Category: Annoyances

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Before leaving for Comic-Con, we went to Ruby’s for lunch and discovered that they’d stopped wrapping up their burgers and started serving them on plates. If you’ve seen a Ruby’s burger, you know what a bad idea this is. If you haven’t, these burgers are easily 5″ in diameter, made with 1/3 pound of meat or an oversized veggie patty, and generously topped. I have problems holding one together, and my hands aren’t exactly small. I had ordered a mushroom burger, which promptly and repeatedly fell apart, sometimes on the plate and sometimes on my lap. We not only told the waitress but also filled out the comment card, in pen, and mailed it. Since then, I’ve made a point of asking for my burgers wrapped and sending them back to have them wrapped if the kitchen forgets. Putting my meal back together in between bites is not, in my opinion, a worthwhile way to spend my time.

Well, the madness is spreading. We went to Togo’s the other day and received our sandwiches on plates. Thankfully, they were less messy, but it irked me. What chain is going to be next? Fatburger? Johnny Rockets? Red Robin? God forbid, In-N-Out? Or will they catch a clue that not everyone is willing to trade personal cleanliness for “restaurant atmosphere?”

(And speaking of restaurant atmosphere: to all you managers out there, the Anxious Clown should not be your business model. Just because not all of us customers are Wednesday Addams, that’s no reason to think we all appreciate perky waiters with 29 pieces of flair, or will order food we don’t want just because said waiters suggest it. Please recognize that some of us are (horrors!) turned off by overattentiveness, and would much prefer to eat in peace. We will come back, but please know that this is in spite of your best efforts to impress us, and that our undergenerous tips are not meant to spur the above-mentioned waiters into greater hyperactivity–as any true service employee worth their tips should be able to tell from our reactions. If they can’t tell, maybe they’re not as great as you thought they were.)

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Comments on this site are now moderated. After a week of daily spam runs that have managed to get past other blocking methods, I’m tired of messing with it. At least with moderation, they won’t show up on the site.

This means that when you post a comment, it will not show up immediately. One of us will have to get the moderation notice and approve the message before it will appear.

I apologize to those who want to make actual comments on our posts. Just one more thing for which you can thank the spammers.

Update: It turns out it could have been much worse. The run of about 15 comment spams that showed up this morning turns out to be the few that made it through out of a total of 357. Over the course of 20 minutes this morning, a network of 126 zombies posted nearly 360 junk comments to this site, and 95% of them were rejected immediately. On one hand, it gives me a bit more faith in the countermeasures, but on the other hand, the scale of the attack is just staggering.

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A truism of television is that they aren’t in the entertainment business, they’re in the advertising business. Their job is selling commercials, and the shows you watch are nothing but an enticement to get you to watch long enough that you’ll see the ads. This is true for ad-based websites as well. The content is just there to get you coming back so you’ll see and click on the ads. (I’ve always had a problem with the idea of using click-through as the primary measurement of an ad’s success, but that’s another story.)

The problem here is that a balance needs to be struck between content and ads: Tilt too much toward content, and you need another business model to pay for hosting. Tilt too much toward ads, and people will stop visiting your site—or start blocking your ads. The more intrusive and annoying the ads, the more likely people will block them.

I rarely block ads. (Of course, I don’t click on them very often, either.) I figure if the website owner needs an ad banner to pay for hosting and/or make a profit and continue providing the site, that’s fine…as long as it doesn’t distract from the content. Remember, I’m not there for the ads, they have to convince me to come to their page, and if the ads make an otherwise-appealing site too annoying to read…well, sorry, I’m either blocking the ads or I’m not coming back.

DevArticles is a good example of this. The page was so full of animated banners visually screaming for my attention, I could barely focus on the article long enough to read it. This one page prompted me to install the Adblock extension for Firefox at work and block everything coming from their ad server, just to be able to read it. Had they kept their ads sensible, like the dozens of ad-supported sites I frequent without blocking the ads, I probably would have bookmarked it as well. As it is, the site reminds me of a line from Babylon 5: “Too annoying to live.”

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Dear [insert advice columnist here],

I moved out of my parents’ home four years ago and have been speaking to them and my sister less and less over time. They rarely have time to visit us, and it is impractical for us to visit them at their home, due to the amount of junk accumulated in their house and my husband’s allergies to their cats. When we do see each other, I find myself uncomfortable with them, both politically and socially, as our interests have diverged. Last Christmas, rather than give generic gifts that would go unused and further clutter their home, my husband and I chose to make donations to charities in their names, and picked foundations and causes important to them. At the time, they seemed to approve of our choice. However, three days ago, my mother called to ask if we would be doing this again so that she could tell everyone to donate for us instead of giving gifts. They are apparently displeased with our nontraditional method of holiday giving and do not want to give us tangible gifts if they will not receive them in return. I don’t mind this for myself, as I dislike the commercial mess Christmas has become, but I’m curious to know if others have received similar reactions, and what you make of the situation. I’m getting the impression that for some, the thought isn’t what counts.

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Despite Bush’s appeal to Kerry supporters [in his acceptance speech], Cheney said the popular vote victory gave Bush a mandate and the Bush White House would continue pushing for the Republicans’ “clear agenda.”

Excuse me, but how the #@*! is a 51% victory a “mandate?”

In any other race, that would be called “barely squeaking by.”

Yes, it’s unusual for a presidential candidate to actually get more than 50% of the popular vote, but that still means 49% of the voters preferred someone else. If you broke a cookie in half, and got a 51%/48% split with 1% of crumbs, you wouldn’t notice the difference.

Last night there were state propositions hovering at around 53%/46%, and the LA Times thought they were too close to call. That kind of victory in a state race would never be considered a mandate, or a repudiation, etc. — it would have passed by the skin of its proverbial teeth. A 66% win? That would be a mandate. A 60% win? Maybe. But 51%? That’s a sign that you’d better look at what people wanted from your opponent, not a blank check to ignore half the population of the country.

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Every once in a while I listen to Star for a few minutes. And every once in a while I catch their station break. And I cringe whenever I hear them talk about being the whatever station for “L.A. and the O.C.”

I’ve lived in Orange County most of my life, and I have never heard anyone here refer to it as “The O.C.” Sometimes just “O.C.,” but really—when was the last time you heard someone say “I live in the L.A.” or “I’m from the New York?”

Incidentally, it seems that as far as IMDB knows, the show is filmed in L.A. Excuse me, the L.A.

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We were at the grocery store earlier today, and Katie was grumbling about the stylus-only touch screens they had for entering a PIN. Unlike actual keypads, you can’t hide the number you’re entering, because you have to move that stylus around instead of 10-keying it in.

On one hand, a touch screen with a stylus is great for visual feedback and for collecting signatures, because the store can keep things on file digitally instead of or in addition to a paper copy. And once you’ve got that, it’s reasonable to drop the keypad, since you can simulate it in the touch screen. But unless it can react as quickly as actual buttons, and react to fingers instead of a stylus, it can’t completely replace the way a keypad is actually used.

An even better example is checkout line at Fry’s. Continue reading →