Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[tooki]

Maybe, but can you tell when was the last time you saw a product with that logo, or even just the logo itself ?

Well they managed to get paid to buy Apple, so one could argue they won big time.

(As in, Apple paid money to buy NeXT, but NeXT’s technology and management almost completely replaced Apple’s.)

Regardless, what on earth is your point? $100K is peanuts when launching a company with hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. Branding is important, something Jobs understood extremely well.

The NeXT logo is also one of the more aesthetically pleasing logos I can think of too, up there with Sun Microsystems. The reason NeXT wasn't more successful is because the products were incredibly expensive, and being far ahead of their time was not enough to overcome the fact that they were incompatible with the vast libaries of PC and Mac software already dominating the market. They were *really* slick workstations, there's a reason that today they are highly sought after collectibles.

Indeed they are! At the first “real” (full-time) job I had, at a Mac reseller back in 1999, they still used a NeXT slab (with NeXT laser printer) to maintain and print the price list! I think it was done in WriteNow.

[james_s]

Indeed they are! At the first “real” (full-time) job I had, at a Mac reseller back in 1999, they still used a NeXT slab (with NeXT laser printer) to maintain and print the price list! I think it was done in WriteNow.

I had the opportunity to grab a NeXT cube about 20 years ago, for some reason I didn't though and I sometimes kick myself for that. Oh well, I probably wouldn't use it much anyway. I had a bunch of Sun and SGI stuff, got rid of most of that back when my last partner moved in with me.

[coppice]

I had the opportunity to grab a NeXT cube about 20 years ago, for some reason I didn't though and I sometimes kick myself for that. Oh well, I probably wouldn't use it much anyway. I had a bunch of Sun and SGI stuff, got rid of most of that back when my last partner moved in with me.

I found the cubes a bit clunky. The nice things to have on your desk were the pizza box NeXTs.

[james_s]

I found the cubes a bit clunky. The nice things to have on your desk were the pizza box NeXTs.

That would be my preference, actually there might have been one of those there too, I don't recall but I do distinctly remember the cube. It was in a storage room full of old computer stuff at the place where a friend's brother worked back then, they let me grab a bunch of old gear to clear out some space.

[Ed.Kloonk]

They've been trying to reach me regarding my car's extended warranty.

It's everyone's pet peeve, sure, but that's not my peeve today.

I have a phone that I use for work. It's only for emergency contact and other than that purpose it doesn't get used, just sits on the charger. Except for Amazon spammers calling. It's a phone number I don't give out too often.

During 'the thing' I noticed the bastard calls dropped to nearly zero but in the past fortnight they have resumed in frequency to about 4 a week.

I wonder if someone in the brains trust here could riddle me as to why. I've changed nothing in my movements or my habits.

Were the spammers deemed non-essential? If so, I wish someone would deem them non-necessary.
 

[armandine2]

got some loupe glasses locally at a good-ish price - picked up them yesterday. Don't know much about them, may or may not fit the bill.

the pet peeve is that they are actually about half the price of at least two other retailers, luckily enough for me I picked up on the inflated price of the other retailers. 

 

[PlainName]

During 'the thing' I noticed the bastard calls dropped to nearly zero but in the past fortnight they have resumed in frequency to about 4 a week.

I wonder if someone in the brains trust here could riddle me as to why. I've changed nothing in my movements or my habits.

Spam here drops off markedly a the weekend. I also note that hacking attempts on my mail server are networked (in the sense of a botnet) - some IP in Brazil will try to log in and then literally moments later an IP the other side of the world will try the exact same login details. From this I suspect that spammers and not actually keeping to office hours but are using infected office machines. Thus the sending of spam relies on offices being open (and machines being available), which is markedly reduced at weekends and during 'the thing'.

[PlainName]

Undownloadable documentation.

Typically open source projects, the documentation is a wiki or web-page-per-heading thing where to obtain an offline copy means scraping the website (or manually, tediously saving each of tens or even hundreds of web pages).

I don't care if the stuff is more than 2 microseconds old, I just want to peruse ANY version offline in a documentation reader (that is, not a bloody browser that's being used for lots of other things). When/if I am writing code I can look up the latest revision then.

[TerraHertz]

Ebay sellers and their surplus equipment sources, that separate/lose the connector blocks from I/O expansion plugins in equipment such as the HP 3488A Switch/control unit, HP 3497A data acquisition/control unit, etc.

These use plugins that consists of a card, and a plastic-body connector that attaches to the card and has the terminal blocks etc for cable connections. The two parts form a single part number, since each part is useless without the other. Usually the HP part number and description of the card label is on the plastic connector block part, since that's visible from the back of the machine.

Here's an example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/254300899488
Seller has bins full of cards for the HP 3488A, all of them missing the connector blocks.

Here's a rare sight: https://www.ebay.com/itm/224062686490
One of those cards for sale WITH the connector block.

Quite often you see the mainframes being sold as 'unpopulated' but some idiot has just pulled off the connector blocks leaving some (or all) the actual interface cards in their slots. If you buy something like that you are getting a lot more for the $ than the seller knows. But then you have to find connector blocks.

Like this 3488A I just received. Contains one 44471A general purpose relay card, but missing the connector block.
There are always far fewer connector blocks on ebay than their mating cards. So what happens to the connectors?



With the HP 3497A/3852 the connector blocks are quite big and look like they might contain something other than just a connector. When unlocked and pulled from the back they come out quite easily, but the mating circuit board is much more difficult to extract. Deliberately. So seeing these connector blocks listed on ebay as if they were the complete card, is quite common.

Here's an example. Fool thinks he has a whole unit, but only has the connector: https://www.ebay.com/itm/403461811989
What the complete unit looks like: https://www.ebay.com/itm/372738248549

Anyway. Idiots. I hate them. I just wanna get some cards (with connectors) for my 3488A and idiots are making life difficult.

It's the same syndrome as people who leave the rack-mounting half of slide rails in racks.  Morons.

[Circlotron]

When you are listening to the weather report on the radio waiting for your area to be mentioned and they read off a list of cities like this:-

City A 27 deg
33 deg City B
City C 18 deg
42 deg City D
etc

Swapping the order back and forth every second line. So annoying!
I'm talking about you, ABC Radio (Australia)

[Ed.Kloonk]

Two different musicians with first name Taylor. The wrong one died.

[IDEngineer]

You don't like James Taylor?

[Kasper]

They've been trying to reach me regarding my car's extended warranty.

It's everyone's pet peeve, sure, but that's not my peeve today.

I have a phone that I use for work. It's only for emergency contact and other than that purpose it doesn't get used, just sits on the charger. Except for Amazon spammers calling. It's a phone number I don't give out too often.

During 'the thing' I noticed the bastard calls dropped to nearly zero but in the past fortnight they have resumed in frequency to about 4 a week.

I wonder if someone in the brains trust here could riddle me as to why. I've changed nothing in my movements or my habits.

Were the spammers deemed non-essential? If so, I wish someone would deem them non-necessary.
 

I've had the same phone number for years and I try hard to not give it out. Scam calls on it are very rare.

I got a new number for my business. Have never used it or given it to anyone.  It got lots of scam calls. I changed the new number to a different new number and it gets scam calls too.  I enabled call control and that stopped them.  When someone phones me, they hear a message telling them a number to enter. Then they have to enter the number to get through.

[jonovid]

 not be surprised if someone would try to sell a cheap car one bit at a time to maximize profit.

[PlainName]

Just had that discussion with the missus. Got a lawnmower en route for the tip (but nowadays we have to book online when we want to visit!). Worth nothing on Ebay, but take the motor off and flog that on it's own and it's worth a few bob. Not sure if it's enough to cover the hassle of listing and selling, but certainly the sum seems to be less valuable than the parts.

[Ranayna]

Ohh, l loved these images when i saw them as a kid in car magazines.

Your comment though reminds me of these magazines that include a model kit or something. The first issue is just 4,99, all the other 50 issues are then just 19,99 To get some cheap model kit that may be worth 20 bucks on it's own :p

[IDEngineer]

They could probably double the parts count if they broke down the electronic modules too. Every little module probably has dozens of discretes in addition to the integrated parts. The more recent the vehicle the more this would be true.

Pretty soon we may be able to order a kit EV on DigiKey, with the "chassis available separately" since it will be the only non-electronic-related thing in the car!

[SilverSolder]

[...] Got a lawnmower en route for the tip (but nowadays we have to book online when we want to visit!). [...]

Making an appointment to go to the bl**dy tip.   What's next - an appointment to use the public roads?   Hmmm, actually not a bad idea.  You could bid on a limited number of road slots in the morning before going to work.  If you really want to go, you pay!! 

[PlainName]

The place has really gone to the dogs since the start of the pandemic. Previously we used to have to phone our GP for an appointment, but that had to be done early morning. Fair enough - limited slots, you don't want the admin tied up all day just on appointment phone calls. But now they've switched to an online system which (allegedly) tries to help - you go through multiple forms and lists to identify what your problem is and you'll get a callback within 48hrs to deal with it. But it's shit. For some reason only known to bureaucrats the online system is only available between 7am and 9am! It's a bloody computer and there's no reason you couldn't fill in the stuff at any time but, no, 7-9 is it.

It's a UX nightmare as well. On the first page you get a text box to explain what it's about, so you fill in things that might be relevant only to find you're limited to 200 words or something. So you whittle it down as much as you can without losing anything import and then two pages later there's a text box to detail your symptoms. If they'd say at the start that's coming up you wouldn't agonise over what the leave in or out of the first one.

It goes downhill from there too, but there's  not enough room in this thread to detail it all. Mind, for a free service it's OK (actually, it's not but it's kind of like open source, I guess).

[Labrat101]

I agree trying to get an appointment with a Dr ... If it was to be a serious problem Forget it . Phone the undertaker cut the middle man out . 
 Everything is now Online . How about a Human .. They complain there is a high unemployment  .. No one knows how
to answer a Phone without Googling it First ..
 Sorry for being Morbid But I think the human race is doomed like the dinosaur

[coppice]

The place has really gone to the dogs since the start of the pandemic. Previously we used to have to phone our GP for an appointment, but that had to be done early morning. Fair enough - limited slots, you don't want the admin tied up all day just on appointment phone calls. But now they've switched to an online system which (allegedly) tries to help - you go through multiple forms and lists to identify what your problem is and you'll get a callback within 48hrs to deal with it. But it's shit. For some reason only known to bureaucrats the online system is only available between 7am and 9am! It's a bloody computer and there's no reason you couldn't fill in the stuff at any time but, no, 7-9 is it.

I don't know where you live. In the UK they like you to use an online booking system for GPs, but its mostly for people who need to make repeat appointments for long term issues. If you get a sudden problem, and you call and talk to someone, you can usually get a quick appointment. If your issue doesn't appear to be urgent, they may refer you back to the online system, but you might not be able to make an appointment there in less than 2 weeks. I think they get a lot of people who know weeks in advance that they need an appointment, who wait until the last moment before booking. So, they need some mild convincing that you really need quick medical attention.

[SilverSolder]

I agree trying to get an appointment with a Dr ... If it was to be a serious problem Forget it . Phone the undertaker cut the middle man out . 
 Everything is now Online . How about a Human .. They complain there is a high unemployment  .. No one knows how
to answer a Phone without Googling it First ..
 Sorry for being Morbid But I think the human race is doomed like the dinosaur

The part of the human race that figures out the workarounds for all the (IT based) paper-pusher systems will inherit the Earth! 

[Labrat101]

I agree trying to get an appointment with a Dr ... If it was to be a serious problem Forget it . Phone the undertaker cut the middle man out . 
 Everything is now Online . How about a Human .. They complain there is a high unemployment  .. No one knows how
to answer a Phone without Googling it First ..
 Sorry for being Morbid But I think the human race is doomed like the dinosaur

The part of the human race that figures out the workarounds for all the (IT based) paper-pusher systems will inherit the Earth! 

I hope Not ... No Names Put-In   

[IDEngineer]

It's a UX nightmare as well. On the first page you get a text box to explain what it's about, so you fill in things that might be relevant only to find you're limited to 200 words or something. So you whittle it down as much as you can without losing anything import and then two pages later there's a text box to detail your symptoms. If they'd say at the start that's coming up you wouldn't agonise over what the leave in or out of the first one.

Sounds like they accurately duplicated the real-life in-office experience! My pattern - over my whole life - is:

* Check into the office, and they hand you a thick pile of paperwork to complete that includes a demand for a written description of what ails you
* Get ushered into the exam room, and a nurse asks you every one of the same questions you just completed on the paperwork
* Finally the doctor arrives, and (s)he asks you EXACTLY THE SAME SET OF QUESTIONS. You answer them for the third time.

I wonder if they're like police, checking to see if your story changes each time you tell it!

It's gotten to the point where when the nurse asks me, I take the pile of paperwork and start reading my answers out loud. Doesn't take long before (s)he smiles sheepishly at me, retrieves the papers, and stops asking. Lather/rinse/repeat with the doctor, same sheepish grin, and finally we're down to business. This technique has saved me 30+ minutes per visit the last few times. You'd think THEY would be motivated to save that time too, but I suspect "it's just our system" and nobody dares challenge it. Well I do!

[PlainName]

I don't know where you live. In the UK they like you to use an online booking system for GPs

Yes, it is likely that system. 'eConsult' they call it.

If you get a sudden problem, and you call and talk to someone, you can usually get a quick appointment.

No, that's how it used to be. We were specifically told that using this eConsult was better because the GPs (it's a practice) check it every day so it will be seen and actioned, whereas phoning in for an appointment may result in one a week or several hence.