What Irked You Today?

[Danno]

AKA: Operator Calibration.

Edited May 19, 2015 by Danno

[Guest]

Flaky traders.

[Rob Hall]

HOA's have been around for a long time. I have lived in HOA communities for the last 27 years. I can not say for certain, but generally the HOAs are set up by builders when they build a new development and are primarily there to manage common areas such as community pools, recreation centers, green spaces(parks and road landscapes). These areas are jointly owned by all the homeowners' in the development and they all pay a common fee to keep them up. The other rules came along later to control the look of the community to keep it the same and when the developer designed it. Rules get modified from time to time, but generally it is in small ways. I have never heard of a community setting up an HOA long after the area was developed, but then I suppose it is possible. It is unlikely that they could get away with imposing rules on someone if the HOA came alone after the fact without unanimous consent of all home owners. Kind of an ex post facto law type of thing. I would think creating an HOA after the fact would wind up with a lot of lawsuits and bad feelings. It is most unlikely that it would be worth doing. By the way the really bad issues with HOAs and contentious litigation are the HOA's in the wealthier communities where the lawyers live.

On the subject of HOAs, I had one when I had a condo in Denver and had no problems with it...the things I really liked about a condo was that yardwork, outside maintenance, snow removal was all taken care of and it was a gated community.

My current house is in a non-HOA neighborhood in Phoenix but for the most part it is a pretty tidy and well kept neighborhood and no overly obnoxious neighbors (though my next door neighbor drove me crazy with two massive home remodelings in a year--noise, dust, traffic, trucks parked out front, etc but we get along fine now).

At some point in the future, I wouldn't mind having a house in a gated neighborhood, seems like a good idea and deterrent against crime and riff-raff.

[High octane]

We changed our provider and cell phones today and it irked me how long (2+ hours) I had to be in that store. It reminded me of buying a new vehicle where you sit there for hours while they get all the paperwork in order, try and sell you things like lifetime protectant, extended warrantees, etc. etc. etc.

[Ace-Garageguy]

We changed our provider and cell phones today and it irked me how long (2+ hours) I had to be in that store. It reminded me of buying a new vehicle where you sit there for hours while they get all the paperwork in order, try and sell you things like lifetime protectant, extended warrantees, etc. etc. etc.

OMG !!! I HOPE you got your new phones UNDERCOATED !!! OMG !!! OMG!!!

[Rob Hall]

We changed our provider and cell phones today and it irked me how long (2+ hours) I had to be in that store. It reminded me of buying a new vehicle where you sit there for hours while they get all the paperwork in order, try and sell you things like lifetime protectant, extended warrantees, etc. etc. etc.

Did you keep your existing numbers? I know about phone number portability, but I've heard about people have problems doing that when switching carriers.. My current phone I ordered online from Verizon and synched up all the contacts, etc from the cloud and mailed them back my old, broken phone. The last time I went to the Verizon store to buy a new phone (a couple years ago) it was time consuming and tedious..

Edited May 20, 2015 by Rob Hall

[Rob Hall]

OMG !!! I HOPE you got your new phones UNDERCOATED !!! OMG !!! OMG!!!

LoL..I guess the equivalent of that for a new phone is getting the clear screen protector film and a case..

[Tom Geiger]

LoL..I guess the equivalent of that for a new phone is getting the clear screen protector film and a case..

and the OOPS! protection plan. My younger daughter had her 1 month old iPhone stolen... hint- do not leave your phone on the bar! I wound up using my new phone credit to replace it. With that episode fresh in our minds, they sold us phone replacement insurance. Of course that was 4 years ago and she hasn't lost or destroyed the insured phone.

[High octane]

Buying phone replacement insurance is betting (gambling) that you're going to lose or destroy your phone. I usually take real good care of my stuff.

[Rob Hall]

I always get the phone insurance as mine often get destroyed.

[blunc]

windows update really carped on my laptop, totally buggered the wireless driver, which means you can't get a fix from the interwebs while that is busted and you don't have access to a wired interweb port.

fortunately I wasn't born yesterday and knew of the process to recover from the problem but the average user these days would have just gone a purchased a new laptop or paid the "special" people at geek squad to possibly make it worse (or more expensive).

[Rob Hall]

windows update really carped on my laptop, totally buggered the wireless driver, which means you can't get a fix from the interwebs while that is busted and you don't have access to a wired interweb port.

fortunately I wasn't born yesterday and knew of the process to recover from the problem but the average user these days would have just gone a purchased a new laptop or paid the "special" people at geek squad to possibly make it worse (or more expensive).

My sister's old Toshiba laptop's fan died a couple months ago. I bought a new fan from eBay, dissassembled it and replaced the fan. After putting it back together, the wireless and mouse ceased to function. I bought a wifi USB dongle from Amazon that fixed the wireless problem..

[southpier]

geeks gotta eat & pay cable bills, too

[Pete J.]

Buying phone replacement insurance is betting (gambling) that you're going to lose or destroy your phone. I usually take real good care of my stuff.

I take good care of my phone too, but there are some aspects of the cell phones that I just hate. The biggest is there lack of tolerance for getting wet. Any kind of wet! A few drops of moisture and they seem to go ballistic. Some are now getting better but you would think that something that you expose to the elements would be a little more resistant to that type of thing. Oh, and they pretty this things up with a slick plastic shell so they will slide out of a pocket at the least provocation and bounce off the floor. They also seem to have a homing sense for a toilet, just like a tornado and a trailer park. Yea, I take care of mine, but they seem to be the kamikaze's of the electronic world.

[Ace-Garageguy]

...The biggest is there lack of tolerance for getting wet... you would think that something that you expose to the elements would be a little more resistant to that type of thing...

Reminds me of older British cars.

You'd think that being built in an area of the planet that was so wet that everything was mostly covered in moss, the tops wouldn't leak and they'd start in the rain. Well...not necessarily.

[Pete J.]

Oh yes, the vaunted English motorcar industry. There are far too many jokes to mention about that. I remember working of a friends MGA and a TR6. Fun as heck to drive, but owning them was a constant repair operation. Of course at that time the only ones who seemed to be making reliable cars were the Japanese. I won't even go into the German stuff. I had a 911 and it too was beautifully engineered, but fixing it was grossly expensive just for the parts alone. I replace the heat exchangers and the parts were a little over $1,000 and that was pre catalytic converter and 40 years ago. I think it was a close race at the time as to who had the worst stuff. The Brits or the Italians. At any rate, European sports vehicles were an "acquired" taste.

[Tom Geiger]

Oh, and they pretty this things up with a slick plastic shell so they will slide out of a pocket at the least provocation and bounce off the floor. They also seem to have a homing sense for a toilet, just like a tornado and a trailer park. Yea, I take care of mine, but they seem to be the kamikaze's of the electronic world.

You reminded me of a story. My wife was out of town and I thought it would be nice to have dinner with my then teen aged daughters. My older daughter drove then and said she'd meet me and my younger daughter at the restaurant. I was ticked when she showed up with her boyfriend. That changed the whole dynamic of my father / daughter dinner. The two girls talked with the boy friend and I was pretty much left out. Then lover boy headed to the mens room. He comes back physically shaken. He had dropped his phone in the toilet.. ah there is a God! So now he's very concerned. It won't turn on. He's shaking it all around, hitting everything with toilet water, trying to get the water out. I chased him from the table, gross! And his phone was ruined. Good for the little jerk (yea he was one). I'm sure mommy got him a new one.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Tom Geiger

[southpier]

reminds me of the sopranos episode when paulie walnuts was throwing out shoelaces because they touched the floor in the men's room.

[Tom Geiger]

reminds me of the sopranos episode when paulie walnuts was throwing out shoelaces because they touched the floor in the men's room.

I never saw that episode but my wife noticed that I washed my hands right after putting on my shoes. She asked why and I explained that the mens room floor is always covered with questionable liquids.

Funny thing, I've never seen an episode of the Sopranos, even though my daughter's friends's father was one of the producers.

[southpier]

well, you pretty much have it figured out

[Ace-Garageguy]

I never saw that episode but my wife noticed that I washed my hands right after putting on my shoes. She asked why and I explained that the mens room floor is always covered with questionable liquids.

Just hose your shoes down with Clorox every day before you take 'em off. Doesn't do much for the shine, but kills pretty much whatever might be lurking in the "questionable liquid" residue.

Seriously, this is one of the reasons I got into the old Asian habit of taking my shoes off before entering the living space.

[Joe Handley]

I'm suddenly getting the chills, this may not be good. Now that things are settling down and Mom is doing better, this cod be a prelude to me getting sick

[Ridge Rider]

Sounds like you have a home owners association! I call this situation "Ralph Kramden syndrome" "I yam the president!"

This created some interesting responses to my my post but no on the HOA,s. This was about codes and inspectors in the housing industry turning down something built to code and approved blueprints and then saying how it should be done (opposite of said plans and codes and approved engineering ). This is the classic example of the turtle on the post.

[Mike_G]

What irked me today? Watching an emergency room doctor look up "duloxetine" on his smart phone and then exclaim "Oh yeah... Cymbalta!" while my mom is exhibitng the onset of serotonin syndrome. They were going to release her and call a cab before I got there. When she said the month was november and the president was Truman the doctor finally realized that something was wrong and admitted her to the hospital. Tomorrrow I'll have to go down to the hospital and tell her attending physician that her problem is that she isn't taking her olanzapine, which he will probably have to look up on his smart phone because I don't know the brand name.

[Ace-Garageguy]

What irked me today? Watching an emergency room doctor look up "duloxetine" on his smart phone and then exclaim "Oh yeah... Cymbalta!" while my mom is exhibitng the onset of serotonin syndrome. They were going to release her and call a cab before I got there. When she said the month was november and the president was Truman the doctor finally realized that something was wrong and admitted her to the hospital. Tomorrrow I'll have to go down to the hospital and tell her attending physician that her problem is that she isn't taking her olanzapine, which he will probably have to look up on his smart phone because I don't know the brand name.

Just be glad he had a phone that was smarter than him.