The Vent and Rant Thread

[poohbear_nc]

There is no easy way to take your socks off after you've sweated through them whilst mowing your lawn with humidity levels > 90%!

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

There is no easy way to take your socks off after you've sweated through them whilst mowing your lawn with humidity levels > 90%!

Just for you.

I in general have very little interest in organized sports at any level. I was searching for something to watch on TV last night and got caught up in the last portion (last few minutes of regular play, overtime play, and shoot out) of the Gold Medal final in football [American soccer]. I'll admit that one thing that puzzles me about what was said about the game on completion last night [American commentators to be understood] and reading about it this morning [again mainly American opinions] is how much of the credit for the win is given to team captain Neymar versus the goal keeper Weverton. Watching the shoot out it (four goals made for Germany versus five for Brazil) it seems to me that scoring in a shoot out is easy. Preventing the score by the goal keeper is exceptionally difficult.

[Bilbo1967]

I wouldn't say that scoring a penalty in that pressurised situation is easy, but players at that level should certainly score more often than they miss.

I would guess that Neymar is getting the newspaper inches because he's one of the most famous footballers on the planet at the moment.

[Blossom]

Microsoft has upgraded my Hotmail account to the new service and half my folders are missing. I have local copies but it still irks me the mess they made of my account. I've had this email since the 90s. I have been migrated several times without problems. I guess I'm going to have to switch to pop and just keep local copies from now on.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I in general have very little interest in organized sports at any level. I was searching for something to watch on TV last night and got caught up in the last portion (last few minutes of regular play, overtime play, and shoot out) of the Gold Medal final in football [American soccer]. I'll admit that one thing that puzzles me about what was said about the game on completion last night [American commentators to be understood] and reading about it this morning [again mainly American opinions] is how much of the credit for the win is given to team captain Neymar versus the goal keeper Weverton. Watching the shoot out it (four goals made for Germany versus five for Brazil) it seems to me that scoring in a shoot out is easy. Preventing the score by the goal keeper is exceptionally difficult.

Tell that to the American women. They missed two penalty shots. One was blocked but the other was poorly kicked. It knocked them out of contention for the first time in, well, forever.

I believe that goalies study the tendencies of the people who are most likely to take penalty kicks so that they can make an educated guess as to where the shot is going to go. But I hate penalty kicks. They should keep playing until one team scores a legit goal. I get that it is a long match and there is a lot of running but you can allow for an extra sub with each new over time period. Penalty shots suck and need to go away.

And yes, I played soccer. Not at the professional level but enough to know how badly it would suck to play longer but the penalty shots are a cheap way to end a good match. Basketball games don't go to free throws and football doesn't go to field goal kicks. Just keep playing until someone scores.

[Blossom]

This migration from Hotmail to Outlook.com is nightmare! I have 8000 emails sitting in my inbox there should only be 2500 it turns out these emails are from deleted mail from years back. My missing email folders are still missing. My account is one huge mess.

Who in the hockeypuck did Microsoft hired to do this migration?!? They clearly have no idea what they are doing!

I feel for those who don't have local copies. All Amazon receipts gone! Poof! If you haven't been migrated quick back up, back up, back up!!! I always keep local copies and now I'll have to upload more backups of my emails. Maybe I'll get a thumbdrive for them.

Oh it's gets better there's no way to mass delete now in outlook.com which means those 8000 emails are going to have sit there. I can't go check them one by one that would take forever.

What I did do was set my Hotmail up as POP in Windows Live Mail and manually recreated the folder structure. I then have to set up rules then copy the local copies into WLM through Windows Explorer. This means no more cloud mail everything will be local which sucks but I can't see anyway I trust them anymore to keep my mail safe.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Blossom

This migration from Hotmail to Outlook.com is nightmare! I have 8000 emails sitting in my inbox there should only be 2500 it turns out these emails are from deleted mail from years back. My missing email folders are still missing. My account is one huge mess.

Who in the hockeypuck did Microsoft hired to do this migration?!? They clearly have no idea what they are doing!

I feel for those who don't have local copies. All Amazon receipts gone! Poof! If you haven't been migrated quick back up, back up, back up!!! I always keep local copies and now I'll have to upload more backups of my emails. Maybe I'll get a thumbdrive for them.

Oh it's gets better there's no way to mass delete now in outlook.com which means those 8000 emails are going to have sit there. I can't go check them one by one that would take forever.

What I did do was set my Hotmail up as POP in Windows Live Mail and manually recreated the folder structure. I then have to set up rules then copy the local copies into WLM through Windows Explorer. This means no more cloud mail everything will be local which sucks but I can't see anyway I trust them anymore to keep my mail safe.

A little good news. You can go to your Amazon account, look under messages and all your orders are there.
Also you can look at all your orders there too with receipts.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

A little good news. You can go to your Amazon account, look under messages and all your orders are there.
Also you can look at all your orders there too with receipts.

Well not all but yes I know that most are there. A lot of my old orders were lost years ago. I have local copies of my receipts. It was just convenient to have all mail accessible from the internet.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Well not all but yes I know that most are there. A lot of my old orders were lost years ago. I have local copies of my receipts. It was just convenient to have all mail accessible from the internet.

Sent from my Nexus 7

You know come to think about it, I lost my one order from sometime around 1996.

[Rumpelteazer]

Rude tourists.

If I'm on vacation in a country I don't speak the language of and I enter a shop and the shop assistant says something to me I assume he or she is greeting me, and I will say hello (in English) back. If the shop assistant says something longer I assume it is in the line of "hello, can I help you with something", and I will also answer him/her.

A lot of tourists just in our shop just ignore you when you greet them, and the Dutch "hallo" is pretty close to the English (a language 99% of the tourists seem to speak) "hello".

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

Rude tourists.

If I'm on vacation in a country I don't speak the language of and I enter a shop and the shop assistant says something to me I assume he or she is greeting me, and I will say hello (in English) back. If the shop assistant says something longer I assume it is in the line of "hello, can I help you with something", and I will also answer him/her.

A lot of tourists just in our shop just ignore you when you greet them, and the Dutch "hallo" is pretty close to the English (a language 99% of the tourists seem to speak) "hello".

Could be a lot of reasons.

When I go into the sort of shop where I would even expect attention from staff or the proprietor I often really do not want to be greeted, nor asked "Can I help you?" That is if I'm just there to browse, maybe with out any intention of making a purchase, or would prefer to just find what I am looking for myself. I guess that greeting and/or "Can I . . ." just makes me feel like pressure to buy something or if I'm not going to do so to get out.

BTW I love visiting Holland. Everyone speaks and understands English and doesn't get affronted that that's my only language.

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Tell that to the American women. They missed two penalty shots. One was blocked but the other was poorly kicked. It knocked them out of contention for the first time in, well, forever.

I believe that goalies study the tendencies of the people who are most likely to take penalty kicks so that they can make an educated guess as to where the shot is going to go. But I hate penalty kicks. They should keep playing until one team scores a legit goal. I get that it is a long match and there is a lot of running but you can allow for an extra sub with each new over time period. Penalty shots suck and need to go away.

And yes, I played soccer. Not at the professional level but enough to know how badly it would suck to play longer but the penalty shots are a cheap way to end a good match. Basketball games don't go to free throws and football doesn't go to field goal kicks. Just keep playing until someone scores.

Nice to hear a more knowledgeable perspective. I can see what you are saying. But watching the play continuing after a full 90 minutes with 15 minuted additions seems like the players would be really dragging their asses before it was over.

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Could be a lot of reasons.

When I go into the sort of shop where I would even expect attention from staff or the proprietor I often really do not want to be greeted, nor asked "Can I help you?" That is if I'm just there to browse, maybe with out any intention of making a purchase, or would prefer to just find what I am looking for myself. I guess that greeting and/or "Can I . . ." just makes me feel like pressure to buy something or if I'm not going to do so to get out.

BTW I love visiting Holland. Everyone speaks and understands English and doesn't get affronted that that's my only language.

I tend just to greet, not only because it's nice but also to acknowledge the customer and show that if he or she needs help I'm there. I hate pushy sales persons, so I tend not to ask "can I help you" unless someone's looking a bit lost (we have lots of small items, it's hard to see the forest through the trees) or when I don't trust a situation (which luckily doesn't happen often). I don't stare at a customer browsing (unless, again, I don't trust the situation) and do something that is productive, but makes it easy for the customer to ask a question when they need to.

We learn English at quite a young age. When I was young (I sound old now) a lot of foreign kids tv programs were subtitled, like for adult tv programs. Nowadays most foreign tv programs for kids are dubbed. With subtitles programs kids picked up English and it was good for their reading. Sometimes we are a bit too eager to speak English and learners of the Dutch language find it hard to practice in real life situations.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Tell that to the American women. They missed two penalty shots. One was blocked but the other was poorly kicked. It knocked them out of contention for the first time in, well, forever.

I believe that goalies study the tendencies of the people who are most likely to take penalty kicks so that they can make an educated guess as to where the shot is going to go. But I hate penalty kicks. They should keep playing until one team scores a legit goal. I get that it is a long match and there is a lot of running but you can allow for an extra sub with each new over time period. Penalty shots suck and need to go away.

And yes, I played soccer. Not at the professional level but enough to know how badly it would suck to play longer but the penalty shots are a cheap way to end a good match. Basketball games don't go to free throws and football doesn't go to field goal kicks. Just keep playing until someone scores.

Sudden death overtime has been experimented with (so called Golden Goal). I think that there were two major issues with it;

1. Play tended to get very negative, i.e. teams started to play very defensively, the fear of losing overcoming the desire to win

2. If the knockout match was during a competition that took place during the regular season (e.g. the FA Cup in the UK), the extended play could have a material effect on that regular season

I personally like the penalty shoot outs. For what it's worth, I played to junior professional level (a good number of years ago!).