My Apologies

My sincerest apologies, dear interwebicon, I know I have been neglecting you. I know it seems like this blog has evolved into just Two Minutes of Hate...that is not what I want. It has been really hectic here in the Gubbyverse and I have not had time to write lovely words for you to absorb into your grey matter. The TMH's are often written 3 or 4 at a time, weeks in advance and automatically scheduled to post...so it is not that I am full of more hate, just haven't had the time to write other ramblings. This week there will not even be hate as my pre-written hates are now exhausted. I promise that I will be back to a more regular schedule (and more than just hate next week). Sorry that I suck.

-Gubby

Two Minutes Hate

Snow

I don't hate snow on principle. I am not a winter person, I don't ski or snowboard or whatever, so the hassles that come with snow seem even worse because I don't really see the positive side. I hate the byproducts that snow causes - driveway scooping, coldness, and idiot drivers (as a few examples).

I don't mind scooping the driveway with a nice light, fluffy inch or two of snow. I actually kind of like it for the exercise aspect. It feels good to work out the muscles. The crisp air can be very refreshing as you are bundled up and sweating from the workout. I hate the large amounts of heavy, wet snow...the stuff you have to get up at 5am to scoop in order to make it to work on time. Not only am I tired from waking up early, but then I have to put in a pretty serious workout on top? Not for me...I'd rather be sleeping. Of course, the people who "love snow" and "Can't wait for it to snow" are not getting up early to help out, they are happy to stay in bed. But the friendly, local snowplow is aways there to help out - packing in the huge pile at the bottom of the drive. I live at the top of a "T" intersection and I will tell you that the snow plow driver loves to drive up the leg of the T and plow all that snow into my driveway. Thanks! It really is lovely, every time you do that.

Cold is self-explanatory...I just don't like feeling cold. Idiot drivers have been talked about before on the blog. But another thing that really drives me nuts during winter/snow/snowstorms is my co-workers. I hate how when there is the slightest chance of snow that they are constantly on the meteorological sights looking at the radar, reading forecasts, and yelling back and forth what the updates are. I just want to do my job and ignore the weather while I am here, please stop shoving it down my throat every 2 minutes. I don't care. Sure, I don't mind being sent home due to dangerous conditions -but it is not like we are twelve and have a big test coming up this afternoon. Do YOUR job, get off the weather websites and speculating if the boss is going to send us home. A) Chances are that it is not going to happen, we are after all adults; B) even if it does happen, you know what I am going to do with my afternoon off? Scoop snow! Not really a grand vacation snow day of watching cartoons, having snowball fights, and drinking hot chocolate.

End Hate

Arrrr....Ye Mights Like It

Pirate Flag courtesy of wikimedia commons.

I would highly suggest anyone with a Facebook account to set their language to "Pirate (English)."


It is pretty much the best thing about Facebook. What does it do, you ask?


Regular Facebook: "xxx became friends with xxx and thinks you may know them too".

Pirate Facebook "Arr! XXX became mateys with XXX! That landlubber thinks ye know xxx too. Spy this matey and send the name o' xxx out to other pirates. Follow the map below." BTW - the map is the link.


It cracks me up every time. It almost...almost...makes me like Facebook.


My absolute favorite part is in the options menu. "Mobile" is now called "Pocket Parrot." I think I may start calling my phone "pocket parrot" in real life.


I proudly fly the pirate flag in life.

Two Minutes Hate

Lack of Consistency (in computer programs)

I use a lot of Microsoft Office programs during the work day. I am not a Microsoft fanboy, nor am I am person who refers to them as Micro$oft. I think they have decent programs for the most part but I find it hard to really love or hate a company that makes utilitarian products.

I will admit that it the various programs do drive me a little crazy once in a while. My biggest pet peeve is that inconsistency in the features of the programs. I think if I get a program from the same manufacturer (in the same suite) that they should have similar options. I am not talking about the main function of the program - I don't expect MS Word to be a full database program, and I don't expect Access to be able to type letters. I am talking about the smaller things, the options that it seems would be easy to implement to allow all the programs to work similarly.

A few Examples:

• In Excel, there is the option where you can choose that you want to print your data X pages wide by X pages tall. This is pretty much the greatest thing when printing. To have the program automatically scale everything down to fit in my desired size is awesome, I use this all the time. Why can't I do this on Word? Why do I manually have to play with borders, line-spacing, and font size to get a letter that is just a few words over 1 page in length to print on one page? Why can't I have the button to click that says - "hey print this all on one sheet"?
• In Word, I can "Snake" columns of data, so that when it gets to the end of the page it continues the data in the next column on the same page. Why can't Excel handle this? It is a database program...why can't I specify that I want there to be 3 columns per page and I want the data to snake? Seriously, this would save so much time and paper.
• Excel can have cells with 32,000ish characters in them, a memo field in Access can have 63,000ish. Why can't these be the same? In fact, as they are, they don't seem to work have the time when exporting & importing. My data almost always gets trimmed to 255 "text" field characters. What is up with that? It should be much easier.
• I usually want my default views, my toolbars, and other defaults to be very similar between programs. Why can't I set a master toolbar that works for all MS Office programs and then have another program specific toolbar that contains more specific functions. Why do I have to go into each program and say that I want "New File, Open Close, Save, Save As, Print Preview, Quick Print" to show up on each program?

These are just a few examples of the idiocies about computer programs not working together as they should. I do have to hand it to MS for helping make the menus more consistent (although still room for improvement).
End Hate