Things that have pissed me off today: 04-02-2010
This post was originally intended to be about something else, but in true attention-seeking blogging style, it will be about things which have today pissed me off.
1) Drivers who hog the fast lane of a motorway (or similar road, I'll get to that in a minute) at an unreasonably low speed, and the minute they're off the motorway and on other roads they are tailgating, cutting people up and suddenly in a massive rush. Yes, Mr. twat-faced driver of a black Vauxhall Vectra who pulled into A-Plant's yard this morning, I'm talking about YOU.
2) Passwords. You can't have passwords that are both easy to remember/use and secure. Every single website in the world seemingly now requires you to either generate a new password, or re-use one that you already have. If you have a new password, you'll forget it. If you re-use a password, the admin of that site can use your details to log on to other sites. A certain online banking service requires a new unique password every damn month, which can only mean that every single user has a post-it note somewhere with their banking password on it. Yeah, really secure.
3) Website registration forms that don't mark the 'required' fields, or specify what they require of your proposed password (eg 'must include numbers', 'must be more than 8 characters') until you click 'confirm'. Then, when the form re-appears with the 'errors' the cheeky bastards re-tick the 'please send me all the spam in the world' box. Yes, Ebuyer and the 'Livejournal' login required to comment on The Independent, I'm looking at you both.
3.1) Online shops that don't tell you that something is out of stock until you try to order it.
3.2) Verified by Visa and MasterCard Securecode. They are both intended to protect everybody else at the expense of the cardholder, give you even more passwords to write down somewhere and are implemented in a piss-poor way that creates security holes you could lose a ship in.
4) Roads that aren't officially motorways, but are in almost every way; like the A5 through Tamworth, or the A42 (M42 in disguise) north of J11. This is done to save money by cutting back on safety standards, and to avoid 'outrage' by the local press and green activists when a new 'motorway' is announced. Build the same road without hard shoulders and with green signs instead of blue, and seemingly nobody cares. Idiots. the result is you get a motorway-style road, with most people doing 70+mph; with cyclists, tractors, people broken down in lane 1 (no hard shoulder, you see) and general morons doing 35mph, just to add a little inconvenience and danger to your day.
5) Flaky internet connections that don't like more than one computer using them at one time, even when they are only doing a little light web browsing. I don't know whether its router issues, or something about the connection itself; but either way it pisses me off.
6) Over-inflated product specifications, such as LCD monitors with a "1,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio" (1,000:1 when tested by anyone other than the manufacturer) and stereos with "600W 'music power' (5W RMS)".
7) Spam e-mails that advertise e-mail spam lists.
Mobile phone resellers. The fuckers who phone you up saying that they're 'affiliated' with your/another actual phone network, and they can offer a billion minutes per century and a dozen texts per trimester for a low price of £36 per month, with a free Nokia WTF and blah.... fuck off you useless parasites.
9) Apple, for their seemingly limitless ability to generate vast media hype by releasing products that already exist out there, but hey, Apple will put it in a shinier case! Made much worse by their association with 'creative' types, who are all so bloody creative and free-thinking that they all have the same go-to brand for computers and gadgets. Wankers.
10) 'Creative' people. In my experience, the people who would describe themselves as 'creative' are NOT, they are just talentless churnmongers who read about what all the other 'creative' people are doing and copy it, whether it be the shitty tune they made on their PC, or their derivative graphic design, or whatever. Normally these people bank all of their self-esteem in the 'creative' pot because they have no other redeeming features, talents or abilities whatsoever that they can use to describe themselves. Quite often they have no job as well, so they can use the 'creative' label that they've applied to themselves to justify this fact, claiming that they're a 'freelance artist', or they are 'working on a project' or something, while all the while they are arsing around pausing only to suckle on the taxpayer's teat. Twats. Utter despicable twats.
11) WordPress, for converting no.8 on the list into a fucking smiley.
12) People who sit at home in their heated and lit house, on 200Watts-worth of computer, posting messages onto the internet about how somebody-or-other is 'wasting resources' by driving a car, not re-using supermarket carrier bags or doing something else that they disapprove of.
February 4th, 2010 - 19:08
Are you going to delight us with some mobile phone reseller adverts on Friday’s show? I see they have billions of free minutes, are they related to the fine people at Sofa King? Perhaps you could get one free minute with every sofa?
If you want to retaliate against the cold callers, try out this handy countermeasure script:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html
It’s frikin awesome. Basically you become the cold caller and start asking them loads of questions, it’s amazing how many of them will immediately start to answer them.
They usually chimp when you start asking about their salary so sometimes I skip that bit to prolong the conversation and increase my chances of getting to use the “Do you have a problem answering questions to a stranger on the telephone…” response. The long silence at the other end of the phone when you hit them with that is pure joy, you can almost hear the penny drop as the smell of burning wood starts to dissipate.
February 5th, 2010 - 12:50
what an outburst on the 4th huh?
i for one am creative! kinda offended now! i was a creative freelancer too! omg!
and
i have a twat! wtf?
do u know me?
February 5th, 2010 - 13:59
@ Canuck: “Twat” in this case is used as a general insult, much the same as you would say “assholes!” without actually referring to someone’s anus.
I don’t have any problem with people who ARE creative, just the people who announce it all the time, when they introduce themselves and in general conversation. If someone is actually that creative they shouldn’t need to be telling people all the time, it should speak for itself. It’s like some bloke going round telling everybody how rich he is and how he went to wherever on his holidays, it’s pompous and unnecessary.
And I certainly wasn’t on about you, I was talking about some horrible mutant agglomeration of quite a few people I’ve known before…
I’m just about to send you those Creme Eggs (they’re on my desk now, wrapped and addressed); will they make you feel better?
February 6th, 2010 - 00:29
yes , yes it would…how creative of you!
gigls now, thanks so much martin
confession, i know those types also!
lol@horrible mutant agglomerations for sure.