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.
