IT.
Sloped and leveled floors.
A goalkeeper in soccer or similar. It’s a thankless job, you save 10 shots, nobody notices. But you miss one and you’ll be called a bum by your own fans. As opposed to a forward striker, who might miss 10 shots, nobody notices. But you make one and you’ll be a hero being paraded on shoulders.
Network Administration.
If the network and servers all work: What are we paying you for?
If the network or one of the servers are down: What are we paying you for?
Here is a recent ticket my team just got. I was honestly suprised how pissy it got.
Hopefully this is the easiest request you’ve had of the day. This is a request from my C-suite. Since we’ve looked at the network and everything ‘looks good.’ But they have asked us to take another look given the continued complaints from the vendor (see attached email) I’m escalating to the NE team so the “experts” can validate that there isn’t any code or anything that would be causing this cart to have faulty connections.
infrastructure in general - even beyond IT. No one sits at home thinking: The sewer system is great! How reliably my shit vanishes from my toilet! Until it doesn’t.
Murder. Just sayin.
Sound quality.
I worked in life theater for almost a decade as a sound board op and audio engineer for a few local theaters.
People would always comment to the lighting board op how good the lights were.
But maybe one person in a whole run of a show would compliment the sound.
Boy oh boy, if a cable died mid show… The whole intermission and afterwards I’d have to hear “I do sound at my church and,” or some variation of “I’m just a hobbyist but,”.
You think I wouldn’t pull that cable and replace it if I could???
Yup, came to say the same thing. People only notice good lights and bad audio.
The whole intermission and afterwards I’d have to hear “I do sound at my church and,” or some variation of “I’m just a hobbyist but,”.
How many audio board ops does it take to change a lightbulb? One to do it, and ten more to comment that they could’ve done it better.
Men peeing in toilets.
Anyhing IT
Can confirm. The IT guys never deserve their money.
If theyre doing it right, why do we need them? Everything works.
If they do it even slightly wrong, why are we paying them? They clearly can’t do anything right.
The location of light switches relative to the light.
Ah yes one of the rants from the design of everyday things
Railway safety. On airplanes there will sometimes be people who clap when the plane lands safely. In modern cars we have a number of safety features that are pretty hard to ignore. But with trains everyone is (rightfully) focused on punctuality. Only in the rare event of a crash or similar so most people even begin to think about the safety aspect.
I don’t clap when planes land safely, but I’m sure I would celebrate if the train I was on landed safely!
Seasoning
Salt yes, but I’m convinced bay leaves do nothing
I thought something similar until I tried a bay leaf tea to see what the flavor is. Put 1 leaf into boiling water like you are brewing a tea and give it a taste. It’s a subtle umami flavor.
Bay leaves let that one person at dinner know, that you don’t like them
Noooo, getting the bay leaf is lucky!
Bass in music. If the bass play right, you don’t hear it, but if they miss or play wrong there is immediately something missing
I hear the bass? Or, I guess it depends on what music we’re talking about. But in many situations the bass played right is very noticeable. 😁
It took me a while to respect bass guitars but they definitely provide that musical umami
You also need the horn section for that phat sound.
CGI. When people say “there was too much CGI” they just mean “there was bad CGI” because the good stuff is imperceptible.
That’s a good one. I like this guy’s series on the topic
And often that’s not because the CGI itself is bad quality, but because the effects team was asked to do the impossible with half the tools necessary. The “fix it in post” mentality.
Even small things like having reference lighting examples from the set can be the difference between an okay outcome and something almost imperceptible.
Absolutely. On the Team Deakins podcast they (Roger and his wife James) said they try to be involved in post as much as possible, because when animators and DPs don’t communicate, the digital elements are lit differently and end up looking cartoonish.
The reasons why CGI is bad doesn’t matter. If the CGI is bad it is bad.
I’d argue it matters quite a bit. It shows producers, and by extension a studio, that can’t manage production effectively, and that almost always extends to the rest of the movie. “Bad” CG is rarely the only issue with those movies, it’s just what you remember most since movies in general require the suspension of disbelief and that pulls you right out of it.
That the CGI is bad is what matters the most. Why it is bad changes nothing for the viewer.
Like plastic surgery
Any maintenance
Having recently moved into a house with these issues: doorknobs. You never, ever think about the ones that just work well, but every iffy one is irritating every time you use it.
Door handles>doorknobs
