chronovore | Entries tagged with annoyances

I'm a poster boy for hay fever today: red, sticky, itchy eyes; runny nose; itchy throat; and for the first time ever, ringing ears.

Seriously, what is with this? Apparently we just shifted into hinoki cyprus season, where it had previously just been cedar, which doesn't much affect me. This has been one of the most severe allergy seasons I've ever experienced. Probably influenced by other stresses, no doubt. I think another bad allergy season was right when I was graduating from college in 1991, and had no idea where I'd be working... or living, for that matter.

So, yeah, ringing ears. Not a fan.

By the time I reached the bike parking lot near the station, I had less than a minute to catch the special express, and maybe 20 more seconds to catch the regular express, which takes off just after it.

Crosswalk light was green, so I was off to a good start. Despite a lingering cough, I took off at a jog. In front of me, a woman was also jogging. She clearly was moving toward the station, and it looked like she thought she'd make it, so I made myself keep up with her; we ran the length of the block leading up to the station entrance. As we neared the gate, the special express departed. I had maybe 20 seconds left. Clearing the ticket gate with my electronic pass, I watched the departure announcement sign change, meaning the express was about to depart. Now running at a slightly more brisk pace, we both cleared the corner, the escalator leaning upward toward the raised platform, just a little more... Halfway there...

At which point the woman in front of me decided that she wasn't going to make it, and stopped climbing the escalator steps. Stopped, right in the middle, not off to either side. Stopped, so I had to stop too, or shove past her to maintain my speed. Which I didn't, so I slowed, scootched past her slowly, then continued climbing. Just when I crested the top, the train started moving.

I'm pretty sure if the woman hadn't stopped on the escalator, I would have made it. So my perspective, seeing a small pattern writ large, is this: If you're going to fail, if you're going to concede, at least have the decency to do it in a way that doesn't impede others who haven't yet given up.

At work we have fingerprint reader locks at the entrances leading to the building's common spaces such as the elevators and hallways leading to the building's restrooms. Unfortunately they are kind of a pain in the ass, because the registration of the fingerprint alignment is quite finicky, and the bond between the glass and finger does not work well if the proffered digit is overly dry, there is no user feedback from the lock while it scans (Is it reading now? Did that go through? Is it active, or is it warming up to read? Do I need to try again?), etc. I've joked that, if these locks were used in a horror movie where the main character is fleeing from the monster or alien, in movies they always open at the last minute but with these locks the character would just get eaten. They are really uncooperative locks.

So it's quite a stroke of when I'm returning from the restroom and someone else is leaving the dev floor. All they have to do is push a button and the door unlocks, but from the opposite side you have to go through Fort Knox procedures to get back on the floor to work.

Sometimes, however, there will be someone standing on the dev floor side, waiting... they can hear the beep-beep-beep of my employee number being entered, they can then hear the long delay after those beeps, while I fumble my finger around on the glass, trying to find a position that the lock accepts my fingerprint. They're planning to open the door, but they're waiting for me to do it. WHY? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? PUSH THE FUCKING BUTTON AND OPEN THE DOOR. DO YOU THINK HANS GRUBER IS OUT HERE WITH A BAND OF TERRORISTS, ABOUT TO KICK IN THE DOOR? DO YOU THINK HANS FUCKING GRUBER IS GOING TO BE WAYLAID BY A FINICKY FINGERPRINT LOCK? OPEN THE GODDAMNED DOOR FOR ME, JOHN McCLANE.

Current Mood: annoyed

SKYPE needs a "report spam" button anytime someone not on your contact list messages you. If they get 100 reports in one day, they can block the user's account, save their own bandwidth.

I've now set it so only people on my contact list can chat me, but their default (non-advanced) privacy settings read as though no-one new will be able to contact me, which I assumed meant even "new contact requests" -- turns out it's only for text/voice chat.

Current Mood: annoyed

January 2006 - A nightmarish neighbor: noisy, nosy, now in jail / Police say they hauled guns, ammo, drugs from his home:

For three years, Bertone, who once worked for the city Housing Authority and ran for the Board of Supervisors in 2000, has wreaked all sorts of havoc in an otherwise quiet community in the southeastern part of the city known as Little Hollywood, officials and his neighbors said Wednesday.

Bertone, 54, doesn't just play loud music, authorities say. At all hours of the day and night, he has blasted police radio broadcasts, shrill oscillating tones, Spanish dance tunes and other noise from speakers he installed on the outside of his home at 336 Lathrop Ave. Police said they could hear the racket from 100 yards away.

Bertone isn't just a nosy neighbor, they add.

Police said he hooked up floodlights and six cameras that swept the block. Inside his home, he could monitor his neighbors' movements on four video screens.

Flash forward to November 2006 - SAN FRANCISCO / Blaze guts home of ex-noisy neighbor / Fire called accident -- owner plans to leave neighborhood:

The home of a San Francisco man who once tormented his neighbors by tracking them with surveillance cameras and blaring music from the roof went up in flames Wednesday, in what firefighters called an accidental blaze.
The two-alarm fire broke out just after noon near the water heater in Don Bertone's home at 336 Lathrop Ave., in a southeastern neighborhood known as Little Hollywood. Firefighters believe heat from the appliance ignited fumes from a nearby can of gasoline.

LEAST ACCIDENTAL FIRE EVAR.

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: Miserlou - Bobby Fuller Four

So it's 03:15, and I've spent the last 2.5 hrs. hunting what turned out to be four blood-filled mosquitoes. They were lucky, then they were really unlucky. If they'd just snack and be on their way, it wouldn't be so bad, but even engorged they'll keep buzzing and biting. I've got four new bites, and the boy has at least two. The girl sleeps under a mosquito net because she's a princess (and smarter than I am). So. Yes. I'm tired; I'm tired to the point where it feels like nausea. But I hunted them all down (knock wood) and made several bloody stains on the wallpaper and my hands.

We had the housecleaner dust all the window screens today. Silly me, I turned off all the lights then opened all the windows when we went to bed, and didn't even think to check if the screens were solidly shut. As it turns out the biggest window had the screen entirely on the wrong half of the window -screens slide here, and I forgot that- so the window was entirely open for an hour or so. Hence the parade of sleep-stealing bloodsuckers. DESTROY.

CNET News: Music publishers: iTunes not paying fair share (via /.):

Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are making preparations to one day collect performance fees from Apple and other e-tailers for not just traditional music downloads but for downloads of films and TV shows as well. Those downloads contain music after all.

These groups even want compensation for iTunes' 30-second song samples.

Apple's iTunes provides an otherwise-unusable 30 second clip as a free advertisement to promote the sale of the song itself, and the songwriters want a cut of the advertisement?

Oh, man. What were they thinking? MS Word, in an ill-advised attempt to make itself more accessible has converted all of its previous menus into nested, tab-like palettes of buttons. I've never seen anything like this in any other program... and I'm pretty sure I know why: it sucks!

If anyone else has been trapped into using this for their work, please show me your best "Office 2007 for people who have used computers for over 25 years" tutorial sites. Handy mnemonics, even.

AND EVERYTHING IS BLUE. What is up with that?

Obama vows to reform monstrous tax code | Reuters:

As a counterpoint to Obama's defense of his policies, protests were held in Washington, Chicago, Boston and other cities. Organizers said the protests were inspired by the 1773 Boston Tea Party rebellion against British colonial taxes, which helped spark the American revolution.

The "tea party" protesters demonstrated against taxes, government bailouts and Obama's budget proposal.

Rallies were planned at state legislatures across the South, the most conservative region of the United States. In Mississippi, around 2,000 people gathered on the steps of the state capitol in Jackson.

"Our biggest thing is to protest the overspending of our government. They are not looking at the people. They are just automatically dipping into our pockets," said Julia Hodges, an organizer of the Tax Day Tea Party in Mississippi.

Florida Primary Recount Reveals Grave Voting Problems One Month Before Presidential Election | Threat Level from Wired.com: We are about to experience a dry rectal intrusion from Florida, once again. Good grief, what will it take to shore this up?

Current Mood: angry

I seriously want my browser to tell me which window or tab is playing a noise. A little speaker icon next to the title, that's all. Auto-playing sounds and flash and crap are making me unhappy.

Listening to The Savage Lovecast again today, and remembered

chernobylred condemning Loveline's Dr. Drew. Driving home late at night during crunchtime, I really used to enjoy Loveline when it was Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla. The two of them were a great pair, because Adam is hilarious and Drew always seemed very insightful in terms of being able to identify trauma in someone's past that they'd not brought up in the question. And they were always at each other's throats, Drew largely through scathing silences, and Adam coming down on Drew for not loosening up a little.

( surprize! buttsecks! )

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Pulp Fiction; Personality Goes a Long Way - Vincent and Jules

Skateboarder Has Terribly Painful Landing - Watch more free videos

The last three missions of Sneak King have evoked very colorful language from me. I remain un-dissuaded. I am, after all, The King.

Hey, news-flash: US Amazon's One-Click shopping requires a credit card with a US-domestic billing address. Purchases from Amazon's MP3 store can only be made via One-Click. I do not have a card with a US billing address; hence, I do not have access to Amazon's MP3 store.

I am distinctly not enjoying the direction the internet-as-marketplace has been taking this past couple years.

Current Mood: annoyed

Global Geek News Blog - Twitter Etiquette.

Dude. Get a life. Whomever you're following, they don't have a contract with you to follow your rules. Don't like the way they're using it? Drop them. If you're feeling giving, let them know they've been dropped, and why.

I'm not the system's biggest fan, but even I know you can input "follow [name]" to get updates pushed to your device, and "stop [name]" to cease that person's twitterrhea at a local level.

Edit: Hee! I'm a dork. It's "leave [name]" to drop them. "Off" will just c&d updates. Have a handy list.

Current Music: Ghosts I - IV; NIN

AB-magnifying-glasses, originally uploaded by chronovore.

This is the AlienBrain menu bar. Who told them these icons are intuitive? Seriously, SHERLOCK HOLMES does not have this many magnifying glasses.

My family just got back from a trip to San Jose, California. I very much wanted to see my local friends, but instead decided to keep the entire trip entirely focused on being with my Dad's widow and my sister's family. My two kids get to play with their Japanese family every day of the year, as they're literally 20 steps away down the block from our house, but they've only seen their single US cousin once before. We made up for some of that discrepancy on this trip, and we really got my Dad's widow into the Christmas spirit, and she helped us do the same.

My apologies to

weezie13,

tsanders,

allera,

hedr_goblin,

cyclopea,

toxgunn, and heaps of friends who don't have LJ accounts. I know everyone was probably busy with their own plans anyway, but I feel bad for being incommunicado about it.

The trip started off badly but became better as the week went on. ( cut for length and video )

Every time I get stumped and resort to Altavista's Babelfish or Google Translate to translate Japanese to English, I feel like a complete genius for understanding what little I do of this language. The stuff that comes out of the automatic translators is like Burroughsian cut-up poetry.

When Your Cellphone Is in My Space - New York Times: [the other michael]

Yes, it’s true: as James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University, says, “If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people.”
Cellphone use is but one manifestation of this unhappy fact. Or maybe it was always so, but with more of us living in closer proximity, today it’s more obvious.

Current Mood: intrigued

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Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 04:24 am

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Journal for Kids Who Don't Read Good

Entries tagged with annoyances

allergies

forceably seen pattern of the day

fingerprint locks, threat or menace?

(no subject)

(no subject)

bugs

ASCAP desperate, reaching at straws

Office 2007

Republicans Gone Wild - Someone throw some beads at them.

Florida, O! I loathe you.

leave the noise

much ado

polish skater joke - warning, painful (though no broken bones)

this morning i wove a tapestry of obscenity which still hangs in the air above my home in kishiwada

no "one-click" for you, chappie!

twit

AB-magnifying-glasses

"XMAS ALL DELETE" - as seen on Keroro Gunsou

autotranslation

to be edited later... sorry