Stuff That Really 'Grinds My Gears...'

Happy Mawlid al-Nabi al-Sharif, everyone!

What do you mean, it doesn’t work both ways?

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The more I use my phone for writing stuff, the more I consider writing on a smartphone to be Stuff That Really Grinds My Gears. In fact, using a smartphone in general annoys me more than it helps me. I would probably be better off with a flip phone, but this is a very minor thing to complain about.

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One of many reasons I prefer winter to summer.

…Although in summer I normally don’t get the kind of cough/cold that I’m finally almost over now.

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People who can’t corner (well, curves,really). If you are slamming on your brakes in the corner, you’re doing it wrong. Slow slightly beforehand then accelerate through the curve. There is no more excuse for not knowing this in my part of the world than there is for not knowing how to drive in rain. (Which is another one).

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Alas, mine are not seasonal; mold and dust mites thrive in some form in all climates, year round.

Lucky me.

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Ick. That sucks. I’m lucky enough that as long as there’s nothing green nearby, I’m largely unaffected.

Reminds me of a commercial for I-have-no-idea-what, where a kid’s playing with his food, driving a vegetable around a mashed-potato race course. The father finally gets fed up, and you think he’s going to tell the kid to stop playing with his food, but he actually tells him to accelerate through the turn.

For myself, winter driving tends to repair most of my bad driving habits. When the road has a lot less friction than you’re used to, you learn very quickly why “decelerate, turn the wheel, accelerate” is the correct sequence to follow.

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I wouldn’t plan on visiting NorCal, then; many people here can’t seem to drive in the rain for shit.

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Yes! And one that just happened to me this morning:

If you are behind sometime at a red light, waiting to make a turn, and you start honking your horn at them the millisecond the light turns green, you are distracting them and SLOWING THEM DOWN, not speeding them up as you want to. Now they have to figure out what the fuck you’re honking about instead of just making that turn.

Again: NOT talking about someone speed at a green. The light has just turned green; traffic has just stopped; people run enough red lights in my neighbourhood that is a good idea to verify cross traffic is actually stopping for the light before proceeding.

Bonus: if this happens early in the morning, you are announcing to your neighbours you are an asshole.

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In reverse weaving in a side winder pattern while holding down the horn and flashing the full beams on and off randomly.

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While flashing can be enough to create double images, maybe a low-flying drone with its own flashing would do more to create decoy images.

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1) Stop.

2) Turn around in your seat, put on a big smile, and wave. If they’re honking, it must be someone you know, right?

3) Ascertain that there are no pedestrians in the crosswalk or cyclists passing on the right, then proceed.

Bonus if you are waiting to make a left turn and manage to squeak through on the advanced green or through the only gap in traffic, leaving them to wait through another light cycle.

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I thought I recognized you from somewhere…

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While, yes, “cant” is a word. I do not disagree with that.

But where in my history of communication have you decided that I am talking about the angle something is leaning or perhaps speaking in jargon more often then auto-correcting to "can’t " since your mobile keyboard sucks.

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I’m in the UK so we know how to drive in the rain (it’s our default weather) but every year everyone is surprised by snow, like it’s something they’ve never seen before!

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I have gone back to a small phone - a Sony Z5C - because I’ve found big phones to be too big for convenience but too small to do stuff. At the same time, I don’t care for laptops because you’re stuck with one keyboard. I want Latin + accents, Cyrillic and Greek. And I don’t like tablets because I find them awkward to hold.
I use my phone for a lot and would definitely be unhappy without a barometer, compass, camera, payment method, navigation, FLIR sensor, emergency torch, weather warnings, MP3 player and message handler. But what I really want is something that folds like a laptop but has a second, mono e-ink screen in place of the keyboard that displays whatever alphabet or symbol system I want.

People produce niche IT products, phone makers seem to obsess over their DxOMark scores, but actual innovation is pretty rare.

I don’t know whereabouts you are but we get long rain free periods and then it rains and a whole lot of people turn out not to understand stopping distances and/or take forever to get going at junctions. I think from long experience that awful driving started in the Mid-West and has gradually moved East as British people take their cues from US TV programmes.

Back in the distant past I used to travel frequently by motorbike along a minor road. At one point there was a long downhill followed by a humpback bridge and a near-hairpin bend.
Now the way you took it was this; you went down the hill at moderate speed and braked before the bridge. On the bridge you took off for a short distance. As soon as this happened, you turned the front wheel the wrong way. This caused the bike to cant over because the front wheel was spinning; at the same time the precession slowed the front wheel, so when you touched down you were already facing the right way for the exit from the bend. We all knew about it, we all practised it, it was a perfectly safe manoeuvre because on the way down the hill you could see if there was anything the other side of the bridge.
Then one day I was followed down that road by an idiot in a large Ford who was driving as close as he could (500 Triumphs are not fast bikes by any standard). There was nowhere he was going to be able to pass. But I went down the hill as usual, and then discovered he wasn’t there any more.
He had obviously braked when I braked, became slightly airborne - and of course cars can’t change direction in the air, so he ended up in the ditch. Fortunately no great harm done.

The relevance, the thing that grinds my gears; people who try to drive too fast on unfamiliar roads and don’t think that perhaps the person they are following does this daily or weekly and knows every dip and bend. My assumption with people who brake heavily on bends is that they simply didn’t know the bend was there. (That, or ignorance of course.)

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My experience is a bit different. With laptops, depending on the language, I can use an external keyboard with stickers, or I could use a silicone keyboard cover with stickers, or-- it’s slow since I can’t touch-type-- I can use an on-screen keyboard for reference. One problem is that my brain sometimes filters out one alphabet on the stickers when I’m trying to use that alphabet-- where is Roman Q again? But I can’t use touch-screen keyboards. Some touch devices are unresponsive, others are haywire.

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I’m hosting a craft show, and because we’re in a church we’re calling it a “Christmas Market” - oh holy hell the flak I’m getting for that!

Vendors who won’t apply because its in a church!
Shoppers who won’t come because “christmas” is not inclusive enough.

Like, there are a million craft shows this month, go to one of the “holiday markets” if you like!
Our has Santa and Krampus! Its a Christmas market dammit!

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I’m super confused by this - who are the shoppers and vendors? People who aren’t church members? Why do church members object to their church doing churchy stuff?

I’ve never actually heard of something like this. The church my parents went to growing up didn’t allow any non-charity sales on-site.

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We are not affiliated with the church at all, we just use the space to host a show. Its pretty common in my city as large halls are hard to come by for cheap. Lots of downtown churches here have signs “Hall for rent”. Shoppers are just regular craft show goers, and vendors are all Etsy sellers.
And we’re not a “Christian” group, but its in a church, so why not have Santa and make it fun and festive and be a Christmas show? You can’t please everyone!

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Why not indeed?

Call it a “Weihnachtsmarkt” and confuse everybody.

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