Rant 😤

I was listening to the latest @atpfm podcast, about the dust up between Apple / Creators / Patreon and I’m in agreement with the hosts: it’s just yuck. I love their hardware but with the focus on squeezing more revenue out small devs / creators, it’s getting harder to justify giving Apple money.

Our old one kicked the bucket, so yesterday I bought a new lawnmower…and today, when I opened it up, the mower came out but one of the wheels didn’t. 😮‍💨 I’m sure I could have filled out a bunch of paperwork to get a new wheel and attachment but honestly, I was so pissed, I just took it back. 🫠

Forcing me to give you my phone number to buy something online when you already have my email address means I will not be buying from you. 😱😤🤬

My father just bought a Mac with no input from me and set it up without my help…and now can’t remember the password; trying to remotely help him was painfully frustrating. 😮‍💨 Oh the joys of being tech support. 🤣

Irony: he has a computer science degree and used to write SQL for a living. 🤣

Does anyone out there know how to scrub your number from all of the political texting lists? …asking for a friend… 😮‍💨

Someone once said “hell is other people." I would like to modify that: hell is Costco on a Saturday afternoon.

I’m so damn sick of unsolicited text messages about politics and upcoming elections. Yes, I’m going to show up and vote…you know that already so why are you bothering me with this crap?! 😱😡🤬

Dear Microsoft,
If you’re going to override default behavior on a Mac in Teams (like taking away the spell-check functionality), please make sure “your version” works. I find it silly I have to type out message in notes to paste into Teams.

KThxBye

I will never again get a phone directly through my carrier, even if it’s significantly cheaper. We’re up in Canada 🇨🇦 on vacation and my phone is locked…I can’t even add a secondary eSIM for cheaper mobile data. 😮‍💨😱

Working on my taxes this afternoon and wanted to double-check there were no documents for an old retirement account. It’s nice to know some things never change: Empower Retirement is still an awful company with awful tech. 🤣

Is it just me or is advertising in podcasts just getting…awful? I just listened to five minutes of “sales stuff” and…yuck (it was he same commercial, repeated three times). I’m all for paying for podcasts but some of them, there just isn’t a way to avoid the advertising.

You know it’s bad when the representative from the Insurance company tells you to try GoodRX instead of using your own bloody insurance. Ah, healthcare in America. 😱🤬

(The generic version is out of stock and back-ordered everywhere in the City and the name-brand has a 110% markup.)

Can’t get a 90 day supply of mediation filled b/c of an unspecified error in the computer system my mail-order pharmacy uses (they wouldn’t confirm if the big cyber-hack was the cause), so I have to use a local one but they don’t do 90 day supplies. 😱😡 #HealthcareInAmerica #FirstWorldProblem

It’s the very definition of a first world problem but I’m unable to rent / reserve skis for an upcoming vacation because someone didn’t check to see if the latest deploy didn’t contain breaking javascript changes on the site. 🤣😱😭 #ScreamsIntoTheVoid

🔗 HP CEO evokes James Bond-style hack via ink cartridges

It's clear that HP's tactics are meant to coax HP printer owners into committing to HP ink, which helps the company drive recurring revenue and makes up for money lost when the printers are sold.

This is why I will never again buy an HP printer; claiming you're _"protecting"_ consumers from viruses when in reality, you're protecting your bottom line...at least have the fortitude to own up to your financial priorities greed.

Kinda amazed and dismayed at Nintendo right now: lately, every time I try to sign into their store to buy a game, the login process crashes / fails. Do they not want my money…?! 🎮

Tried out the Copilot app but this isn’t going to work for me. I want to love it (it’s so pretty) but it’s missing fundamental features I’ve seen / used in other app (bulk-import, transaction renaming rules, the ability to import Apple Savings transactions). 😭

I always find it ridiculous companies (in this case a gym) make it so easy to sign up for services but if you want to cancel your membership, you have to go do it in person. 🤯 (The backstory: I want to move to a cheaper gym.)

Dear Apple
I’m pretty darn sure you know that I keep marking emails with “Payment Completed” as spam, esp when they contain image attachments and ask me to contact the support team (with a very odd URL) if I have concerns. Perhaps you could just block them moving forward?

Thank you,
Unhappy Geek

Follow-Up (Part 2): I was trying to listen to some Holiday music this morning, only to realize none of my Sonos speakers worked with AirPlay. After digging online, it turns out the only way to get a Sonos speaker back into HomeKit after the home is deleted is to factory reset the Sonos. 😱😅