No TAB key.
I have always avoided LinkedIn – the idea of a site where I can’t see anything unless I join tells me me they don’t actually provide anything people want unless they are press-ganged.
But it is worse than I thought.
I really needed to contact someone, and the only email Google showed was on LinkedIn. So I bit the bullet and created an account (fu@glasers.org, of course), and happily went to look at his details. There was a tiny bit more, plus the offer to “Send InMail”. So I happily clicked on the link and…
“To send an InMail now, upgrade your account.”
WTF! They want $24.95 per month for me to send a message. Apparently, for that, I can actually send 3 InMails, which they tell me is $30 of value. $10 per message! And they actually recommend a $49.95 account.
Well at least closing the account was not too painful – only had to confirm three times.
I have never, ever, had an airline upgrade.
My wife has, my son has, my researcher has, and it seems everyone I know has – even my suitcase has.
I have even been downgraded – yes, that’s right, they have a form which says “Involuntary Downgrade” – bet not many people have seen that.
And all the stories about how to get one just don’t work for me.
I have turned up early, with a Gold Card holder, who was going business. And I was Premium Economy. I asked, but still no dice, and that was the time they upgraded my suitcase and left me where I was.
Apple screws up iTunes zoom box
I am always finding that my iTunes window is too big for the laptop screen, since it usually gets resized on the big monitor. So the resize corner is off the bottom of the screen, and somehow I need to get it back.
Every other app I know lets you hit the zoom button (the green +) to get an (possibly) ideal size.
Not iTunes – you get a stupid little mini-browser if you do that. So maybe I can get the window to resize by moving the window (as in Safari)? Not a chance.
I finally had to read the Shortcut Keys in Help (if all else fails RTFM). It kindly and politely informs me that I should Option-click to get the normal behaviour.
FFS.
Autocomplete in Safari doesn’t backspace right.
Type a few characters in the address or Google bar; realise you got the last two wrong so do two backspaces – you might have thought you got back to where you were, but you didn’t or maybe you did!
If it did an autocomplete, then the first backspace cancelled the autocomplete, and the second cancelled one character;
If it did not do an autocomplete, then you lost both characters (probably what you wanted).
This just can’t be right – I have to look at the screen to find out what my typing has done.
The number of times I type a search term and press go, only to look up and see that there is an extra character at the front really pisses me off.
Email responses from web forms never include your message
They all do it – nice (possibly) form to fill in on the web, where you put your carefully crafted message to tell them their service was great/crap or simply ask a question.
But the response never, ever, actually includes the message you sent; and because they made you bypass your email system, usually on the grounds of security, you have to keep a copy somewhere else to work out what the hell their response means.
Do any of them actually try being a user of the system, or just watch someone going through the process of communicating with them?
Yet Another Web 2.0 Site (c) Les Carr
What really pisses me off about these sites such as http://academia.edu/ is that they make it so you have to join before you can search (as Linkedin).
So firstly you actually can’t find out if it is good to join, and secondly it doesn’t function as a way of non-members finding you, even though it fills up the Google search page.
Trying to upload a photo to Facebook
So I have one tiny little photo I want to upload … 20 minutes later I am still looking at a “Select Photo” screen that is flashing away.
It told me that the “recommended” way was to install a plugin – fine, but it didn’t offer me any other ways, so I clicked “OK” instead of “Cancel” – seemed a reasonable choice. After allowing it through my security, I then try again.
So what is it doing now? Either it has failed, or it is trying to index every photo on my hard drives, I guess to be helpful and offer me the choice.
Is there an exit button? Of course not. I need to close the window and try again.
“Fixing” things
Why would anyone fix a utility as fundamental as “touch”? It wasn’t “broken” so it didn’t need “fixing”.
What was in their minds when they changed the code?
I can just see some clever little oik, wet behind their Linux-like ears finding the “bug”, and being delighted they have found something to spray their piss on, retiring in the warm glow that all those copies of the software will go round the world smelling of them for the rest of time.
What am I on about?
The latest version of RedHat has broken my scripts. I used to be able to do
touch -d 20010000 foo
but now it gives me
touch: invalid date format `20010000′
yes, I know it wasn’t sensible, but it wasn’t “wrong”.
It is now, so because some tosser doesn’t understand the importance of backwards compatibility and legacy, I’m going to have to go round and check every bloody script and “correct” them.
What was the point?
We’re all a bit religious
Ever said “Touch wood”; crossed your fingers; avoided the crack in a paving stone; read a horoscope; not put up an umbrella indoors; avoided walking under a ladder? (Well possibly not the last if there was someone up there, but why did you do it?)
Most people find they have some of these comfortable little routines, and in fact they are largely harmless, perhaps helping us through some of the bits of the world we find painful or don’t understand.
Mind you, I am pleased to say people are sufficiently self-aware about them to keep them to themselves, as they realise they are groundless, and they would be rather embarrassed to let others think they used them to organise their lives. Well, possibly with the exception of astrology.
Such things are generally referred to as superstitions, although religions is used for the more complex.
Some people are more superstitious than others, but I like to try understand them by putting them all on the same spectrum. To do that we need to use the same term, and I prefer to use the superstitious scale, as religion comes with a lot more baggage, especially at the less complex end of the scale.
So why don’t you try this?
Whenever anyone uses the word religious, simply rerun the words substituting superstitious. If you find the word god, make it a favourite planet (I tend to use dog myself, as it is easiest).
“He is very religious and prays to God every day” becomes “He is very superstitious and prays to Saturn every day”.
“Tony Blair called in superstitious leaders for consultation this morning.”
Sounds to me that is what he did?
So now I can talk about how superstitious people are, and can seek to understand the comparison between religion, astrology, homeopathy, crossed-fingers, etc. within a nice consistent framework.
This is good, because it helps me to understand the people I am interacting with, and that is always good for human relations.