Archive through September 05, 2002
TV ClubHouse: Archives: The return of The Return of the Gripe Thread (ARCHIVE):
Archive through September 05, 2002
Whit4you | Sunday, August 18, 2002 - 09:46 pm     This thread always cheers me up "I used to feel sorry for myself because I had no shoes..till I met a man who had no feet" you know what i mean |
Rissa | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 10:50 am     I have a gripe, probably pretty minor in comparision but it's driving me insane!! My father-in-law is new to the internet (bout 8 months) and like all newbies he feels COMPELLED to send me every friggin' piece of garbage out there in hyper-space. Well, let's back up.. first of all, there is NOT a free program anywhere that this man has not downloaded, he has crashed his computer three times from messing with the settings and/or overloading his system. Everytime this happens, guess who gets called to fix it, that's right, ME! I am so ticked that I don't even try anymore (first time took 6 hours to find problem and repair).. I just reformat and reload basic windows then lecture him like a 5 year old (fat lotta good it does). He thought it would be oh so kewl to get a cable modem, not because it's faster but because it comes with a free computer camara thingy (where other people can see you typing, big thrills there I guess). He never bothered to A) see if he could afford it (he CAN'T) or B) see if his computer could even use the accessory (it can't without installing a new board) So he gives the camara thingy to me and now complains to other family that I have no gratitude since I haven't hooked it up (I don't want anyone watching me type. RFLOL) He is so proud of all his new internet BUDDIES from all over the world that he sends them pictures via email of MY CHILDREN!!!!!!! When we found that out (he found my 13 year old a email buddy from Israel, sent this *kid* my daughters picture and email) my hubby and I exploded at him, told him that he was so outa bounds it wasn't funny. You could literally see it going in one ear and out the other. In addition I have been online for about ten years now and NEVER even been sent a virus. I have now gotten three in the last 6 months, yup, all from HIM. Never infected me, I just delete everything he sends but it means that I can no longer have piece of mind letting my kids use my computer because they just might open one seeing how it's from grandpa. He, on the other hand has been infected at least twice (I don't think he tells me anymore. RFLOL) which again required reformatting his whole system. Last night he sent me a junk email about how if you are ever alone and having a heart attack, coughing intentionally might just save your life. THis morning he sent me another chain mail warning to be on the lookout for that other chain-mail warning because it's bogus and you shouldn't cough while having a heart attack. I am 37 years old, the only heart attack I am immediately in risk of is the one he is giving me!!!! This latest one about the heart attacks is doubly annoying because we were over at his place just a few days ago and I (and my husband) very nicely but clearly told him that I do not read a single word of anything he sends me because without fail, it's stuff I have gotten over and over for a decade now. I asked him nicely to STOP because when he does on occasion send a personal letter or note, those get deleted too. My husband also told him that his computer is for work and he is not supposed to get ANYTHING personal on it (hubby was sent the heart attack warnings at work too). My brother-in-law gets "come help me" calls too and between the two of us we have reformatted his system about a dozen times (we both live an hour drives away as well). The man is clueless!!!! There is no help, but I just had to unload that. LOL |
Mystery | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 11:02 am     Rissa, I sympathize with you! I used to get 5-6 of those "mail this warning to everyone on your email list" items a day from well-meaning but not terribly sophisticated relatives. Each time I looked up the email on an urban legends site (I use snopes.com but I'm sure there are others) and sent them back the story saying that the warning was false. I also tried to tell them that almost anything (personally, I think it IS anything but I didn't want to say that) that asks you to forward it to everyone you know is just going to be a waste of time. It took some time at first but now half of my relatives use snopes themselves when they get something, and the other half have taken me off their email lists, so it was worth it! One thing I'm wondering is if your father in law has an antivirus program that might alert him when he's receiving, or trying to pass on, something with a virus. I know it's annoying and I'm sorry your time is being wasted. And the "sending your children's pictures to strangers" element is particularly scary. He definitely needs to understand that even if the strangers he sends the pictures to happen to be trustworthy, once he has emailed pictures, there's no telling where they'll end up. Keep your chin up! |
Twiggyish | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 11:19 am     Rissa, I can relate! I get the same type of emails, and the viruses, too. grrrrrrr |
Maesin | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 12:13 pm     Rissa, there should be a some sort of system where if you do something "wrong" with your computer you get shocked through the mouse or keyboad. You have my sympathy. I do want to thank you for the chuckle though, because right now I feel so much better and don't even have to post my gripe anymore! Hope it gets better. I always ask myself "Is it really worth 5-life?" and usually the answer is no. Of course, somedays it takes longer to come to that conclusion!  |
Aria | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 01:30 pm     ROFLOL Rissa! Boy can I relate! My sister-in-law is the computer dummie in my family. She works at her husbands office and about 4 years ago they got a computer. She doesn't even know how to type let alone turn the thing on, LOL! So she recruits me to help her learn. It was okay at first because I insisted that I get paid. The long and short of it is that I ended up putting shortcuts for everything (including documents, lol!) on the desktop because she just couldn't (or wouldn't) figure it out. After the first initial paid lessons, she continuted to call me everytime she wants to print a label, letter or anything! It was driving my crazy! Last summer she had a major problem and I sent her to the guy I order all my computer parts from. He fixed whatever she did and also loaded a new operating system and deleted all her desktop shortcuts! Heeheee! After she got her computer back she calls me and tells me that he broke her computer she can't do anything now and that it was all my fault cuz I sent her to that guy and I better get down there and fix it for her! Needless to say that was the straw that broke the camels back and I told her No! And to take it back to the computer guy. After that, we only exchanged words on a few occasions over the last year until about a month ago. Two days ago she phones me and says she will pay me if will I come and fix her computer because it still doesn't work from when she took it to that guy! ROFLOL! |
Rissa | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 02:38 pm     Ewww, electric shock keyboard. I like it !!!! LOLOL My hubby just blocked his dad's email from his computer and left a phone message informing his dad of why. LOL Probably just means I will get ALL the garbage instead of half but maybe he will get the message. You would think with all the stupid idiot programs he fills that computer with that just ONE would be an anti-virus but nopers. And with the last one {sigh} he just will not listen to what a virus is or how it works. He is adamant that it was a friend of his who sent him "pictures of my party" and no matter what anyone said to him, it was not a virus, and he just had to see those pictures. We reset his computer and as soon as we left the house.. the fool went and reloaded the same email again (unbeknownst to us, he had filled disks up with his files). The best one I have gotten from him was a program that helps you reduce mail from "those annoying friends and family who fill your mail box with useless clutter" RFLOL!!!! I sent him an email back that said "Do you not see the irony in this?" heehee He didn't. |
Azriel | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 09:06 pm     This is about to drive me insane! Has anyone else had any problems lately with freaking popups that will not freaking close?!? This is TOTALLY TICKING ME OFF! I accept that I cannot stop these damn intrusive freaking popups from appearing and I really don't mind them if I can click and close them, but I just get unglued when I can't close it! I'm staring at a www.findanopportunity.com window on my toolbar. I don't know what the hell this website is hawking but I will NEVER look at it or consider buying anything from it because they have freaking pi$$ed me off with their window from hell that I can't close. Tell me HOW can this be a GOOD marketing concept when they tick you off and make you look at it against your will?!? ~deep breath~ okay, after I post this and close my browser to get rid of that freaking window I'll feel all better...till the next time it pops up at least. Thanks for letting me rant |
Maesin | Saturday, August 31, 2002 - 09:42 am     Ok, so this really has nothing to do with the boards, but I am posting it anyway because I know someone out there must feel my pain. Why when there is one college game I want to catch all season, I live in the only town that is not showing it free. Sure I can *order* it for $15 from PPV, but why?!?! Why can't my game be shown on regular TV, just like the rest of them! I can't seem to get the audio up either so I have the play by play up right now and am stuck to my computer for the next three hours. Not that this is any different from watching BB3, but it's just the point! BTW my game is the Mich v. Wash game and my team is losing!!!!!!!!! Thank you all for your time. I am going to go sulk somemore. I do feel better now that I got some of that out! |
Halfunit | Saturday, August 31, 2002 - 10:24 am     Azriel, I share your pain with pop-ups. I use a very small program called No-Ads. I love it, as it lets ME add which pop-ups I don't want (it also comes with the *known* sites - anything FREE in the title!). The program can be found here: http://www.southbaypc.com/NoAds/ It runs in your taskbar. If you should get a pop-up that isn't included in the list, just right click the icon, and select OPEN. The top window shows all the windows you have open. Highlight the one you don't want and select "add to targets". POOF, the popup is gone! I update about once a week. Make sure you select HIDE when you want the program to run in the background. I personally like how it keeps track of the KILLS per session, lol. |
Hillbilly | Saturday, August 31, 2002 - 10:50 am     Azriel...sometimes when you get a pop-up like that, try RIGHT clicking on the button in the task bar that corresponds to that window and choosing the CLOSE option. Maybe that will work for you too. |
Hillbilly | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 01:19 pm     I have a complaint...crickets. I don't know why but this year they have started home invasion maneuvers and are driving me crazy. |
Wargod | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 01:49 pm     Adelphia. Everything about adelphia makes me want to gripe. I've been having problems with their billing (they overcharge, they don't send bills out each month!!!) and when I called to find out why I got a disconnect notice last Friday (when bill had been paid two weeks ago!) and for 3 months worth of cable, the woman on the phone told me our service had been disconnected a week ago Monday. As soon as she said that I forgot the reason I called in the first place! I very calmly (not!) explained that we have been watching cable for the past week, so no disconnection. She went and checked, came back and told me the date and time for disconnection (week ago Monday between 12:15 and 12:25). To which I repeated again, that we have been watching cable ALL WEEK LONG! She was then kind enough to say "well, if you've got cable, you're not getting it through us," (they're the only cable company I know of around here!) before she politely HUNG UP ON ME!!! To top it off, I'm still not sure why I got the disconnect notice two weeks after they cashed my check, nor why I'm being charged for 3 months, nor why they think I am now disconnected!!! Hillbilly, don't crickets eat other critters....like spiders and such? Or they're supposed to be good luck or something? |
Hillbilly | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 01:54 pm     Wargod...I don't know if they eat other bugs or not but just try sleeping with two of them under a piece of furniture where you can't reach them and they both chirp all night long!... |
Wargod | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 02:10 pm     Ok, that would be annoying! |
Hillbilly | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 02:14 pm     I wonder if your Adelphia problems are exacerbated by their financial problems. They have probably lost key employees and the new ones aren't quite up to speed or you have those who are left with double and triple the workload. |
Wargod | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 02:24 pm     I've been griping about adelphia for awhile, lol. We get basic cable...no movie channels, don't order pay per view stuff....don't even have a box or their remote. Supposed to be around 30 some odd bucks a month...never has been. I've never had a two months where I pay the same amount. One month was 70 bucks, next was 40 something. And when I got to talking to people around town about this, I discovered that while we get the same stuff, no one ever pays the same amount as anyone else, LOL. Ah well, hubby is talking about satellite, I'm talking bunny ears, LOL. I'll keep sending them my checks....and soon as hubby and I decide what we want to do, I'll call adelphia back and tell them what they can do with their service. |
Mystery | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 02:27 pm     Wargod, we have a satellite dish and love it! You can watch BB three hours earlier in California! |
Wargod | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 02:33 pm     Mysery, you just did what my hubby couldn't do! Where do I sign up for satellite? I have heard that satellite is not much more than cable....and I don't believe I've heard anyone complain about their satellite or have probs with the service like I tend to have. |
Mystery | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 02:43 pm     Lol Wargod! You have two choices, Direct TV and the Dish Network. We've had Dish Network for about 4 years; when we got it, Direct TV did not have the option of getting east coast channels (but I think they do, now). It's so great to see Letterman at 8:30! However, if hubby could use some persuasion (oh wait, it was his idea) Direct TV is the one that has the option where you can pay for extra NFL games. Dish is trying to get Direct TV's exclusive NFL contract broken but no luck so far. We pay about $55 a month for Dish with the full programming and 3 movie channel packages (around 15 movie channels I would guess), which is still cheaper than our cable bill was. Even without the NFL package we still get more sports options since the NYC stations rarely show the same games as we get in CA. No problems ever with service or reception. I'm not sure how much installation would be; we signed up for a year in advance and they installed it free. Dish and Direct TV are planning to merge, so if that goes through there will of course be no difference in their packaging. It might be worth it to just take whichever one is offering a better deal right now. Last night we had a neighbor over watching something but I could have seen American Idol live and then BB taped, or the other way around, if she hadn't been here. It's way cool. |
Wargod | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 03:34 pm     That is just about the price we're paying for cable...with no movie channels. Like I said, its supposed to be around 30 bucks a month....but I've never seen a bill that low...sigh. |
Loppes | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 04:03 pm     Hillybilly, I heard somewhere when the crickets make noise they are mating. Sounds like there's a whole cricket group orgy goin on at your place. Lon |
Mystery | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 04:08 pm     Wargod, who are those cute kids in the picture in your profile page? |
Flyonthwall | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 04:10 pm     Wargod, can you e-mail me? I tried to use the one in your profile but it came back to me. Mine is in my profile. it's Mickeyluvrtigger2@hotmail.com Thanks, FLy |
Car54 | Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 04:18 pm     I have never complained here before. I have a request. If you are gonna start a new thread, could you spell the words in the title right? Thanks. Driving me crazy. I feel better now. |
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