Stuff That Really 'Grinds My Gears...'

Having to replace my password with one that is 8-12 characters, has one number, one uppercase and one lowercase character when my password already has 8 characters with one number, one uppercase and one lowercase character, but also an underscore.

So many banking and healthcare sites’ policies are determined by people looking at a 2003-era “best practices” document and looking to add one line of “achievement” to their annual performance review.

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Likewise, addresses and places of residence somehow being hard to figure out.

I’ve had my credit cards reported as stolen when I’ve gone to visit my parents in Georgia (the state, not the country). Maybe it’s because I don’t travel nearly as much as I used to, because when I used to travel a lot for work, this shit would never happen to me ever.

Also, I’ve had the $200 free glasses* I had to get** sent to some random place in Texas, because the insurance sees that my employer is based out of Texas so they assume I live in Texas as well.

*Technically covered by insurance, but there’s a co-pay for high refractive index, a copay for bifocal, a copay for this, a copay for that, and it adds up. Basically, the glasses are free unless your eyesight is bad enough to need glasses :confused: In general, health insurance in the US Grinds My Gears ™.

Busted my face trail running, because apparently I’m not only too uncoordinated for team sports, but also too uncoordinated for running. Probably more of a Fuck Me than a Grinds My Gears, but*

***This damn proxy server I’m behind thinks the HMS Fuck Me thread is a porn site :scream:

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another thing that grinds my gears is when some doofus with an email account differing from mine only by lack of a non-alphanumeric character signs up for some trendy apparel site’s newsletter, which I get even though the intended recipient shows up in the to: line. I try at least twice to be removed, my attempts don’t work, and then I have to scout for executive VPs and the CEO’s phone numbers to tell them I’ve logged my numerous attempts and am sending my log of unsolicited commercial email to the FTC.

ETA: It gets worse. Customer Service canned response tells me to unsub via its handy-dandy unsub page, in which there appear to be typos in the id property of a webform control option for unsubscribing, possibly rendering javascript form processing errors.

Data processing and cleaning is so important, unless one outfit tries doing it on the cheap (no in-house dedicated staff) and gambles that no erroneous recipients would be irked enough to use ftccomplaintassistant.gov. Telling me to use a unique email address isn’t helpful when it was unique SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO when I signed up for the account.

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I have an email address that is very short and simple. I have yet to go to a major website where some damn bot hasn’t signed up with it already. Sigh, yes, send me the link to change the password… I have collected some random usernames I never would have thought of myself, though.

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My Gmail address is only seven characters long, and I’ve never come across that issue. How short is yours?

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And no, it’s not my handle here.

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Nice.  

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Go po?

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Oogp.  

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Stuff That Really ‘Grind My Gears…’

…When people use a collective noun with a plural verb. :stuck_out_tongue:

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In another few decades English won’t have any inflections at all.

And we will write everything in emoji :steam_locomotive: :sun_with_face: :heart_eyes_cat:

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On a different note…

There’s an app on my phone.

It is for making appointments with a certain organization.

After each appointment passes, it bugs me about making my next appointment. This is not the issue.

It bugs me to make my next appointment repeatedly, even if I have already made my next appointment. This is not the issue.

Instead of using the “notification” tone, which is generally a fairly unobtrusive chirp, it uses the phone’s ringtone. Which is generally loud and a lot longer than a notification tone.

I’ve had this thing go off at work, go off while I was driving (“Why isn’t my Bluetooth picking up?!”), go off when I was busy elsewhere in my house and had to rush to my phone to pick it up… And nope, my phone wasn’t ringing, it was just a blasted notification to make the next appointment that I had already made. That is the issue.

Also: I have reported this to the developers, and they told me to just turn notifications off for that app. Which I have done, but was not a setting that migrated to my new phone. It’s been over a year since I first told them about this issue, and it still isn’t fixed. That is also the issue.

So, now notifications are turned off for this app on my new phone as well, but it’s still annoying that I had to bother doing that. How much of a code change does it take to point towards playing the right sound?!

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? :stuck_out_tongue:

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When people hold their devices vertically instead of horizontally when making videos.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!! Then they should go turn their landscape-oriented big TVs so that they’re in portrait mode!

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The fact that the name of this topic says “Grind” instead of “Grinds”.

And that I have to edit my stuff because of typos, lol.

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My favorite is when I’m watching a vid on my phone that’s been shot in portrait mode, but then letterboxed sideways, so when you go to watch it in portrait mode, it’s bloody tiny.

When the hell will phone software permit pinch-zooming video, dammit?

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Always fun when some programmer apparently hasn’t read the relevant RFCs (or taken any time to look for edge cases in their code). I had to deal with one major company at one point that had designed a system that refused to accept a “-” character in any part of the email address, calling it an “invalid” email address…

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I get why it’s often done - easier to hold with one hand, more subtle if you’re filming a cop beating someone etc - so what grinds my gear is that phones don’t include software that lets the recording switch from portrait to landscape without needing to change the phone…or if that’s an engineering impossibility, have rotating lenses :wink:

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So not an engineering impossibility.

Given the eleventy jillion pixels in your average CCD, cropping to HD should totally be doable.

Although who knows how many layers down the assumption was made that nobody wants to do that… Might need the OS and/or camera driver to be on board.

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