Innocuous things that make you irrationally angry (a list thread)

Local NPR affiliate's traffic updates: either do a detailed traffic report or dont do one at all, you goddamn vague hippies. "there's a 10 minute delay on Hwy x between folsom & sacramento" is fucking useless to me for a 20 mile section of hwy. I'd rathet not know at all!

I get irrationally angry when people write "Son' instead of "-san"

fair cop - it was in my head because someone posted "Denial Son" on a football thread.

the joggers are the worst. why do people jog and then take shortcuts?

Argh, short-cutting joggers ARE the worst! They lumber down the middle of footpaths so there isn't quite room on either side and they never move over for anyone else, because apparently their chosen hobby is so agonisingly painful that adding an extra few inches to their route to avoid hitting someone else would just be terrible.

Well, that ain't my fault, so move out of my way and use the extra 0.3 seconds it adds to your journey time to think of a new hobby and/or exercise method you'll hate less, OK?

Though I am a habitual crossing-avoiding jaywalker so don't listen to me. (At least, the one near my flat where it's usually not busy and I know the order of the traffic lights upstream and can spot a good traffic-free moment in advance. Another one I use daily even though it's out of my way because the traffic is just too fast and too unpredictable. Even using the crossing is slightly nervewracking as I've seen too many things go through it on red.)

Can we go back to jaywalking for a minute? Do New Yorkers overall obey pedestrian signals? That's not what I remember it being like. It's certainly not like that in Chicago. A few years back, Mayor Daley wanted to start ticketing jaywalkers, but that attempt was roundly shot down. Some pedestrians' rights people said it would be a way of favoring motorists, who already have the lion's share of power on the streets.

Anyway, cautious jaywalker 4 lyfe here.

i think in any decent sized city jaywalking is necessary unless you like to take three times as long to get anywhere.

In London most streets are very narrow, ten steps max, which makes most of them jaywalkable.

i never jaywalk unless i'm *sure* both directions are clear. even if it means walking way the hell out of my way to find a crosswalk (encino, i'm looking at you and your long-ass streets).

ia: businesses being closed on sundays. i know you're a mom & pop and you need a day off, but does your day off have to correspond with everyone else's? (me: "it's a lovely afternoon; i think i'll stroll over to the new hot dog place people are talking about... oh shit, they're closed!" and there goes some money they could have made.)

oh yeah LA is another story for sure. (xp)

For Mother's Day, we were going to eat at our locally-owned traincar diner, but pulled up instead to an empty parking lot and locked doors. We were concerned because this place has gone through some ownership changes, and it wouldn't be the first time for us that the place had closed down for a few months.

I called the diner the next day, and the owner told me that because they're open 24 hours a day on the weekend, they close shop for two hours every Sunday from 2-4 pm to do maintenance and cleaning. Even on Mother's Day.

I believe that means they're open 22 hours if I did my math right

sunday afternoon is probably the busiest restaurant/diner time here because of post church gatherings so its a pretty retarded time to close for 'cleaning and maintenance'. red lobster has a line snaking out into the parking lot every sunday early pm.

ziploc closures make me IA because I am challenged & can never close them properly, or at least not without some effort & swearing :(

The goddamn screen that constantly rotates a half turn when I'm trying to drain the sink while I'm doing the dishes and does not allow me to empty the water, then I have to angle it so the water drains but then food goes down with the water so I spend the next four years of my life cleaning the drain. Then it miraculously stays in place and fills up the sink when i'm simply trying to rinse a plate or two. #rapturemenow

Then it miraculously stays in place and fills up the sink when i'm simply trying to rinse a plate or two.

this whole sentence should be sticken from the record cuz it's the same complaint as the previous sentence #doublecomplaint

man i appreciate ziploc tech after dealing with a box of sugar where you have to press in the flap (#GaruG) and bust one of your two thumbs FIGHTING CARBOARD which could've been better used initiating a thumb war.

I think it's great but I'm just very uncoordinated ... I even love the resealable bags of flour, except when it takes me 10 min to close the stupid thing

10 mins of your life vs. 12 bazillion flour bugs who will eat you out of house and home and hearth

^^^ no kidding. I'd nevet dealt with flour bugs before, but ugh...those fuckers get in everything!

it's biblical when they get going

after I clean my drain i sit by the pantry with a loaded shotgun, just in case

to shoot the flour bugs?

yes

it's a living

Cursor focus not being in the first cell of a web form.

(I'm looking at you, ilx login page!)

People sticking a post-it note with something written on it onto the top of the post-it note pad.

> (I'm looking at you, ilx login page!)

and search page

using a pronoun without an antecedent

especially when combined with pathetic fallacy

e.g. "i wanted to place an order, but it won't let me"

/customer service griping

oh yeah, using "it" to refer to that computer thingay there, steam coming out of my ears

I've used "it" in that situation before, but meant "it" to refer to their abysmal online form.

matt maybe u should read the thread title

ugh, this is the worst part of parental tech support. i.e. 'it won't go down. i don't know why - it used to go down, and now all i can see is the top'

i mean it is pretty frustrating when you are helping a customer but they are too stupid to articulate the problem; faulty grammar just provides a focus for my resentment.

people who eat chips as loud as possible and like they've never had a meal before.

When I did tech support I got into the habit of asking, "Can you please read to me the words you see on your computer screen?" At first I thought I'd get yelled at for being patronizing, but I never did, and I probably asked that question 500 times.

xp

oh god, how about "parental tech support"

I had to spend 15 minutes explaining the concept of a playlist to my mother, made all the more difficult because I wanted to just say "a playlist contains pointers to songs you've chosen from your library" but then I thought to myself "do you REALLY want to go into the concept of pointers with your mother?" and ended up making a really tortured, labored explanation that attempted to avoid computer science shortcut terms that would have been just as painful to explain.

Dan, my sympathies: my mother on law got an ipod shuffle & since then my husband & his brother are trapped in a recurring nighmare of explaining the playlist, her nodding quietly & then asking a question that proves she didnt understand a word so rinse repeat til she can do it herself...until tomorrow when it's gone out of her head :(

to the point where they have both quietly said, on the brink of steangulation, "Mom, we've explained this every day as simply as possible...we give up."

strangulation, I mean

I don't get this lack of playlist understanding. It's a list of songs that is derived from those in your collection. You can choose to play it in sequential or random order.

Dare I ask what they're thinking it may be, if anything?

throw a web page together with lots of screenshots. bookmark it or put it on the desktop.

mh, in my mother in law's case it boils down to - if you dont fully understand what ITunes is, or what your ipod shuffle really is, and resist learning how it works in a basic way, playlist understanding is the least of your troubles

I spent about half an hour on the phone with my mum trying to explain how to burn a single mp3 onto a CD, using iTunes. Turned out she'd downloaded a 'playlist' file instead of the mp3.

I know what a playlist is and how it works, but DJP's articulated it in a way that I never have been able to, making it all really make sense to me. It just contains "pointers"!

I'm sure a lot of people think the playlist is a compilation of the tracks themselves.

been there...my dad is a complete idiot in regards to pc issues. my mother who is blind figures out pc related issues with very little help.

this technology for my mother in law is so alien, it's beyond tech support. she wrestles with text messages on her phone, or playing mahjong on an ipad...she mentally puts playlists in the too hard basket before she's started.

meanwhile her husband, 77, laughs behind her back...he's had one for years & loves it, no problem with playlists whatsoever

wanted to just say "a playlist contains pointers to songs you've chosen from your library

Did not know this! I mean the nature of them, that the song titles in the list are "shortcuts" and not the actual tracks, I guess.

I don't get this lack of playlist understanding. It's a list of songs that is derived from those in your collection. You can choose to play it in sequential or random order.

Dare I ask what they're thinking it may be, if anything?

The situation that prompted the conversation was that my mom bought an mp3 off of Amazon and, instead of clicking "Yes" on the prompt to use the Amazon downloader, clicked "No". A streaming link to the song on the Amazon server came up for her in Windows Media Player (she does not use iTunes). She played the song a couple of times and then "saved it in Windows Media Player". She closed the application, came back to it the next day, and the song was gone.

As it turned out, what she did was create a new playlist, gave it the title of the song, added nothing to it, then closed Windows Media Player, losing the link to the stream. We had to call Amazon support to get them to re-enable the download link for the song. While investigating this, I had to answer the questions "Where did my song go?" and "I created a playlist? What's that? Why would I want that?"

It was all very aggravating.

xp: lol actually the light bulbs going off in this thread are making that whole process retroactively less aggravating, also maybe I should have just said "pointers" and called it a day.