The Pleasure of Putting My Eyes Out

Yesterday was affirmation of that statement as it relates to shopping. It's not a true statement, not by a long mile. Just read back a few dozen posts to the ones about my eyes and my fear (terror) that I had the start of a detached retina.

But that does pretty well describe how I feel about shopping. I hate shopping and simply saying 'I hate shopping' doesn't describe how I really feel about it.

Yesterday and last weekend are two perfect examples.

Last weekend I had the Saga of the Jeans. The end result, after going through the horror of actually finding them and paying for them, was wearing them.

Pair 1 is fine. It's not a perfect fit because they're just a touch too big, but I can live with that. They ride reasonably well and I don't feel as if I have to keep grabbing the waistband to haul them back into position.

Pair 2, however, is something else again. Same brand, same style, same cut, but nothing like the same 'feel'. They feel like nothing better than a pair of crack pants. Whoever made the fabric used about 300% too much spandex (and why does every garment made by man these days require spandex, anyway?).

They bag and they sag and they shift and they are miserable to wear. Ordinarily, I am not a consumer who complains. This time I did because I figure they need to know to improve their product. I specifically said: I bought 'em fair and square. I washed 'em and I wore 'em so I don't expect anything in return.

This just makes me hate shopping even more.

Yesterday I got to go to Costco. Normally, I like Costco. Or, at least, I don't hate it. Yesterday, though, made me hate Costco, too.

I decided to buy gas, which I never do on the weekends because the station is packed. But I decided to get it over with so I wouldn't have to do it on Monday morning.

Got into line - one car ahead of me with two cars at the pumps. I figure it'll be just a couple of minutes. Sure enough, the front car finishes and pulls out but the guy in front of me doesn't move. The vehicle in front of him is a big truck with a correspondingly large gas tank. Five minutes I sat there waiting for something to happen. It finally does and I get to the pump.

I put my card into the reader and get the "Remove Card Quickly". I did. "Re-insert Card". I did that twice more and, by then, I am annoyed. I am annoyed that I have to do this at all. I am annoyed that the idiot in front of me didn't take advantage of that empty pump before. I am annoyed at the stupid mechanism.

Idiot finishes before I do and gets back in his car just as my pump stops. I finish up and get in my car and start the motor and idiot is still sitting there - paying absolutely no attention to the fact that there's a line behind us, and that those people probably want to get this over with, too. Idiot.

So, I put my car in gear and pull out to go around him and that is the point at which his brain engages. He pulls out.

Almost fifteen minutes spent doing something that, under normal circumstance (stopping during the week) takes about five minutes and, on the weekends assuming I don't have an idiot in front of me, takes maybe ten. I'm annoyed.

I find a space, park the car and get into the store. My shopping is done in about ten minutes because I know what I want and where to find it.

At the front of the store they have moved tall displays in front of the registers so you cannot see the lines from the other side of the displays. Is this deliberate? I have no idea, but I pick a line and... it's long. It's five people long and the guy at the front, which I didn't realize immediately, had two overflowing carts.

Shit. I look around. All of the other lines, now that I'm on the 'right' side of the displays, look just as bad so I heave a heavy sigh of resignation and settle in to wait.

Front guy's first cart is emptied and his wife starts unloading the second cart and... crash. She dropped a double jar of jalapeno peppers. Oh, frabjous day!

Four full carts in front of mine and a puddle of vinegar spreading from a mess of shattered glass intermixed with peppers.

Cue the mop bucket and two guys tasked with cleaning it up. In the meantime, as we all do, I'm looking around at the other lines.

The woman who had been behind me but whose husband had stationed himself in another line which moved faster than the one we were in has moved over and has reached the register while I still have three people in front of me.

What do I have in my cart? A bag of six avocados and a case of water. That's it. That's why I'm there. That's what I'm buying and I stood in line for nearly twenty minutes for the privilege.

By the time I got to unload the avocados onto the belt, I was so frustrated and annoyed I was ready to just walk away and leave it. Then, the woman in front of me has this insulated bag filled with stuff - which means the clerk has to unload the bag in order to scan the items inside it. Irritation notches up another two degrees, and spikes again when he says, "Oh, the bag of veggies broke open."

Shit. So they deal with that while my toes are just about doing a tarantella inside my shoes from frustration and impatience but, by this point, the temptation to just leave the cart and walk away is over-run by "just get it over with". I waited and they finished. My order took zero time since it was a matter of scanning just two barcodes. I paid and got into the line to get out of the store. I was NOT happy but when the guy at the door said, "How're you?" I didn't snap. I just said, snidely, "Just peachy, thanks."

In the car, I turn on the motor and start to pull out, stopping when a family strolls by at a snail's pace as if they haven't a care in the world. They didn't stop to wait for me to pull out. They acted as if they hadn't seen my tail lights and the car moving. They wander off and I start to back out again and the cart wrangler shows up. Standing between my car and the cart corral that's right next to my car he ignores my back-up lights and wrestles carts into line so he can pull them out, line them up, so he can push them back to the store. It's like my car with its taillights (which do work, by the way) doesn't even exist.

Finally I get to pull out and start home. I get into a line of cars at a traffic light and there's another idiot in front of me. He's not paying attention, looking down (probably playing with his God damned phone!) and, when the light changes, he just sits there. I honk. He looks up, scrambles and he just makes the left turn light before it turns red, leaving me sitting there at the red light. This is a major intersection, not a minor, and that light is about three minutes long. If he hadn't been screwing around with his phone we both could have made that light but noooo. He had to pay attention to his phone.

I HATE people who do shit like that. And this is why I HATE shopping.

Thank God it's Sunday and the shopping is done for another week.

I'm breathing again. Sitting here in my PJs with my coffee and I will relax, dammit.

Have a quiet, shopping-free day with no idiots around.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Yep. I'm Annoyed and I'm Getting Tired of Being So.

Am I turning into a crotchety old witch? It's starting to seem like it since it feels as if all I do these days is rant about stuff. Or is it because there's just more stuff about which to rant? I don't know. But at least this one is a different subject - away from geopolitics or elections or the regular stuff.

Today it's Microsoft. I am so freakin' fed up with Microsoft and their screwing things up for the user I could scream. In fact, I think I will. Quietly and on paper because I don't want to disturb the slumbers of my colleagues. I think that's best.

I'm pretty good about staying on top of Microsoft's updates for the Windows OS. When I get notices that there's something new out there, I'll generally wait a couple of weeks to let others suffer the consequences of poorly written code. Then, once I think the complaints have flowed in, the programmers have reprogrammed and the danger has passed, I'll download the patches and fixes and updates.

A few months ago I did that right after the updates were released. B-I-I-I-G mistake. My computer was hosed for two days. And those two days were just to modify it from expensive doorstop to semi-quasi-usable laptop. Then I spent hours upon hours over the course of two weeks to get it back to where I wanted it to be.

First, I had to go through a nightmare of trying to restore the operating system to a point where I could reinstall my programs. That took, literally, half-a-day. Then I had the pleasure of reinstalling my programs, re-downloading Firefox, etc. (since Bing is a pile of dung as a search engine and IE is so full of holes and vulnerabilities I use it only when I absolutely have to on the backward sites).

Fortunately, all of my files were still there where I expected them to be and were intact so my head didn't explode. Also fortunately, I had recently backed my files up to my flash drive, so I was doubly secure.

That taught me to wait that period of a couple of weeks before downloading any updates, and to back-up my files before downloading so if it does end up as a pile of useless rubble I at least have the capability of transferring my files to a new computer.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has wrested control of my laptop - the computer that I, not Bill Gates & Co. bought. The same piece of equipment for which I pay a princely sum each month so I can connect to the interweb. Can you tell this irritates, me?

This morning I turned it on, having a little time to mess around on said interweb before getting ready for work and... crap! It started downloading updates.

Now I did not ask it to start downloading or installing updates. That is something over which I prefer to have control. I will usually do such things at night, while I'm in bed, sleeping, not during those precious waking hours when I want to use the thing.

So now, after it's done, I have to go into the guts of my operating system and try to find that switch that will go to the Off position so that I can take back control.

Aside from that, my annoyance stems from the fact that I started this thing at 4:50 this morning. Yes, that's correct: ten minutes before five o'clock. The chickens aren't even up at that hour, but I was and so, or at least so I thought, would be my computer.

Wrong!

I hit the power switch and it started and... Downloading Updates. * Heavy Sigh * of resignation. Okay. I'll do the cat, get my coffee. Did those things, took my shower, dressed, made my bed and checked back - forty-five minutes later. It was still running.

WTF!??? Forty-five minutes? And no one else in the house is watching TV or on the computer or interfering with my internet connection and it's forty-five minutes? Yep. It was. And another forty-five minutes of waiting. Ninety minutes of foot-tapping impatience and it finally finished at 6:25 am.

Okay, cool. I have a few minutes before I have to leave. It restarts and gets back to the front page - the pretty picture of a beach someplace. I hit the mouse button and log on. All seems to be going swimmingly and then... blue screen. Not the one of death but of Purgatory.

They're advertising for God's sake! "We have a bunch of new features." WTF!???

Hello! McFly! I. Don't. Care!!!! I want to use my computer for what I want to do with it when I want to do it! Or are you still loading a bunch of BS in the background? Or is it that you're digging around in the guts of my computer looking for something that is none of your damned business?

That went on for a minute on one screen - that didn't advance for nearly forty-five seconds or so (it seemed like an hour at that point). Then it showed me that they have new features - another minute until I finally got so fed up I just closed the damned lid on it. I'm irritated enough that I almost don't care of the freakin' thing works again when I re-open it. That will instantly pass if it doesn't work, but for the nonce, I am that angry.

Dear Bill Gates & Co.:

A) Don't advertise on my computer, okay? I don't care.

B) Don't scroll the screens slowly enough to tell me that you think I'm a backward remedial reader still at the stage of sounding out the vowels and consonants. I can read, thank you. I don't need you to sound it out for my benefit, okay?

C) Don't show me this crap at all!!! If you're going to mess with my computer, mess with it and get it over with. Don't tease me like this because all you're doing is pissing me off!!! Okay? Got that??

Am I annoyed? Hell yes! It's half-a-day later and I'm still furious.

If I want to download updates and fixes and other things, fine. That is my choice, my prerogative. Having some outside company just decide to take over my computer for which I paid and for which I pay to access the internet is far more than 'annoying'. It is intrusive in the extreme.

I appreciate that Microsoft is trying to fix holes in its programming. That's fine, I get it. But can I please just do it on my schedule or suffer the consequences if I'm too freakin' lazy or lax to take care of biz?

How about if they give control of downloading and installing back to the user?

How about if they give you an option of looking at their new features? Two buttons: Yes / No or Sure / Later or some other combination that gives me at least a feeling of being in control of my computer?

Gr.

Maybe next time I get a computer I'll look into Apple and drop MS entirely. Or maybe Linux (although I think you have to have an advanced degree in programming to make that function smoothly). I don't know. All I do know is that I am sick and tired of Microsoft running the world (or thinking that they do).

Whew! Now that I have that off my chest - I hope you have a don't-download-unless-you-choose-to-day.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories