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

I think the 'My Conversations' pop-out acts like a monitor on our dilapidated servers.

Yesterday's PH. Whenever I use the phone in the kitchen (landline), Mr T seems to turn up & put the kettle on/run the tap/something equally noisy.
He will use the phone & not bother to turn the radio off!

When I am at home, within 30 seconds of sitting down on the toilet someone needs me. Every. Single. Time.

I get that when I'm waiting for a delivery/phone call etc.

Today's PH: Me as navigator - here's the route I recommend we take (after consulting google maps). Driver - I'll go the way I know. Turns out the 'known' route is not available any more. That meant we were 10 min later than intended arriving at a funeral so parking difficult & had to stand. Then on return route, again driver knows best, so I didn't provide directions, we didn't take the best route and ended among later arrivals at the wake so long queue for food & drink. (No apology either...)

Yes, the toilet thing is definitely a well-known phenomenon!

Also funny about being on the phone - the worst one I experienced was a couple of years ago when my mum's car broke down. Mum went to look for help and asked me to call the breakdown service while I was sitting in the car. I had laryngitis, so couldn't shout, but was just about making myself understood. Mum then came back, opened the car door and spoke to some people while I was trying to finish the conversation We got there, but it was a challenge!

Today's PH: Password not accepted - Reset password - Kf password reset e-mail is not received within 10 minutes, try again. [If the first e-mail didn't arrive, why would a second e-mail be any different? ]

My PH is hay fever season when I experience energy-draining hay fever symptoms. I don't sneeze that much but it is loud when I do.

SashaQ I have had the same problems with passwords.

Oops - read that as Sasha sneezes in association with passwords.....

Ah! Ah! Ah! AshhUbl12jhb#!nvj !
Yep, I can see that a lot of randomly-generated strong passwords containing upper and lowercase, numbers and special characters are in fact sneezes...

<BB<

Or cats walking on keyboards.

My cat has the knack of walking on the shortcut keys to open up music & start it playing.

PH: webpage or OS icons which shift around as they load so that the one you aim to click on becomes another icon by the time the command from brain has reached clicking finger.
Window$ 11 is really bad for this- if you're impatient (like me) and start clicking on taskbar icons too soon after starting the PC, I end up clicking the wrong ones and loading the wrong programs whilst they shuffle around.
Then there are the webpages which build erratically and you never really know when they are finished building and what will be in the place you are clicking by the time you click
You get the idea!

This is SO bad on my android tablet. There's a comics page I visit every day (a couple actually) where I'm constantly opening ads I had no intention to open because the page jumps around. I think there might be a setting or extension on desktops that let you force the page to stay put, but it's been so long since I looked into it, I'll never remember it.

Yeah. it doesn't seem like it should be beyond the wit of a coder to write something which causes the curser to behave like a magnetic lasso or 'snapping' tool so that as you approach or hover over an icon or place on a webpage, that place stays static relative to the rest of the screen or page, so that you always click what you plan to click Perhaps it's just never been deemed annoying enough by enough people to have forced the issue

PH: e-mail trails of the form:

X: sends e-mail to Y

Y: 'I am out of the office until such-and-such a date - if the matter is urgent, please contact Z.'

X: contacts Z

Z replies to X, copying in Y: 'Y is out of the office - the matter will have to wait until they get back.'

A dishwasher PH: After returning several dirty plates and mugs to the washing up bowl even though they have just come out of a freshly-run dishwasher my PH is the spray arms being welded together. The merry hours I have spent banging and shaking the damn things to remove lumps and lemon pips from the holes, which has caused them to wash less efficiently.

What a convoluted way of describing the phenomenon. Sorry.

PH: checkout operator 'only trying to help' rather than asking what would be helpful.

Instead of beeping the items through at a steady rate, this person waited until the conveyor belt bunched everything up, then beeped things through fast. Also, things were arranged on the conveyor belt so I could pack heavy items at the bottom of bag 1 followed by some light items, then heavy items at the bottom of bag 2 followed by some light items - the checkout operator decided that all the light items should be in one bag so mixed everything up. Thus it took me longer to pack than if things had just been as usual...

I bring my own bags, usually one insulated and one mesh, and I'm very careful to presort my items. What I've been doing lately, is only hand the bagger or cashier the insulated one. Then as they begin bagging the "cold" items (hopefully heavy ones first), I start grabbing items for the mesh bag while they finish the cold ones. I also make sure to grab the bananas or bread before they can crush them in the bottom of a bag.

Aha - that's a good idea to give the cashier something to play with while you sort the important stuff Yes, very easy for the bread to get crushed in the rush...

I usually use the self-service checkout (which has rapidly become the standard around here) unless the one remaining cashier looks at risk of falling asleep out of boredom.

PH at the self-service checkout is when they want to check if you have been honest just after you packed the last groceries into your bag, so that you have to unbag the lot. Nowadays, I only start packing after finishing payment.

Wow, that is annoying that you sometimes have to unbag all the shopping so that the staff can check it. In the shops I go to, they will do checks of people using the 'beep as you go along' handheld machines, but the self checkouts check as you pack with the 'unexpected item in the bagging area' plaintive cry ('It's a bag!' I reply). Makes sense to check, though, as I guess people might hide items without beeping them...