Aggravation
The way consultants always use those stupid teal-colored arrows in their Powerpoint presentations
I despise the sweat-inducing properties of nylon fabric. This happens when you're wearing nylon pants or a nylon shirt and you're walking around but finally get back to your room, and it feels like you are going to die of sweat. Thank you dear god for inventing cotton
Running out of something you really need (toothpaste, soap, etc) when you are really busy, like during finals. It really would only take 5 minutes to walk to the store to buy some, but you just don't want to. WHY
When a really good song is too short
People you send a NYTimes.com link to and they say, "Ugh, it requires a password, never mind." First of all, what planet have you been living on to have not read anything off of NYTimes.com in the last 5 years? Second, it's FREE. And as Gabe eloquently pointed out in his last comment, can we please stop taking pride in not reading?
People who insist on getting statistically valid, large-scale datasets in order to make a decision, rather than quick prototyping and iterations based on n=10 or 20 or even 5. When writing a paper, these people are the ones who spend 80% of their time doing a literature review and only 20% coming up with original ideas. In business, these morons are generally older middle-management people who are used to looking through piles of paper to seem busy. Adopting this tactic, of course, makes it easy to justify why they move and think so slowly: "We need more data!" Now, I'm not that smart, but I've done a lot of design and basically these people don't know what they're talking about. RAPID PROTOTYPING AND ITERATION, ITERATION, ITERATION ARE THE WAY TO GO. I could point you to 89159154 experts and reports showing you, but I'll just tell you here. Instead of researching, having meetings, creating committees, and creating a massive infrastructure to see if you should change an icon's color from red to green, try doing a theory-based A/B test and then modify your design and re-test it over and over. Try telling this to one of the old-time bosses that believe in formal reports, though, and see where it gets you
The way it takes > 10 seconds to open a PDF file
Anybody who lies and says, "Oh man, I really messed up that test BAD" and then gets an 86. I WILL HIT YOU
When you ask people "Where do you want to eat?" or "What movie should we rent?" and it takes an executive committee to decide something among 3+ people. Sometimes I just say "McDonald's or Jack in the Box?" FEWER CHOICES = 10 HOURS SAVED
I despise the sweat-inducing properties of nylon fabric. This happens when you're wearing nylon pants or a nylon shirt and you're walking around but finally get back to your room, and it feels like you are going to die of sweat. Thank you dear god for inventing cotton
Running out of something you really need (toothpaste, soap, etc) when you are really busy, like during finals. It really would only take 5 minutes to walk to the store to buy some, but you just don't want to. WHY
When a really good song is too short
People you send a NYTimes.com link to and they say, "Ugh, it requires a password, never mind." First of all, what planet have you been living on to have not read anything off of NYTimes.com in the last 5 years? Second, it's FREE. And as Gabe eloquently pointed out in his last comment, can we please stop taking pride in not reading?
People who insist on getting statistically valid, large-scale datasets in order to make a decision, rather than quick prototyping and iterations based on n=10 or 20 or even 5. When writing a paper, these people are the ones who spend 80% of their time doing a literature review and only 20% coming up with original ideas. In business, these morons are generally older middle-management people who are used to looking through piles of paper to seem busy. Adopting this tactic, of course, makes it easy to justify why they move and think so slowly: "We need more data!" Now, I'm not that smart, but I've done a lot of design and basically these people don't know what they're talking about. RAPID PROTOTYPING AND ITERATION, ITERATION, ITERATION ARE THE WAY TO GO. I could point you to 89159154 experts and reports showing you, but I'll just tell you here. Instead of researching, having meetings, creating committees, and creating a massive infrastructure to see if you should change an icon's color from red to green, try doing a theory-based A/B test and then modify your design and re-test it over and over. Try telling this to one of the old-time bosses that believe in formal reports, though, and see where it gets you
The way it takes > 10 seconds to open a PDF file
Anybody who lies and says, "Oh man, I really messed up that test BAD" and then gets an 86. I WILL HIT YOU
When you ask people "Where do you want to eat?" or "What movie should we rent?" and it takes an executive committee to decide something among 3+ people. Sometimes I just say "McDonald's or Jack in the Box?" FEWER CHOICES = 10 HOURS SAVED
3 Comments:
you should try adobe reader 7 - they finally listened to feedback and made the startup way faster
When people fix their AIM so you can't see if they're idle. Someone probably reported this earlier, but I just want to reiterate how destructive this is to our sense of trust in one another. Also, it's a given that the one time in a hundred that these jerks actually IM you, you will have dozed off or gone to fix a snack. It's like the boy who cried wolf, or something.
Commercials in movie theaters. No one wants to be pitched products while waiting to escape from the realities of our commerce-driven world for two hours. Sort of like how no one wants to delay sex to hear a knock-knock joke.
People who use wine-speak among non-wine-snobs. Granted, I go to a few wine tastings, but I sure as shit keep my technical appraisals to myself when I'm having a jug of E&J with the old college buddies.
People who rant about "corporate America" this or "multinational corporations" that as if 1) they had any idea what they were talking about, or 2) they weren't totally complicit in the whole equation.
Any 20-year-old in a torn t-shirt who characterizes him or herself as a "poet".
a good way to get access to websites (particularly news-based) that require a login/pw to keep you from using the online source and instead opt for the paper one so they don't go broke:
http://www.bugmenot.com/
it's a few extra clicks but the mouse is so much closer to my hand than the keyboard usually is.
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