So...
I'm pretty sure that my satirical, educational, metaphor-esq, response was warranted... but just to check:

I'm having an issue with an online gambling platform... I'm in the USA-- recently several states allow online gambling. This specific one is a huge company so extra careful about proxies etc. To play via browser\desktop you need to install 3rd party, constant, network verification software... network architecture pro with my company's network, manually written ofc, running my static IPv4 /28 from my home = f that
app version even told me i had to uninstall rustdesk (it thinks i obeyed)

the issue is nothing controllable from client side... it's the same problem regardless of device, os (android phone, tablet, and iPad... fresh factory settings, bare bones and container versions... yea I was using it to procrastinate), network type, etc, etc

so i finally take the time to take a video of the issue (would be super confusing via screenshots)... even compress it to 1.5x speed and 240px, leaving the full screen (not cropping) and metadata intact. I point out that im a dev, and even worked for online gambling platforms...

i quickly mention all the noob troubleshooting bs, that i literally know every bit of data that moves on my network... that this issue is identical on both an iPad and android phones (so totally different apps\OSes)... the "live support" already tried(my req) totally deleting then reissuing the problematic promos... 'deleted' one persisted...etc

I clearly lay out all this info, even suggesting they forward it to someone in tech... give them the specific model numbers and OS builds of the primary devices(ipad and android phone)

...

I get back, an equally long, form response... summary:
we r soooo sorry you're having trouble
we care sooooo much about your\customer experience!
the tech team says (heavily implying it got escalated\forwarded) if you try these things itll fix it:
*imagine every generic troubleshooting guide from the early 2000s, plus a few notes like "(smartphone)"*

...and i shit you not, it even gave instructions to restart devices, power-cycle my modem\router and clear my browser cache. (all clearly nonsensical to anyone who read my initial email with a vague knowledge of English and/or tech)

Despite only having 1 valid hand to type with, i type nearly 70wpm (on my prefd keyboards)... so I lectured them, explaining their disrespectful bs clearly... and including a dumbed down metaphor relating a friendly request for a specific salsa recipe using\not using specific available ingredients... and replied to with a children's description of what a tomato is.

Explicitly gave a second chance to actually read the initial issue\email and forward or respond appropriately.

I was way more polite than my depiction seems...too polite.

soooo... i sent an additional email response...
i changed the subject so it'd still align with their ticket system but also identified the rep, with heavily implied disdain.

the contents of the additional response:

Dear 'Mary',

It seems that I forgot to include a very important resource for you.

I apologise. Please follow this link and complete all steps\levels. I want you to have a great online experience!

https://bestdosgames.com/games/...

Best Regards,

Sara Range

things like the "Best Regards," are artifacts of their formatting.

so... im not sure if i was too much of a dick, not enough, or if it even matters because it may go over their head.

opinions pl0x?

@SidTheITGuy - please help enlighten me. You claimed 1 was Ignorant of Indians... you may just be right... so im coming straight to you about this specific, foreign topic. Im assuming you have expertise with softcolon, right???

So... Ive had one hell of a day (well... a month and still pretty hell of a yr tbh)...

Due to some work-related reason to look at an associate's LinkedIn, I ended up curiously clicking the profile of a sole respondent to a post...

ROFLOL (near literally-- extremely rare for me).

I read it like 10x... going through every, oftenly plausible rationale for what I was making sure wasn't just dyslexia, thinking in non-english, some typo or even some new trendy crap that i was unaware of.

Do to my tendency to avoid tons of new dev/tech terms...
I even briefly wondered if it was some new term for using whitespace formatting instead of semicolons in js (fyi, i prefer coding in giant unformatted blocks, in notepad.exe... you will never catch me w/o explicit ;'s).

Now i really wanna just contact this guy and ask him how/why he chose this business name.

I cut out his pic/name... but, tbh, as someone who's innately amazing at SEO, i must admit, he's got some seriously impressive SEO.

The entire 1st page of google results (after asking if i meant "softcolor"...idfk what that is), was all his company, even an Insta. My locale is germany/deutsch... technically i do also have Hindi pages as allowed/dont auto-trans... but what i searched on and what i was using for linkedin, barely resolve to the same country, no shared anything.

For awhile now, my hopes for humanity just being in a rut, soon to receive some motivational kick in the rear or the helicopter parent trend, skyrocketing over the past ~20yrs giving rise to snowflakes and seemingly imminent social\financial doom, keep going steeper downhill.

The overuse and\or reliance on, both term and tech, AI has been particularly disturbing and painfully ironic...

Seems it's overwhelmed my, typically instant, reslisations of severe head-scratchers that have nothing to do with AI and even, apparently, denote actual honesty and effort employed.

today, within moments, quickly scrolling on eBay i found 2, new to me... which is quite rare, perplexing 'wtf's.

1. a laptop clearly stating, multiple times, reiterated, not copy\paste... that not only was it lacking a hard drive... but "no hard drive cable"...
my mind briefly tried to figure that one out
... even considered searching yheir several other lots to see if they typically included the "hard drive cable" or if they were often denying customers of this clearly standard component.

2- see pic
it was so soon after the 1st find that i briefly considered that i was missing something... aside from faith in humanity, nope.

that said, i do respect their blunt, bold\capslock committee to transparent honesty.

So I needed a break from all the straight computer logic for days... so i figured i had 2 options, argue with chatGPT or go back to a dating app.

I chose the latter.
Im ocd with notifs... i NEED the bubble to be gone.

Found this gem...

"Hey beautiful Sara ;) my names is James king it very nice 2 meet u wow u look like a angel that fall from heaven 😘u mind me of a rose because how beautiful you are am how beautiful the rose is am I the best guy on badoo that u would ever talk with on badoo I actually look for Friendship and relationship ;) how are u today am wyd"

So... because im curious, esp when it comes to perplexing linguistics... im def gonna ask if English is his 1st language.

Normally i can tell within a sentence or 2... even tend to know their native tongue by then... this one has me stumped.

Anyone wanna guess if hes a native English speaker???
Maybe ill make a modest prize poolif there's a few entrants.
(he has plenty of pics so ill be able to legally find out in a few min... but ill wait til i dont get a response for a week)

Ill probably make a script to strip out the auto-messages... replying with an auto ofc... and the mundane crap that shows they definitely didnt go beyond the pics.

How much zucchini is too much zucchini?

I know I have WAY too much...

I knew at least when 1st considering D20 zucchini breads.

then when i began to wonder if the remaining batter would work with my death star waffle iron...ill know tomorrow!

....ran out of typical pans, incl foil ones(normal and mini for easy gifting)

- gave 1 away (similar sized as in pic)

- approx. 2 lg zucchini bread loaves in fridge (gave away 2, ate a ½)

- cut up\froze enough onions\peppers\pak choi to a min. acceptable zucchini : everything else stir fry ratio... x20 servings

- similarly, green onions, pak choi, marinated sesame fried tofu bits, zucchini and miso (quick miso soup) x16

- thinly sliced enough to layer it into ~20 lg servings of lasagna.

... zucchini in pic is slightly larger than the one that made the many aforementioned and pictured loaves of zucchini bread

apparently, in a week tops, I'm gonna have at least another 3 more THAT size needing to be picked

anyone in the continental US want some zucchini bread? or, if in michigan, zucchinis?

i didnt even plant much... actually only about ½ of other years.

i am also having some serious overflows coming of (at least) grapes and watermelons.

grapes...
when i bought this place, this odd, square, surrounded by cement walkways, area, with an increasingly problematic tree (risking cable\electric lines, foundation, etc) and so dense with weeds that I learned, dandelions have a giant, bush-like form, with heights beyond 8ft tall.

i grew up hanging out in the nearby woods, noticing that weeds lost the fight vs raspberry\blackberry plants. being handicapped\lazy\experimental, w\ev, i figured id just kill it all then fill it with random berries... knew nothing about grapes so just got 4+ random types... apparently they are all fancy\expensive grapes... and reeeeeaally produce. i already had to pick ~10lbs.

watermelons-
idr if i planted normal ones and little ones or just little ones... idk how to tell without cutting them open or maybe just watching a long time to see if they stopped growing?
anyone with advice (or seeking watermelons) is welcome.

assuming (hoping) they are mini ones there's at least 2dz that are at least ping pong ball size.... and around 100 little yellow flowers still.

i totally get that my frustrating problem with produce here would be beyond welcomed by most people... but seriously... wtf do i do with a few dozen to over a hundred (hopefully mini) watermelons, so many zucchini that, despite personal daily consumption and at least a half dozen friends that love zucchini bread and\or my secretly healthy lasagna(my friends tend to be guys), but have their limits capping out, plus mine, at less than ½ whats rapidly being produced and, apparently, thousands of dollars worth of hundreds of pounds of fancy grapes???

there's an interesting old lady across the street who'll take at least what her and husband can possibly consume,.. even makes grape jam, but thats still only a few dz lbs tops.

it seems wrong to kill the plants (or even to remove a large amount of blossoms and feed them all to JSON (lil tortoise)... pretty sure he's already getting tired of them just from the few that fell off in the wind or something.

i wish i knew some farmers that do farmers market things... but that kinda seems super suspicious... 'hey mr farmer... want a large supply of expensive grapes, watermelon and zucchini, for free? you can sell them to random people, or just give them away. i dont want money or anything...' idk... seems like the beginning of one of those movies that either has evil alien plants assimilating all land mammals, or where there's some crazed medical researcher convinced that there's a massive, underrated threat without enough attention for vaccination production funds-- so they are gonna release some deadly virus supposedly to save the world.

ive been cooking too long.

ideas pl0x?

Fk you Google!

My Samsung note 10 screen went dead near a week ago... it's a secondary line so waiting for parts wasn't the end of the world.

Ofc the screen (curved and incl a fingerprint reader thatd be a major pain to not replace) was integrated to the whole front half... back panel glued, battery, glued immensely and with all other parts out, about 6mm space only at the bottom to get a tool in to pry it out.

New screen (off brand) ~200... all genuine parts amazon refurb ~230... figured id have some extra hardware for idk what... i like hardware and can write drivers so why not.

Figured id save a bit of time and avoid other potentially damaged (water) components to just swap out the mobo unit that had my storage.

Put it back together, first checked that my sim was recognised since this carrier required extraneous info when registering the dev... worked fine... fingerprint worked fine, brave browser too...

Then i open chrome. It tells me im offline... weird cuz i was literally in a discord call. My wifi says connected to the internet (not that i wouldn't have known the second there was a network issue... i have all our servers here and a /28 block... ofc i have everything scripted and connected to alert any dev i have, anywhere i am, the moment something strange happens).

Apparently google doesnt like the new daughter board(i dislike the naming scheme... its weird to me)... so anything that is controlled by google aside from the google account that is linked to non-google reliant apps like this... just hangs as if loading and/or says im offline.

I know... itll only take me about the 5-10m it took to type this rant but ffs google... why dont you even have an error message as to what your issue is... or the simple ability to let me log in and be like 'yup it's me, here's your dumb 2fa and a 3rd via text cuz you're extra paranoid yet dont actually lock the account or dev in any way!'

I think it's a toss up if google actually knows that it's doing this or they just have some giant glitch that showed up a couple times in testing and was resolved via the methods of my great grama- "just smack it or kick it a few times while swearing at it in polish. Like reaaaally yelling. Always worked for me! If not, find a fall guy."

Dear humans that identify as Frontend Web Devs,

I get that you aren't adept at the logic aspects of dev, but I would greatly appreciate if you tried to better your simple, common sense logic... or at least have someone do basic QA.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen

Dear web devs,

PLEASE learn how to (or teach/inform your clients) correctly target ads.

Thank You

Also, WTF??? and even WZF?!?! Who created this? Furthermore who the hell paid for this to be an ad, what are they trying to achieve and how tf do they think this will achieve that???

PS-
In case you're wondering what i was looking up on thesaurus.com, or would like to assume/blame this ad on my browsing history, cookies and/or something like google listening in the background through my mic... nope. Looked up "adage" and im waaay too adept at cybersecurity and easily annoyed by anything doing something i didnt explicitly tell it to.

if you're ignorant of the google listening thing:
yes this is totally a real thing that the vast majority of Smartphone users have no clue is happening despite it being in t&c. Try a few, somewhat relevant to this topic, google searches and youll find suggested searches like "can my phone read my mind?".
I tend to explicitly ban shit like that on everything (even devices of anyone on my property that never logged into my internet... im not paranoid, just not a fan of tech doing things i didnt tell it to)... but when i needed to enable/allow it on a dev for 30min, the next time i went to look for a book, one of the top suggestions (before typing anything) was "Burmese Pythons"... i looked back at my activity for that 30min days ago... I had been explaining some basic python code to a kid from myanmar... so it was pretty amusing.

babydev#1 just made a devRant account.

He just told me he's gonna add me here.

This one's for you @TeachMeCode
It was on the outside of my doorwall

Whilst procrastinating via semi-helpful browsing,(random blockchain news/info) I come across a new crypto that's really pushing for dev (advertising dev grants etc).

I click "why develop on *whatever*".

This is the start of the page it lead to:

"The Internet began with Web1, a read-only content delivery network. Users could only consume what was offered by site owners, which significantly limited their interaction with the web content."

I blink slowly a few times, figuratively scratch my head and leave.

Am I just too harsh on things like this? I mean, I get that internet history and knowing wtf web3 means is important and all...

Is it too high of a bar to expect a link, specifically trying to entice competent devs who are directly looking into a new web3/blockchain tech to dev with/on, lead to a page that starts with somewhat relative, to the originating link's stated topic, information?

Don't get me wrong, I definitely understand the frequent necessity to be pedantic... but starting with multiple paragraphs of internet history when the sole objective of the link is to inform/entice, specifically, competent devs, who are explicitly looking to leverage blockchain tech... just seems ridiculous.

Despite not actually super interested in changing or adding new blockchain tech to dev with in the near future (not dissatisfied with our relatively established groundwork/current approach), I was actually starting to consider branching out a bit to include initial functionality and/or tools/integrations with this protocol i wasnt aware of (not even just for grant $)... but if their idea of onboarding devs to build on their tech starts with an extremely pedantic intro as to Web1-3 basics... they must have a reeeeally low bar/very desperate for devs.

Seeing this makes me pretty certain it'd be easy/minimal effort to get a decent chunk of grant funding... but with a bar THAT low, I'm not wanting to be associated with them.

Ok... the devs at doordash are even dumber than i thought.
I placed an order for bubble tea like 2 hrs ago, its 22:13 now. It still says assigning a dasher. I look at the 'store' page and its been closed since 22:00. I look for a cancel button so i dont get annoying pings etc...

I go to help and select to cancel it. Then it tells me they r sry for the delay but if i wait it should be here in ~35min and they'll give me 15$ credit (whole order was 17) so ofc i clicked that... cuz it's closed, im gonna get a refund when someone realises its closed, now i get an extra 15$.

Why didn't they write in a simple check of the hours of the store so they stop looking for someone to get a non-existent item from a closed store? It's not like they dont know its closed.

Im ranting in progress of the issue so i dont get the urge to do any of the things not seem as acceptable to fix this issue.

Issue: yesterday i activated a device i havent had any (even prepaid) service on in years, and had a 'new'(to me) number assigned...

Today, after being sick so muting nuisances immediately for rest, i check, 3missed calls from the same, less spammy looking number. I havent use this number for even a txt code verification at all... aside from 1 call to comcast (for the blissful irony of seeing if its an option (they need to survey physically) since im suing my current isp who didnt take my VERY NICE and explictly required in their business t&c, refund for the issue's duration.. after months of tryjng to directly get a message (not using my not technically hacking expertise like just scrubbing for email formatting and popped up in their inbox (calling them is more frowned upon)...

Their conclusion as to "why" (they nvr solved the issue... dhcpv6 was in aggressive lease mode(no response per lease(NOT batches) of about 60 for about 20 devices which i ofc use my /28 static ipv4 block... not ipv6 (they also claimed there was no logs til i dug and found verbose, long history high/med high debug level logs in their prop. dev's gui... which they forced me to use, has 2 separate cores/stacks which is done for 1 reason only... constant simultaneous ipv4 and ipv6 (so ofc was auto enabled)...

Basically it was spamming do to a config issue with their scripts, and their WAN6 dev/script's config. Have found a single person who knows what ipv6 (or v4) or wan6 device actually means... their conclusion from multiple "specialist departments " ..."we dont support ipv6 so if u had issues caused by using something we dont support it's your fault... sooooo ludacris.

.... ok back to main point.
callback options
1 schedule a call back for "later"
2 dont schedule and hang up/try some other time
3. cancel callback and join the end of the cue(from previous message it told me a callback in 6-10m or lose your place in line and go to the end... hours later no call and they definitely have the number as it reiterated -.-
...
answer to wait in line>
experiencing extremely high wait time
>your current wait time 31-60m
2.5sec later.. let me connect you to a rep ...etc (identical as in callback options intro)
> your current wait time is 30sec
waiting nearly 25min whilst typing this.(i did make sweet potato stuff, propagated a rose, fed JSON some of his new, in closure buffet of things he previously never encounted and bought a literal ton of rubber mulch)40min to a rep 5more to solve (last guy at same position didnt know this option exited, despite me decribing it verbosely to him.

Everything the automated syst asks is about account numer... there is none ive never even had a burner that was at&t brand.

Wzf.

I found it!!!
The unicorn of nonsensical datetime formatting... In large scale official, current use!

It's actually dd/mm/yyyy !

This nonsense gave me an idea. Now I want to start building a big, organised, db for good bad examples. I can think of so many uses for it if everything is tagged/categorised well.

Thank you rando LinkedIn reject, you gave me the best birthday gift I could hope for... another potential branch of my data architecture to play with new data in new and to be discovered ways!

The site of the rando is athensnexus.com

Am I the only one who's somewhat creeped out by LinkedIn profiles written in 3rd person?

There was some fragmentation and corruption that i had to eat away. I like things properly partitioned.

So... how tf does doordash think i, or anyone, wants to buy, specifically these items, from a chain grocery store???

How weekends are supposed to be. Ofc it's only one part of a balanced breakfast.

So... it's break time.

I just was eating fries with ranch... dipped my fingers in the ranch as if they were holding fries...then immediately hit Ctrl + z.
Took me a few seconds to realise why it didn't work.

Possibily the weirdest coincidence I've experienced... I was just searching for, specifically and explicitly, the ebook version of O'Reilly pocket references for a babydev since physical copies, if/when available, are expensive and slow delivery. While googling the PHP one, somehow, 1984 (orwell) in russian was oddly high in the search results.

1984 is my favourite book and I've been meaning to take time to brush up on my russian. Normally I'd blame the result on things like tracking data, but this was via a clean, isolated, never logged into anything, system. The only factors that couldve been skewing results are my explicit locale settings, primary- german/germany, secondary- english/US, additional languages- dutch, russian, arabic, spanish. No other cookies or previous search history and using a static IPv4 that has been allocated, but until a few hours ago, totally unused for ~6mo (part of my /28 block).

It's so serendipitous that I keep mulling over everything trying to figure out wtf I missed... seriously, how the hell does "O'Reilly pocket reference php ebook" return a russian paperback of 1984???

I'm totally gonna find and buy one now too (the actual result is costly, plus would ship from germany so more costly).

I was cleaning a closet and found this. It's the bag that had a couple extra pieces for my riding lawn mower.
Questions:
1. Who isn't aware that you can seriously injure or kill any animal (including humans, especially small ones) via running them over with multiple, sharp, quickly rotating blades?

2. Who the hell is allowing morons that don't realise this around minors?

3. For people who aren't already aware of the seemingly obvious dangers, are they even willing and/or able to read this?

I know we live in a world where people sue manufacturers and retailers for plastic bags that they leave by babies and coffee being too hot, but seriously... wtf

Oh china, you did it again.

Anyone know wtf this is supposed to be?

I looked at the several pictures in its description too... I'll add them after a little while, but I'm not sure they'd be anything but more questions.

Oh china, you amuse me again...

This is from a live crane/claw game app. Who's got the most amusing and/or accurate definition of wtf this is and/or means?

I think it might look(possibly be) fucked up/suggestive... but I'm not even sure why.

Also, who wants to win an "Artistic Face Curtain"?

I got a baby (<1yr) tortoise and i named him JSON.

Ok... @tosensei you win. I'm gonna start using a knife for all round, orange, citrus fruits. (It's a tangelo)

Ok... so I have a unique question/opportunity. I can't give all the details but here's the jist:

3yrs ago I was hired to consult a now prominent(still decently well known then) web-based company with many thousands of users, dealing with a lot of money and leveraging a social environment. They had several issues but initially they really needed me to find/train chat mods.

I did not take the offer for monetary reasons, like all consulting I've done, I had additional reason and/or fondness to fix the issues. In this case it was an interesting challenge and I knew several customers and some support staff so it'd be worthwhile.

They (without request) reduced their typical 2mo probationary period to 2wk for me. With less than a day left of that period, I was 'hacked' via a pushed telegram update, on the account they made me create for work purposes (they had control of the phone number not me).

During this 'hack' one of the 2, currently active, culprits sent a message to his tg account from the 'hacked' one and quickly deleted the entire convo. The other pretended (poorly) to be me in the chat with the mods in training (at least a few directly witnessed this and provided commentary).

Suddenly, I was fired without any rationale or even a direct, non-culprit, saying anything to me.

The 'hack' also included some very legit, and very ignorantly used, Ukrainian malware.

This 'hack' was only to a 2nd gen lenovo yoga I got due to being a certified refurbisher... just used for small bs like this chat mod/etc job. I even opened up my network, made honey pots, etc., waiting for something more interesting... nope not even an attempt at the static ip.

I started a screen recording program shortly after this crap started (unfortunately after the message sent be 'me' to the dude who actually sent it happened... so i still dont know the contents).

I figured I'd wait it out until i was bored enough or the lead culprit was at a pinnacle to fall from...

The evidence is overwhelming. This moron had no clue what he was doing (rich af by birth type)... as this malware literally created an unhidden log file, including his info down to the MAC id of his MacBook... on my desktop in real time (no, not joking... that stupid)

Here's my quandary... Due to the somewhat adjacent nature of part of our soon to be public start-up... as i dont want it to turn into some coat tail for our tech to ride on for popularity... it's now or never.

Currently im thinking, aside from any revenge-esq scheme, it'd be somewhat socially irresponsible to not out him to his fellow investors and/or the organisation that is growing with him as one of few at the forefront... ironically all about trust/safety/verification of admins in the industry.

I tried to reach out to him and request a call... he's still just as immature. Spent hours essentially spamming me while claiming it wasnt him but hed help me find whoever it was... and several other failed attempts to know what i had. When i confirmed he wasnt going to attempt a call, i informed him id likey mute him because i don't have time for back and forth bs. True to form he deleted the chat (i recorded it but its of no value).

So... any thoughts?

So, I just (few hours ago)made a new variable that's either brilliant or innately flawed... not sure yet. It's an oddly unique var...

__bs__

So far I only made it in python and windows env (i script like the methodology of css).

I bet you're wondering how I've defined __bs__ and the practicality of it.
__bs__ is derived from a calculated level of bullshit that annoys me to tolerate, maintain, etc. as well as things that tend to throw nonsensical errors, py crap like changing my strings to ints at seemingly random times/events/cosmic alignments/etc or other things that have a history of pulling some bs, for known or unknown reasons.

How/why did this come about now?

Well I was updating some symlinks and scripts(ps1 and bat) cuz my hdd is so close to death I'm wondering if hdd ghosts exist as it's somehow still working (even ostream could tell it should be dead, by the sound alone).

A nonsense bug with powershell allowing itself to start/run custom ps1scripts with the originating command coming from a specific batch script, which worked fine before and nothing directly connected to it has changed.

I got annoyed so took an ironic break from it to work on python crap. Python has an innately high level of bs so i did need to add some extra calculations when defining if a py script or function is actually __bs__ or just py.

The current flavour of py bs was the datetime* module... making all of my scripts using datetime have matching import statements to avoid more bs.

I've kept a log of general bs per project/use case. It's more like a warning list... like when ive spent hours debugging something by it's traceback, meticulous... to eventually find out it had absolutely nothing to do with the exception listed. Also logged aliases i created, things that break or go boom if used in certain ways, packages that ive edited, etc.

The issue with my previous logging is that it's a log... id need to read it before doing anything, no matter how quick/simple it should be, or im bound to get annoyed with... bs.

So far i have it set to alert if __bs__ is above a certain int when i open something to edit. I can also check __bs__ fot what's causing the bs. I plan to turn it into a warning and recording system for how much bs i deal with and have historical data of personal performance vs bs tolerance. There's a few other applications i think ill want to use it for, assume it's not bs itself.

*in case you prefer sanity and haven't dealt with py and datetime enough, here's the jist:
If you were to search any major forum like StackOverflow for datetime use in py, youd find things like datetime.datetime.now() and datetime.now() both used, to get the same returned value. You'll also find tons of posts for help and trying to report 'bugs', way more than average. This is because the datetime package has a name conflict... with itself. It may have been a bug several years ago, but it beeb explicitly defined as intentional since.

Ok, @jestdotty , today, i give up on china.

I've been messaging with a rep who is taking the time to keep editing a contract... Im pretty sure she was genuinely trying...

As typing this we finally got to a 'correct enough' contract... so I could click the damn pay button.

Over the past 7 hrs.. at 3 back and forth exchabges and modifications at each issue:
1. Used previous PI from the dude i gave up on... so had a qty at 12 when only 11 exist a colour wrong for a crate of items, and listed the dude i refused to sign a contract under listed as the rep.

2. Now the item subtotals were off... just a few pennies or so... assumed she left the usd prices but calculated with ¥... didn't want alibaba to reject in a day so i checked if it was noted anywhere... Oh boy was it... VERY clearly, all caps, bold in the body of the total row... that the total was, exactly, 11680 (spelled out ofc) RMB aka ¥ chinese yen. I told her this, she sends me a cropped shot of the $ numeric total field... so i sent her the giant all caps bolded line, the one thatd typically be considered final say in most international courts... no clue where that value came from, it had zero relation to any actual values... and i was as curious as when chatGPT creates totally new, unique, lyrics for satirical german songs... i really tried.

3. Wrong incoterms (trade terms... abbreviated to a few letters... had it that I'd be physically going to the tbd port to accept/clear customs... no)

4. Technically it was accurate (well a few strange subtotals since she used ¥ half the time... told her it was fine as long as it had the company name on the label (gave 3 full examples to use whichever)
I get the contract ...shipping...
"To: Sara"
Then the right address (seriously wtf)

5. I point this out and carefully explain in mostly just examples and "the us government doesn't like anything being sent to just a first name, there's no legal way to sign for acceptance"

6. She gets stressed enough to tell me she doesn't have time to keep editing (since this horrid pile of poor formatting was just thrown at her a day ago... i dont point out the ridiculous irony)

7. Imo, the highlight of my night/morning... in her stress she promises me it'll ship right... sooo many issues there...
Even if it was delivered/allowed a signature for "sara" for 7ish large boxes just off a sea freight from china to a residence in the middle of a corn field (which tbh would be hysterical)...the IRS would have a valid reason to audit me... theyve done it w/o valid reasons several times, since I was 18 doing international trade and a contractual employee of a large gambling company, quarterly reporting, and ofc declaring more than my taxes in donating melted glass and crane game prizes...yea, they hate me and always do all that work to find the same thing... i underdeclare charity by 10%.

The entire concept of getting USA mail, even when pristine and you know logistics agents in every major company and port or distribution center, to properly deliver anything... ROFLOL ... and im already on some 'open and check everything' list with customs for a hysterical misconception they made years ago... cant/shouldn't get into detail publicly... but it was caused because 2 packages from different cities in China were both going to my address/through customs at the same time... package 1, 75 of those cheap af ball-pit hollow plastic balls for a 2yr old's bday(very delayed) package 2. 75 rechargeable batteries (the kind in power banks) 9600mah.

8. Told her to change "sara" to company name... glad it's registered to this address still.

It took me under 5min to type this... had to get the WTF out.

Dear AliBaba, please give an option to allow buyers to create the supply side contract for review, not just req modification... please?

Someone tell ne why this song reminds me of @b2plane ?
https://youtube.com/watch/...