Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Pet Peeves

It seems to me that LM_NET members are already hungry for comic relief. A week after the funny names deluge, we had the pet peeves thread. This one also really resonated with people. Of course for some people, the pet peeve is "frivolous" or off-topic posts, which brought a bit of irony to the exchange. Anyway, this one got me wondering...what are your technology pet peeves? I certainly have a few and will add to this post in a bit, and also provide this place if anyone else wants to comment with peeves, especially techhie ones but others as well.

6 comments:

  1. I read "The Dentist from the Black Lagoon" to students this week. The Dentist's name was Dr. B. N. Payne.

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  2. PEOPLE TYPING IN ALL CAPS

    and people who send on e-mails without cleaning up previous addresses and all

    > > > the extra
    > > > reply notations that
    > > > > go from forward to
    > > > > forward than never get
    > > > > cleaned out of the messages

    until they get to me, that is :-)

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  3. People peeves:

    - Techies with no patience or sympathy who condescend to non-techies who feel intimidated by technology; I confess I consider harsh language and/or blows to the head and shoulders when I see this happen.

    - clueless presenters who read their slides to the class/audience; grrrr, this one really chaps me, because it's insulting. Think about it, teachers....

    - instructors who assign technology/multimedia projects to students - web pages, video, etc - who don't know how to do it themselves; another grrrr for this one, because it's just plain laziness.

    - Also laziness: people with knuckles for heads who don't or won't silence their phones in a class/meeting/movie/play/concert/church service.

    - Parents who bring infants or toddlers to violent, loud movies, which often have an R rating.

    Technology peeves:

    - Adware on the desktop of a brand new PC - makes you think about who is the customer here. Is it the purchaser of the PC? No, the customer is the company who buys that space from [large company in Washington state], who sells *your* desktop to them without asking you and makes it a real chore to get that junk off of there. Bleh.

    - All the proprietary and/or incompatible video formats: just exactly why won't a QuickTime or Real video clip play in a PowerPoint on Windows? Hmmm? Or a Windows Media clip in PPT on Mac? Hmmmmm? How exactly is this serving the customer? Hmmmmmmmmmm?

    - Restrictions and proprietary practices by the different cell phone companies; oh, we hates them with a white-hot seething hatred, yes we do, because we've become dependent on them despite the abuse.

    - Major interface changes to widely used programs: Office 2003 => 2007, iMovie HD '06 => iMovie '08

    Whew - I'd better stop there. I didn't know I had so many peeves. You're going to do something about all of these, aren't you? Gosh thanks.

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  4. My biggest pet peeve with technology is the millions of forwards on e-mails. I am paranoid about cleaning them up or I won't send them on. I have received ugly replies from someone unknown to me who had received an e-mail I had forwarded to someone else. If you don't agree delete it!

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  5. My pet peeve is he graduated high school. I always wonder exactly what the involves doing to the building???

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  6. Personally, I think there is a massive conspiracy. I check the equipment to make sure it works. I help the teacher set it up, and it works. By the time I get back to the library, I already have a frantic message from the teacher that nothing is working. And, in many cases, it's nothing the teacher has or hasn't done. See? Conspiracy!

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