Not really a peeve, but a curiosity, an amusement, for those of us who see the absurdities and entertainment in human life. In the manner of Chuck Shephard’s “News of the Weird”.
For example, in job interviews there are lots of subtle hints about the organizational culture, or at least experiences of the organization - and sometimes revelations about the job candidate - in the questions asked.
“How do you feel about fist fighting as a problem resolution technique?”
“What do you know about the sovereign citizen movement and how do you consider yourself relative to that philosophy?” - that kind of thing
Our northern neighbors up in Lava Hot Springs have apparently run into demographic issues where the elementary school was proposed to be closed, with dwindling numbers of students bussed off somewhere else.
To the rescue came a charter school, which became Lava Hot Springs Academy, at the historic location where the big cats that escaped from Ligertown in search of food were sizing up the kids on the playground, back in the 90s.
Public participation must be conducted in person. [“No wrecking our meeting remotely”]
Total time allotted for public comment will not exceed 15 minutes.
Each speaker will be limited to 3 minutes.
Public comment will be taken on matters scheduled on the agenda for that meeting.
.
.
Because of the diversity of issues, members of the board will not respond to a public comment. Instead, issues may be recorded and referred to the proper staff person for follow-up.
The chair may interrupt or terminate an individual’s statement when it is too lengthy, personally directed, abusive, obscene, repetitive or irrelevant.
My take - not sure who was behind setting up a charter school in Lava Hot Springs, but it seems to me they may not have fully appreciated the local culture… from which Ligertown emerged.
Unrelated to the category, but a funny story. My mother’s sister lived in Pooghkeepsie, NY and was listening to the Vassar student radio station reporting the Ligertown story. The young reporter reading the news made the statement that, “Authorities were searching for a hag-whar in the mountains near Poke-a-tay-yo.
Hey, out west everything was originally a Spanish word, right?
I love when I have these instances where I’m like, “How did I not hear about this thing happening in my relative back yard…” and then looking at the date and realizing it falls into my LDS-induced two-year pop culture hole, aka a mission. It is a weird thing that happens more and more infrequently, but something that everyone but you seems to know about. Ligertown is one of those, but I am howling laughing at how Idaho that whole story really is, reading about it 31 years later.
AND, yes, I love the vaguely specific questions of an interview. It reminds me of an interview I had once, a few decades back, where I was getting bombarded by such questions, including an animated guy who was trying to draw on a piece of paper without drawing out specifically what happened and asking me how I would respond to the three boxes he was trying to draw. I finally said, “It appears I am replacing a person who created some real issues; my only assurance I can offer you is that it sounds like this person and I are two very different personalities.”
That seemed to calm things.
But at the end, the same animated guy asked me another ridiculous question, “Why should we hire you over all the other candidates?” Not knowing who the other candidates were and finding these questions to be silly, I just said, “Because I’m the best looking.” The group of interviewers burst out in laughter; the guy asking the question was clearly angry at my response, and I thought I tanked the interview.
To my surprise, I got the job - and was told later that the group LOVED that I put that guy in his place. Turned out that the person I was replacing was not the only part of the problem, that the animated guy was an equal part, and if I couldn’t get rattled by him, that would solve the problem.
That might be the only instance where being a smart-mouth was a benefit for me.
Our little neighborhood just got a notice taped to our door today that told use we won’t have access to the only street in or out of the subdivision tomorrow due to slurry seal work on that street. The work could start anytime between 7:00am and 5:00 pm and it takes six hours to cure, so it’s possible we wouldn’t be able to get our cars back home until after 11:00 pm. When you count other side streets affected there’s probably 75 or so homes that have to park on a street or in a park parking lot all day tomorrow that are a minimum of 1/4 mile away.
WTF kind of planning and notice is this? My only solice is knowing that the mayor is one of those who is affected as well. Pretty big miss by her road maintenance folks on a smarter plan.
I use my Mastercard quite a bit (to get the cash back) but religiously pay off the balance every month. This past month we had a couple of rather large purchases, so the balance was significantly higher than usual.
Bank of America changed the UI for their online payment confirmation screen on their website a couple weeks ago. I did set up a payment that was supposed to come out last Friday (even saved a screenshot) but it hadn’t come out of my account as of this morning. Thought that was weird, so I went in and double-checked this morning.
Turns out that they added a separate confirmation button that you have to click to finalize your payment. So while I entered the payment, I didn’t hit the new “FINALIZE AND SEND” button so it never happened. Not clicking that button cost me over $100 in late fees and interest payments.
And I hate software developers that constantly fail to create simple, intuitive, functional, user interfaces, or that once they have something that meets that criteria, leave them the ■■■■ alone!
Edit to say - sorry for the angry post, but I recently inadvertently updated (by about 5 levels) my iPhone, and the UI changes were so dramatic, that I don’t know what device I’m using anymore, and EVERYTHING is harder to use by a LOT. I’ve read a lot online on a variety of places and noone has anything good to day about it.
There is a website I use to create a document that accompanies our outgoing mail so that the mailroom can scan a barcode and charge our office for postage.
The peeve comes from the fact that the site has a left nav that collapses down to icons and you have to hover over to expand it to click on the bigger icon needed to get to the form to fill out. The sliding action serves NO USEFUL PURPOSE WHATSOEVER other than to look pretty. It doesn’t save any page real estate as there is plenty of empty white space. And it doesn’t even make the page look balanced. I think some idiot FED programmer decided the page sliding looks cool or something. It is just annoying to have an additional unneeded action.
Oh come on. Raging Waters was never going to be on a high enough quality you could train anybody for anything. But the point was unless it is something as big and as focused as lagoon a beach, the smaller water parks that popped up in the late '80s and early '90s just would never survive. There’s too much change and how they need to be builds and operated now. I still remember the water slides in Ogden as a kid I think you can still see some of the abandoned parts of the slides up on the hill in Riverdale.
I worked a summer during college as a custodian - er, “park services” - at Raging Waters. That was the nastiest job I’ve ever had, and I had a summer job cleaning hotel rooms as a teen.
My very first day, we had to pull up all the rubber shower mats, put on rubber gloves, and pull off the clumps of hair that had accumulated underneath them.
Stuart the cat knocked my hearing aids off the night stand and the puppies got to them. Thank God for Costco’s warranty. I dropped those off to be repaired and then zipped off to Sandy/Pepperwood to pick up an easel for my new paint by numbers retirement hobby. Pepperwood is quite swanky.
My pet peeve, you ask? Traffic. Holy Toledo, traffic is bad even at 10:00 in the morning, with arseholes cutting you off in the middle lane going 90 with empty trailers. Unbelievable. I know I’m singing to the choir, but you can’t even time your drive during the slow time. The knot heads are everywhere at every time during the day.
Well, last night I was looking out the kitchen window and found a raccoon sleeping in one of my trees. It was too windy today for a repeat performance.
So it’s time for the summer critter convention to commence.
