Be Excellent To Each Other

I didn't let mine watch TV for the first few years... but only because I hate children's TV

They're currently being babysat by Netflix while I get some work done procrastinate on here though.

Mine are jumping about in front of the kinect like a bunch of idiots. It's hilarious.

People that have safes in their houses. On display.

My mom and dad have two safes in their house on display only because they're so big and heavy, we can't move them out of the house.

It's a good job they're on mats on a wooden floor otherwise they'd have never been moved rooms.

I’m already done with new chapters.

I'm trying to think of little things that annoy me, but shouldn't. A lot of the things I can think of are actually justifiable, or at least are justifiable to me, but then I'm being a right grumpy git today.

The example I am thinking of is when people say they did a 'complete 360' to describe a dramatic change in their opinion or viewpoint. My annoyance is entirely justified there.

Oh, a lot of buzz words and jargon annoy me, and I think many of those annoyances are justified.

'Reaching out' is the one annoying me at the moment. Why don't they just say 'contacted?' It's bad enough when Americans do it, but like a lot of expressions that start with them, I've noticed it creeping into UK usage, with at least one BBC News article having used it in the last few days.

Is it reasonable to be annoyed at web design people that use images for buttons and include the text on them?


A client of ours has had their designer bloke re-skin a portal we're deploying and it's full of this stuff.

Yeah, that's rubbish. You want a button you can overlay the text on.

Given the range of well-supported effects you can achieve with CSS these days I can think of very few reasons to use an image of any sort for a button.

Looks classy though.

My only thought is that it's not on a platform that supports CSS.

Dynamics 365 Portals use Bootstrap and all that CSS and JS is still in the background - he's just chosen to do things his own way. I think the main reason is the 'oh, you need another button doing? Sure, here's my invoice' kind of reason.

People that type "would of" or even "would off" instead of "would have"

Oh yeah, fuck that then. Switch all his buttons out for the bootstrap ones and don't look back.

People who use the made up word "upskilling". It's like training but shit. No one hires a classically upskilled pianist, do they?

Upskilling is particular training/retraining in areas that you're currently weak at, so replacing 'trained' with 'upskilled' doesn't work in your example as the pianist is already skilled.

To me, that’s advanced training.

I didn't say I liked it, but it has a specific meaning beyond just 'training'.

It's still bollocks.

I'm fine with both upskilling and reach out. Both have a specific meaning not really covered by other terms.

As management bullshit buzzwords go it's very much on the milder end of the scale.

I don’t mind so much if someone is said to reach out to a group of people, it’s when they reach out to one person that seems wrong to me. I’d prefer ‘appeal to’ or ......anything but reach out. We managed without using that that expression for aeons and I’ not going to start using it ever. BUT, it shouldn’t annoy me, really.

What about reaching out and touching faith?

I would if I could but I can’t. Someone beat me to it.



But seriously, I’ve mever heard of ‘touching faith.’

Saying "ping me" and expecting an email of some kind makes me want to kill.

Oh man I love “ping me”

Yes.

Do you reply telling them how far away you are?

I will now. Awesome

In milliseconds, of course

Mafiascum.

My son's nursery didn't have any of that and its the same place he now attends school.

I was quite relieved really, as at the time all of our NCT friends were posting graduation pictures on Facebook and like you thought it was total bollocks

That said if he had one I would have made sure he had everything he needed and made a huge fuss because it would have really mattered to him.

Our school makes up for it with endless theatrical productions that cost me money, spent £13 in Matlan this week on a blue tee shirt and leggings so he can be a raindrop in some show

Easter was a good £10 on a hat, glue and easter chickens that I stuck on for the Easter Bonnet parade, was quite proud of that though as don't have a crafty bone in my body and do worry that I fall short in that area for him.

Haha, I love the idea of a raindrop costume!!

Current annoyance Herons.

The local one was on my fence last weekend and its look very likely the feathered shit has cleaned out my fish pond for the 3rd time in 7 years.

Had a lot of rocks and plants for them to hide in, but not seen any for a week, just went out with a torch now and nothing

Slim chance they are hiding, hoping to drain the pond this weekend so will see

Further Heron annoyance, its illegal to shoot the fuckers

I would never shoot one but just wish i would go and get its dinner in a river

Ohhh... That reminds me! Things that annoy me. Parents doing their kids work for them.

My girls had an Easter bonnet parade and as usual, we let them do what they wanted with the bonnets. Obviously they looked messy but they were ace and totally random.

Asfish, I'm sure your son helped so I'm not picking on you. It just reminded me.

Cats. We've had to buy a fucking enormous cage to put over our veg patch because next doors half dozen love shitting in it.

We can't drape netting over it because birds keep getting tangled and dying, which is quite upsetting.

I don't think cats fall into the 'shouldn't annoy me' category though. Murderous shitting machines that they are.

I had to get a collection of ultrasonic electro-zapper devices to stop the neighbourhood cats shitting all over our back yard.

And they kill things for fun, things that are nicer than they are.

Not sure a human can be too self righteous about any other animal that shits up the place and kills other creatures for fun.

I like cats well enough, we had a cat about four years ago but Jnr fell out with her big time and we had to rehome her. She had a habit of jumping on my keyboard when she wanted attention, or some of what I was eating.

They are murderous shitting bastards though.

We have a cat and I love her to bits, but they do kill for kicks though. Earlier in the week she came into our conservatory and ate 2 packs of wet food.

I was a nice day so after eating she went to sleep on our patio table.

My wife had left some of the conservatory doors open and a small sparrow flew in, the cat was off the table in a flash onto the bird

Thankfully my wife intervened and we put the shaken but otherwise ok bird on some high tree branches and I let the cat into my PC room to sleep so the bird had a chance.

I’ve been thinking about this more today, due to unrelated things, and I remember the other high pressure parenting ‘decision’ before having Darwin was the pressure to have a really calm, beautiful and painkiller-free birthing ‘experience’.

When preparing to push a 9lb+ baby out of your body, don’t reject those pains, light some candles, put on your favourite live songs, get some scented oils out and have a romantic dance with your partner.

I had a drug-free birth, of a 9lb+ baby (I keep writing that as I can’t remember how much he weighed! ) not through choice but hospital crapness, and midwives that did not believe my baby was coming out of me when he was. Man... I do not recommend it. It’s not a badge of honour for me. It left me with PTSD and a fear of things that has changed my life.

Obviously, I should be annoyed by that, and will be, but the bit that I’m a bit miffed about is the suggested purity of birth being ‘spoiled’ if you take the ‘easy’ route of help. That somehow you’ve failed.

If I could go back and get some help or relief through that birth, I would.

Lift up the receiver, I'll make you a believer.

You don't need to go back, simply have more babies!

I dunno, at my place we have now got MS Lync, and because the icon is a speech bubble, everyone uses the word "bubble" as a verb meaning "to contact via MS Lync". Clearly, as a miserable cunt, I should hate this. But I quite like it. I think it's partly because the alternative is using "Lync" as a verb which just sounds wrong.

Or use 'message' or 'IM'.

Bubble? Fucking hell.

..we have a lot of people who've been around since everything was paper based, and they remember when the office got its first computer. As in singular.

Yeah, Lync is used by shitloads of companies and I'm going to guarantee none of them talk about Lync-ing someone. My previous company used Lotus Notes for IM and precisely no one ever talked about Notes-ing anyone else. That's pretty weird.

That said we have Jabber and that's quickly became a verb. I don't mind, though. If I said to some people that I had sent them an IM they wouldn't have the first clue what I was on about and if I just said message they'd start looking in Outlook.

That's not so terrible on the basis that jabber actually is a verb.