totm nov 2023 Thread to discuss negative things in a very general way, just see where it goes y'know?

[RealKerbal3x]

I have a biology exam tomorrow. It's not on a particularly difficult topic, but ugh, I hate exams, and in particular, revision. It's just extremely tedious

Edit: Page 10!

Edited June 5, 2019 by RealKerbal3x

[Selective Genius]

I joined a research lab today. I got a chance to appear in the walk-in interview a few weeks ago, and I was selected! 

I was very excited, initially.... but there's this one girl.. She's an year younger than me, but has been in this lab for 2 years now. She thinks I am stupid. I am NOT stupid, just so you know! It's like, she does not want to register my presence in the room. I dunno why, but this irks me a lot.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Selective Genius

[richfiles]

I WILL NOT install the Epic Game Store launcher on anything I own. Epic is throwing around Fortnite money to buy exclusivity, and stifle competition. They refuse to take any of that money to actually improve their infrastructure, have a worse store than their competition, and then have the audacious gall to claim they are "good for competition". Had they come into the playing field on the claims of being good for competition, and just offered devs a higher cut, and left it at that, they'd be the heroes! Instead, it took them all of a month to shift into full on anti-competitive mode and start throwing out that sweet, sweet Fortnite lucre to buy off developers. Then there was the spying bit, where they got caught with their pants down reading the files of competing game launchers, to report on what their customers had installed from he competition.

First, they got Satisfactory...
Then they snagged The Outer Worlds...
Then they got Borderlands 3...
Now they picked off Shenmue 3...

Epic exclusive just means that I am writing off something I wanted, because I am EXCLUDING Epic from my hardware!

Epic can keep buying off developers, but I can keep holding out, and keeping my money! They came into the game looking like heroes, but quickly revealed themselves to be the villain, and I absolutely refuse to support them, or any game that remains exclusive to their awful, anticompetitive storefront. As of right now, I just add a year to the release date of any game announced. I'll either wait for the Steam version, or not buy it at all.

 

Also, my Air Conditioner compressor is stuck running again, even when I turn the unit off, meaning it blew another one of the Darlington transistors that controls the compressor relay. I need to look into a beefier part, and possibly a better snubber diode configuration. These failures are absolutely ridiculous!

[Delay]

2 hours ago, richfiles said:

I WILL NOT install the Epic Game Store launcher on anything I own. Epic is throwing around Fortnite money to buy exclusivity, and stifle competition.

Epic also made the Unreal engine.

They've come a long way...

[Shpaget]

5 hours ago, richfiles said:

Also, my Air Conditioner compressor is stuck running again, even when I turn the unit off, meaning it blew another one of the Darlington transistors

Consired using multiple channels of the ULN together.

And those flybacks we talked about.

[richfiles]

7 hours ago, Delay said:

Epic also made the Unreal engine.

I know. They came into the launcher/store scene poised to be "the good guys", but within a month or two just started throwing money around and sniping exclusives. They started becoming aggressive, and taking away consumer choice, all while "bragging" about how good they were for "competition"... What competition! There's already, besides Steam, GoG, Battle.net, Origin, and others. Epic is just one of many, but rather than let the consumer choose to favor their more generous developer cut, and play the hero, they got greedy and got pushy, and people don't like being pushed.

It's all about how hard Epic is forcing their store down people's throats by taking options away from people with their cash pile.
They ruined their own reputation. I was 100% in favor of them until they got stoopid™. 

4 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Consired using multiple channels of the ULN together. And those flybacks we talked about.

Crazy thing is working now! 
It still doesn't speak well of the state of the driver chip. I'll look into a beefier variant, or individual darlingtons and nice big ol' snubber diodes.
I'm half tempted to break it out to a socket mounted under the front panel, so if the dumb thing blows again, I won't have the pull the whole unit out of the wall to service it...
I'm so sick of cheaply made modern garbage... I get it... People like low prices at the store, but how worth it is it really, when things fail after a few years.
That's why I support my Right to Repair!

I also just feel like randomly complaining about how insane Apple has become, trying' to sell a stupid $1000 monitor stand. Absolute madness... 

Edited June 11, 2019 by richfiles

[Flibble]

I have sciatica, it is really annoying and the best thing for it is to keep moving, which is also quite painful.

[Geonovast]

22 minutes ago, Flibble said:

I have sciatica, it is really annoying and the best thing for it is to keep moving, which is also quite painful.

Have you tried an inversion table?  I'm convinced they're magic.

[FleshJeb]

1 hour ago, Flibble said:

I have sciatica, it is really annoying and the best thing for it is to keep moving, which is also quite painful.

I have a bulging disc in my lower back that occasionally prevents me from walking at all. My doctor is also a sports medicine specialist and he handed me a sheet of 20 pilates exercises for decompressing discs. They're extremely effective for acute pain, as well as being preventative. 

The first 6 of these are ones I have done: https://www.verywellfit.com/learn-pilates-exercises-to-help-decrease-back-pain-2704746

Do 10 reps of those, 3x a day and it will help. I went from not walking to fine in 3 days. It's OK if they hurt a bit, but if one hurts a lot, do fewer or none. If one feels good, do it more.

Inflammation is the enemy, so standard anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen or naproxen sodium on a regular schedule until the problem stops. If you're having spasms or cramping, the "shameful secret" among big hairy guys who work for a living is PMS meds like Midol. It's magic, take it and enjoy the pink frilly bottle.

No heat, ice only. I made that mistake ONCE.

[Chel]

Yes it's great to be called up to do a complex maths problem and stand there having no idea what to do while you get laughed at for 10 minutes. I try to succeed but I just can't figure out how it all works so I just feel like it's worthless to even do it so I fail and get in trouble and then it just gets worse.

 

The teenage years are the best years of your life! 

[WinkAllKerb'']

12 hours ago, Flibble said:

I have sciatica, it is really annoying and the best thing for it is to keep moving, which is also quite painful.

experiencing more & more similar stuff in various body location, "early" back included but noticeably much more often leg and arms extremity, and as you say best is to force yourself moving to help spread the locally accumulated toxines, clearly painfull for 15 30min but much less than if you don't move, then it could last hours ....

not a fan of medication, to solve this kind of local pain personnaly, just prefering to simply force to walk/move for a little while.

Edited June 12, 2019 by WinkAllKerb''
some revert on writing dislexia fix

[MDZhB]

I know that it wouldn't be a good idea on these forums with this community, but dear god do I wish there was a downvote button sometimes. Rarely do I think I would really use it on these forums - even with people I disagree with - but when I do see a would-be opportunity, I really wish I could take it.

[Flibble]

4 hours ago, WinkAllKerb'' said:

experiencing more & more similar stuff in various body location, "early" back included but noticeably much more often leg and arms extremity, and as you say best is to force yourself moving to help spread the locally accumulated toxines, clearly painfull for 15 30min but much less than if you don't move, then it could last hours ....

Mine is lower back and radiates down legs. Much better today, yesterday I couldn't walk properly because my left leg hurt too much. Also makes changing gears in the car awkward as it's painful to push the clutch in.

[WinkAllKerb'']

20 minutes ago, Flibble said:

Mine is lower back and radiates down legs. Much better today, yesterday I couldn't walk properly because my left leg hurt too much. Also makes changing gears in the car awkward as it's painful to push the clutch in.

mine tend to focus and radiate from palm of feets(60%)/ankle(30%)/tibia(10%)/(left leg 85%-95%) since years or  palm of hand between thumb and index (left hand 100%) since months and since a few week slowly starting to radiate from back time to time as well

quickly understood a forced walk helped dissipate it ... so much it's painfull when you don't move

Edited June 12, 2019 by WinkAllKerb''
%

[Guest]

12 hours ago, Flibble said:

Also makes changing gears in the car awkward as it's painful to push the clutch in.

Good time to maybe invest in an automatic, pretty sure if something hurts it's not that great to keep doing it

13 hours ago, MDZhB said:

I know that it wouldn't be a good idea on these forums with this community, but dear god do I wish there was a downvote button sometimes. Rarely do I think I would really use it on these forums - even with people I disagree with - but when I do see a would-be opportunity, I really wish I could take it.

Unfortunately, the only option you have is to take it up with the person via PM - and even then, they might report you. There is no other reasonable option, though. The forum is owned by a company, after all.

[Dman979]

23 hours ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

The teenage years are the best years of your life! 

Yeah, whoever told you that was trying to sell you something. Being a teenager is like being a mini-adult, doped up on hormones with no sleep.

 

At least we have dogs.

 

[Chel]

3 minutes ago, Dman979 said:

At least we have dogs.

cats better tbh

[razark]

1 hour ago, Dman979 said:

Yeah, whoever told you that was trying to sell you something. Being a teenager is like being a mini-adult, doped up on hormones with no sleep.

So, it's exactly like being an adult, but without the responsibilities of having a non-easily-replaceable job, bills, rent, utilities, groceries, and the reality of dealing with your bad choices without the freedom of time to correct them?

 

 

Yeah.  Being a teenager is horrible, ain't it?

[Bill Phil]

24 minutes ago, razark said:

So, it's exactly like being an adult, but without the responsibilities of having a non-easily-replaceable job, bills, rent, utilities, groceries, and the reality of dealing with your bad choices without the freedom of time to correct them?

 

 

Yeah.  Being a teenager is horrible, ain't it?

Maybe adulthood is harder than it needs to be because we’re doing something wrong raising our teenagers.

Just a thought.

[Lisias]

How in hell we get rid of the stink of burnt popcorn?

I was making some popcorns to make a bit easier some midnight oil burning, but suddenly I had that urgent call of nature and forgot to turn off the stove. Now I have a ruined pan and the entire house is smelling burnt popcorn. Terrible!

[Superfluous J]

On 6/12/2019 at 12:28 AM, The_Cat_In_Space said:

Yes it's great to be called up to do a complex maths problem and stand there having no idea what to do while you get laughed at for 10 minutes. I try to succeed but I just can't figure out how it all works so I just feel like it's worthless to even do it so I fail and get in trouble and then it just gets worse.

That's just prep for real life. I can't tell you how many times I've been on the phone with a customer to support a product whose acronym I couldn't even define.

But instead of getting laughed at, if I fail enough I starve.

[razark]

31 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Maybe adulthood is harder than it needs to be because we’re doing something wrong raising our teenagers.

I'm pretty sure I don't exactly disagree with you, but I'm not willing to entirely agree with you quite yet.  I'm going to have to put more thought into that. 

(There's something wrong, but what it is, I couldn't say at the moment.)

 

18 minutes ago, Lisias said:

How in hell we get rid of the stink of burnt popcorn?

I was making some popcorns to make a bit easier some midnight oil burning, but suddenly I had that urgent call of nature and forgot to turn off the stove. Now I have a ruined pan and the entire house is smelling burnt popcorn. Terrible!

That's why I like to use a hot air popper.  I've never had burnt popcorn with one.  My problem with the one I have now is that it's too short and throws out a lot of unpopped kernels that I have to throw back in.

 

12 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

That's just prep for real life. I can't tell you how many times I've been on the phone with a customer to support a product whose acronym I couldn't even define.

I learned that tech support is largely a matter or learning to BS a customer while simultaneously doing a google search and sorting through results.

I also learned that doing a google search for error messages simply returns a list of pages that display the same error message.

[richfiles]

I was an old school Pokemon fan (mostly the anime) back in the 90s, and fell out of it for the past 20 years. I was vaguely aware of the progression of the game series, but never bought any of them. Honestly, the mechanics and play of the old games was very rudimentary, even for their era, and I alway thought that I'd jump into it when Gamefreak decides they want to make a fully 3D Pokemon game. I bought Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee, and very much enjoyed it. My only gripe with it, is that it was strictly limited tot he old Generation 1 Pokemon, so it felt like I was just rehashing the original games, but it was alright. The game did feel much improved over the old games, and I thoroughly enjoyed it...

Besides... When Pokemon Sword and Shield come out this November, I'd finally be able to pick up that fully realized 3D Pokemon game and finally go and "catch 'em all"...

NOPE!!!

Turns out, Gamefreak got lazy, and decided not to actually make the game capable of allowing you to catch 'em all. The previous games have always permitted you to transfer Pokemon from older games into the newer games. It would have been a justifiable reason for me to go back and pick up the last games, or use my Pokemon Go game, or just trade with other players to build up my collection of Pokemon. The basic idea, is that the Pokemon that were not available in that region could still be traded for, and you could still eventually "catch 'em all". Well, they removed that capacity entirely. You can still trade or transfer Pokemon into the game, but only ones that are already local to the new region. If a Pokemon isn't local to the region, you simply can't transfer it into the game, and this is NOT how any of the prior titles have worked!

I finally wait for the absolute APEX of the Pokemon franchise to jump in... And the screw it up royally! Long time fans are FURIOUS. Some people have had Pokemon that they caught on the Gameboy advance, and transferred them to the DS, and then to the 3DS. Inter-generational transfer was always a feature, with he exception of Gen 2-3, where major changes in the stats structure, and the switch from Gameboy to the Gameboy Advance hardware put up a technical roadblock. Even the very first Gen 1 Pokemon games could transfer to Gen 2. While the Gen 2-3 gap was unavoidable back at that time, it was something the fans didn't care for, and for the past 13 years, it's been possible to transfer Pokemon from one game to the next. Amazingly, it later became possible to transfer even Gen 1 Pokemon into the Gen 7 games, thanks to Virtual Console versions being made compatible with the Pokemon Bank app, used for later era transfers.

Gamefreak claims that they made the decision to make room for improved animations and model on the Switch...
Umm.. YeeeeaahNOPE...

Back when Gen 7 came out, people complained about the framerates. Game freak explained that they created models far in excess of the resolution the 3DS was capable of, to "future proof" the game assets. And indeed, the models are indeed of a high enough quality that they could be used in future, higher resolution games... and indeed drag down the FPS on the aging 3DS. Note, that they included ALL the Pokemon, from ALL generations, on a 4 GB cartridge. The Switch supports a 32 GB cartridge, and while it is true that they have created a much more detailed landscape, consider that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is on a 16 GB cartridge, and the base game only took up about 12-13 GB of space for it's MASSIVE world. Even if you make the assumption that you need that much space JUST for the massive world, consider Gamefreak fit ALL the upgraded 3D models on the 4 GB 3DS cart... 13+4=17GB... And with 32 GB carts being available, that still leave a LOT of free space! They had PLENTY of room.

The issue, is that Gamefreak is actually kinda BAD at coding... They got away with lazy coding and made 80 billion dollars off of it. They have rabid fans that'll take whatever they shovel out... People ho have dug into some of the Pokemon games have discovered HORRIBLY AMATEURISH coding and asset management. An example, in many Pokemon games, rather than creating a universal asset, and referencing it for every occurrence of a character, they have been found to have a unique identical asset of the same character REPEATED in ROM for each and every separate instance where it is called... So instead of having one model, one set of textures, and call that one model and texture set 14 times, they instead have 14 identical models and 14 identical sets of textures... I mean... I can't even imagine how such abysmal coding could ever have stood the test of time... But that's how Gamefreak is!

It's undoubtedly the case that poor and lazy coding and asset management has RUINED what was supposed to be the GRAND PINNACLE of the Pokemon series...
This is such a massive blunder, that not even the most hardcore fans are letting it slide. The new Pokemon Sword and Shield was a HIT a week ago.

6/05 - Pokemon Direct - 124K likes to 5.9k dislikes
6/11 - Pokemon Treehouse - 14K likes to 35k dislikes

That is one BRUTAL shift in ratio... It all comes down to the fact that you CAN NOT catch 'em all anymore.
I know it's just a video game, and I know long time players are even more furious, for even better reasons, but I'm genuinely disappointed by this development. I waited 20 years to jump in to this game. I got my toes wet with Let's Go Eevee and Pokemon Go, and when I was ready to dive in, I find they drained half the pool water. I guarantee Gamefreak's lazy coding and asset management is what did this! Absolutely pathetic!

[Flibble]

11 minutes ago, richfiles said:

The Switch supports a 32 GB cartridge, and while it is true that they have created a much more detailed landscape, consider that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is on a 16 GB cartridge, and the base game only took up about 12-13 GB of space for it's MASSIVE world. Even if you make the assumption that you need that much space JUST for the massive world, consider Gamefreak fit ALL the upgraded 3D models on the 4 GB 3DS cart... 13+4=17GB... And with 32 GB carts being available, that still leave a LOT of free space! They had PLENTY of room.

One thing to consider here is the cost of cartridge. They probably used a smaller cart as they are cheaper. So they were banking on the savings from the smaller cart outweighing the lost income from people not buying it because it doesn't have all the models. Did that pay off? Who knows, but it's a big risk given goodwill is hard to regain.

[richfiles]

Regarding the cart sizes, many companies have actually been avoiding the 32 GB carts for cost reasons, however the Witcher 3 appears to be using a 32 GB cart, and Pokemon is a game that very often sells two copies to hard core players (there are always exclusive Pokemon that have to be traded between the two games). The prices of those 32 GB carts seems to be finally coming down, and with a mass seller like Pokemon, they certainly could justify it.

Really, what it comes down to, is if Gamefreak were actually any good at coding, they could probably actually fit the game on a 16 GB cart. Their code, models, and textures are historically observed to be extremely inefficient. Even if the weren't the case, the sheer size of the franchise more than warrants the extra expenditure. They've always sold their games for $40, and this time around, they will be $60 each. That alone is an extra $20 per game, which easily absorbs the expense of the more expensive memory. It's just a bad situation, bad coding practice, and years of getting away with anything, cause the fans were rabid, and would put up with it.