell but I cannot get over the fact that the spelling and grammar (I know I'm being a bit of a hypocrit but I'm not a form letter from a multi million dollar company) in their status update form letters is absolutely terrible.
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Niku » Fri May 25, 2018 6:32 pm

I got new glasses for the first time in way too fucking long (like nearly ten years probably) and I honestly can't tell if I'm going through prescription-adjustment or if something's fucked with the lenses. And I guess I will just need to wait and see since the office is now closed through the three day weekend in case I do need to bring them back for changes. At least I've got the old pair just in case, because driving does not sound like a fun prospect with these new ones just yet.
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby Mongrel » Mon May 28, 2018 11:09 pm

Look if yer gonna close at 11 pm, then could you at least update your website to NOT say "open 24h" and then also close up at 10:30 anyway so that when I show up at 10:35 maybe I don't feel like a complete idiot?
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Re: Oh those pet peeves

Postby beatbandito » Fri Jun 01, 2018 9:58 am

I'm pretty bad with names in general and tend to use associated terms to refer to things instead of the proper names.

But recently I've picked up the habit of calling legal sized sheets 11x17s even though that is an existing different size of paper, just because our big printer broke years ago and it's become standard for the boss to ask for them and get legal (the biggest we can currently print). And it is actively hampering my ability to communicate.
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