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

not being from the northeast, I only learned in my mid 20s that some zip codes begin with zero. it may have been after I made some database updates after editing data in excel and not realizing that fact, and that excel doesn't understand that either and likes to interpret zip codes as integers

at first, I read this as a complaint that people don't use the +4 zip code, which would truly be irrational

xp

The amount of post I used to not-get that was addressed to 'Flat 10, Example road' when 99% of flats in this town (and most?) are flats in a building which has a number, one of many on a road.
There are also two 'Example Road's in my city and the taxi company sent every single taxi to the wrong one, without fail, even when we spelt out that this normally happened and that it needed to go to the one in our very well-known district. Eventually someone took pity on us and changed the default one to our one.

Automatic address completer things give the 'county' for Bristol as Avon (doesn't exist), Gloucestershire, Somerset... probably many more I've forgotten...

used to live at a house that was the only one with its postcode and managed to get things delivered with just the postcode, no name or address

Example just received (names and numbers changed to protect the ignorant):

Suite 202
Fun Rd.

Street listed but no actual street address specified. WTF.

ya that's what I meant

Old Lunch, the first time I found that out, it caused an actually quite expensive mailing error and much embarrassment.

Yes, folks, when you put a Boston-area zip like 02134 into Excel, it will drop the zero and neatly sort itself right between 212xx (Baltimore) and 214xx (Annapolis).

Oh yeah, my ex used to live at a Flat 1, Whatever Drive which also had a House 1 much closer to the main road

House 1 was very grumpy about the number of mistaken callers and never redirected them up the hill

a big sign reading "HOUSE 1 NOT FLAT 1" did not improve anything

also don't talk to me about Excel losing leading zeroes (you can talk to me about this but I will bore you for hours about every Excel CSV mishap I've ever had, and I usually get sent a couple of spreadsheets which used to be CSV files and weren't imported sensibly every week)

people that post things with solely the word "This." as their commentary

^^

otm

so much this

lol

musicians who can't decide where they post new music. sometimes it's on bandcamp, sometimes on soundcloud, sometimes their own site, sometimes somewhere else, and they can't be fucked to have some central place where they let you know they've got a new thing out.

fuuuuck I hate excel dropping leading zeroes! I work in telecoms. muchly mobile phones. all Aus mobiles start with 04. fuckin run a report for phone port outs and have to add the fuckin 0 back in fuckin

Is it not just a matter of adding them as '00123456789 - they're not really numbers, you're not going to be adding them or multiplying them?

would that I could but they come down from supplier databases that way.

and it shouldn't matter! I should then be able to search a number sans the leading 0 but noooo, fuck yer fuzzy search

People who have to get out of their cars to put money in the fare machines at parking lots.

I would say Excel and, more broadly, most Microsoft products make me IA on the reg. Or it might be more that I'm Angry about their Irrationality.

There was this thing I used to have to do all the time for work which involved cutting stuff from Word and pasting it into Excel, but because one of the Microsoft products always wanted to reformat stuff I was pasting from another Microsoft product, I had to employ Notepad as an intermediary. Pointless.

People using more than one question mark after a question, esp in work-related communication.

'Did you get my e-mail??????'

Yes, I did, but your aggressive use of question marks means I probably won't answer it ever.

Excel is p great tbh folks

People who have to get out of their cars to put money in the fare machines at parking lots.

I would be IA if they attempted this from inside their cars?

(We may be talking about two different things.)

http://i.imgur.com/HdTggZ8.jpg?1 http://i.imgur.com/ASA0qyF.jpg

would you believe they have machines that combine the two now? you put the ticket and your credit card in it when you exit and it does the transaction in one place

xp around me there are gated lots that have a farebox you're supposed to pull up to, put your money in (they're set rate rather than hourly), the gate goes up, you pull in. So many people I see have to open the door and get out of the car rather than just unbuckle their seatbelts and lean out the window.

sounds to me like your anger is irrational

About 10 years ago, the garage of the building I worked in put in one of those kiosk machines. The signs all said, TAKE YOUR TICKET WITH YOU and YOU MUST PAY AT THE KIOSK and such. Uh huh. Yep, got it. And every day on my way out there's like five people lined up in front of the kiosk being utterly perplexed by the talking machine, and not sure where to put the ticket vs. the money, and what to do if you want a receipt vs. not.

Meanwhile I noticed that the exit gate itself offers the opportunity to put in a credit card and pay there. In fact it takes less time and causes fewer delays to the people behind you. So that's what I do now.

You notice how in those YOU MUST PAY AT THE KIOSK places, the ticket is a familiar size? You know, kinda like the size of a credit card? Yeah there's a reason for that. Because the slot in the exit gate can also manage with a credit card, and it doesn't talk to you and it's perfectly easy to understand what goes where; there's exactly one slot and one button.

Feel free to be IA at me for this, but I've stopped obeying those YOU MUST PAY AT THE PAY STATION KIOSK signs. If I find one that doesn't take a card at the exit gate I will happily eat my words, but I haven't found that place yet.

Was reminded of one today: students who say they are studying the non-subjects of "pre-med" or "pre-law". You haven't been admitted to medical or law school yet. Just say you're studying biology or English.

My college had a graduate program in occupational therapy and offered undergraduate courses labeled "pre-occupational therapy."

There was a joke about how if the instructor asks you a question and you say, "Sorry, I was preoccupied," you should get an A.

Ha, yes, there are contexts where it makes sense to say you are studying a "pre-" subject. I don't think it does for most 'pre-med' or 'pre-law' students who are completing ordinary science or arts degrees, though.

the exit gate itself offers the opportunity to put in a credit card and pay there.

But why walk all the way back down to the exit when you're wanting to take the skyway to Mezzanine 3 in the first place?

takeout places that don't automatically include utencils/napkins. I'm a busy professional here!

This can be cross-posted in a thread called "Things you are rationally embarrassed to be irrationally angry about."

pplains, I don't understand - I mean that as the car is leaving, there's a slot where you are supposed to put your prepaid ticket (if you followed the directions). However, one can also skip the prepayment station and simply pay there.

Not to get too Kantian, but: If everybody did it, it might sometimes take longer to get out. However, the kiosk machines as currently practiced simply relocate the backup... to the machine.

In the gate it is literally as simple as: you put in the ticket and it says you owe $X. You put it in your debit or credit card. You can request a receipt, or decline. The gate opens and you drive away. Meanwhile everybody who obeyed the YOU MUST PAY AT THE PAY STATION sign is still standing in front of it trying to figure out what to do.

===============================

This is distinct from the situation where you must prepay, print a ticket, and place that ticket in your car windshield. Those are a different kettle of fish altogether. I do NOT advocate gaming those systems.

xpost I always gathered that this thread was implicitly "Things you are rationally embarrassed to be irrationally angry about." That's my progression, more often than not.

So the price is the same whether you pay at the kiosk or at the gate? Then why doesn't EVERYONE do that?

If everybody did it, it might sometimes take longer to get out.

I mean, besides that.

Lol our garage at Pointe Orlando is like that.

What i hate is that there will be 2-3 "green" lanes open AND EVERYBODY PILES INTO THE SAME ONE just far back enough that you cant cut around

Did Facebook just change settings heavily?
I access it a lot on my phone internet or at least used to until this afternoon.
Now get message saying it's not supported. Weird.

The opposite of excel is also annoying, the way the Google keep thinks any number with more than 2 digits is a phone number and brings up the call dialogue when you try and edit it.

the leading zeroes bit happens on my files sometimes but since we often used it for batch files w/ SSNs, it becomes an easy problem to fix by going to "custom" and just putting in nine zeroes.

I lament that I briefly was learning how to become a fucking whiz at Excel and then our department dissolved, I lost that contact who was mentoring me, and now I suck at it again. but then again, don't really need to use it as often as I did then either.

Today I learned remembered: the US is a terrifying lawless place where you don't have to enter PIN to use a card.

Most places i go to require it for debit transacts, even with a chip (not credit tho)

My card was compromised twice this year tho lol

I've avoided getting a "tap and go" chip card for that reason, the idea a simple walllet loss could result in someone going on a cash spending spree on my dime is scary.

Problem is, theyve become so ubiquitous that I have had the experience of handing my eftpos (debit, uses a PIN) card to a foetal-aged cashier, who looks at it dumbly because they dont know about card swiping.

The other IA threads should be locked.

swipey cards can be cloned, though, and tappy cards cannot

those are the technical terms

Granted, but tappy cards can be used at 10 stores in 30 minutes and clean out yr account.

I guess! I never really use debit cards, just not enough of a net against that kind of fraud