If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above.
You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed.
To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
I’ve been missing having Aquapel on my windows, so I went through the minor irritant of applying it, an irritant compounded by it being the solstice, where I don’t have enough light.
Discovered another irritant in that my windshield has somehow accumulated dozens of “microchips” which weren’t there a couple years ago. I’m almost positive the majority are from that same stretch of interstate where I got the big chip.
I’m watching one of those “College Kids React to 70s Music” videos, and they play Dream On, and one kid gets really excited and exclaims “Oh! This was my ringtone in middle school!”
I spent about 10 minutes workshopping an obscure Corey Feldman reference into a joke reply until I remembered “Dream On” is a different song than “Rock On”.
More than “Dream On”, but I do enjoy Tyler spazzing-out at the end. I’m not the hugest fan, but I have to give him credit for being able to remain intelligible when he screams.
In junior high (not middle school, that’s some newfangled term for “not in grade school anymore, but not ready for high school”), there was no such thing as a cell phone, let alone ring tones for them.
Cellular phones were being introduced to the mass market in the mid-1980s, and I actually got to go to a school on how to install and repair Oki’s “installed in a car” system. It consisted of a “large three-ring binder” sized box with all the radio and logic stuff in it that was installed in the car’s trunk, and a handset/cradle “control unit” installed where the driver could reach it. This was very much like the prior “mobile telephone” paradigm, and a setup I was quite familiar with, as I’d been installing and servicing Motorola’s, and other brand’s “mobile telephones” for a couple of years by then.
In the early 1990s, because my wife was working overnight shifts at a hospital quite a distance from our home, we bought a mobile phone. This was, by chance, an Oki “lunchbox” phone; you plugged the cord into the cigarette lighter outlet to power it, and it worked like a “control unit” but all the hardware was right there.
In 1995, we moved to San Antonio with that phone. We transferred it to the local carrier, and were assigned the number I still have today. A couple years later, we got a Motorola Cell Star flip phone for me, and another for my wife. Then followed a variety of different Razr models over the years for both of us (and eventually for our son).
I can’t remember what year we got our first iPhones, but they were iPhone 3s.
Some time around moving up to an iPhone 5, I made some ring tones. My “default” tone is a clip from “Powerhouse” by Raymond Scott.
Yes, you’ve heard it in countless Loony Toons. That’s why I chose it.
My first cellphone wasn’t until the late 90s. A pretty massive PrimeCo… I think Qualcomm phone. Before that I was pager, and stuck with the pager for awhile because I was more comfortable handing that number out and it was already on my business card.
Got my first GSM in the early aughts. A near-free, tiny Moto candy bar.
From there, I startled importing European phones because at the time they had a better selection. Had a Siemens and a Nokia. Loved the Siemens. No idea why I got rid of it and I ended-up hating the Nokia.
Dumped that for a 1G iPhone, and the rest as they say is history.
My only two ringtones were on the GSM phones. An analog telephone ring, and then the Cisco intercom chime from 24.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
Status:
Offline
Dec 26, 2022, 08:31 AM
A few old people at work still use ringtones. If you hear [i]I'm Shipping Up to Boston,[i] Thunderstruck, or Click Click Boom, blasting at full volume through a tinny cell phone speaker, you know exactly who is getting a call.
The only upside I can see of a ringtone is that it saves you from the awkward moment where someone is talking to you and they don't know that your phone is vibrating, then you have to shush them so you can take the call. Otherwise you're just a nuisance to everyone around you.
We have a friend who is a retired electrical engineer. An actual EE. Not an EE that is really a coder. This guy worked on radio/tv transmission equipment.
Anyway...He’s a true geek. Not only does he have a ringtone on his android (of course) phone, but he carries the phone in a belt-mounted holster.
I should point out that, while “Powerhouse” is my default ringtone, I have specific tones assigned to specific people. When my wife calls, I know it’s her. Same with my son, etc. When I hear “Powerhouse”, I look carefully at the caller ID before even considering answering.
I use unique tones for texts from specific people too. Helpful in sorting out whether or not I want to see what “the supervisor” is texting me while I’m in the process of doing something trivial like helping a 78 year old woman with her first shower in weeks because she was hospitalized for {insert something awful here}. Yeah, I prioritize stuff that way.
I was doing a deep-dive into first-listen videos on YouTube today. Y’know, videos of people reacting to various songs for the first time. I’m jumping around, going from different songs and different reaction videos, sometimes using the suggestions YT puts up in the sidebar. They were actually pretty helpful.
That is until I notice the algorithm was suddenly suggesting a lot of Jordan Peterson videos. I was, like, WTF? I hadn’t clicked on anything that would have even remotely suggested I might like to see any video from a raging homo/trans-phobe and anti-feminist. Maybe it was because I was listening to mostly music by women? If that’s why, that’s pretty fucked-up. “Oh! You’re enjoying music made by women! You’ll for-sure like videos from a strident anti-feminist!”
I have a couple custom ringtones. It's nice to know when the husband is calling versus random spam. I wish I could make my slack alert tone be "WORK BS" or something. Discord is also a very simple ping noise, texts, facebook messenger... I should get more distinct tones for each of these.
What annoyed me was apple wanting me to pay again for a ringtone for songs I already owned, so for a while I had an app that would slice up mp3s for me and that was cool. Of course it probably doesn't work today. Using audacity or something becomes almost like work.
All of my ringtones are either from Apple's standard set, or clips I made with Garage Band. It's actually pretty easy to do - or was when I made mine years ago.
I despise all autoplay. I don't allow any of it. I DO note the suggestions in YouTube's right sidebar, and since they're based on my viewing history, they aren't too far off. Adam Savage, "The Slo Mo Guys", Smarter Every Day, that sort of thing.
iCloud on my phone keeps turning itself on. And I have to keep turning it off. Again and again.
While I appreciate that the App Store sends stuff I buy for my iPad to my phone automatically, I hardly ever “need” most of those apps. In fact, I don’t need most of the apps on my phone at all. It’s just a pain to deal with all of that stuff.
I’m going to delete a crap-ton of apps from my phone, and change the settings for App Store to not add new apps to the phone, but I also wonder how well the phone will comply with these settings, seeing as how iCloud does what it flipping wants to already…
iCloud on my phone keeps turning itself on. And I have to keep turning it off. Again and again.
While I appreciate that the App Store sends stuff I buy for my iPad to my phone automatically, I hardly ever “need” most of those apps. In fact, I don’t need most of the apps on my phone at all. It’s just a pain to deal with all of that stuff.
I’m going to delete a crap-ton of apps from my phone, and change the settings for App Store to not add new apps to the phone, but I also wonder how well the phone will comply with these settings, seeing as how iCloud does what it flipping wants to already…
Doesn’t Messages require iCloud in order to do whatever voodoo it does? I know several Apple apps also require iCloud in order to sync between devices.
Why in the heck would AppStore just add new apps to your phone? That’s just weird. Or are you talking about automatic background updates to existing apps? I’ve always kept that turned off.
Well I did turn off iCloud for a bunch of stuff. Then I deleted a number of apps I hadn’t used for a long time, if ever. Garage Band and Keynote have no utility for me on my phone, though Pages and Numbers do have a limited usability.
And since I haven’t clocked in or out since March of 2021, I dumped my timekeeper app. And even Tiger Text, which is a truly secure text app, but only with people enrolled in a specific group - and since I don’t work there anymore, I don’t figure I need to do HIPAA-secure texting anymore either.
After rebooting, my phone’s storage went from about 75% full to about 25% full. Now we’ll see what happens next time the phone gets a wild hair and wants to commune with the cloud on its own.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
Status:
Offline
Jan 5, 2023, 09:34 AM
Apps stealing focus when they shouldn't. Autodesk Inventor is one - it takes a while to boot, so I tend to work on other things and let it boot in the background. Except it will steal focus no less than 5 times while booting, so I can either deal with getting interrupted 5 times, or just sit there and take it for a couple minutes while it groans itself to life.
Apps stealing focus when they shouldn't. Autodesk Inventor is one - it takes a while to boot, so I tend to work on other things and let it boot in the background. Except it will steal focus no less than 5 times while booting, so I can either deal with getting interrupted 5 times, or just sit there and take it for a couple minutes while it groans itself to life.
1000x this. Both Windows and macOS are terrible at this. Apps shouldn't be allowed to steal focus for any reason IMO, and for whatever reason neither Apple nor MS seem to be interested in letting us disable it on the user end.
I've read the excuse often is something along the lines of "but what about valid use cases?" - to me there aren't any. Nothing drives me more nuts than typing something, opening an app, switching back and then accidentally triggering a dialog or keystroke in the OTHER app.
Yesterday my wife was showing me an ad for a very nice, loose and casual dress. It was pretty. Then we both saw that the description called it a “boho summer dress.” Bah! No sale here.
If you’re trying to evoke “Bohemian” in any sense, use the blinking word “Bohemian.” If you’re particularly trying to evoke “Bohemian lifestyle,” say that. Also be prepared to be schooled in where the term came from, how much baggage it started out with, and so on.
It comes off as using a term they don’t really understand, but they’re sort of redefining it without actually redefining it. And it’s clearly marketing-based. It really looks like this is a trend that’s trying to conjure up a sense of “free spiritedness” without actually dipping into hippie styles. (At least there’s one ray of hope in this whole black-hearted marketing plot.)
Yes, it irritates the snot out of me. Was it obvious?
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
Status:
Offline
Jan 9, 2023, 11:34 AM
Originally Posted by Brien
Nothing drives me more nuts than typing something, opening an app, switching back and then accidentally triggering a dialog or keystroke in the OTHER app.
I always love when I'm entering a password and another app steals focus so I end up typing my password in visible plain text in another app.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
Status:
Offline
Jan 10, 2023, 10:06 AM
Just got ANOTHER one. In web-based Gmail, I have to open the email in order to mark it as spam, which gives the change for the email to load its images, which I'm assuming lets the spammer know that I've opened their email.
edit: Looks like I can right click > Move to > Spam.
I’m convinced that, if Gmail sniffs you’re using a 3rd-party mail client (Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc.) it will occasionally let spam through, forcing you to log-in directly to Gmail. I get the same occasional spam out of nowhere.
Oddly, sometimes spam will come through (I use Thunderbird) but when I go to Gmail to mark it as spam, it is already in the spam folder. How/why it still downloaded to my Tbird Inbox is a puzzler.
I also sometimes get spam that isn’t actually addressed to my Gmail account. The address is usually some variation of my Gmail address (thorzdad.wantstobuy.things @gmail, for instance) and quite often not even to the Gmail domain. I get a large amount of spam where it’s being sent to a friggin’ AOL address. I check the long headers and/or raw code and my actual, legit Gmail address is not anywhere to be found. Why this happens really perplexes me.
Also, wtf can't Google remember the device I'm signing in on? Everytime I am forced to log-in to Gmail (or YouTube, for that matter) on the web, I get security alerts about a mystery login from a "new device". But, it's the same friggin' device I've used for the past umpteen years. Set a cookie, fer cryinoutloud.
My take is that every now and then, Google “forgets” your spam settings. Especially your filters that tell it “this is always spam.” They’re still there, but Google just doesn’t apply them. Until you log in and look at them, when suddenly they are back and online.
It also looks like Google expires device cookies. Maybe for added security, but also maybe to make you log into their mail pages every now and then. No ads, so I don’t know why. Maybe they’re lonely?
Top