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From: Jeremy Stephens Date: 20:25 on 07 Feb 2008 Subject: MS Access upsizing wizard I fucking hate the MS Access upsizing wizard. If there an error of ANY kind in a table, it will skip the table and not tell you why. God dammit. Hatefully yours, Jeremy
From: Nicholas Clark Date: 22:57 on 04 Feb 2008 Subject: Post Office Cash Machines There are various things that can be hateful about the software running cash machines. But tonight the cash machine at the Post Office (run by Bank of Ireland, so maybe they are to blame, and not the ants that boogie*) Firstly - why use 3 of the 8 buttons to give me the options cash/balance/something-I-forget, and then add a whole extra bloody screen of "would you like a receipt?". Just make that 4 options up front - cash with/cash without Maybe they got their programmers from McDonald's - and it was only QA that stopped it saying "would you like fries with your cash?" Secondly, and far less cluefully, why present me with a screen with various pre-selected amounts including FIFTY POUNDS, and then when I press that one immediately present me with a dialogue asking me to enter an amount in multiples of TWENTY. If the 10 pound cash reel is empty (or jammed) just don't bloody show the amounts you can't dispense. It's not like other (better) cash machine software doesn't get this right - I know I've seen machines with the amounts in their usual places, only in place of "£30" or "£50" it says "Sorry, no £10 notes available". Maybe the software was written by muppets, and it needs to have extra screens to delay the user if there are a lot of notes to count. You'd be there half the night for £200. "Tventy. Ha ha ha" "Forty. Ha ha ha" ... Nicholas Clark * The UK Post Office was advertising everything with various anthromorphised ants which graced everything in sight, particularly the advertising screen each branch's queue was aimed at. So many ants that some months ago this very Post Office* had coloured card stars hand written with "features" of the credit card they were promoting, one of which was something like "doesn't have any ants" ** The big one near Trafalgar Square
From: Bruce Richardson Date: 20:31 on 04 Feb 2008 Subject: Logitech Harmony Remote Software "Do you want to connect to the Setup website and check for and install updates? * Yes, and do NOT ask for permission every time. * Yes, but ask for permission first. * No (the software will shut down.)" In other words, you can let the software check for updates (and install any it finds), or you can not run the software. When I first saw this, I knew that this was the kind of crime for which UI designers should be shot. I also knew that at some point there would be an update that broke the software. What a joyful day, now that this has happened.
From: Dave Brown Date: 07:25 on 30 Jan 2008 Subject: A note to Firefox Dear Firefox, Ctrl+Q means Quit Application. No, you're not so important that you get to be the only application in the world which doesn't have a Quit keyboard shortcut. No love, --Dave
From: Michael G Schwern
Date: 17:20 on 29 Jan 2008
Subject: Thunderbird's UTF8 warning
Thunderbird sees fit to warn me before I send something that contains UTF=
-8=20
characters. I guess something I cut & pasted into my signature file has =
some=20
of them new fangled "smart quotes" or whatever. It presents me with this=
big=20
dialog box telling me all the consequences of using Unicode or se[1]nding=
=20
Unicode in the current character set (without telling me what that charac=
ter=20
set is).
The best part is it will seem to do this randomly, not just when I hit se=
nd,=20
but while I'm editing or working in another window it sees fit to steal f=
ocus=20
and say "HEY! OMG! LOOK! Let me tell you about the DANGERS OF UTF-8!"
Then I get a choice. No question is asked, but I get a choice anyway. I=
can=20
[Cancel]... but I wasn't doing anything. [2] Does this mean it will canc=
el=20
the whole message and maybe close the window or just not send the message=
?=20
Kind of ominous. Then there's [Send Anyway] and does that mean to go ahe=
ad=20
and send it in UTF-8 which is what you were warning me about or to go ahe=
ad=20
and send it in my current apparently non-Unicode character set? And, fin=
ally,=20
there's [Send in UTF-8] which is the most sensical of them all... but sin=
ce=20
you so rudely interrupted my typing do you mean to send it right now or w=
hen=20
I'm done editing? [3]
Bestest of all is it asks me this FOR EVERY MESSAGE! There's no "always =
do=20
this". I've looked through the Composition preferences and there's nothi=
ng=20
about character encodings. I get the choice between "plain text" and lor=
d=20
knows what that means these days, and HTML. There's just a black smear o=
n the=20
spot where the "Quoted Printable" option would be for I burnt out that pa=
rt of=20
my brain which processes those words.
There appears to be no, "just do the right thing and shut up you stupid b=
lit"=20
setting. More software needs one of those.
[1] God damnit, it just did it.
[2] And again for a second compose window.
[3] For the rhetorically impaired, those are all rhetorical.
--=20
7. Not allowed to add =E2=80=9CIn accordance with the prophesy=E2=80=9D t=
o the end of
answers I give to a question an officer asks me.
-- The 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do In The U.S. Army
http://skippyslist.com/list/
From: Nicholas Clark
Date: 11:39 on 28 Jan 2008
Subject: pdftotext
SYNOPSIS
pdftotext [options] [PDF-file [text-file]]
...
Pdftotext reads the PDF file, PDF-file, and writes a text file, text-
file. If text-file is not specified, pdftotext converts file.pdf to
file.txt. If text-file is '-', the text is sent to stdout.
No. Dammit. You're a Unix filter command. You should ALWAYS be writing to
stdout. Anything else would be hateful and broken and counterintuitive.
Nicholas Clark
From: Struan Donald Date: 20:55 on 22 Jan 2008 Subject: Thunderbird, how hard can it be? Short version: Thunderbird + IMAP + Exchange = hate. But you knew that already. Specifically in this case it's deleting messages. I'm in the happy situation of occasionally getting a big chunk of alerts where some process or other at $work throws its toys out the pram. This is fine, other than the clanking and whiring Thunderbird makes as it deals with downloading more than 3 messages at a time. The pain comes at the deleting stage. Long ago I learned the magic incantation of shift + delete to avoid the pain of watching Thunderbird wheeze as it moved things to the deleted messages folder. However it seems that even this does not save me. Now it frequently manages to lose the connection to Exchange in the process of deleting messages at which point I get to watch it start to download all the deleted messages again. After a short while it realises things are not as they should be and once again starts to delete them again. The entertainment of watching the message count frantically trying to keep up with this confusion doesn't really last. Struan
From: Timothy Knox Date: 00:03 on 22 Jan 2008 Subject: Hating all web browsers Okay, this is almost too easy. ;-) But here goes: Dear Web Browser (aka Firefox, IE, Safari, and probably all the rest): When the web page you are rendering for me has some ridiculously oversized diagram in it (like, say, a product architecture diagram), I know I will have to scroll to see the whole thing (though it would be nice if you would scale it to fit, with a "click for full-size" option). But why, for the love of Mike, must you assume I want to read all text that wide, too? Do I have "Please abuse me with the horizontal scroll bar" tattooed in invisible ink on my forehead? Why can't you render the text (that is not already constrained by some other HTML/CSS unholiness to a fixed width) to the width of my window? Is that *really* so much to ask? If so, WHY?! May you all burn in the Eighth Circle of Hell <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy>;.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 22:57 on 21 Jan 2008 Subject: Mailing list as bug tracker It's hateful enough to use a mailing list as your bug tracker, it's not like any good bug tracker doesn't have a mail gateway, but it's extra hateful when they don't accept posts from non-members so I need to sign up to a bunch of mail I don't care one bit about JUST TO REPORT A BUG! I'm looking at you, TextMate. Specifically their bundles.
From: Timothy Knox Date: 07:50 on 21 Jan 2008 Subject: Stuffit Expander, get stuffed! Breaking news: Stuffit Expander is hateful!* Stuffit Expander, my hate for you is exceeded only by my hatred for ... well, okay, by my hatred for *most* software. But today, we are turning the HateCam (TM) squarely in YOUR direction. First, why do you crash (sorry, sorry, "quit unexpectedly") so d*mn often? And why can't you handle a command line invocation with a dozen or so files to open? Why, even when (to work around your utter and complete brain-damage) I write a shell loop that opens each file, sleeps for 5 seconds, and opens the next, must you crash two or three times at the least? But most hateful of all, why do you think you are so fscking important that when I ask you to expand a file, you feel the need to bring yourself to the front and steal my d*mn focus, just to show me that never-to-be-sufficiently d*mned little progress dialog? Why, you festering pile of bilious hate, WHY? Why can't you just expand my file, and mind your own business? Just expand them, and SHUT THE FSCK UP! We now return you to your regular hate, already in progress. * Okay, it's only breaking news if you have been in a coma for the last twenty years.
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Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi