start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

like why people refuse to watch soccer to "own the Brits"

OTM. After the last five years (and especially 2020), I don't think it is a stretch at all to say there would be guaranteed at least one armed protest somewhere in the country if we tried to mandate the 24-hour clock or the metric system.

"My Meters Don't Kilo"

Canadians also don't know the 24 hr clock ime.

Oh, man, you want to hear a fight we've had here so many times? Today is Monday, in a few days it will be Friday. So is that "this Friday" or "next Friday?" I think it's "this" Friday, because "next" Friday is next week, a la ..."next week."

The best way to sell the metric system to the US is to start referring to it as the tactical system.

Americans switched to 2-liter bottles of Coca-Cola in the blink of an eye. You have to make us care about it somehow.

that's mainly because most consumers of two liter bottles of Coca-Cola mentally translate "two liter bottle of Coke" as "a buttload of Coke".

Yes ideally you want to make an American think they're getting a good deal

the Guy Fieri system

Our big secret is pssst, we do know how to use the Metric system. We just don't tell anyone that we do.

Cooking in metric produces better results. Baking, particularly so.

confusing Celsius with Fahrenheit results in some hilarious cooking results

Yes ideally you want to make an American think they're getting a good deal

you get more kilometres per hour than you do miles, going at the same speed. job done.

every American only knows "kilo" in terms of drug buys

Brits work in fluid variations of half-arsed metrimperial hybrids depending on age, location, school and general disposition towards our European mainland cousins.

One thing I liked some places in Japan, was how they sometimes even extended the 24 hour clock into the small hours, so that e.g. a bar open from say eight in the morning on a Saturday to three hours past the next midnight would have the opening times "Saturdays: 08:00 to 27:00" on the doors rather than the somewhat illogical hybrid "Saturdays: 08:00 to 03:00", signalling those final hours as really late Saturday, rather than really early Sunday. Haven't seen this anywhere else.

this really tickles me, particularly as one of my previous jobs involved documenting bar opening hours and having to explain to various officials that 02.00 was the next day

There used to be this loophole here, where there are still blue laws for liquor stores.

Liquor stores are allowed to stay open until 1 a.m. on weekdays, until midnight (of fuck, 11:59:59 p.m.) on Saturdays, and not at all on Sundays.

Which meant there were certain establishments who'd throw open their doors at 12:01 a.m. Monday, after being closed 24 hours, to serve thirsty customers for exactly 59 minutes.

xxp There were protests against the adoption of the metric system 40 years ago, IIRC.

lol @ the logo for the United States Metric Board (1975-1982).

https://i.imgur.com/ps8ryUe.png

ripoff of logo for Missionary Position Association

The Wonder Woman Doing A Handstand Foundation.

This is how I use my bluetooth speaker with my laptop

1. Turn on speaker
2. Turn off bluetooth on my phone to stop it connecting
3. Click the search button on the taskbar
4. Wait for about 10 seconds
5. Write "bluetooth"
6. Wait another 15 seconds
7. No results for "bluetooth" - ah yes, but I know this now, no worries
8. Click the settings tab and select 'bluetooth and other system settings'
9. Wait for what feels like about half an hour
10. Click the button to turn on bluetooth
11. Click another button to connect to the speaker
12. Play and enjoy music for a few minutes until the devices belonging to my wife and kids decide that actually they would like to use the speaker instead, tell them to turn off bluetooth please
13. At this point the computer kicks back in, but the computer now thinks the speaker is a communications device and switches to very quiet low-bitrate sound.
14. If I can be bothered, reset everything to make it work again

checks out

my bluetooth headphones announce “low battery” and then turn off 20 seconds later. thanks for the warning! ffs

yup, with additional "would ye just fuckin..." pleas which are interrupted by short beeps of false hope

xp

Yeah my laptop also pops up a low battery warning to "plug in now" about 20 seconds before turning off, which I have definitely established is not enough time to go and get the cable.

Have just had a look whether this was a problem with my power settings. Short answer is no, longer answer is no idea.

I am gonna fucking garrotte the next person who shares that they were "humbled" by receiving an award. That is literally the opposite of what receiving an award means to you, don't treat me like an idiot.

seriously who started that shit. also award reception and awards shows in particular belong in the irrationally embarrassed thread

I felt very aroused when i got this award

has anyone ever recieved an award and said something like "that thing I made was worthless shit, you must be complete idiots to like it"?

I was up for a theatre award and cared so little i went to go see Black Sabbath instead, and then i wound up winning and i left the trophy for two months before claiming it and had friends accept on my behalf

Mostly i didn't care cos i felt like everyone in that community theatre was so focused on the awards ceremony they let it impact their performances and tried to collude to get their friends to give them perfect scores on ballots.

RIGGED

The mail in ballots did it

aaargh just misssed half a webinar with Steve McQueen because i didn't [roperly bookmark my time and started rinking early.
well what I saw was good hope I do get a link to a recording.
Bah humbug

Shitty music algorithms have been driving me nuts lately. We had to drive somewhere, so my wife put on some music. First four songs: "Welcome to the Jungle," "Under Pressure," "Carry On Wayward Son," "Africa."

What playlist is this, I asked?

A Tom Petty station, she answered.

i can't stand the M icon for Gmail right now

agreed it's awful

I had to call a bank-like business for something bank-like. The first time I called, after going through several banks of automated choices and warnings of longer hold waits than usual due to etc., it finally spat out another automated message saying that due to call volume, no one can take my call right now ... and then disconnected me. That's weird, I thought, I never eve got to be on hold. So I called back, figuring it was a glitch, and went through the whole drawn out process, concluding in me getting outright automatically hung up on again. Huh. I wait a few minutes and then call back a third time, go through the whole long menu of options process expecting to be disconnected again but hopeful that something has changed, and indeed this time I am actually put on hold, with the (automatic) warning that wait times are long and the current wait is estimated to be around 15 minutes.

First, why didn't it just put me on hold the first two times, after telling me wait times were unusually long? Why just automatically disconnect and not give me the option to simply wait on hold as long as it takes?

Second, after the "this may be 15 minutes" warning, I ended up waiting (listening to hold music on speakerphone) for 35 minutes before *I* hung up.

A couple of hours later I try again. I go through the whole process, expecting the worst, but instead of getting hung up on I make it to the hold mark again, once again with the automated warning that it could be at least 15 minutes. I get comfortable for another 30+ minutes on the phone ... but then a representative gets on the phone with me in, like, 30 seconds!

Get your act together, hold-time robots!

I used to work in a bank on the phones and would happily tell people to press hash and star to get straight to an operator, even handed out the lower-rate international phone number a few times, systems seem to be getting worse now though, it's true.

First, why didn't it just put me on hold the first two times, after telling me wait times were unusually long? Why just automatically disconnect and not give me the option to simply wait on hold as long as it takes?

My guess is that sometimes these places have a limit on how many lines they can handle "on hold" at once and on the third time you managed to squeeze in before the limit. I'm guessing the first two times all of the "hold" lines were taken, so it just dumped you off instead.

Not that that makes it any less frustrating for you, the end user, though!

Yeah, that's about right - a good system would tell you this before putting you through the security questions though

My company, actually not following the prompts or entering info slows things down more cos it dumps the customer into a default queue which may or may not be right dept, and then all of the identification and authentication has to start from scratch, which adds 2 minutes to the call.

But our phone menus tend to be more streamlined than the bullshit CC companies use

A couple of hours later I try again. I go through the whole process, expecting the worst, but instead of getting hung up on I make it to the hold mark again, once again with the automated warning that it could be at least 15 minutes. I get comfortable for another 30+ minutes on the phone ... but then a representative gets on the phone with me in, like, 30 seconds!

Get your act together, hold-time robots!

If only there were relevant xkcd

O wait

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/estimation.png

people who waffle on whether something is a 'requirement' vs a 'guideline'.

when I assess my class's progress, there are specifically labeled days in the schedule where I *have* to check in with my coach and tell him how the learners are doing, including if anybody needs remedial assistance. The coach approaches us for the info on that specific day, and if we don't supply it, we get pinged incessantly until we do. It's this long arduous detailed process with documentation as well.

So today - I find an error in the progress report schedule (it's written for 11 days instead of 12), so I ask him how to adjust the schedule so that I'm reporting him the progress on the right date, and he says "ehh it's up to you, this is more of a guideline than a hard fast rule".

so it's a hard fast rule when you're hounding me for this information on the specified date, but when I ask you for guidance due to an error you made in the schedule, now it's "up to me", so I should 'figure it out'?

he’s just hounding you because that’s what bosses do. and when there’s a hiccup in the system he’s pushing responsibility down the ladder because that’s also what bosses do. sorry, i meant “empowering you to make decisions”