Little Things That Irk You IX

[Brad]

Here's my irk of today/yesterday - Microsoft Office has changed the default font to Aptos. I never asked it to, I never wanted it to, it's just something they've rolled out. I honestly hate the MS Office suite of today - and to some extent Windows itself - constantly moving stuff around and making minor changes without me asking. The last time I needed to make a pie chart, the whole layout of the charts browser was different. Just leave it all alone! I'm at work, I don't want anything moving around, spending all this time having to figure out what's changed and why it's moved and why it all looks wrong. It's like somebody going on my desk and shifting all my stuff around. Does my head in.

I rarely have to write documents for anyone other than software Devs (markdown) but the last time I did I gave up on word in about 5 minutes, bit the bullet and learnt LaTeX. Loads of people complained that my document wasn't in word format and asked me to do a word version but I just refused and said they had to deal with it. It really is a sack of ****, just like all modern Microsoft software.

[Dogg Thang]

Word died for me when they turned the menus into tabs, which is way less efficient because they have big visual icons as well as the actual text of what each icon is, meaning one of those is redundant. And some of the tabs remove your view of what you're actually working with. The drop down menus were simpler and way more efficient. This is a hill I will die on.

[Lebowski]

It's such a convoluted and confusing program to use at times, I was given a document to edit that had loads of non-standard line/page breaks in it, it used to be that you could just click on them and delete them, but these had been set up in a really strange way. Lots of googling later and it turned out the only way to remove these was with the find and replace tool, and there is a specific code that you have to use to search for them.

How anyone would know this without delving deep into help topics is beyond me, why this specific line break works differently to every other type is a real mystery? The whole program feels like a rats nest just waiting to bite you.

[egparadigm]

^p^p is my go to for deleting double line breaks.

[Lebowski]

^p^p is my go to for deleting double line breaks.

See that the issue, I'm all for shortcut commands as I use them all the time in other programs, but when the command is the only way to do that thing then you have a problem.

[eastyy]

I did mention this a while back but seems to have got worse over time, the way tech/websites has devolved. Searching for stuff be it on youtube or google or amazon seem to have got worse with not only more difficult to find stuff but then having ads and stuff promoted that was not what i was looking for, and then outlook letting more obviously junk mail through. And then my Mobile phone which is a Xiaomi Red mi7 that when i got it was a great phone....but after a few years it has slowed down to a major extent and the fact even just regular browsing and playing the odd game always seems to have 2gb+ of temp files i need to remove

[Baseley09]

Had enough of seeing that Tad Lasso lady every advert break.

[fallenangle]

^ Indeed but a more general irk for me are UK Xmas TV ads with 'celebrity' people I do not recognise or know.

The MS one features Sophie Ellis Bextor at one point but I did not realise who it was because she is decorating a cake and caked in makeup. Who the other girl/woman is I have no idea.

EDIT: Hannah Waddington apparently. Had to wiki look her up too.

[Neon Ignition]

Man arrested on suspicion of theft of Banksy street sign in London | UK news | The Guardian​
I'm probably an outlier on this but for a while now I've been weirdly irked by the focus on stuff like this. Outcry over the theft of the sign, absolutely sod all care about the 'art' itself. A - Banksy's work wasn't art, it was criminal damage itself. B - Like quite a lot of his stuff, it was **** student level b*******
It must be soul crushing to be an under appreciated artist with real talent

[Deuteros]

When aging plastic turns sticky...

I've been tidying my video games and related stuff and I had two or three cables feel sticky to the touch. One of those was a Blaze PS1/PS2 scart cable that had never left its packaging.

Out of the possible solutions I found online was rubbing the plastic with a baking soda and water paste. I might try giving that go tomorrow but if anyone has a better trick, I'd love to hear it.

[fallenangle]

I've not had that with any electrical stuff - yellowing of hard plastic yes but not that sticky soft plastic problem with any cabling.

What I have had it with was with a pair of supposedly heat, chemical and volatile liquid resistant work boots I bought and had in storage, original packaging, for over 5 years before needing to use them.

Kept in cool conditions in the dark but when I got them out I found the rubberised plastic sole was almost melting. I tried fitting Blakeys and wearing them hoping they'd harden up with use but they left black streaks on the floor and I had to dump them virtually unused.

[Hirst]

Try using car seat leather treatment/feed (not cleaner).

Was reading some book in HMV, one of those junk annuals they sell round Christmas to confused grandmas: https://www.littlebrotherbooks.co.uk...product_id=151

Honestly though this was so bad to the point it was genuinely funny, my favourite section being a spread about the history of Nintendo consoles which opens with a Famicom labelled and described as a 1977 “TV Color Game” and then moves straight to the 1985 NES (no mention the Famicom even exists). Never mind the fact they’re selling it to an average age of 7. I also recall some kind of best Switch games list and the number one was FIFA.

[Deuteros]

The baking soda worked reasonably well! You can't really work it into a paste if using water (in the videos I watched, some form of vegetable oil was used) but I assumed it was meant to work more as a mild abrasive than as a chemical reagent. I followed it by rubbing the cable with ethyl alcohol and it no longer feels icky to the touch.

I read some suggestions about using car seat care products but didn't have any at hand. I'll keep them in mind if I have to do this again.

Not quite sticky but I found two cables that seemed to be oozing some kind of brownish fluid. In both cases, replacement power cords Microsoft sent me when it was found that some models of the original Xbox had a problem with solder joints in the PSU. Thankfully, the oozing was limited to the figure-8 connector end of the cord.

[Neon Ignition]

He's such in insufferable *****

[briareos_kerensky]

Computer at work stuck in an update->restart->couldn't complete updates->restart->update.
What a joyous way to start the new year at the office.