Pet Peeves

"Cool/warm temperatures"
"Fast/slow speed"
"High rate of speed"
"Heavier/lighter weight"
"Add additional <<item>>"
"There is many ...."
"Could of been"
And the list goes on ...

Yes, there are brainless morons out there using these. And many of them get paid to rape our language, repeatedly, with mucho gusto. *rolleyes* They also have no clue that they are wrong and will deny it and get defensive too. :)

I remember when CDs came out and many were using the word incorrectly and we made fun of them by saying "compact CD disc". It took a few decades but I think people use the acronym properly now. *whew* :)
 
Maybe not a pet peeve, more like an annoyance, but i contacted six different people trying to get clearance through some airspace only to reach a voicemail. Seriously? Six forwards/phone calls to get nowhere?

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BigBadLou said:
I remember when CDs came out and many were using the word incorrectly and we made fun of them by saying "compact CD disc". It took a few decades but I think people use the acronym properly now. *whew* :)
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People who mix up acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms...
 
People who think the "ham" in "ham radio" needs to be all caps. (It's not an acronym, abbreviation, or initialism.)
 
Rushie said:
No it's not about being green and saving the planet. It's about the place saving money on buying paper towels. Have you noticed how stingy hotels are with T-P? The thinnest cheapest paper possible and will never leave a spare roll in the room even if one of the two installed dispensers is almost empty. (Or both!)
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You can tell a lot about a business by visiting their restrooms and seeing the quality of products used in same. Not kidding. If interviewing somewhere, always show up early and ask if you may use the restroom beforehand to freshen up. You’ll know the financials of the place in less than 60 seconds.

BigBadLou said:
I remember when CDs came out and many were using the word incorrectly and we made fun of them by saying "compact CD disc". It took a few decades but I think people use the acronym properly now. *whew* :)
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That one doesn’t bother me as much as it does some people. Acronyms and initialisms get turned into nouns by military, government, and tech people all the time, and the majority of life has been around all three.

deonb said:
People who mix up acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms...
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Haha. I have been hunting for my style guide from college days that showed the use of the APOSTROPHE was required for initialisms back in the day. I still fight the urge to type ...

“ CD’s “

... because a college prof beat it into me. And it was actually accurate, back then.

Nowadays the format ...

“ CDs “

... is more common.

And nobody does...

“ C.D.s “ or forbid... “ C.D.’s “.

Eek!

Of course that was so long ago I literally carried a portable typewriter (hey, it was daisy-wheel and had a few lines of memory and an auto-erase roller and built in white-out tape!) around to write those reports on. Hahaha.

It was quiet enough for the time period that you could use it in places like the student union, but not in the library. Rechargeable NiCd batteries would last about twenty pages. :)

I was never one to keep up on either the academic style guides or the AP style guide over the years. Jobs didn’t require it. And... oh right... therefore, I didn’t care.

The few companies that had strict style requirements for their documents, had both their own in-house style guides and word processor templates for the header and footer and reference pages, and their own books stated how they wanted things like that referenced, as well as formal product names along with trademark and copyright symbols... etc etc etc.

And there was usually some nerd in a cubical somewhere who was responsible for getting answers on really odd-ball stuff. Which came up quite a bit in technical manual writing.

Nowadays you’d be lucky to get a technical manual for any tech product. Nothing like we used to have to write. And carry.

I remember one time calling my boss (knowing he was a stickler for us folk who wrote those manuals to actually lug them around with us when visiting customer sites) to ask him how to do a tricky restore function on an older system, late at night.

He answered the phone, heard my question, and hollered “Page 6-11 of your maintenance manual!” and hung up on me. He knew I’d call back and say I didn’t have the three inch “tome” with me. I did. He then told me I knew the rules and I owed him lunch, and read me the five or six steps I needed.

Long ago and far away. Everything today is text messages, chat channels, and “Who remembers how to do this?” If you’re lucky, a PDF or internal wiki or similar “documentation” system. Dead tree manuals are truly dead.
 
denverpilot said:
You can tell a lot about a business by visiting their restrooms and seeing the quality of products used in same. Not kidding. If interviewing somewhere, always show up early and ask if you may use the restroom beforehand to freshen up. You’ll know the financials of the place in less than 60 seconds.
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My luck would be that I came out of the restroom, and immediately had to meet my new potential boss. Wet hands = super bad first impression = no new job.
 
Zeldman said:
Still better than toilette paper dragging from your heels.....
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Joshuajayg said:
Experience?

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Waiting on a flight in HPN back to ATL and used the john. About a foot or so was sticking out of the back of my pants and in full view of everyone in the waiting area when I walked out. Wife saw it but didn't tell me. And didn't for awhile. :incazzato:
 
The poor paper thing may not be "cheap" - often, now, it is the building's owners going for LEED/Green points. Because, it is "green" to have crappy TP that you have to use twice as much of.
 
SCCutler said:
The poor paper thing may not be "cheap" - often, now, it is the building's owners going for LEED/Green points. Because, it is "green" to have crappy TP that you have to use twice as much of.
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When my former employer’s building me the LEEDs requirements, they hung a couple of always on TVs in the lobby. All they did was proudly display the news that the building was now LEEDS compliant and saving the planet for Al Gore’s polar bears, or some such. Looked like Powerpoint, so they’d fired up a couple of PCs that were also always on, 24/7, to drive the TVs. LOL.
 
denverpilot said:
Dead tree manuals are truly dead.
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I think you can fit all technical manuals for all products ever produced on a decent laptop these days. The English versions at least.

Library of Congress is around 15 TB for 16 million books. I would venture a guess and think that all technical manuals ever < library of congress.
 
BigBadLou said:
Yes, there are brainless morons out there,,,
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All morons have brains, they just aren't calibrated as well as other people's brains.

ElPaso Pilot said:
By the way, there are two types: those that believes something is illegal unless a law exists stating it isn’t, and those that believe we all start from the other direction.
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Reminded me of my peeve with some workers back in the day. They would do something obviously dumb and unsafe like jousting on forklifts and when they were summoned to the office to discuss they say "where does it say we cannot due that?"

Talk about brains needing some calibration.
 
SCCutler said:
The poor paper thing may not be "cheap" - often, now, it is the building's owners going for LEED/Green points. Because, it is "green" to have crappy TP that you have to use twice as much of.
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I have to assume that's why the hotel I stayed at in Denver had a air conditioning thermostat that wouldn't go below 68F... well, ok, it went below 68, you could set it to 60F, but it did nothing at all. I finally resorted to duct taping a Raspberry Pi to the bottom of the thermostat with the CPU in a loop to warm up the thermostat to make it think it was warmer than it was.
 
Schools sending crap home for kids to pawn off on their parents to sell. My kid isn't even 4 months old and his daycare sent home movie tickets to sell for a new playground. This place charges $50 per day and has over 200 kids enrolled in some sort of program.
 
JB1842 said:
Schools sending crap home for kids to pawn off on their parents to sell. My kid isn't even 4 months old and his daycare sent home movie tickets to sell for a new playground. This place charges $50 per day and has over 200 kids enrolled in some sort of program.
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I agree, that seems pretty excessive.

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JB1842 said:
Schools sending crap home for kids to pawn off on their parents to sell. My kid isn't even 4 months old and his daycare sent home movie tickets to sell for a new playground. This place charges $50 per day and has over 200 kids enrolled in some sort of program.
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That's certainly annoying..
(I don't have kids btw)

We get a lot of:
a) kids asking straight out for money without the kid doing anything. ie free money.
b) money requests for school events which have the outward appearance of being nothing more than a party (prom nite events)
c) parents doing something to raise money for the kids while the kids are at home playing video games.
d) we also have way too much emphasis on sports. I'd rather give to educational things. "School" I must look up the definition or the new definition. I'd always thought it had to do with learning...and 'enrichment' was secondary.

Ideal:
Kids decide on a worthy event, hopefully with a positive and worthy goal.
Kids decide on how to work (not get handouts) to raise funds.
Kids do the work, adults have no part in it.
Kids participate in the event, have the experience of working to raise their own money, then the event itself.
 
Heh. I was talking about myself actually... no way I'm gonna read the entire thread to see if someone already bitched about what I was bitching about. :)
 
I didn't read this entire thread before posting in it. If I did read it I probably would have become too depressed to type anything.

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Let'sgoflying! said:
That's certainly annoying..
(I don't have kids btw)

We get a lot of:
a) kids asking straight out for money without the kid doing anything. ie free money.
b) money requests for school events which have the outward appearance of being nothing more than a party (prom nite events)
c) parents doing something to raise money for the kids while the kids are at home playing video games.
d) we also have way too much emphasis on sports. I'd rather give to educational things. "School" must look up the definition or the new definition. I'd always thought it had to do with learning...and enrichment was secondary.

Ideal:
Kids decide on a worthy event, hopefully with a positive and worthy goal.
Kids decide on how to work (not get handouts) to raise funds.
Kids do the work, adults have no part in it.
Kids participate in the event, have the experience of working to raise their own money, then the event itself.
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Our rule of thumb is that we will contribute to any worthy cause as long as the kid is making the ask, keeping the list, handling the money, etc. A parent passing around a list at the office won't cut it. Our thought is that we want to reward a kid out "selling" something and learning how to organize things and deliver a product. Those are helpful life skills. Couch surfing and playing video games are not useful skills.

Oh, and if the kid is selling something that is absolute crap (like Boy Scout popcorn), we'll just make a donation, rather than buy the item...
 
Mistake Not... said:
My pet peeve is people who post without reading the entire thread.
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I have not read all of the preceding 2428 posts. Have you?
I have also not read all of the posts to the juxtaposed threads thread.

However, I do agree in part with your peeve.
 
Why read it all? The subject has changed probably 2-3 times or more.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
d) we also have way too much emphasis on sports. I'd rather give to educational things. "School" I must look up the definition or the new definition. I'd always thought it had to do with learning...and 'enrichment' was secondary.
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Your profile says West Texas... so you know that football is just as important as the academics.
 
mkosmo said:
Your profile says West Texas... so you know that football is just as important as the academics.
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...even if it's 6-Man Football?
 
My wife and I went to Wal-Mart to walk off dinner Thursday. I've been Black Friday shopping before and it was busy, but nothing like this. Elbow to elbow, no room to move at all. The woman behind me was on her cell an kept running her cart into the back of my ankles. Each time she would say "sorry". "Sorry" "sorry" "sorry" After the fourth time I turned around and was fairly polite. "I didn't say anything after the first four times..." and left it at that. She immediately did it again. "sorry" Fortunately my wife knew what was about to happen and pushed me through the crowd toward the door.

Otherwise, I've got a bad feeling I'd be spending the next 25 years reliving Andy Dufresne's life. Only guilty of the crime.
 
I went to the local Walmart here really wishing I didn't have to.

Surprisingly it was almost empty. A conversation could be had using normal volume. No kids crying, screaming, running through the aisles. Even the few check out lanes with an actual person working it were very short.

Maybe everyone shopped themselves out last Friday....

I still haven't recovered....
 
Zeldman said:
I went to the local Walmart here really wishing I didn't have to.

Surprisingly it was almost empty. A conversation could be had using normal volume. No kids crying, screaming, running through the aisles. Even the few check out lanes with an actual person working it were very short.

Maybe everyone shopped themselves out last Friday....

I still haven't recovered....
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You mean they had more than one manned check-out lane open?! :eek:
 
Zeldman said:
I went to the local Walmart here really wishing I didn't have to.

Surprisingly it was almost empty. A conversation could be had using normal volume. No kids crying, screaming, running through the aisles. Even the few check out lanes with an actual person working it were very short.

Maybe everyone shopped themselves out last Friday....

I still haven't recovered....
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I'm kind of bragging... my nearest Walmart is 2.5 hr. Away. I like it like that.
 
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