Category: pet peeve

  • Things which really annoy me: A list

    Everyone is annoyed by certain things, not by others. It’s time I made my own list: News or Movies or TV shows about sports figures. Generally I don’t care about sports at all. Whenever someone mentions the latest triumph by the local sports team, I ask, “Is that the one with the touchdowns?” or “I…

  • Dear Amazon: Thanks for taking a dump on my ebook! (Formatting kindle ebooks on ipad)

    (The problem behind this rant has been mostly solved. See bottom). (This is Rant 1 of 2. In a few days, I will post my rant about  Smashwords) Dear Amazon. I’m really mad — no furious — at how crappy your ipad app is for reading Kindle files. Crazy/unpredictable output. Your $#$#$# Kindle Previewer on…

  • Two nastygrams about climate change

    I often get irate about climate change, and here are 2 emails I have sent about climate change.  They are not so much analytical but contemptuous in tone. Why? Frankly, because I think shaming is the only acceptable response. Certainly it would be possible to give a point-by-point response to Mr. Morano’s jabberings, but that…

  • Why does Comcast require 4 months to send a $20 refund?

    Everybody has their tales of awful customer service, and I’m going to share mine. I paid for a family member to have Comcast broadband Internet. The price was about $30 per month for 6 months, then Comcast increased the price to the “normal” monthly price of $46.97. I switched Internet providers, and called to cancel…

  • Anti-abortionism is easy; why not have a opinion requiring real moral courage?

    About 15 years ago I was active in my Catholic church on social issues. I served on AIDS care teams, a homeless shelter and issue advocacy.  One thing I did was to start a petition drive at my church to support universal health care.  It was an issue where  Catholic views of charity coincided with…

  • Computer Annoyances

    I frequently download jpgs of public domain paintings for my web projects. It is astonishing how rarely jpegs of paintings are given meaningful labels. I would expect names like mona_lisa_da_vinci_1506.jpg  Instead they have names like n34343.jpg  or picture.asp.jpg or annoying things like that. Why is it so difficult to input or view metadata for images?…

  • Unclear Instructions (and other Pet Peeves)

    I received an email from a friend about the date of an event.  the date is July 25, 2008. Phrasing that way is unhelpful. Is this a Monday or Tuesday or Friday or what?  I cannot understand why people don’t use both bits of data. I don’t remember dates. I remember days of the week. …