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Old 16th Dec 2020, 11:06 am   #41
GMB
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

Quote:
Starting every sentence with 'So' or 'Basically'
Sticking 'like' into every sentence or 'know what I mean' at the end.
This is people writing as they might speak.
Interestingly I recently heard of research that suggests that dead words (and sounds like "er" and "um") add clarity to speech because it gives the listeners brains time to process the data stream more easily.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 11:19 am   #42
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

Quad bike
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 11:30 am   #43
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

So, Basically, In basic terms, Antenna, Schematic, Plate, Amps (and amp) Tube, Train Station, Bus Station etc etc etc.......highly guilty but guess who doesn't give a rats, if I did my wife would leave me.

Lawrence.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 11:33 am   #44
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

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Will someone please explain what's wrong with the phrase 'quite unique'?

Alan
There are no degrees of uniqueness. Either it is or it isn't!
Use of the word 'quite' in the case of something completely unique is quite permissable. Reference to a dictionary will confirm. It's one of those words that has different contextual meanings.

Alan
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 11:55 am   #45
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

Not being able to find things, both me & my wife have managed to lose things recently & have had to turn our flat upside down trying to find them.

I seem to have a habit of putting away a cable or adaptor for a particular connection away and then not being able to find it when I want to set something up months later.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 11:57 am   #46
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

Why the change from footpath to footway? Is it just penny-pinching by saving the cost of one letter on signs, or change for change's sake?
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 12:06 pm   #47
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

Buying a third SSD-USB adaptor because I didn't realise there were so many types and didn't check the manual beforehand, and somehow managing on the first one to fit a M type PCIe SSD into a B slot and thinking I had probably damaged it.
Even more annoying is Transcend do a SSD enclosure with a M type slot but than only supports SSD's with both B and M slots, absolutely pointless when a B slot would have better compatibility.

I've had the same sort of thing with a previous poster concerning clock radios. Needing to replace the aerial cable on one and seeing no screws I naturally tried prising the case open and got no luck whatsoever. Turned out that the front came off and lo and behold screws.

Oh and buying my Dad a new fountain for his birthday only to have the puppy chew the cable to bits, the cable has since been replaced with SY control cable and heaven forbid what would happen if the damn dog did it again.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 12:12 pm   #48
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

Back when the Atari ST was my main computer, I bought a third-party hard drive unit for it, fantastic, the first computer I'd ever had a hard drive for. One day I plugged it all together and ...Oh-Oh, not working.

The internal interface PCB had quite a few TTL IC and a couple of GALs on it so I thought I'd start by removing all the TTL ICs and testing those - all were soldered into a thick, heat-sucking double sided PCB so I enlisted the help of a friend who had access to a desoldering iron, a luxury I didn't have at the time.

After removing, testing, and socketing the ICs I noticed that the fault had changed from a complete lack of response to the drive now giving a corrupted ID string when queried by the driver. I had a little flash of inspiration, picked up an ASCII table and was able to work out from the nature of the corruption that data bit 6 was stuck low, so I took a meter to the PCB and discovered that surely enough, bit 6 was open circuit between two parts of the circuit - annoying, because I had obviously caused that myself through carelessness when desoldering one of the ICs. One neat wire link later, the corruption was gone and not only that, normal operation was fully restored. So where had the original problem gone?

Only then did I remember that the drive unit had two identical SUB-D connectors, one IN from the computer and one OUT, intended as passthrough to other HDD-like devices. Both connectors were the same 'sex', and it finally dawned on me that what I had originally done was to plug the HDD-out cable from the computer into the HDD-OUT on the Hard drive unit.

Hours of unnecessary work and unnecessary damage to and subsequent repair of something which didn't even need to be fixed in the first place. As I remarked to my friend at the time - 'how can anyone bright enough to fix that problem... be stupid enough to cause it in the first place?'

Anyway, that's quite high on my list of things to make you scream - spending a lot of time trying to fix something, only to realise that it was never faulty in the first place.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 12:35 pm   #49
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

How about the excessive use of "pre" ie in pre-order for example. How is this possible. If you order before it's designed or built or for sale you are still ordering it. Probably missing something here. Something to get me wound up anytime is hearing "kilom-eter". I shall now get back behind the barricade. Peter.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 12:56 pm   #50
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

I'm not sure what this thread is for. We all have plenty of pet hates, so with the number of people on the forum, it could have infinite length and still get to no conclusion. No-one's going to change my pet hates, no-one is going to talk me out of any of them, and I'm unlikely to take on anyone else's. Maybe we're doing this to exhibit our peeves in the hope of receiving some sympathy, and thereby feeling slightly better about things?

Starting it off was a bit like shouting "Does the end justify the means?" into a debating society meeting, then running like hell.

Is the thread off-topic? I don't think we can even define what the topic is.

David
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 1:24 pm   #51
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

The scope of the thread title makes it sufficiently broad as to encompass almost anything - which is not always a bad thing - but reading back to the OP I would suggest that the intention was for any forthcoming observations to be related to the forum's core remit of repair / restoration.

Apostrophe atrocities annoy me as much as they do everyone else, but I don't think that was what the OP had in mind when he created this thread.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 1:43 pm   #52
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Thumbs up Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

Three things:
1. The widespread misuse of the word 'literally'; usually spoken.
2. The use of 'between' when more than two items are being compared.
3. The overuse of the word 'issue' when introducing almost any topic that is a possible cause for concern.

Aside.
Upon reading nearly all of the above posts has been very re-assuring: prior to that reading, I thought that the many trials, tribulations, annoyances, etc. were only affecting me! So for that simple reason, I'm glad that this thread has appeared.
To me, that addresses David's concerns in his post #50.

Al.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 1:52 pm   #53
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

Some decades back I was involved with the development of a piece of rather-expensive measuring equipment: it was designed around an as-yet-unreleased-but-we-managed-to-get-samples-under-a-NDA A/D-converter chip.

We spent a couple of months sweating over it and eventually managed to get the A/D - which was the heart of the thing - to work with sufficient isolation of digital noise from the analog input, by means of complex decoupling and some special 'flat' capacitors that actually sat between the two rows of chip-legs, sandwiched between the chip and the PCB. It was a real hassle though, and we let the manufacturer know this.

We signed-off the design to production, went to the pub to celebrate, and then onward rejoicing to our christmas/new-year break.

First week of Jan we got a Telex - remember them? - from the chip-designers in the 'states, saying "We know many of you have had decoupling issues using our pre-production samples - we've listened to your grievances and have pleasure in announcing that the production chips will be provided with four additional ground/decoupling pins to alleviate the problem".

Cue much screaming, as we found that the PCBs for the first production-run of our instrument had all been etched in the christmas/new-year gap.

Cue further screaming as we tried to fit the now-longer chip's footprint into the already very-tightly-packed PCB.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 2:10 pm   #54
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

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Originally Posted by Scimitar View Post
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I've never had problems with "train station" - it's where I would go to catch a train,
But the staion is built upon the railway, not the train. Therefore it is a Railway station and the place you go to get on a coach is an omnibus terminal rather than a bus station, for the same reason.
I don't mind 'train station' at all, as I find it easier to say than 'railway station.' And, as pointed out, 'bus station' seems acceptable.

And what about 'radio station' as a place where the radio waves originate from (and are also received at, in the case of 2-way radio).

I don't like 'channels' when 'station' is meant... But I don't scream.

What does? People who talk of current going from positive to negative. I just can't get it - current streams entering a pentode via the anode and the screen-grid, joining forces and leaving at the cathode. Yaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!

Only place current does this is in a p-type semiconductor, as Mr Hall can demonstrate.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 2:22 pm   #55
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

Another annoyance - people talking about "films" when nothing's been made using film for the last couple of decades.

Similarly, when news reports talk of 'tapes' or 'footage'.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 2:52 pm   #56
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Being picked up by taxi at 6AM, flow to Glasgow (business class), taxi to a port, going aboard ship to try and fix a problem that had scuppered fitters/technicians for a week. 15 minutes aboard I found it was a not fully home 38999 connector (I spotted the red stripe), job done. This was Friday when the fish and chip van arrived, all cooked in beef dripping, lovely!!!! (I could almost hear my arteries clogging up, OK once in a decade).

Made me laugh realy, a paid for day out to a sunny Scotland (marvelous), got home for pub time too.
 
Old 16th Dec 2020, 3:27 pm   #57
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

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'know what I mean'
To that my reply is "Are you questioning your erudition or my understanding". Also the word "actually", it has no use whatsoever, as in "It's actually a dish", what is wrong with "It's a dish"?
 
Old 16th Dec 2020, 3:28 pm   #58
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

I once had to fit a Pye Westminster into a new Rolls-Royce owned by the local sand-and-gravel business; it was a boot-mount version and there was no hole large enough in the metal between the boot and the interior to allow me to feed the rather-bulky plug on the interconnecting cable.

No problem, I thought, I'll pop the little pins out of the plug housing, feed the cable through the one hole I can see, then re-fit the plug.

"The map of which-pin-goes-where is in the service-manual so no need to write it down as I disassemble".

Except the colour-coding of the cable I had was different to what was shown in the manual. Aieeee!!

Fortunately, the boot was spacious enough for me to climb right inside while I metered-out the wires and refitted them.
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 4:08 pm   #59
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

"It is what it is" is frequently heard on TV antiques programmes that's days. Why?
Call centres and other operators where whilst I am listening, 1 or 2 syllables get cut out meaning need to keep asking for it to be repeated. I assume due to inadequate vox operation. Digital "progress" NOT!
Rob
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Old 16th Dec 2020, 4:27 pm   #60
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Default Re: Things that make you upset/scream!.

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Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
Another annoyance - people talking about "films" when nothing's been made using film for the last couple of decades.

Similarly, when news reports talk of 'tapes' or 'footage'.
I don't mind depreciated** terms being used at all, as long as they are "paying homage" as it were, to the earlier technology upon whose shoulders we are standing.


** sorry, a Linux thing I am told M'lud.
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