Things that Bug Me - November 2008
Camera-in-shot-because-shot-was-taken-in-a-mirror. Usually, most of these degenerates have a much more expensive camera than I. Here's a surprising factoid: almost every camera ever made that costs more than about $20 has a timer function, and it's not terribly complicated to use it. If you can't use a timer function and figure out the correct angle to get a decent shot, you most definitely shouldn't be posting pictures of yourself on the internet... or breeding for that matter.
Thermostat abuse. There are people in my household - I won't name names - who clearly don't grasp the concept of a thermostat. Particularly in the bathroom, where the heater that's in there is much too large for that room, I set the thermostat so that on a hot day (if someone leaves it on) the heater goes off and stays off, but on cold days it will stay on. Someone keeps grabbing the thermostat and setting it to maximum when they turn the heater on, apparently of the illusion that the further up the thermostat is, the more heat the heater will put out. Yeah, they don't work that way.
Apostrophe abuse. I can't tell you the number of times I've been to a website and whatever they had to say was eclipsed by the sheer number of apostrophes in their text. I had a close friend who was a bad offender with this, and it makes your text look almost kindergarten to read.
Here's a tip, if you don't know when to use an apostrophe, take the apostrophe key and break it off your keyboard. Your newfound inability to use apostrophes and quotes won't make you look half as stupid as someone who "write's like this in their blog's". I'd rather sit and watch Christian videos on Youtube while stabbing myself in the leg with a large nail than read these boneheads' websites.
Problem-solving Tunnel Vision. I see this a lot on various help channels on IRC - someone so fixated on facilitating a flawed solution that they can't accept a simpler solution that they didn't think of. Because of my readership, I won't bother with any technical examples, so I'll use a real-world example: "I need to change the tire of my car, but the ground is too close to the tire. What kind of shovel do I need to dig out the ground under the tire?". Yeah, for anyone with half an understanding of most POSIX-based Operating Systems, your question really does sound that stupid.
If you can't immediately bring about a solution, step back and take a moment to figure out if your plan of attack is the best one.
FreeBSD new releases :D
FreeBSD 6.4 was released today, and of course Sabrienix is doing it's part by helping to seed the new release in Bit Torrent format - because we don't have the excess bandwidth to run an actual mirror (not that the project needs any more - seriously, torrents are a hundred times quicker if you've got any amount of bandwidth at all).
Now I eagerly await the release of 7.1, which hasn't even hit release candidate status yet (though I'm told it's happening very very shortly).
Bah, Humbug!
Thanksgiving came and went, which is nice because things were getting a little hectic. Overall it went well, my contribution was a Rhubarb + Custard pie, which everyone liked - odd considering everyone who tried the stewed rhubarb that went in it despised it.
We're doing something crazy tomorrow, waking up early and hitting up a couple of stores for Black Friday. I'm not going to be kicking down any old ladies to make off with the box of bookshelves they grabbed or anything, but there's a couple of things on sale that we'll try to see if we can score for a steal. If nothing else I'm sure it'll be an experience.
We're "about half way" done with Christmas shopping, which is good because we're rapidly running out of money. Things aren't desperate yet, but there was a few things I personally wanted to get and we didn't run out and grab them and I don't like that feeling. 
I have absolutely no idea what my wife's getting me, but she insists it's good. I think this year is gonna be great, despite the fact we haven't even set up the trees or anything (yeah, we have two trees). I won't setup the outside decorations until we get snow that sticks. We decorate the small, mangled pine outside as well as put up a couple of snowmen because my wife has a snowman fetish, but outdoor snowmen look silly if there's no snow around for them to sit in.
Looking forward to the New Year though, to get all of this holiday madness over with and get the majority of winter behind us.
