Paying $40 for a concert t-shirt that shrinks two sizes the first time you wash it.
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Yep. Paid $10 for shirts in the 70’s. They didn’t fit but once.
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Biting into a gummy to find out you just took a real skunky one that is going to get you high instead of just managing pain.
#WeedProblems 
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This isn’t really a pet peeve, just more of a random, odd observation.
I’d been shaving my head weekly for nearly 20 years. So most people I’ve met in my job have only ever seen me with a shaved head. I’ve also had a beard for the majority of that time.
Last November, my kids asked “Dad, do you have gray hair?” Told them I didn’t have any gray last time I had hair 20 years ago, but I have no idea what it looks like now. So I decided to grow my hair back out for the first time in decades and now have a big shaggy mop on my head (which is decidedly not gray, thank you very much).
When I get on Zoom calls with work people that I haven’t seen in a while, they almost always comment “Oh, you grew a beard!”. This has now happened over a dozen times in the past couple months.
I’ve had the beard the entire time, the difference is that now I have hair. But people automatically default to noticing the beard when they see something is different. It’s very odd.
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So grateful I work from home and my commute consists of walking upstairs to my home office.
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I hope you wear your business casual sweats
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That’s my worst nightmare. I can handle anything but wet hair like that.
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Ok, old man here…
I have been getting calls from “agents” posing as State employees trying to get be to borrow money to pay for my wife’s final expenses. Nevermind the fact I have already shelled out the money for those, and it’s done. I know that grifting has been normalized in the minds of far too many people, but WTAF. I was having a good day today and these dirt bags have now gotten me in a high state of pissed off. I have had enough of this ■■■■■■■■■ It’s time for a hard reset.
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Man, I’m so sorry you’re dealing with that.
When my mom passed, I got a flood of calls from realtors asking what we were planning to do with her house. They apparently watch death announcements, match them up with next of kin records (somehow tied to the death certificates issued by the state), and then use that as a marketing strategy.
People attempting to scam those who are grieving or profit off the grief of others are truly some of the lowest scum imaginable.
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That is shock-the-conscience low.
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I’m so sorry you had to deal with that BS, Greg.
There was an episode of Taxi back in the 70s where Louie (DeVito) wanted to change careers, became a stock broker doing cold calls. He took off like a rocket, setting records right away, but was using really unsavory tactics, like using the Obits as leads. His coworkers were disgusted and left the office early, unable to tolerate the grift.
50 years later… disgusting has become normalized & routine. That really pisses me off.
If that happens again, if you want to get their name and number I’d be happy - I’m sure many of us would be happy - to either unload on them, or maybe the thing to do is string them along like the scammers they are.
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I know someone who got wrapped up in the DOPL scam:
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Had a similar issue 15 years ago. I was diagnosed with cancer. Went thru all the stuff…operation, chemo, etc. But what got me was starting about a month or so after the operation was that I was getting a bunch of letters from mortuaries. How morbid is that?
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So my kids don’t get grifted when I pass, my arrangements will already be made and funded.
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This is actually 3 different pages with checkboxes if printed. All of them are great and basically essential in this day and age. They cover every possible angle including some of the disgusting exploitive posts mentioned above.
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Great info, Absolute!
More info:
- Get a secondary phone number, like Google Voice (free), and when you give organizations / political parties / businesses your phone number, give them the secondary number. You’ll be surprised how much unrelated BS texts show up, over time. Our data is absolutely for sale.
- Similarly, use a secondary email account, use that for organizations.
- The SIM stealing issue with cell phones seems to be picking up. One of the guys on my team had his cell phone identity stolen and it took 2 days for him to wrestle control back, compromised email account, other accounts that use text as the 2nd authentication.
- Related, use an authenticator application whenever possible (MS authenticator or Google authenticator, etc) for 2nd authentication instead of SMS texts. The built-in biometric security on phones is pretty good, also… far better than text messaging.
More broadly, ask companies if they adhere to California level privacy standards. That sends the message that we lowly individuals care about privacy.
In the US we have HIPAA for healthcare data, which is pretty good, but the gold standard for overall individual data privacy is GDPR from Europe, which is about a 9.5 out of 10. California’s laws are maybe an 8, but far better than essentially no privacy protection for many other states and at the federal level. (Credit card data security is really impressive, better than HIPAA, IMO.)
In the same way Utah voters got animated over the data center issue, maybe we’ll see some serious uprising for privacy protection. We need it, even though greater consumer awareness may put some scammers and “Veterans Support Network” kinds of fraudsters out of business.
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Wow! Thanks so much @Ma-ake! Not sure what the SIM or authenticator apps are but will look them up and hunt you down at work.
@Ma-ake and others: What are the pros vs cons of VPN for data protection other tricks of the trade Please opine…
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Elm seed bugs. It’s like we’re being invaded.
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YouTube TV service runs through midnight of your final subscription day.
However, the billing for the next month happens at NOON of your last subscription day.
Which means I had already paid $80 for another month of TV I won’t watch by the time I cancelled the service after the World Cup Final game ended (thinking I had until midnight to cancel). 
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I’m not sure I know what those are but I do remember the weird sense of nostalgia? I got my return home to see box elder bugs again for the first time in a decade. Those stupid things were freaking everywhere when I was growing up
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