Modern Vespa

Gotta wonder if alcohol was involved.

I'm with Hunter S Thompson on this one.

armedferret, I salute you.

Being force-fed Christmas music EVERYWHERE!!
Restaurants, stores, hotel lobbies. After a month of it, I compare it to a slow nail gun to the head.

Right now I'm being treated to, yet again, Bing Crosby's 'It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas' over the hotel cafe's system, yesterday morning, it was what sounded like a pre-pubescent Wayne Newton warbling something about seeing 'Mommy Kissing Santa Claus' or something like that, which apparently must have scarred him for life.

I'm surprised that Pink Floyd didn't come out with a Christmas album.

Happily, it will all come to a screeching halt in another week or so....ironically, a genuine Christmas miracle.

This post doesn't really fit this thread very well, as none of this specifically pisses me off as much as it just sort of irritates the hell out of me, (there's a difference?) perhaps something like a mild, six week form of Chinese water torture, or so I imagine, never having had to experience any actual Chinese water torture.

So here's to December 26th, the light at the end of this Thanksgiving-to-Christmas tunnel.

I hate to disappoint you, but…

Though I'm not sure that truly qualifies as a Christmas song.

No, I think it perfectly fits this thread. And FWIW, I agree. Christmas music gets dull after about… let me think… one Christmas song.

Though I do rather like The Waitresses variation on the theme, so if I have to be forced to hear one, it would be this one:

Well you could just decline to do Christmas like I did ?

This year I won't be doing the presents, oversized trees or big family meal thing.

Try it as it's very liberating.

Having said that Chris Squire and Alan White wrote a pleasant little ditty.

I agree, we haven't been swept up in the tidal wave of insanity that the season has become.

We declared our house as an official 'Christmas-free zone' over a decade ago (sort of a milder version of us declaring the Sturgis Rally time every August as a 'Free 'F-Word Zone' for the duration). Trixie and I will do the 'present thing' for our birthdays, but on a limited scale even then, usually just a private supper out at a place of the birthday person's choosing.

Our house has no Christmas decorations either inside or out, and we don't have kids to indoctrinate into the cult, so that simplifies things a lot.

It would likely be different if I possessed even one religious bone in my body, but I must have missed that particular gene absorbing ceremony back there when floating around in my personal primordial soup.

My immediate family is as scattered and indifferent about Christmas as we are, so it's just us two, with the cats bringing it to four if I stretch it a bit.

It's really not that I think that all Christmas music is essentially 'bad', but the repetition of it from every nook and cranny of existence during this period is mind-numbing....heck, I feel the same way about classic rock, I can't listen to it. Christmas music is like having to listen to a continuous loop of Free Bird, or Hotel California....only worse, in it's special way.

I'm a bit surprised you didn't count the wasps, but I understand. They're more like snowbirds, just in for the winter.

I've been doing that for over 20 years. Apart from being a bit peeved by religious people hijacking a perfectly sensible solstice celebration, I'm appalled by seemingly everyone endorsing rampant commercial greed over such a long period.

I couldn't agree more.

I've just become a bit bored of the whole thing so now that I have an option not to plaster on a fake smile and plough through that bullshit one more time, I take it.

Oh, and charities begging me for money this month can poke it as well.

I don't have any desire to, as they say, "pee in the cornflakes" of those who truly enjoy Christmas for whatever their reasons may be, but it just doesn't work for me, and I'm sure I'll just continue to lay low for almost two months of the year's twelve, grumble about it to myself, and get on with it.

Christmas makes zero sense to me on one level, and completely repulses me on another, and if it has any redeeming qualities in my mind, it's that families DO use the occasion to get together and (supposedly) have a good time (again, supposedly),so at least there's that.

But the never-ending barrage of Christmas music still sucks.

Or flip-flops.

Thought this might belong here...

$5 for a Chicko Roll

$7 for a take away coffee in Port Adelaide.

$75 if you are late checking out at the Von Trapp Lodge in Vermont.

That better be an extra large with two or three shots and fancy milk etc

I had to look that up. That ends up being about USD$3.35, which... really doesn't seem so bad.

I've never tasted one, though, so maybe USD$3.35 is way too much.

Well duh.

It could be worse. They could halve their size for the same price which is what all the local chippies have done with spring and curry rolls.

The convergent need to give to certain things certainly pisses me off.

It pisses me off that I can no longer skate by with a sly grin and quick wit.

It pisses me off that the lines on my face and the visceral fat in my belly betray my mind.

It pisses me off that I can no longer fix things within a week. The long game is hard.

It pisses me off that I can't look at the world and alright with it. Blinders being off isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

What did Jackson Browne say? "I'm gonna be a happy idiot, and struggle for the legal tender...."

Well..today finally I got my package deliverer after been waiting for over a month to go through US custom .
Took me about 10+ phone call to figure out where the package was, and why was being hold at US Custom.
Just asking as a general question in the forum, not a complaint, did anyone ever experienced their package of parts & order from Europe to be open and damaged by US Custom inspection?
I am all for the Custom to inspect ✔️ and keep our country safe.
But just because you doing your job, don't mean that you have to damage everything or whatever you inspecting in the name of safety. Black mirrors, levers, and decals all have Knife blade mark on it.
Yeah I am definitely piss off. 🤬 😤
I guess it is what it is , don't even know if I have any recourse in this issue anybody have an idea or suggestion?
Ps:And for what is worth it Christmas & holidays are overrated.

"It was like that before we opened it".

Yeah sure it was

If it's coming from SIP they just don't package particularly well. Check to see if there is any parcel insurance.

For all the time my package sat in Customs, it arrived surprisingly intact.

I had a prebug Zuma bodykit arrive at JFK from France, and then disappear into customs. Never found out what happened.

Waited two more years and ordered the same kit, but from a trusted Italian vendor
Held my breath on customs, but that one went through LAX and arrived just fine.

wanna be sick? without looking it up, guess how much a 24oz beer costs at a Dodgers game.

Buck an ounce?

I've mentioned before about receiving emails at my gmail account for several other Dan Bates in the world. Normally they don't piss me off, or even mildly irritate me, because I understand that mistakes happen.

Today's experience was different.

This morning I got an email from a third party identity verification company, welcoming me to their service, and providing instruction for how to complete my enrollment. Since I had never heard of this company, nor had I signed up for their service, I figured I'd contact them and let them know what was up, especially since they are an identity verification company. I went to their website, and the only way to contact them was via a chatbot.

The chatbot was unable to help me, so it connected me to an actual agent. I explained the issue, and the agent asked for my name, email, and DOB. I provided my name and email, but not my DOB. I explained that they didn't need my DOB, since I would not be in their system, and I did not know the DOB for the other Dan Bates, so I would have no way of being able to provide that information. They said they need it to log into my account. I said I don't have an account with them, I just need my email address removed from their system. They said that without the DOB or the last 4 digits of the credit card used to pay for the services, they could not look up the account. I told them that I was not the Dan Bates that signed up for their services, so I had no way of knowing any of that information.

While all this was going on, I clicked on the Log In link on their website. I entered my email address, and clicked on the Forgot Password link. It then asked for my email address again, so I entered it, and clicked the send reset email button. Moments later, I received the email with a link to reset the password. I followed that link, and it asked me to set a new password, so I did. I was then able to log into the other Dan Bates account, and view his DOB.

I then explained to the agent that I had the other Dan Bates DOB, and provided it. Their response was, "Are you still there? You haven't responded in a while. Since you haven't responded in a while, I'm going to close this chat." All the while I'm responding to them. When they closed the chat, I became pissed off.

I then clicked the Forgot Password link again, because I remembered that there was a phone number provided to call if I was having trouble logging in. I put in a fake email address to get the phone number, then called.

The live person I spoke with was very understanding, and was able to remove my email address from the account. They did ask for my DOB, and explained that they could see the account information and the DOB of the other Dan Bates, and that by providing my DOB she would be able to confirm that I am not him, and would be able to remove my email address. She went on to explain that his account was a "child" account of someone else, and that she emailed the main account holder to let them know that Dan would need to update his email address.

After all that was done, I told her that I was shocked that I didn't have to answer any security questions to verify my identity when changing the password. Especially considering that identity verification is their entire reason for existing.

The Ford Focus is being discontinued.

I have a similar problem, but with AT&T. I've been getting someone else's cell phone billing notifications from AT&T because that person was apparently confused about the specifics of their own email address. I can even tell from the billing notice what their actual address is -- they used it as their User ID -- but the email address is separate and they inadvertently gave AT&T my address.

I have contact AT&T numerous times about this, but it generally turns out exactly like what you've encountered -- they want to know my AT&T info, but it's not my account I'm contacting them about! I go around and around with them, but they either don't get what I'm trying to tell them or they just don't have any idea what to do.

I think in general customer service agents aren't equipped to handle this class of problem.

I tried forwarding the billing notices to the correct email address, too -- but got no response. I sent warning emails that I was just going to delete the notices, but that wen't unnoticed as well.

So, I still get the billing notices once a month. And I'm still deleting them.

Also, Eddie, you're a stupid fuckwit. You too, AT&T.

My wife has a job interview today via MS Teams. The last job interview she had also wanted to use Teams, but she couldn't get it to work, and they ended up using Zoom instead. Because of that, she wanted to check to make sure her system was set up correctly beforehand, and had me initiate a meeting with her today from work.

I got it all set up, and she connected, but she was having audio issues - I couldn't hear her. When she joined via her phone, I could hear her just fine, so we figured it was her audio settings on the iMac. She ended up downloading the Teams app for Mac, and doing that fixed the audio issue on the browser-based Teams connection.

I noticed during all of this troubleshooting that websites wouldn't load anymore on my work PC. I was using the Teams app, so our troubleshooting wasn't affected. All other internet services worked just fine (email, printers, cloud storage, etc.). All of my web browsers are affected (Chrome, Firefox, Edge). When I try to visit a website, I get an error message stating, "This site can't be reached. (website) refused to connect."

So I've placed a service ticket with IT.

I suspect it's a memory/resources issue, as this same issue would happen if I tried to have InDesign and Photoshop open at the same time along with all of the other applications I use. I an have one or the other open, but not both.

Luckily, my work MacBook isn't affected by this. I currently have Chrome, Outlook, Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Fiery Command Workstation, HP Click, and Trello open, and have no issues at all.

Woke up to some Karen with a vendetta having reported the HELL out of my IG accounts (yes, including my cat's account that I manage) and my fb meme page (34 consecutive posts reported for sexual exploitation and bullying alternating back and forth) so now all my instas are gone permanently.

You'd think the algorithm would pick up on report after report after report from the same person as possibly spam/frivolous but nah. Community has to feel safe!!

Taking the fb page down friday too, karen gets her online safe space and i have more time to get ducks lined up for retiring in September (at 44.5 yrs of age).

Ouch. That sucks. I'm truly sorry.

What a total Mare.

Yeah it was just pictures of a daily .75-1oz of whiskey and vespa/other life stuff thrown in. Yet theres pages actually exploiting early to mid teen girls and shockingly lewd commentary yet those accounts go unhindered.

I guess it helps us see what social media is actually intended for.

I had an very interesting fall out with someone recently during an animated conversation about the rise of Andrew Tate and Instgram being full of young and mature women displaying themselves for objectification.

My observation was that young people who will often lack direction and structure will unconsciously search for something to fill that gap and crave a form of affirmation and adoration in the process.

Sadly I got talked over half way through the sentence and the point was lost.

The internet - social media, specifically - has created a new type of narcissism. It's sad. And unhealthy.