So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Trenchfriend]

Hooray to good old (flat) cotton-shoelaces!! Our littletowns old-fashion shoestore doesn't have the correct stuff, so today, I walked to our garden-market/remaining stock-market, because they have classic, flat (brown) shoelaces all the time and luckily they got the 1,20m-length, which I wanted and cotton (70% cotton/30% poly).

And it worked on my ankle-boots and the laces do not longer open on the way!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

So trivial yet it ticks me off!

When one Christmas tree light burns out
causing the others to turn off but you can’t tell which one needs
replacement!

Solution:

View attachment 93373

Works, but only if you don’t have mice in the house.
View attachment 93408

 

[LizzieMaine]

Cats always have their high-beams on.

 

[Fading Fast]

Mobile advertising is getting ridiculous. On the phone, the MarketWatch site now "force" scrolls you back to the ad even when you've scrolled past it the first time, i.e., you're reading an article, you scroll by an ad and then the screen automatically scrolls back up to the ad. After that, you can scroll by and it won't scroll up again (although, that takes some manual dexterity as the ad takes up all but the edges and you kinda have to scroll at the edge or it doesn't move), but the first time you are "forced" up is obnoxious.

I get that things have to be paid for, but I also maintain that aggressive moves like this turn people off to the site and your brand - that can't be good in an era when everyone is fighting for "eyeballs." It's another version of making the "X" so small that instead of closing the ad you end up clicking on it and being redirected to the advertisers site. All that does is get me to hate the site I'm on and the advertiser - how is that good for either of them?

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

If I get another black cat I'm going to name him/her Eveready.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Mobile advertising is getting ridiculous. On the phone, the MarketWatch site now "force" scrolls you back to the ad even when you've scrolled past it the first time, i.e., you're reading an article, you scroll by an ad and then the screen automatically scrolls back up to the ad. After that, you can scroll by and it won't scroll up again (although, that takes some manual dexterity as the ad takes up all but the edges and you kinda have to scroll at the edge or it doesn't move), but the first time you are "forced" up is obnoxious.

I get that things have to be paid for, but I also maintain that aggressive moves like this turn people off to the site and your brand - that can't be good in an era when everyone is fighting for "eyeballs." It's another version of making the "X" so small that instead of closing the ad you end up clicking on it and being redirected to the advertisers site. All that does is get me to hate the site I'm on and the advertiser - how is that good for either of them?

Maybe I'm just imagining it but one of the creepiest adverts I can think of was one for Mobil from the 1970s. It was about a motorist who keeps encountering the same hobo or tramp (representing dirt) everywhere, including the back of a passing pickup truck. The motorist finally gets to his destination and the same hobo/tramp appears asking, "Park your car, sir?"

 

[Fading Fast]

Maybe I'm just imagining it but one of the creepiest adverts I can think of was one for Mobil from the 1970s. It was about a motorist who keeps encountering the same hobo or tramp (representing dirt) everywhere, including the back of a passing pickup truck. The motorist finally gets to his destination and the same hobo/tramp appears asking, "Park your car, sir?"

That sounds like a horrible ad - what the heck was Mobil thinking.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Whoever wrote that ad must've been traumatized by hearing "The Hitch-Hiker" on radio as a kid.

 

[tonyb]

Mobile advertising is getting ridiculous. On the phone, the MarketWatch site now "force" scrolls you back to the ad even when you've scrolled past it the first time, i.e., you're reading an article, you scroll by an ad and then the screen automatically scrolls back up to the ad. After that, you can scroll by and it won't scroll up again (although, that takes some manual dexterity as the ad takes up all but the edges and you kinda have to scroll at the edge or it doesn't move), but the first time you are "forced" up is obnoxious.

I get that things have to be paid for, but I also maintain that aggressive moves like this turn people off to the site and your brand - that can't be good in an era when everyone is fighting for "eyeballs." It's another version of making the "X" so small that instead of closing the ad you end up clicking on it and being redirected to the advertisers site. All that does is get me to hate the site I'm on and the advertiser - how is that good for either of them?

Maybe it's mostly on account of my getting old and cranky, but these days advertising is likelier to turn me away from whatever is being promoted than toward it.

I could cite numerous examples, but one that stands out was a cable TV ad for a pair of fellows running for two at-large city council seats. I haven't been here long enough to have a good grasp on just who the candidates in local elections are, so I gotta thank whoever created an ad so loaded with dog whistles to get even the deaf mutts to perk up their ears.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Mobile advertising is getting ridiculous. On the phone, the MarketWatch site now "force" scrolls you back to the ad even when you've scrolled past it the first time, i.e., you're reading an article, you scroll by an ad and then the screen automatically scrolls back up to the ad. After that, you can scroll by and it won't scroll up again (although, that takes some manual dexterity as the ad takes up all but the edges and you kinda have to scroll at the edge or it doesn't move), but the first time you are "forced" up is obnoxious.

I get that things have to be paid for, but I also maintain that aggressive moves like this turn people off to the site and your brand - that can't be good in an era when everyone is fighting for "eyeballs." It's another version of making the "X" so small that instead of closing the ad you end up clicking on it and being redirected to the advertisers site. All that does is get me to hate the site I'm on and the advertiser - how is that good for either of them?

Pretty much all newspaper websites that don''t flat-out paywall you are going to some variation of this -- the other annoying wrinkle is the refusal to let you read the site with an adblocker in place. We're fast approaching the day where you'll have to enter a credit card number to read anything online.

 

[Fading Fast]

Pretty much all newspaper websites that don''t flat-out paywall you are going to some variation of this -- the other annoying wrinkle is the refusal to let you read the site with an adblocker in place. We're fast approaching the day where you'll have to enter a credit card number to read anything online.

Hopefully, the balance is just being reset. The whole "information wants to be free" nonsense of the internet is finally giving way to reality. Whatever one thinks of large news companies, it costs money to properly report on news. Reporters in the field cost money as do all the other tasks necessary review, coordinate, fact check, organize, synthesize et al., news to put a website like the NYT or WSJ together. My guess is that when you worked in Radio, you wanted to get paid (and, my guess, were underpaid, but at least not zero).

The idea that it should be "free" was nothing more than "I want it to be free for me." Aggregator sites are fine, but they need something to aggregate and that requires real work and effort from flesh and blood people - so, somehow, someway that has to be paid for. The WSJ was one of the few news companies to make the right decision early - its site was always a subscription (and, for a time, had the most subscribers of any site on the internet). The NYT made the mistake of going free first and is now trying to unwind that model and mindset.

I have no issue with a subscription, ad or a combination model to support a site - it's all a matter of how its done. And I get that the "free" sites need more advertising. What doesn't make sense, IMHO, is creating so aggressive a model that you turn off the user to both the site and the advertiser.

 

[AmateisGal]

Wind. I know I can't control it, but MAN does it ever put me in a bad mood. I walked a few blocks to run an errand and was just angry at getting blown all over the place.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What I like about print media is that you can pick up the paper and look at a story or two on the front page and decide if you need to buy it or not. At least until the guy yells over "Hey, you gonna buy that or what, this ain't a g-d liberry!"

 

[Fading Fast]

What I like about print media is that you can pick up the paper and look at a story or two on the front page and decide if you need to buy it or not. At least until the guy yells over "Hey, you gonna buy that or what, this ain't a g-d liberry!"

My 850 year old mother (oops, typo, 85, wonder what made me make that mistake) still reads physical papers, so I had to stop to buy one for her the other day (she's visiting). I was amazed at how hard it was for me to find her a paper as most newsstands don't sell them anymore or only get a few copies that sell out in the early morning and that's that - according to the newsstand guys.

After that experience, I started paying attention and realized that print really is all but dead in the city anyway. Most stores that used to carry papers, newsstand for one, carry none or only a few copies of each and, even then, only of a few major papers - the days of a wide selection are clearly over.

All that said, I never bought a paper the way you describe. Since I almost always read the same papers each day and for a lot of content throughout, the cover stories were never a buy-no-buy decision maker.

 

[Juanito]

Cheap, flimsy silverware.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's gotten that way here in the past year or so. I've read the Boston Globe most of my life, and since we live out of their delivery zone, I always have to buy it at a newsstand or convenience store. But since the Globe switched to their new printery and cut half their printing staff last spring it's been a case of having to be there the second the papers come off the truck, because where there used to be a whole bundle now there's only four or five copies per outlet. Where I used to buy it six days a week, now I'm lucky if I can find it for two.

Along with the Globe I'll sometimes get the Bangor Daily News, the Portland Press Herald, or the NY Daily News, depending on whether something on the front page catches my eye. But the Globe has always been "my" paper, and I bitterly resent the hash the current ownership has made of it. Even though they're still better off than the Herald, which went bankrupt last week.

I only buy the NY Times if there's no other choice, because their refusal to carry any comics is pretentious. Even the Herald-Tribune used to have comics.

 

[Fading Fast]

...I only buy the NY Times if there's no other choice, because their refusal to carry any comics is pretentious. Even the Herald-Tribune used to have comics.

Living in NYC, you get to meet real-live NYT employees / reporters (excuse me, journalists) and pretentious doesn't go far enough.

 

[2jakes]

"Hey, you gonna buy that or what, this ain't a g-d liberry!"

 

[3fingers]

I quit reading major papers when I could no longer discern when I had left the opinion/editorial page. I didn't have to agree with the opinion spewers to read the news, but I expect to read what happened, not to be told what to think about what happened.

 

[Zombie_61]

My 850 year old mother (oops, typo, 85, wonder what made me make that mistake) still reads physical papers, so I had to stop to buy one for her the other day (she's visiting). I was amazed at how hard it was for me to find her a paper as most newsstands don't sell them anymore or only get a few copies that sell out in the early morning and that's that - according to the newsstand guys...

A long-time and very good friend still prefers to read the Los Angeles Times daily...when he can obtain one, that is. His story is the same as yours - if you don't get out early to find one, odds are the few copies that were available will be gone. The other issue is that the paper itself is nothing like it used to be--the entire edition is now smaller (i.e., far fewer pages) than the first section was years ago, and they're charging the same price. Add to that the fact that the articles are nothing more than a shallow summary that all end with, "For the full story, go online at [L.A. Times URL]...", and there are days when even he admits it's hardly worth the effort.