The pet peeve thread

[Motor City Sonics]

Pet Peeve is when I am in the middle of typing a post a pop up ad comes up and I have to exit out of it to get back to typing.  Can't wait until I'm done typing?    Annoying.   

[Edman85]

Not really a pet peeve, but my phone broke yesterday (drowned on a boating day), so I bought a new one from Verizon. Unfortunately, in order to activate the Sim Card, they sent a text to the old broken phone which I had no way of receiving, and I couldn't call Verizon without a functioning phone.

So the pet peeve is lack of common sense in authentication techniques.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Edman85 said:

Not really a pet peeve, but my phone broke yesterday (drowned on a boating day), so I bought a new one from Verizon. Unfortunately, in order to activate the Sim Card, they sent a text to the old broken phone which I had no way of receiving, and I couldn't call Verizon without a functioning phone.

So the pet peeve is lack of common sense in authentication techniques.

LOL - I went through this with an early version of UM's "DUO" TFA. You could only add a new device while you still had your old device. They did fix it after a couple of years, but software developers are the only people in the world who get away with releasing products that are the equivalent of selling shirts missing a sleeve.

[Deleterious]

The father being called a hero for jumping overboard on the cruise ship to save his 5-year-old kid.  Nobody talks about the terrible parenting involved in letting a 5-year-old fall overboard in the first place.

[chasfh]

When you order an appetizer first and then your meal, and they bring them all out at the same time.

This runs a close second to, you order a drink, they never bring it, toward the end of the meal you tell them that’s fine go ahead and kill the drink, they apologize for spacing out on it, and it shows up on the bill anyway. That one’s happened to me twice in the last month.

Edited July 3 by chasfh

[oblong]

When did turning on the hazards when it's raining hard become a thing?  I noticed it earlier this year when driving thru Kentucky and it was pure white knuckle "hope the guy in front of me knows where he is going".  In that case everybody was going about 25 down I 75 so I thought maybe it was a local thing to them, especially since we were at the point where you are miles between exits.  BUt yesterday it rained pretty hard around here and I was on 94 and noticed quite a few people doing it.  

 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

When did turning on the hazards when it's raining hard become a thing?  I noticed it earlier this year when driving thru Kentucky and it was pure white knuckle "hope the guy in front of me knows where he is going".  In that case everybody was going about 25 down I 75 so I thought maybe it was a local thing to them, especially since we were at the point where you are miles between exits.  BUt yesterday it rained pretty hard around here and I was on 94 and noticed quite a few people doing it.  

 

If vis is really bad (fog level) and I've slowed and I think the guy coming up behind me could clobber me, OK. Otherwise if you are moving with traffic I say keep them off.  In A^2 the bus drivers have taken to driving their buses with their flashers on - just stupidity. You know I just might like to know which the hell way you are taking your 55ft barge at the next corner or when you are across from me at an intersection.....Do you think I can't see your BUS!

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

If vis is really bad (fog level) and I've slowed and I think the guy coming up behind me could clobber me, OK. Otherwise if you are moving with traffic I say keep them off.  In A^2 the bus drivers have taken to driving their buses with their flashers on - just stupidity. You know I just might like to know which the hell way you are taking your 55ft barge at the next corner or when you are across from me at an intersection.....Do you think I can't see your BUS!

For some time I have wondered why it isn’t standard on cars that when you have your hazards on and you put on a turn signal, the turn signal controls until you complete the turn and then it goes back to hazards.

[chasfh]

This is a complaint, not a pet peeve, but I guess this can go here.

I bought a navigation app for my phone for our upcoming driving trip for $39.99. The total bill came in at $44.09, because my various local jurisdictions layered a cumulative 10.25% sales tax onto the purchase.

I'm not one of those "all taxation is theft" guys. i understand the principle that the services governments provide to their citizens need to be funded by the people who benefit from it, so I don't begrudge the concept of taxation itself.

The idea behind sales tax is to fund the infrastructure to provide legislation, regulation, enforcement, and protection to vendors and consumers for the purpose of assuring a safe, above-board, and well-structured marketplace. But if you think about it, that can really apply only if the sale takes place entirely within a jurisdiction, such as when you go to your local store and buy something. 

That's not what's happening here. The vendor is online and located god knows where, but it's not in any of my jurisdictions. And neither my state, county, nor city are providing any regulatory or other services to protect this transaction. If something goes upside-down with this transaction, I can't pursue any redress within my local jurisdictions, because the transaction is interstate and not local. And yet, they are all taking a cut of this  sale, merely because my mailing address happen to reside within those jurisdictions. It is, essentially, a junk fee that pays for nothing.

That, to me, truly constitutes theft.

[oblong]

I don’t keep up on this stuff but did the rules change?  When I sold software 20+ years ago we only charged sales tax for customers in Michigan because that’s where we had a physical presence.  

[LaceyLou]

8 minutes ago, oblong said:

I don’t keep up on this stuff but did the rules change?  When I sold software 20+ years ago we only charged sales tax for customers in Michigan because that’s where we had a physical presence.  

There was a court case within the past 10 years in which it was determined that states can require online merchants to collect income tax based on where the buyer lives. 

[Motor City Sonics]

Major Pet Peeve.   The No-Reason Traffic Jam and I-94 is the epicenter.    You will slow to a crawl wondering where the accident is and there is no accident and there's no extra traffic merging.   SO WHY AM I GOING 7 MPH ON A FREEWAY!

Also, those who won't even get up to the speed limit in the left lane and just keep puttering along while everyone is passing them on the right.   Ticket them and take their license away until they understand the flow of all the lanes.  

And don't get me started on people who do not react to a green light until someone honks at them.   I usually assume it's someone on their phone but sometimes it's someone just staring into space.    Self-driving cars can't be worse.  

Flying cars are possible.  They could be made, but as long as we keep driving like this on the ground, they're never gonna let us take to the air and based on the dwindling attention span of the population, that'll be never.    

[Deleterious]

The phantom traffic jam aerial view.

 

[CMRivdogs]

Virginia Dept of Transportation has just started using speed cameeras in several construction zones. Violators going 11 miles over the limit will receive tickets by mail. They go to the person who the vehicle is licensed to.

Maybe they should do that on all roads. And fine vehicles who go under the speed limit as well. If you can't drive on the freeway, use the back roads. We'll all be safer.

 

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, Motor City Sonics said:

Major Pet Peeve.   The No-Reason Traffic Jam and I-94 is the epicenter.    You will slow to a crawl wondering where the accident is and there is no accident and there's no extra traffic merging.   SO WHY AM I GOING 7 MPH ON A FREEWAY!

 

There is a whole branch of mathematics devoted to this, though I managed to avoid ever having to learn any of it in detail. But in the end it comes down to the drivers. Each driver on the road will either increase or decrease the damping factor on the native instability that comes with too high volume. If everyone would leave room to always slow down a little slower than the guy in front of them and then speed up a little slower that he does, things will keep flowing. If people over-brake and over-accelerate, instability increases and traffic will end up at a full stop more often.

Edited 21 hours ago by gehringer_2

[Motor City Sonics]

13 hours ago, Deleterious said:

The phantom traffic jam aerial view.

 

It's the left lane.   People just not driving the way they are supposed to. 

[Tigeraholic1]

15 hours ago, chasfh said:

This is a complaint, not a pet peeve, but I guess this can go here.

I bought a navigation app for my phone for our upcoming driving trip for $39.99. The total bill came in at $44.09, because my various local jurisdictions layered a cumulative 10.25% sales tax onto the purchase.

I'm not one of those "all taxation is theft" guys. i understand the principle that the services governments provide to their citizens need to be funded by the people who benefit from it, so I don't begrudge the concept of taxation itself.

The idea behind sales tax is to fund the infrastructure to provide legislation, regulation, enforcement, and protection to vendors and consumers for the purpose of assuring a safe, above-board, and well-structured marketplace. But if you think about it, that can really apply only if the sale takes place entirely within a jurisdiction, such as when you go to your local store and buy something. 

That's not what's happening here. The vendor is online and located god knows where, but it's not in any of my jurisdictions. And neither my state, county, nor city are providing any regulatory or other services to protect this transaction. If something goes upside-down with this transaction, I can't pursue any redress within my local jurisdictions, because the transaction is interstate and not local. And yet, they are all taking a cut of this  sale, merely because my mailing address happen to reside within those jurisdictions. It is, essentially, a junk fee that pays for nothing.

That, to me, truly constitutes theft.

If the customer picks up the item at the seller’s location, tax should be collected for the state in which the seller is located. If the item is shipped to the customer, then tax applies for the delivery state, whether that is the same state where the seller is located or a different state.

https://www.salestaxinstitute.com/sales_tax_faqs/where_to_collect_sales_tax

[oblong]

6 minutes ago, Motor City Sonics said:

It's the left lane.   People just not driving the way they are supposed to. 

94 in the city, being recessed and 3 lanes, is hard to manage when traffic is high.  The right lane is very stop and go because of the short entrance ramps not allowing enough time to speed up and merge for cars coming on.   Trucks cant drive in the right lane because of those short entrance ramps.  Then the left lane is susceptible to people constantantly switching between the center and left to get around the trucks, and then in the left lane it's not just slow drivers but people cutting into it to pass while driving in the center. So it's stop and go.

When going to games from where we live I often get off at Warren then take that to Grand River.  During certain times of the day it shaves off 8 minutes to my lot on Cass.

 

[oblong]

any runners here?  I'm training for my third free press half marathon, and fifth half overall, and while I love the heat and hate cold weather, this heat is killing training programs.  So many running friends have evolved into "Whatever.... " when it comes to expectations.  This year was especially bad with the Canadian wildfires this summer.  

 

 

[chasfh]

23 hours ago, LaceyLou said:

There was a court case within the past 10 years in which it was determined that states can require online merchants to collect income tax based on where the buyer lives. 

I do know this, and the point of my post was not to ask why my jurisdictions charge me sales tax if they don't even have a presence here, but that the fact they can charge it is literal theft because I get nothing back for it. It's essentially a junk fee.

[gehringer_2]

4 minutes ago, chasfh said:

is literal theft because I get nothing back for it. It's essentially a junk fee.

Maybe I'm missing your arg here. All dollars are fungible. Every dollar the state collects goes toward every service the state provides doesn't it? Even when funds are supposed ear-marked -- remember "lottery money only goes to education"? just a sleight of hand as equivalent #s of dollars that would have gone to Ed now go somewhere else.