Things that irritate you

[Halgar]

The death of old cars will be parts availability and someone capable of working on them. Sure, there's a strong contingent of car enthusiasts that will always work on their own vehicles, but folks like me, capable, but I don't want to and shouldn't have to. And, I shouldn't have to buy a new car every 2 to 5 years to avoid the service bay, which is rapidly where the industry is going, because vehicle repair ain't cheap and it ain't easy finding a capable or honest shop. I've been to three different shops in 4 years, 4 shops if you include the original shop that I'd been going to for over 20 years and left because their quality went in the toilet and they were charging for stuff they didn't do.

One of these days I'll probably post my rant on the latest shop's inability to do what was asked of them and how much it cost me for them to do virtually nothing.

[Phin]

Seeing this:

[1911Colt]

[juicedcoupe]

I just received this. It expired two days ago.

[TRX-1-3]

I just received this. It expired two days ago.

Screenshot_20240322_094212_Email.jpg

Reminds me of this old promise

[Halgar]

That's funny, I just saw that sign yesterday at the brew supply shop!

[1911Colt]

Modern America's idea of "justice" irritates me. The city of Oakland can't control the criminals, so they punish the victim

[juicedcoupe]

Modern America's idea of "justice" irritates me. The city of Oakland can't control the criminals, so they punish the victim

If that is what the fine is, then the graffiti should qualify as felony vandalism. And as such, it should be considered evidence until the investigation is done.

Just saying.

But it is in California.

[Lowgear]

The Spectrum cable company. I've been dealing with their crap for months now.

For something like two months we were getting letters that all their cable boxes were going to stop working by the end of March. The monthly cost of the new boxes was also going to go up considerably. With having 5 TVs, the time and effort involved for me to replace all the existing boxes with new ones was going to be a huge pain. If I was going to be forced to do it, I would take the opportunity to ditch 4 of the cables boxes, and replace them with Roku streaming devices instead. I had to go with Roku as they were the only real choice that supported the Spectrum app.

I've done it all over a period of the last 5 weeks but not without a hitch. As a result, I ended up having to also install a new wireless network as well. One of the TVs is located in a separate shed/building on the property. The signal strength of my existing 10 year old ASUS router barely reached down to it, and thus wasn't capable of allowing the Roku device to work consistently. It was time for a new router anyway due to its age, and now having 13+ wireless devices that have to connect to it. I went with a TP-Link Archer AX6000 which helped the problem. Now instead of a poor signal, it's showing a fair signal. If that ends up not being good enough, I also have a wireless repeater that can strengthen the signal further.

The replacement cable boxes from spectrum didn't show up until a week before the old ones were set to stop working. I hooked up the only one we were going to use, but couldn't get the included remote to work with it. Come to find out it was supposed to come already semi-paired to the cable box but wasn't. Looking it up online, I found there was a sequence of button presses that would get it communicating with the box so I could finish pairing it. After doing that, you had to log into your spectrum account to activate the new box. It wouldn't let me do that due to it not deactivating the old one. I had to spend 20 minutes on a live chat with them so they could do it on their end.

The new cable box from them is a joke. You can no longer block/skip channels you don't want or aren't subscribed to, and you can't hold the channel button down to quickly move through the channels. The remote is completely awful as well. It's entirely black, arranged poorly, and the entire thing is coated in a silicone like material. The cable box itself is a grey area between a regular cable box, and a streaming device. As a matter of fact, they no longer even supply cable boxes to new customers. You either rent or buy their Xumo streaming device or provide your own.

Now there's 7 cables boxes sitting in the basement that all have to be returned, and I'm sure they'll mess that up.

The good news is I love the Roku. I wasn't sure about it at first but being able to watch whatever I want whenever I want to is magical. I'm currently on a mission to watch every episode of the original Twilight Zone that was made.

[Frankentruck]

Spectrum is terrible, agreed. We threatened to drop their cable service altogether and they ended up basically giving it to us free for a year just as the streaming app with no cable boxes anymore. The current preferred app on our main Roku is Pluto. No need to login on it (occasionally it asks) and it has a lot of older shows on their own continuously running channels. Godzilla channel

[Lowgear]

Yeah right now I have the following main apps on all our Rokus...

Spectrum
Roku Channel
Tubi
Pluto TV
Freevee
Filmrise
Plex
Peacock (Paid)
Paramount+ (Paid)
Netflix (Paid)
Apple TV+ (Paid)
Prime Video (Included with Amazon Prime)
Disney+ (Included with Spectrum)

We may eventually get Discovery+ for the MotorTrend streaming service which has now been combined into it.

[morrisey0]

We may eventually get Discovery+ for the MotorTrend streaming service which has now been combined into it.

I had MT up until they just got absorbed. I was down to maybe 2-3 shows I was actually watching on it, and none that I really felt like I needed to watch. I watch more auto shows on YT for free.

[Lowgear]

I know what you mean. It would be for my elderly father if he's interested as the bulk of his TV watching comprises of the MotorTrend channel. I wouldn't say I watch a lot of TV myself as I usually don't have the time to fit it in. I religiously watch two shows that are live every week, and occasionally get in bed to watch it for a few hours. That's why I love on demand so much as it puts the content on my schedule now.

[1911Colt]

I'm currently on a mission to watch every episode of the original Twilight Zone that was made.

Tubi and Pluto are great for that sort of viewing.

[Lowgear]

I like how you can search for what you want to watch, and it shows you which apps offer it. The other night I started watching a movie, and the audio was out of sync. I chose to watch it through another app, and all was good.


Now getting back on track... It irritates me how eBay now lets sellers send you offers for auctions you merely glanced at. I hate going to my account, and seeing a big list of offers for items I have no interest in.