h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today's PH: This is really daft but I hate when timings clash - I'm hungry & want lunch, the washing machine cycle has finished & needs emptying, the washing up needs doing, I need to go to the toilet, I'm expecting a parcel delivery....

Of course everything gets done eventually, just not all at once!

I hate things overrunning. I went to an event which they said would finish at 5pm – and it didn't, it finished at 5:45pm. That's 45 minutes late! Don't they realise that if you say you'll finish at 5pm, people will make transport arrangements accordingly and work out how long it takes to get to the station and book train tickets accordingly, or work out how long it'll take to drive back to the harbour and then book on the appropriate ferry. But overrunning by 45 minutes can have a cumulative effect – ten minutes late can mean you miss the train which means that you miss the connection which means you miss the connection after that, so it isn't unusual that because something finished ten minutes over, you end up arriving home 3 hours or more later than you'd hoped.

Finish on time! If you want to thank everyone, at least say, 'We said we would finish now but we've still yet to spend an hour thanking people. I know, we'll take a five minute break so people who have transport arrangements can leave and then we'll return so that people for whom running late won't have a major impact can listen to everyone being thanked, even though we could just bung all the 'I would like to thank X, Y and Z' bits on the website without taking up anyone else's time.

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That's very poor organisation to over-run by that amount of time. If I've got a train to catch, & I can see time slipping away, I'm very tempted to slip out early if I can.

I always expect them to finish late - they nearly always do - and plan accordingly.

Then of course, it finishes on time and you're hanging about for ages. Can't win!

PHoD: People who park so far on to the pavement that it's impossible to get past the car without stepping into the road. I encountered one today, "parked" (more like abandoned) at an angle. The rear end was far enough out to get past easily. The front end was so far on to the pavement that you could only pass it by having a close encounter with a bush. An able-bodied pedestrian without encumbrances could manage it. Someone with a pushchair, wheelchair or mobility scooter couldn't. I walked in the road to get round it. The bush looked a bit too spiky for my liking.

I have something similar on wheels. Close to where I live there is a narrow curved street with parking spots perpendicular to the inner curve of the road.
Everyday, a huge van without windows parks in the middle of the curve, too large to actually fit inside that parking spot. As a result, traffic from both sides can't see if there is traffic from the other side and the road itself becomes so narrow that even a car can't safely pass a bike from the other side.

Current Petty Hate: system updates that change things for no apparent reason. I've done system updates on my tablet and my mobile phone. In both cases the minimum system volume has increased from low enough to ignore to loud enough to be annoying. I can use a good equalizer app to reduce the volume to an acceptable level, but I really shouldn't have to. At first I used the Dolby facility on my phone to reduce the volume, but the latest system update has removed the Dolby equalizer. Now it's just a few check boxes, no real control at all. In addition, I had a group of apps collected in a cluster (don't know the proper term) on my phone. After the update, most of the apps have disappeared from the cluster, so I'll have to recreate it almost from scratch.

Actually, I take it back. The equalizer app I downloaded (Precise Volume) works very well with some apps but not at all with others.

Can anyone recommend an app or other fix for my volume problem?

That is more than a petty hate indeed - my tablet asked for an update recently and I noticed the terms and conditions said something along the lines of “if you don’t like the new setup, tough”, but thought it would be safer to do the update rather than try to ignore it. I am getting used to it, and finding where they have hidden the handy icons I use most regularly, but the battery life has halved...

Sorry I can’t help with the volume problem - if anything, my tablet’s minimum volume has decreased, so that is really strange that ‘they’ have decided your devices need to be more annoying rather than the same as before...

It's a bit long-winded, potentially expensive and perhaps overly complex for your needs, but if you bypass your tablet's internal dac (digital to analogue convertor) all together and use an external dac with it's own volume control you can have very fine control over the volume at all levels. Do you tend to use your tablet in-situ or do you walk around with it? The answer would dictate the best kind of dac; some are small, work from USB and are designed for life on the move (example Audioquest firefly- no physical volume control but via apps like 'usb audio pro'). If you wanted to go down this route let me know and I can supply more info

Running the risk of being called pedantic:

winnoch2 - Impostair Sydromair Extraordinaire

Did you intend "Syndromair"? with an "n"?

If not, forget I mentioned it...

Oh I seem to do that a lot these days; complete blindness to missing characters. I could've looked at that for years and not seen that

Winnoch2, the point of a tablet (for me, anyway) is that it's mobile. I'd rather not be carrying extra bits around with me. That's definitely the case with my phone. Aside from that, I'd rather have a solution that's low cost, preferably free. These changes have been imposed on me. I don't want to pay to get round them.

Thanks for the suggestion. In the absence of an app that works, I suppose I'll just have to live with the situation.

Another IT PH:
We've had discounts for online accounts which is unfair to non-tech people (although OK for me). Now various banks etc are beginning to insist on use of mobiles & texts - or extra discount if you use their app.
I'm fed up with this discrimination - certainly not listening to what the customer wants.

I agree with that - I don't have a smart phone but lots of companies seem to assume I do and don't have any provision for customers who don't. I was recently told that HMV's loyalty card scheme is being replaced by a loyalty app - I assume they want to lose the loyalty of the customers they have who like to do things the old-fashioned way of buying their own DVDs and music physically rather than downloading or streaming everything...

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Yes, even my grocery store has started making special offers via their app. They're assuming that people are using tablets or smartphones.
I don't want to order via an app, I like using my desktop computer & a browser.

Petty Hates: Neighbours throwing their rubbish in my back garden and blocking the communal front garden pathway when they see me using 4 wheel rollator walker. Another one is staring at me from the car when I am putting refuse in the wheelie bins.

That doesn't sound petty at all. What jerks!

To be fair to HMV , they've replied to me and e-mailed me a barcode to print out that I can use in store instead of the app. Although it expires next week.

PH: Lack of HMV stores these days…

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PH: Calendars - all those 'free' ones sent from organisations with which one has some association. Just how many calendars does anyone need? What a waste of paper.