The "Things that annoy me" thread

Mu biggest current annoyance is USB, cables and connectors. It's a fucking mess.

I wanted to have an extension cable for my Hyperdrive USB-C hub that I have my MacBook Air and HP Elitebook 13 (work) hooked up to. The USB-C cable that attaches the laptop to the hub is fixed and cannot be removed (which is stupid, but seems to be common for all of these hubs) or replaced, and I needed an extension cable to so that I could just switch it between the two, as they are about 0,5 m away from each other.

I tried one, which for which it said it supported USB Super Speed, and USB PD up to 60 W. Did not work. Tried it just to charge my phone, and it did that, no problem. Turns out that it's most likely the hub that doesn't allow extension cables for some reason.

Why? I can't see a single logical reason why it shouldn't work. Now, what's the point with a common connector, when you can never know if the cable you bought will actually work. And, why isn't the hub's cable replaceable? So that the user can attach a longer cable if needs be...
 
Mu biggest current annoyance is USB, cables and connectors. It's a fucking mess.

I wanted to have an extension cable for my Hyperdrive USB-C hub that I have my MacBook Air and HP Elitebook 13 (work) hooked up to. The USB-C cable that attaches the laptop to the hub is fixed and cannot be removed (which is stupid, but seems to be common for all of these hubs) or replaced, and I needed an extension cable to so that I could just switch it between the two, as they are about 0,5 m away from each other.

I tried one, which for which it said it supported USB Super Speed, and USB PD up to 60 W. Did not work. Tried it just to charge my phone, and it did that, no problem. Turns out that it's most likely the hub that doesn't allow extension cables for some reason.

Why? I can't see a single logical reason why it shouldn't work. Now, what's the point with a common connector, when you can never know if the cable you bought will actually work. And, why isn't the hub's cable replaceable? So that the user can attach a longer cable if needs be...

This is 2 years old by now so maybe we're up to "USB 3.R.2 Gen 17 x Z", but it at least helped me understand package verbiage and product description pages...
 
Chainsaws where the manual tells you to put your foot in the handle loop area to hold it down while you start the saw, but the area is too small to fit a steel-toed boot toe through.
 
My dad's ancient Toshiba laptop has this problem with phantom touches on the left click button. It has an old-style touchpad, so the buttons are separate physical buttons, and one of them would click even when you didn't touch it or just blew air on it.

As my dad refuses to spend €400 or more on a new laptop, and considering this one works more or less fine for his needs apart from that phantom left-clicks, I decided to take it apart, clean it, and see where's the problem and if it can be fixed. Yesterday, I opened the laptop, cleaned the dust from the fan and heatsink, replaced the thermal paste, found the culprit and closed it back together.

Once that was done, I took some time to search local classifieds, found a guy who was parting out laptops in our town, gave him a ring, and agreed to pick up the part today for €6.60. Perfect.

As I picked up the part, everything seemed fine, but when I came home, disassembled my dad's laptop for the second time, went to remove the faulty touchpad buttons... I realised something didn't quite line up to my expectations.

The new-to-us part was different.

And not like slightly different, so some drilling and fitting would solve the problem. Nope, it was quite wider, taller and couldn't fit whatsoever. Needless to say, I immediately felt like a fool. Well, I guess now I should phone the guy again and try to return the part or exchange it for some other if he happens to have the part I need.

Lesson learned: next time, take a picture of the part you need once you diagnose what exactly it is that you need. Also, lesser laptop manufacturers tend to put different parts into the same model of laptop.

EDIT: The story has a happy ending, after all. The seller said they have more of the same laptop model, found the correct part, and agreed to exchange it for the incorrect part. In the end, they let me keep the incorrect part as it had some extra cables, but I'll return it tomorrow as I didn't need those cables. The problem is fixed and the laptop works just like it should.
 
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Dear god MS Teams...

it's ok-ish if you're only ever active inside your very own organisation (I actually quite like the way it works there). As soon as you work with someone else? UTTER PAIN IN THE BUTT AND BALLS!!!!
I work for a municipal utility of medium size that early on separated a lot of services into their own organisations. That means, for me, that I have to work across quite a few organisational borders from the start (also comes with the job). That in turn means, next to my main / home MS Teams account, I currently have a handful of guest accounts for the domains of the other companies (WHY!?!?!?!). Teams is incapable of managing one acocunt at a time, though - you have to decide which one you want active, and switching means restarting Teams (more often than not multiple times because the first time it goes wrong).
Ok, ok, bad enough... but... this leads to people wanting to just give me a call or drop me a line in a chat or send me a file or anything like that never actually reaching me! If they type in my name on their home-domain, bloody teams first of all suggest my guest access in their domain to contact - despite the fact that cross-domain chat/files/calls are a thing! They COULD reach me on my home domain, but no, teams suggest staying "at home". Which in turn means I don't receive their call, don't get any notification of their message until some 12 hours or so later, when for some reason teams informs me that something happened in a different tenant that i might want to know about.
All this crap could've been avoided if they just used my main account for guest access - but no, the accounts are separate. OR if teams was capable of managing more than one connection concurrently. but no.

ARGH. :blowup::blowup::blowup::blowup::blowup:
 
Thats very weird. I have teams setup on my work account and I can do customer ‘visits’ just fine.... as long as they know my email address and use teams, anyone can call me or have a meeting.... so i don’t see why you would need multiple accounts?
 
Yeah, they can just call and text me through my regular home account but: because we run joint projects, as soon as they add me to one of their teams (with channels and data sharing and co-working and such), a guest account is created in their tenant (for whatever reason) and shit hits the fan. This is basically a whole new teams account which just happens to run under the same email address (it even has different 2FA settings in my case). Admittedly, some of the trouble could be avoided if people made sure to only ever message the account that says "EXTERNAL" and not the one that says "guest", but teams always recommends the guest accound first (when typing in my name or email in the search bar) and since people are lazy and will just hit enter as soon as the right name seems to appear, that doesn't work.

ughh... basically this guest-account bullshit should not ever exist, I feel, because the handling of multiple accounts is plain garbage...
 
Jalopnik.

Only recently have I tried to quit the muscle memory of typing that website when I want to read some car news. It's the "where do I go now" sort of thing like when I type in imgur or even finalgear. :D

Jalopnik has become such an awful place for auto news now that it's disappointing where it's gone. But for now TheDrive seems to be the replacement, which is good, but remembering to go there is a learning curve.
 
I haven't read much of Jalopnik for a while, obviously it's much worse since @ninjacoco stopped writing for them and nobody has the balls.

Remember when Sniffpetrol was funny? It still exists, almost as a parody of itself. We know Richard Porter is partially to blame for all the scripted TG 'comedy' we hate the most, so it would be hard to like his work even if it was still good.
 
I haven't read much of Jalopnik for a while, obviously it's much worse since @ninjacoco stopped writing for them and nobody has the balls.

Remember when Sniffpetrol was funny? It still exists, almost as a parody of itself. We know Richard Porter is partially to blame for all the scripted TG 'comedy' we hate the most, so it would be hard to like his work even if it was still good.
I visited the sniffpetrol website a few times, but it never captured me really. He's much better in person. I still go back to the 4 or 5 year old podcast when he was on with Matt Farah before The Grand Tour took off. There was a newer one, but I can't be bothered to search it. He's on Johnny Smith's podcast too which he's just as good there as well. His writing is like you said, not funny. What is it, the Smith and Sniff podcast? That's nice.
 
I posted something free on Craigslist.

It was a plywood box my girlfriend made in college (15 years ago) for an art class, and we've just used it a garage storage. It's banged up, and awkward to use because it's heavy.

Someone actually took time out of their day to respond to the ad with, "Keep it. It's an heirloom." ?
 
My 3M half-face respirator has two replaceable parts: the filters, and the elastic straps.

I need both. The straps are $20, and the replacement filters are $16.

A whole brand-new mask is $32.
 
My 3M half-face respirator has two replaceable parts: the filters, and the elastic straps.

I need both. The straps are $20, and the replacement filters are $16.

A whole brand-new mask is $32.


Depending on the type of filters, they can be expensive. On the other hand, I know people that have made smoking devices out of the old face mask part. lol
 
Depending on the type of filters, they can be expensive.
Yeah, I get that, but it's weird that just the filters and strap are MORE expensive than the same filters and strap AND the whole rest of the facemask in one package. :lmao:
 
My 3M half-face respirator has two replaceable parts: the filters, and the elastic straps.

I need both. The straps are $20, and the replacement filters are $16.

A whole brand-new mask is $32.
Sounds like they come from selling printers...
 
I ordered something from Woodcraft.

In the package, there was my item, packing material, and the packing slip.

And also:
- a pamphlet for a sort of "product category of the month"
- a "$100 wine voucher" for an online wine store
- a "13 value" ad for Harry's
- a "secure your future!" ad for a company selling gold coins as an investment
- a "grow your own tomatoes" pamphlet
- a $10 off Woodcraft coupon that only had 1 week before it expired
- a coupon for discount on Woodcraft Magazine
- another coupon for discount on Woodcraft Magazine
- ANOTHER coupon for discount on Woodcraft Magazine
- St Jude's donation request package (an envelope, and 3 pages and a return envelope).
 
The entry to our new bedroom.

This doorway is at the end of a long hallway. It's the entry to our new bedroom. One side is the existing house. The other is the new addition. They didn't line up the walls on one side. I had to make the decision to make the door look centered at the end of the long hallway, since you see it from every room besides that bedroom. But that means that the doorway inside the bedroom is off-center, and crammed into a corner.

1615489663083.png



Once you're in the room, the floor slopes down (because they built the new addition lower than the existing, which is why that next door is lower...it's between a door at the low point and the entry at the high point, so we installed this side closet door to be in line with the bathroom door next to it. Yeah...
 
I was on hold with the DMV for 1 hr and 42 minutes this morning/afternoon. The MOMENT I pop a chewy Starburst into my mouth, they pick up. Because of course.
 
I was on hold with the DMV for 1 hr and 42 minutes this morning/afternoon. The MOMENT I pop a chewy Starburst into my mouth, they pick up. Because of course.
It's the DMV, isn't it mandatory for any sort of contact with them to be some sort of inconvenient and/or excruciating?
 
Mu biggest current annoyance is USB, cables and connectors. It's a fucking mess.
I have a USB-C iPad. I also had a USB-C Macbook. I don't anymore, but that's beside the point.

I couldn't charge my JBL Charge 4 bluetooth speaker using the Apple chargers. The cable would physically fit but it wouldn't charge. The Apple chargers also wouldn't charge anything else including the Apple devices until I unplugged the cable from the brick and then plugged it back in again. After that, all was well again.

Oh, and the A to C charge cable that came with the JBL wouldn't physically fit in the Macbook or the iPad.

However, the Apple C chargers are perfectly compatible with my Jabra USB-C headphones. I also own a couple other Chinesium A to C cables and they work fine with the Apple stuff. I've also (obviously) used all sorts of chinese USB-C gear with my Macbook and it's been fine, as expected.
 
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