You know those people that seem oblivious to their surroundings when walking around? The ones that tend to be most often messing with their phones, or sometimes lost in a book? The ones who will usually walk in the middle of a sidewalk or corridor, sometimes swaying from side to side, usually walking too slowly for the crowd?
I propose a new word to call these people: ZOMOBI. A contraction of “zombie” and “mobile”, zomobi describes how they're most often brainlessly moving ahead, often with a mobile device in their hands. As a bonus point, it works in both the languages I use the most: English and French.
So, when you're out and about, don't be a zomobi: pay attention to what's going on around you!
– Doctacosa
I’ve been dealing with people and websites from several countries recently, and there’s something that many groups handle differently: date formats. Depending of who or what I’m communicating with, today’s date might be 7/9/2015, 9-7-2015, 2015-07-09, July 9, 2015, or even 7/9/15. It’s complicated and error-prone, especially if you don’t realize how a given person has chosen to write down said date.
As such, can I propose that everyone should use 2015-07-09? It’s simple, obvious, and placing the year first avoids the issue where you don’t know if 07/09/2015 was written in the American format (9th of July) or in the European format (7th of September). Additionally, it keeps a logical progression if you place a time next to it: 2015-07-09 12:34:56 goes from the largest unit (the unit) to the smallest one (seconds). There’s also no excuse at this point not to always write the year using four digits.
As an added bonus, if you name several computer files in this format, they’ll automatically be sorted from oldest to latest, and you can even flip the display order with a click or two. It’s convenient and simpler for everyone!
#date #musings #standards #iso8601
– Doctacosa
For a while now, with the rise of smart watches, I’ve seen several people claiming that those who “still” wear a watch are too lazy to simply get their phones out of their pockets. That’s simply not the case.
I wear a watch on my wrist. I enjoy my watch. The right models on the right people can be quite stylish, and I like how they look. It’s also more convenient when I actually want to know the time.
The funny thing is, wristwatches became popular in the early 20th century as people were tired of having to fish in their coats to find their pocket watch. The transition from one to the other was quick, and so very few people still use pocket watches nowadays.
If you call me weird for wearing a watch, then I totally feel justified in calling you archaic for needing to pull a device from your pocket only to tell the time.
– Doctacosa
I think I figured out part of my frustration with online gaming as a whole: I love the concept, it usually works great, and you can lose yourself in an alternate universe for hours… and yet, it often just doesn’t work for me. Either the game is broken in some way, or lags too much; either my friends and I can never get online at the same time, leading to unfulfilled promises; or the game grows stale too quickly and others lose interest while I still want to keep going.
I wish I could enjoy multiplayer game so much more. The potential is there, but the problems or availability of the players quickly add up to something that makes it unfun.
– Doctacosa
How an evening at home goes when I realize I don’t have an Internet connection:
I’ll go check my forums…
… no connection, huh? Weird. Oh well, it’ll probably be back soon. I’ll go read my e-mails in the meanti…
I’m stupid, that won’t work either. Guess I’ll go check the news on their webs…
Argh, of course that won’t work. Well, I’ve been meaning to watch that TV show on Netflix, so I ca…
No, won’t work either. Hey, did I have any e-mails…
… screw this, I’m going to eat.
^ That was me last night.
– Doctacosa
I hate courier companies and their lack of logic.
I have a typical work schedule: Monday to Friday, mostly from 9h to 18h. They have their typical delivery schedules: Monday to Friday, from 9h to 17h.
This means that, when I order stuff online, I can never be home to get one of their deliveries. Every time I need to call them, explain the situation, and get my package held up at their facility so I can go pick it up. If I’m lucky, I can do that from 8h to 20h, Monday to Friday.
The thing is, half the time when I call, they sound surprised that I have no one at home to receive their goodies. I’m sorry, but I live alone, there’s no one here when I’m out. Even if I had a girlfriend living here, odds are that she would be working a similar schedule to mine and wouldn’t be available either. This isn’t the 50’s anymore, with a housewife taking care of chores and shopping during daytime.
I could stay at home to answer the door if I had a rough idea of when they’d be dropping by. With the advanced logistics and tracking possible in 2013, they could at least say if the delivery would be in the morning or the afternoon. In that case, I could skip a half-day of work and take care of that, but I can’t. I need to stay home ALL day if I want to handle this properly. An alternative, possible with modern technology, would be to send me a text message an hour or two before the approximate visit time. That way would allow be to leave work, get a box, then head back. Of course, none of this is offered at this time.
One thing that infuriates me even more is the pick-up locations: all the courier companies have exactly one spot each where I can go claim my box. That’s at their respective warehouses, all located near the airport in an industrial zone, at least 20-30 minutes from here by car when accounting for the local traffic. None of them have a single convenient downtown location, which I could easily hit on my way to or from work. None of them have a spot easily reachable by public transit either. It always has to be done by car.
Screw you UPS, Purolator, DHL and FedEx. I know that I’m technically not your customer, it’s whoever sent the package. Still, screw you for your lack of decent options.
Oh, and UPS? The staff at your pick-up location all look like they’re ready to jump down a bridge. Acknowledging me with a polite “hello” would be a great start.
– Doctacosa
An article catched my eye the other day: Google Begins Pratically Begging You to Use Your Real Name on YouTube
Google recently added to YouTube a new “feature”: when you try to post a comment (and you aren't already using your real name through Google+), you'll be prompted to switch to using your full name instead of whatever nickname you picked when you registered. While they do their best to convince you to switch, you're still free to carry on as before. That is, for the time being. How long before they decide that this is mandatory?
The point of this move is probably to try and improve the quality of the comments on the site: by having real names displayed next to each message, some people might be more careful before starting to insult others for no valid reasons. Even yet, studies tend to show that this doesn't have any real effect.
I'm annoyed by this trend seen everywhere. Either it's real-name policies being put into place, or it's commenting systems are being torn apart and replaced by a silly Facebook posting gizmo (more of my thoughts on that here). I've been using the nickname “Dr. Cossack” for over ten years now. As of a year-and-a-half ago, I started using “Doctacosa” outside of the Mega Man fandom as something more personal, without any ties to gaming or existing people and/or characters. This is me. It's my Internet front.
I'm not hiding my real name. Anyone who's even remotely curious to know it can find it very easily. However, since the early rise of the BBS (then later the World Wide Web), we've all been able to select whatever name we want to represent ourselves online. I don't feel like this has been a major issue in the past, and it still isn't today. As such, why are so many media groups pushing for real-name policies, when it's as easy as before to use a fake-yet-realistic name?
– Doctacosa
In Canada, we decided to move over to the metric system in the seventies, before I was born. This includes units for distances, weights, temperatures and most other measurements. That’s a good thing, as the units make a lot more sense (decimal system!) and are widely used by almost all other countries in the world.
We’re still using the imperial system in some places, sometimes by force of habit (cooking temperatures), and often because of the big noisy neighbor (the United States) still running on the old system. That can be annoying at times, but we all manage without much trouble, and I’m confident that the old units will gradually be phased out in most domains.
Can we, however, finally agree to use the same units when comparing similar items? I was doing some grocery shopping yesterday, and comparing the prices on carrots was silly: the small bag was identified as the 340 g pack, while the large one was at 2 lb. One metric, and imperial, and that’s for the same brand! The same went with potatoes, as some bags were marked as 5 lb while others were 5 kg. I wish we could go past this nonsense and standardize on metric already.
We’re in 2012, this shouldn’t even need to be said anymore.
– Doctacosa
This is something that keeps bugging me.
When you live alone, and work on a standard day schedule from Monday to Friday, how are you supposed to get your deliveries?
Pretty much everytime I’m set to receive a shipment at home, mostly when I order something online, I’m at work. UPS will leave a notice that they were at the door and I didn’t answer, while Purolator will call me once their truck gets back to their depot with my box. Both the UPS and Purolator support staff, on the phone, seem surprised that there isn’t anyone home to receive a package. Why would that be so unusual?!
Many people live by themselves, and are away to work during the day. Couples nowadays tend to go to work on similar schedules too, leaving the home empty. We’re no longer in the pattern of 50 years ago, with an housewife being present to take care of cleaning/cooking/whatever and possibly receive deliveries! If I’m the unusual case, as the couriers seem to think, how do others deal with this?
Shipping at work is not an option, as my employer doesn’t allow that. My parents tend to be at home during the day, but they’re a bit too far away to make this convenient. My friends follow a schedule similar to my own, so they aren’t available either. So, what gives?
– Doctacosa