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Rant Thread - What really grinds your gears?

Just becauseyou have a license that I don't does not mean you are entitled to more pay than I get.

Particularly when I am the person you call when things get complex.
 
Therapist visit today... my homework assignment was to write a letter to myself, from the year 2020.

What I wrote was hopeful, positive and definitely espousing the love that I have for my lady.

So, my hopeful future looks bright. I wish upon this with all that I can muster.

Love, from LOveWerks
 
Sprint Connections Optimizer

My rooted HTC M8 completely croaked last Friday, so I have reactivated my old HTC M7, which is stock, until my M8 is fixed.

This evening I ate dinner at a Silver Diner, which has Guest WiFi that requires a sign in. I refused to get the log in information.

The stupid Sprint Connections Optimizer kept turning on my Wi-Fi antenna, and 23 times (yes I started keeping count) it tried to force me to log into the Silver Diner guest WiFi. It was especially annoying when it would stop me from tying a message by taking me out of Gmail, and forcing me into my browser to the Silver Diner Wi-Fi login page.
 
I hate when the hotel force-loads their home page on every tab in my browser... I have to delete and reload every one of my pinned tabs afterward.
 
I hate when the hotel force-loads their home page on every tab in my browser... I have to delete and reload every one of my pinned tabs afterward.

Are you in a Hyatt or something? They do that, get their horrid landing pages every time you open a new tab or browser instance, and have to reload to get what the pinned-tab or bookmark was originally for. It's a very good reason to use a VPN, then the hotel can't packet inspect, insert ads and spy on everything you're looking at.
 
Are you in a Hyatt or something? They do that, get their horrid landing pages every time you open a new tab or browser instance, and have to reload to get what the pinned-tab or bookmark was originally for. It's a very good reason to use a VPN, then the hotel can't packet inspect, insert ads and spy on everything you're looking at.

Actually... I think it was a Hyatt-associated hotel. Hampton Inn.

I have a mini-router... I wonder if that would help? Gotta dig it out of a box at work, though. :/
 
Actually... I think it was a Hyatt-associated hotel. Hampton Inn.

I have a mini-router... I wonder if that would help? Gotta dig it out of a box at work, though. :/

Hyatt, Holiday Inn, Accor, Sheraton, etc, I'm sure all multi-national brand-name hotel chains are essentially evil. The landing pages are ads of course, there to try and sell you things.

A mini-router only allows you to connect more devices. A VPN is something you subscribe to, it's a remote service that encrypts everything between your device and the VPN provider. And the hotel can't see or do anything with that.

Hotel networks can be great things to do some packet sniffing and probing on anyway as a guest. Sometimes can see everything, unless the hotel network routers block room to room data traffic, which is what they should be doing anyway for security. I've come across a couple of Macs in the past on hotel networks, presumably belonging to other guests, where whomever has set the entire drive to full public open read-write access.....ooops! iTunes on open and hotel networks, you used to be able to see and play other people's entire iTunes music libraries. That was the default, music sharing was on, no password needed. But Apple changed that.
 
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Sprint Connections Optimizer

My rooted HTC M8 completely croaked last Friday, so I have reactivated my old HTC M7, which is stock, until my M8 is fixed.

This evening I ate dinner at a Silver Diner, which has Guest WiFi that requires a sign in. I refused to get the log in information.

The stupid Sprint Connections Optimizer kept turning on my Wi-Fi antenna, and 23 times (yes I started keeping count) it tried to force me to log into the Silver Diner guest WiFi. It was especially annoying when it would stop me from tying a message by taking me out of Gmail, and forcing me into my browser to the Silver Diner Wi-Fi login page.
Turn it off. You don't need root for that.
 
THis is what I have: DIR-505

If nothing else, it might get me better bandwidth using the wire compared to the complimentary wifi...

That's what I thought it was, plug-in the room Ethernet cable and is your own strong WiFi AP. The hotel APs are often out in the corridors, service shafts, cupboards, etc. usually completely hidden away and to be shared between many rooms.

I've come across where the hotel network does block device to device data packets, and find can't make things like Airdroid work, not unless using their on-line cloud service, which might be very slow. And a device like that would solve it completely of course.
 
When people still say they're "taping" a show. If you're recording it on your DVR there's no tape involved, people... :p

That sort of thing doesn't really bother me, could say "recording" a show I suppose. I've heard some people say they're "DVRing" or "Tivoing" a show, but I wouldn't, because I don't have one of those and I don't know anyone who does. I had a VHS for over two decades, and I did tape shows. :p

It's like 'placing", "dialling" or "hanging-up" a phone call. To "place" a phone call, is something we did years ago via operators, before direct calling. And still say "hang-up", even though they're using a mobile phone, and there is no actual handset part to hang back on the switch-hooks. Modern telephones certainly don't have rotary dials any more, except for antique reproductions, they have keypads.
 
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Pushing, no dialling here :D
 

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That's what I like about English, there's many out of date verbs that we still use everyday, that come from technologies of yesteryear. "filming" we don't often use film these days, "ringing" phones don't have bells in them now.
 
Printers are evil. Even worse than HP is Lexmark though.

Lexmark was one of the first to "tag" carts. Needed a Lexmark chip in the cart to run. Epson now does it. We had an HP that complained about non-standard carts, but it used them. Kodak is the only printer with fairly inexpensive carts from what I've read. If I remember right, Lexmark bought out IBM printers. IBM had a line of laser printers years ago.

The other beef I've had with HP is with Photoshop. I let Photoshop manage the printing, and HP thinks it knows more than I do about what I want. I use an old Canon Pixma i6000 (6 color). I can toss almost anything into that printer and print it.
Unlike the early HP inkjets, it's a straight through printer. You can still get the ink, but it's getting harder to find individual carts for photo magenta and cyan. You can still find separate CMYK. What is annoying about some of the new HPs, especially those with individual carts, there is no new print head with the cart. The old tri-colors and blacks had print heads on each cart. Amazon usually has a lot of printer carts, both OEM and non-OEM.
 
That sort of thing doesn't really bother me, could say "recording" a show I suppose. I've heard some people say they're "DVRing" or "Tivoing" a show, but I wouldn't, because I don't have one of those and I don't know anyone who does. I had a VHS for over two decades, and I did tape shows. :p

It's like 'placing", "dialling" or "hanging-up" a phone call. To "place" a phone call, is something we did years ago via operators, before direct calling. And still say "hang-up", even though they're using a mobile phone, and there is no actual handset part to hang back on the switch-hooks. Modern telephones certainly don't have rotary dials any more, except for antique reproductions, they have keypads.

We still have a VHS recorder. The Vulcan likes his golf. We don't have cable or satellite - OTA and Roku only. I have a DVD recorder.

You didn't place a call years ago. You asked Central to do it.
 
Printers are evil. Even worse than HP is Lexmark though.

Lexmark was one of the first to "tag" carts. Needed a Lexmark chip in the cart to run. Epson now does it. We had an HP that complained about non-standard carts, but it used them. Kodak is the only printer with fairly inexpensive carts from what I've read. If I remember right, Lexmark bought out IBM printers. IBM had a line of laser printers years ago.

The other beef I've had with HP is with Photoshop. I let Photoshop manage the printing, and HP thinks it knows more than I do about what I want. I use an old Canon Pixma i6000 (6 color). I can toss almost anything into that printer and print it.
Unlike the early HP inkjets, it's a straight through printer. You can still get the ink, but it's getting harder to find individual carts for photo magenta and cyan. You can still find separate CMYK. What is annoying about some of the new HPs, especially those with individual carts, there is no new print head with the cart. The old tri-colors and blacks had print heads on each cart. Amazon usually has a lot of printer carts, both OEM and non-OEM.
 
Printers are evil. Even worse than HP is Lexmark though.

Lexmark was one of the first to "tag" carts. Needed a Lexmark chip in the cart to run. Epson now does it. We had an HP that complained about non-standard carts, but it used them. Kodak is the only printer with fairly inexpensive carts from what I've read. If I remember right, Lexmark bought out IBM printers. IBM had a line of laser printers years ago.

The other beef I've had with HP is with Photoshop. I let Photoshop manage the printing, and HP thinks it knows more than I do about what I want. I use an old Canon Pixma i6000 (6 color). I can toss almost anything into that printer and print it.
Unlike the early HP inkjets, it's a straight through printer. You can still get the ink, but it's getting harder to find individual carts for photo magenta and cyan. You can still find separate CMYK. What is annoying about some of the new HPs, especially those with individual carts, there is no new print head with the cart. The old tri-colors and blacks had print heads on each cart. Amazon usually has a lot of printer carts, both OEM and non-OEM.
 
We still have a VHS recorder. The Vulcan likes his golf. We don't have cable or satellite - OTA and Roku only. I have a DVD recorder.

You didn't place a call years ago. You asked Central to do it.

Perhaps it was more of a British thing. In old movies, sometimes hear phrases like "Hello operator, I'd like to place a long distance call to....." You're not making the phone call, you're asking the operator in the exchange or central office to do it. placing it with them. All about the semantics. :)
 
You had a hand crank on the phone, which rang a bell in the central office. The operator then completed your call. This was all phone calls, not just long distance. There was no dial. WhenI was a kid, I heard an elderly relative yelling at "Central" to give him his benighted number. He forgot how to dial.
 
For the rural area where I used a hand crank, you cranked out short-long sequences that would indicate to others on the local circuit if the call was to them or the operator.

Everyone's phones on the circuit rang at once and you minded your own business if it wasn't your ring.

You didn't have to crank for the local circuit if you didn't need to. If two or more of you picked up the earpiece, you were live - to talk and listen.

That was the original party line.

For telephones. Party line for telephones.

What grinds my gears is that getting yelled at for suggesting that I take it apart and improve it still echoes...

Even then I wanted more access.
 
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