Laughing, laughing... better shut up or Treb won't invite me to play at the Punkin Pitch...Originally Posted by Jim
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Laughing, laughing... better shut up or Treb won't invite me to play at the Punkin Pitch...
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And this triggered one for me. It's actually my mother's gripe.
When telling someone live on the phone a number, she hates having to ask "could you repeat that back to me".
I repeat numbers for my own benefit. I'm surprised she runs into that many people that don't.
I didn't know this bugged her until just a few weeks ago when she complimented me for doing it. I guess it's because she's been talking to a lot of doctors and insurance people lately.
Order of Kilopi
Ok, second try since I seem to have hit a wrong key the first time:
I was just reading a post on another site with title, roughly, "Something bad happens in LA". It bugs me that the postal abbreviation for Louisiana, where the event happened, is the same as the common abbreviation for a major city in California!
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
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Yeah, that one bugs me, too, Treb! (It really does, not just sucking up...)
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I guess it depends on what you hear most about. I tend to think the city immediately.
Usually; when I hear of something in the state, it's somewhere near it's big city NOLA.
Not that it bugs me, but an occasional headline recently about the Aurora theater tragedy, I sometimes needed to think a bit because I would occasionally first read it as some tragic carbon monoxide accident.
Order of Kilopi
Oh I can do better than that...I can draft you to work both days, all day! And Snohomish too, two weeks earlier.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
Bad Post-Doc
See, it annoys me when two switches aren't pointing the same direction.
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"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"
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True story...
Company A was doing business with Company B and wanted to curry favor. The President of Company B had a nephew who was graduating college and looking for employment. Company A offered him a job at one of their plant sites for a very attractive salary. He accepted the position.
And was deeply disappointed when he got to the work site and discovered that Lake Charles, Louisiana, is not the suburb of Los Angeles he thought it was.
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I had read that the University of Southern California won a court case against the University of South Carolina for the use of the initials "USC."
This seemed misguided to me (and not because I attended the latter school, I assure you). I gather that there was a colony officially named South Carolina long before the California wilderness got divided up directionally, so they should have had priority.
Banned
True, but the courts would have sided with whoever used the initials first in an official capacity. U of SoCal was established in 1880, while U of SoCar was established in 1801.
I can see how the judge ruled as they did.
Order of Kilopi
When I went into my lab room last week (for the second time in a month), I flipped both light switches so the switch I use was down when they were off. I went back in there today, and the switch was up again. I sure hope maintenance doesn't keep doing that to me once classes start.
Order of Kilopi
Unsolicited advice bugs me, even though I know people mean well. What really gets to me, though, is when someone "helps" by "cleaning up" and ends up throwing away something I was saving. If I really wanted help, I'd ask for help.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Order of Kilopi
Is acne trivial? Because it definitely bugs me.
Order of Kilopi
You need to make a record of all the unsolicited advice you've received, grade it according to usefulness, and provide feedback to the people who gave it to you. Do that, and let me know how you get on.
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It seems trivial later in life, but is obviously not so trivial at the time.
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I see what you did there.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Established Member
What really irritates me is unsolicited advice from somebody who knows nothing about the subject in hand. I like to think that on the very few occasions I give advice (which nobody ever listens to anyway) then I actually do know what I'm talking about. But plenty of people advise on the basis of zero knowledge, and this is annoying but not trivial.
Order of Kilopi
Trivial bug: discussion forum posts that start off with "I'm surprised no one has mentioned ..."
Established Member
Really trivial, but really annoying: Fly Swats. These appear to be excellently designed so that they let just enough light through to fool the fly, and even have little raised bits on them so the fly is not squashed into a mess, but nicely dead. But they are sold, like everything else in this world, with a price sticker which is of course stuck onto the flat mesh bit, and are impossible to wash off. This sticker covers enough of that area to reduce the light through it, ruining the cunning design. If you try removing it with hot water, the swat melts....
Order of Kilopi
Try sticking it in the freezer instead of heating it, the glue will often turn brittle with the cold.
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Order of Kilopi
This one annoys me every time it happens.
I don't put enough change in the snack machine (for instance you put in a nickel thinking it was a quarter)
I press my selection, and the digital display says "check product price".
I can see the product price... what I don't know is how much I put in, or know what the machine thinks I put in?
It's a digital display and smart enough to know how much it still needs. How about something like "$0.65 is not enough". Then I can decide to check the price or put in more.
And; if I put in what the product is marked at, then let me hit the coin return because the digital price is set wrong.
Order of Kilopi
It bugs me when I think I know what somebody looks like until I go to draw a picture of them and then I realize I was wrong-- I guess I was looking at the wrong pictures, but for years I would have described MER Principal Investigator Steve Squyres' hair as leaning more towards blond than brown.
Order of Kilopi
Really? I'd have thought we'd covered that already.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Order of Kilopi
We're on our first road trip in 10 years. This afternoon I found myself getting annoyed when the 55 mile/hour truck pulled out in front of us to pass the 50 mile/hour truck on the big hill on the 65 mile/hour highway. Must have held us up for AT LEAST 20 or 30 seconds. On a day when we're actually killing time to avoid arriving too early. So I guess I'm bugged with myself.
I'm also slightly bugged with this laptop having the keys a bit different than I'm accustomed to, causing me to erase half my post and making me retype it. But I'm glad the hotels have Wi-Fi. I seem to be addicted to this internet thing!
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
Order of Kilopi
one of us...
one of us...
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Order of Kilopi
A related thing that bugs me is when the display says "exact amount only" (ie when it cannot give change) but it won't let me pay more. On a hot summer's day when i'm really thirsty, i don't mind paying 1.50 euro for a cold drink that costs 1.30 euro (when i have only a 1 euro and 0.5 euro coin), yet the machine won't let me because it will only accept the exact amount because it can't give change.
Order of Kilopi
Oh yes. I leave my phone number at the beginning and the end. I usually start with something like, "Hello, this is [real name] at [real number], I'm calling about . . ." and get to the message. Then I finish with "Thank you, and again, my number is . . ."
At one time years ago, I did a good number of support calls, and I became very familiar with this issue. Starting with the phone number is best because your listener doesn't have to go through the entire darn message if they didn't catch the phone number the first time. The worst is when someone has a strong accent, a very long message, and at the last minute remembers they need to give their number and rushes through it. I've had times I've had to play a message half a dozen times to make out all the digits. I became quite proficient at using the incremental rewind on our voicemail system.
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Order of Kilopi
A nice article on this issue here http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2012/0...ta-is-in-pt-2/, with a good explanation why the etymology (as usual) is no guide. The status has been in doubt for centuries ("datas" as the plural from 1645; "datum" didn't appear till a century later). Conclusion: it is a non-count noun; treat it as singular.
Order of Kilopi
I suddenly wish I had a complex phone number.
Established Member
Given that the general consensus seems to be that 'data' is singular, what do people think about the very annoying word 'media'? Here is an article from the Guardian newspaper (from which you would expect good English) with the title
Why social media isn't the magic bullet for self-epublished authors
I find the combination "media is" actually cringeworthy (if that's a word). The problem is different to 'data' because whereas 'datum' is not actually used much as a singluar, the singular of 'media' is very common, and is actually needed. So why do some people insist on using 'media' as a singular as well?
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