Little things that annoy you

[NorthernLite]

Grr

The radio station I work for is changing format. The are going from top forty popish country to more hard core country and classic rock. They were supposed to do this last January. Then in February. Then March etc. They decided to skip a summer change over and go at the the first of September. Changed their mind on that and decided Sept 21 would be the best day. They are definitely going this Friday.

This means that I have to be here in High Level and can't accompany my wife south when she goes to her big scrapbooking event. I didn't plan on going scrapbooking. I was going to go to the Edmonton Comic Expo. Now I can't go which means I am going to miss meeting Matt Smith and David Tennant.

Grr

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by Sue

To them me not being interested in Dr Who is on the same level as someone else confessing to not ever having read Harry Potter or eating an orange. Inconceivable!

Okay, I have eaten an orange (more than one, in fact). I've even read the first three HP books. I stopped there because, frankly, I didn't think the writing was that good, and I really hated the lack of ambiguity in any of the characters (please don't tell me how she improved, or that the characters honestly are ambiguous--that train has left the station).

Nor have I seen a single episode of Doctor Who in any incarnation. I'm about as likely to watch it as I am to finish reading the HP series.

Seaboe

[Gutter Monkey]

I get the impression that Doctor Who didn't used to be* very that popular in North America so it's really not all that surprising for anyone outside of the UK or Australia to not have seen it.

I wonder how many people in the UK have never seen Star Trek?



*May have changed for new viewers since 2005

[WildaBeast]

Originally Posted by Dasla

But at least they are showing Peter Capaldi's finale episode which I missed. Mum wanted to watch the tennis. I was sort of upset but thought they would repeat it. Well at least I thought they wouldn't wait 9 months to repeat it.

In a related problem, I too missed "Twice Upon a Time". I'd kind of like to watch it before the new season starts, just for continuity's sake (it feels a bit jarring to me to have a new Doctor without seeing the previous one regenerate). My cable company has all of last season's episodes available to stream on their website, but not "Twice Upon a Time", I guess because it was a Christmas special and not part of the regular season. So now should I hope that BBC America will rerun it, and it will be available to watch on demand (I hardly ever watch TV shows when they air anymore, and I suspect I would be available to watch it when it airs if they do in fact rerun it) or if I should just bite the bullet and buy the episode on iTunes or similar.

[Hans Off]

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

I wonder how many people in the UK have never seen Star Trek?

Probably a smaller proportion than Americans not seeing Dr Who.

Until the mid nineties, Star Trek was shown on free to air BBC television, up to and including season 3 of The Next Generation and the first few seasons of DS9 and Voyager were on BBC (and I think the first season of Enterprise) before being bought out by Sky TV (satellite provider).

[RichardM]

Las Cruces is a reasonably sized city of 100,000 with the county having a total population of 200,000. However, we are in a valley. There are essentially only 2 roads out of town north and south, 1 each east and west and you have to go 70 miles north to get to the road going east. In the city, there are only 6 main roads that go from the east side where I live to downtown. One of those is 4 miles north of me. Three more of those are 2, 3 and 4 miles south. The 2 easiest to get to and most traveled roads are down to 1 lane where they cross Valley Road, the main north-south road that isn't the freeway. It took me 27 minutes to go 6 miles to the library downtown this afternoon. ARRRG!!!! I moved here partly to get away from traffic.

[Crius of CoH]

I'm going to have to subscribe to DC Universe to watch season 3 of Young Justice: Outsiders (unless I can access it through Amazon Prime for free... maybe? Unclear and doubtful). On the up side (such as it is), DCU went full live 3 days ago, and some of the slated programming looks... interesting, at least. Stargirl? Swamp Thing? Doom Patrol? Hmmm.

[Beejtronic]

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

I get the impression that Doctor Who didn't used to be* very that popular in North America so it's really not all that surprising for anyone outside of the UK or Australia to not have seen it.

Definitely not. When I started watching it when I lived in the UK in 2007, no one back home had ever heard of it. (And I am by no means an "old school" viewer!) Then, for some reason it became super popular in the Matt Smith era.

So most of the people balking that Sue has never seen it probably didn't even know it existed prior to 2010 or so.

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by NorthernLite

The radio station I work for is changing format. The are going from top forty popish country ...

"Popish country"? Is that like Danny Boy or God Save Ireland?

[DawnStorm]

Staying on the radio theme: why does AM radio continue to exist? Good luck trying to listen to an AM station in your car as you run errands. Way too much interference from buildings, antennas, buildings with antennas, etc. as well as too much static in general.
I know there's only so much space on the FM dial, but I wish the FCC would either fix/improve the AM band or get rid of it completely (if possible).

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by Beejtronic

Definitely not. When I started watching it when I lived in the UK in 2007, no one back home had ever heard of it.

You don't run around with the right people, Beejtronic.

I knew about Doctor Who when Tom Baker guest starred on Remington Steele, and that was 1984. I probably learned about it when I started getting heavily involved in SF Fandom, which was 1979.

LLTAM: my Other Board is having issues with FireFox that make the board appear in outline format, which in turn makes it hard to ID the new posts.

Seaboe

[iskinner]

DawnStorm: My completely unfounded and in no way professionally informed opinion/recollection is that AM works better in rural and unpopulated areas where larger regions can be covered for less wattage then FM requires.

[Darth Credence]

Originally Posted by Crius of CoH

I'm going to have to subscribe to DC Universe to watch season 3 of Young Justice: Outsiders (unless I can access it through Amazon Prime for free... maybe? Unclear and doubtful). On the up side (such as it is), DCU went full live 3 days ago, and some of the slated programming looks... interesting, at least. Stargirl? Swamp Thing? Doom Patrol? Hmmm.

I bought it, for the comics. I was hoping it would be the equivalent of Marvel unlimited for comics, because that is a good service with a whole lot of stuff to read. They were giving three months free with a one year subscription, which means I have it until Christmas 2019 for $75.
Unfortunately, the comic selection does not seem as good as I had hoped. There is enough that I have some comics to read, but come on guys. Rebirth started over 2 years ago. All of the New 52 era should be available to subscribers, and everything from before that should absolutely be available. It's not even close. They say all DC should be available for purchase soon, and more will be free then, but all DC has been available on Comixology for a while now, so I don't see the hold up.
And finally, I'm highly annoyed by what they allow for streaming. No consoles have the app. I knew that before, but I thought I was OK with my Fire stick. Oh no - it is only a Fire TV that can run it, not a Fire stick. So to watch shows, until they get around to a console app, I have to watch on a computer or buy equipment I don't need.
This was not ready for launch, but they had to make it by "Batman Day", whatever that is.

Originally Posted by Beejtronic

Definitely not. When I started watching it when I lived in the UK in 2007, no one back home had ever heard of it. (And I am by no means an "old school" viewer!) Then, for some reason it became super popular in the Matt Smith era.

So most of the people balking that Sue has never seen it probably didn't even know it existed prior to 2010 or so.

It was just new Who in general that raised the popularity. Eccleston's run was short and got it back on the map, and then Tennant had a long, great run. According to the ratings I could find, combining live viewing and recorded and delayed, the series peaked in Tennant's last year. Smith topped Tennant's low in his first year, but the ratings have slowly dropped since, then kind of quickly under Capaldi.

[Sue]

How times change! I am old enough to remember when Am radio ruled the waves and was around for the transition to FM which IIRC happened in my high school years. Certainly by university only parents and other old people were listening to AM stations .

[GenYus234]

Originally Posted by Darth Credence

This was not ready for launch, but they had to make it by "Batman Day", whatever that is.

November 12th, 2018.

[Sue]

One of my neighbours just starting selling Amway. I thought her selling Tupperware and Avon was bad. This is worse.

[Gutter Monkey]

A friend of mine is getting a LOT of death threats online for a tweet they made about Bert & Ernie being gay. Frank Oz replied to the tweet which suddenly shoved it into the national spotlight and the chuds leapt on it.

(They're just trolling but I guess death threats still aren't a LITTLE thing that annoys us)

[Errata]

Get in an elevator, just as it's about to close, someone presses the up button, and it opens again. Fine. It opens, ignores the close door button, and takes about 10 seconds to start to close again. Then just before it finishes closing, someone jogs up and sticks their hand in the door to open it again. Elevator goes up to the top floor. Everyone gets off. Except that last guy, who presses the button for the basement. Guess he was just really desperate to go along for the ride.

[Roadsterboy]

LTTAM: I recently sold off some old car parts, and made a nice chunk of change on it. I also had an eye exam coming up. Naturally I needed new glasses, and because I am now an old person* with old person health issues, I had to get the fancy lenses with the reading thing and the computer thing, which jacked up the price of the glasses to the point where you can see where this is going. I bought myself an ice cold Coca-Cola on the drive home, and that was it.

(Should I change my screen name to "Oldsterboy" or "Roadsterold"?)

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

I get the impression that Doctor Who didn't used to be* very that popular in North America

Prior to the re-boot (the Christopher Eccleston series), Who was very much a niche series here because it was so hard to find. It was pretty much limited to being shown on PBS stations, and since those have differing programming depending on where you live, not everyone would have easy access to it. My cousin, who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, has been a Whovian since the early 80's, because her local PBS station would show marathons of all the older series (I wouldn't be surprised if she still has video tapes of them kicking around). Other than the rare times I was there while it was on, I didn't see a single episode till sometime in the Tennant era, because I started occasionally watching it on BBCA.

[DrRocket]

LTTAM: Compressed air at gas stations you have to pay for.

The first to do this in our area were the Super America stations. It started out as a quarter, then quickly went up to 50 cents. After getting a lot of complaints, they put a sign next to the rattle can compressor declaring a certain percentage of the money went to "X" charity. Soon, seeing that SA had pulled it off, other brand gas stations started taking advantage of the new revenue stream.

On a recent trip to Dayton Ohio, I paid $1.50 for air! A buck freakin' fifty!!!

Grrr.

Oh, and it didn't take long for the SA stations to drop the charity pretense. They keep all of the money now.

I wrote to my state and federal representatives saying that since we're constantly being lectured about keeping tires at proper inflation levels, they ought to mandate free air. I got polite form letters back thanking my for my "interesting idea" and a (not very) sincere promise to look into the situation.


ETA: In this area at least, all of the Holiday stations I patronize still provide free air for your tires. That fact is the primary reason I patronize them almost exclusively.