I have this drive if you look at the image you can see that the rear panel has a little semi circular nib of plastic at the bottom. It serves no purpose, but what it does do is make it nearly impossible to plug the DC connector in. You can't quite tell from the image but it's perfectly placed so that you can't fit the requisite number of fingers needed to securely hold the plug and push it in to the cavity where the inputs of the panel are located. It actively encourages the otherwise pretty unlikely scenario of making only partial or near contact with the connector and not quite properly plugging it in. A dangerous possibility from a safety perspective but also a great way to lose a bunch of data by having it lose power or short out during operation. It's one of the most exquisitely designed inconveniences hell's engineering department could have possibly developed.
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I have a truck where the oil drain plug is directly over the axle. I have to strap an offset funnel under the drain to get it to not splash all over the fuck, and of course, it's not easy to get that stay put so inevitably I have oil everywhere. Same truck has the oil filter tucked up where I need a special oil filter wrench with a ratchet and extensions to remove it, and when you pull the filter out, you have to tip it so it spills the oil inside everywhere.
I had an idea a long time ago of a website where you can crowdfund a private investigator to find engineers that do shit like this, and a crew to go over to their house and beat them halfway to death.
Cars are designed by people who don't do maintenance themselves.
Why stop there?
I learned long ago when something like this bothers me that it is irrational to get angry at objects, then I connected I am not angry at the object, I am angry at the dumb ass turd who designed it.
btw, I drill a hole in my oil filter before I remove it to drain it so it doesn't spill all over the front of my engine.
Maybe all engineers should have to sign their work. Like have their license number or something embossed on it. That way we can find them and inform them of their idiocy.
About cars, and not necessarily designed poorly, but definitely designed by a man for men: cars that, by default, automatically, immediately unlock all doors when the engine is turned off. A man might be car jacked or robbed, a woman might be car jacked, robbed, or raped.
(Of course men can be raped too, but it's not as likely to happen by a strange woman threatening violence than a woman is to be raped by a strange man threatening the same.)
If we're also talking about vehicles... I'm about average height (~180 cm) but have long-ish legs, and this means that I simply don't fit well into the driver's seat of most cars. Even with the steering wheel adjusted all the way up, seat slid all the way back and reclined all the way forward, my legs are hitting the steering wheel and yet I can barely reach it with my hands. Because of this, I sometimes have to take my shoes off while driving.
Also, almost every car has some annoying things like your oil plug; simply because a modern combustion engine is really quite complicated and there's not enough space under the hood to give every component a convenient place. E.g. my Delica has the starter located below the engine and quite far back, so it's mostly covered by the engine protection plate. Good luck banging on that starter relay if it sticks in the off position and refuses to start, while you're stuck in the mud! However I do agree that making periodic maintenance painful, like in your case, is way worse.
Oh, there's a few engines like the Northstar and the Toyota 5.7 where the starter is actually under the intake manifold, effectively inside the engine. The amount of stuff you need to take off to even see the starter would make your eyes water.
Had an old Isuzu truck that to start, I sat in the drivers seat with the passengers seat up exposing the engine. Had a long steel rod that I would feed down thru the motor and bang on the starter motor while cranking the keys.
Sometimes it started straight away, sometimes it took 5 minutes of banging to get the pig to fire. Good Times.
Woke one morning to start work, went to hop in and saw someone smashed the drivers quarter window. Reckon they tried to start it but must have assumed it had a kill switch.
Pity they didn't steal it, as the insurance payout would have been way more bucks that it was worth.
Alec from Technology Connections is known for his extensive rants about household appliances: https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections
As for me, I'm just trying to avoid things in general, and things I don't enjoy in particular. Perhaps the only things that I find annoying at my home are:
- An awful flow-through gas water heater, which requires me to wait for like a minute before water gets up to temperature every time I need hot water (I'd go with an electric one myself, but unfortunately I'm a renter for now). It's also a poor design because it's going to fuck over humanity in a couple decades via climate change.
- Packaging on almost all processed food. I don't need everything I buy to be in a plastic bag. It's an incredibly poor design because it is almost always non-recyleable, either because it has a thin foil layer or it's a mix of plastics or both, filling the landfills forever and contaminating everything with microplastics.
- Poor window frame design, combined with inevitable building settling, has resulted in a cracked window twice within the last year.
I have many more gripes about things, some of the most prominent:
- Most modern smartphones just suck. Gimme back the headphone jack, an SD card slot, and a back that I can open with my fingernails! (thankfully my current phone has all of those despite being only a couple years old and very cheap)
- Generally everything that has a battery which I can't replace
- Bluetooth headphones without a headphone jack or at least audio-over-USB are an awful design, it would cost the manufacturer like a dollar do add that functionality that can come in really handy and yet they don't
- Fuck clothes without pockets!
- Cheap plastic crap from wish.com or similar that's designed to fail after one use, it just shouldn't exist. I hope CPC bans this shit soon. (although I find it fun to pull out broken christmas lights from recycling, fix them and then get free christmas lights for every New Year's)
- "Teflon" or similar frying pans. Just get a cast iron one. Lasts forever, doesn't poison you, also allegedly enriches your food with iron
There are many, but my current bugbear is the wireless Apple mouse. It has a built in rechargeable battery and and a tiny little port for you to plug the recharging cable in. The port is mounted on the bottom of the mouse rendering it useless while it's being charged. I guess it's to make it look nicer but it's so stupid.
That was a design decision by Steve Jobs to keep people from using them as wired mice.
If this is true what a dumb reason. Basically decided to make a device that could be used 100% of the time unusable for some fraction of time just because it looks the way he wanted it too.
Planned obsolescence. When the battery finally dies, you can't use it wired.
Laptops with no intake dust filters.
Actually, no, any computer with fans that doesn't have a dust filter is a terrible design.
Any time there's a ready meal from the supermarket and for some reason the adhesive is way stronger than the plastic film. You end up with loads of bits of film just sort of stuck to the rim of it. Super annoying.
Any mug that has a really hemispherical, smooth handle. You put a hot beverage in there, and the weight is enough to make your fingers slide down the handle, and then you burn yourself on the main body of the mug unless you really squeeze.
Any faucet that just barely sticks out over the sink, so you have to touch the back of the sink to wash your hands (british sinks are even worse, though).
I'm going to go with that horrendous, non-absorbent, 1/8th ply toilet paper that gets stocked in public and office bathrooms.
I'm on Team Bidet now, so it doesn't bother me as much as it once did... but the stuff should not exist.
I'm guessing that one day, the people who buy the stuff will figure out that it they're not winning if it costs one-third the price of normal TP when everyone has to use ten times more of it, but who knows when that day will happen. Because it hasn't happened yet.
cups, glasses, bowls, anything that doesn't have a spout and makes a mess every time you transfer liquids
Every time I spill something I'm reminded how much better lab glassware is (beakers etc)
When I was a kid cereal didn't have no zippas! We rolled up the one end of the bag and watched it partially unfurl when we let go, and we were satisfied with that.
Roll the bag. Flip the box upside down. Put it in going up. Hold it in place and flip the box back over. Gravity holds the bag closed. This is a bad idea if anyone else accesses the box and isn't on the same page as you.
US can openers. In other countries, they cut the sides of the can not the top, so the lid has no chance of falling in while dulling the edges. It also allows them to be much smaller and easier to use.
I bought this can opener after watching a Technology Connections video, and I kinda love my can opener.
Same. I should really learn to use a simpler one, but I love this model and it still seems rock-solid to me after years of use. The best part is not ending up with sharp, dangerous edges on the lid!
I don't know what "other countries" you're talking about, but where I'm from, a "can opener" looks like this:
(I've been using one just like this for my entire adult life, and guess what - it's ok!)
You can buy good can openers and bad ones in any country.
Some toilets have a perfectly round bowl so they don't stick out as far and take up less bathroom floor space - and they work fine, but only in bathrooms that anticipate the vast majority of its occupants to be equipped with a vagina. For those of us rocking a penis, those fucking toilets are horrible - sitting on that damn thing requires you to contort your junk around like some sausage-Houdini as you're sitting, so that you can guide it through the remaining 2 square inches of open space not occupied by your legs or ass. Then when you're actually seated, you still have to sit there and awkwardly hold the thing so it stays pointed straight down.
Fuck up any part of that, and the tip of your dick hits the seat or the inside of the bowl.
...and they must be like $3 cheaper than an oval toilet or something, cuz 99% of US apartments seem to be equipped with the round, vagina-only toilets.
Oval bowls are the way. No matter what's in your pants, it gets the job done without the significantly increased biohazard risk.
I guess in fairness, the problem isn't with their design, it's with the people who purchase the toilets treating them as sex-neutral when no the fuck they aren't!
I never really considered it was because the toilet might be rounder and less oval but I have definitely noticed those toilets because for some reason they're ALL like that in every workplace and commercial building in this one suburb of my city. I have no idea why just that suburb decided they really enjoyed the idea of everyone having their penis touch the toilet bowl. I work freelance and because of agglomeration, most companies in my industry all set up shop in that particular suburb so I got to experience a wide gamut of different buildings who all made this same bizarre and infuriating choice.
Humidifiers.
It's just a pool of water with a little nebulizer and a fan to blow the mist out a chimney.
Trouble is, they're all made by the fucking plague demon Nurgle with the sole purpose of aerosolizing mold and bacteria by having the tiniest nooks and crannies than cannot be reached to be physically cleaned.
And before I get the "you gotta clean it with vinegar every week" comment, two points:
- You don't soak your hands in soap and rinse them off and call them clean. You gotta scrub them.
- Am I supposed to fill a 5 gallon bucket with vinegar to soak the whole water tank every week? Because the chimney goes right through that bitch.
Toilets seem to be getting smaller and Iโm having trouble sitting on it without my penis touching the front.
Hey everyone get a load of this guy with his massive hog
Yeah, why do people blow their noses into PAPER when you can just go to the bathroom sink and hork in your hands, and then wash up afterwards??? Why would people walk around with dried boogies on they face when they can wash?? Why? Why, Mister Anderson, why, why?
Just tell me that you turn the water on pre-hork instead of touching the fixtures with hork hands, and I'm totally fine with your suggestion.
Wine bottles. After thousands of years of drinking you would think humans would develop a bottle design that doesn't dribble down the side after pouring.
If this is a regular issue for you I'd recommend a decanter or at least a large carafe. It solves your problem, helps the wine to 'breathe' and looks fancypants as balls.
For example, I'm incredibly confused about how you're supposedly to measure liquid laundry detergent with the cap. At least the kind that I have sits on it's side, so if you measure it with the cap it just leaks everywhere and makes a mess.
After pouring the detergent into the appropriate receptacle, toss the cap in with your laundry to be washed like everything else. No mess.