1) Install programs for Windows-NT-server-based software which reboot the system at the end of the install without asking you first, hence terminating any important tasks you happened to have running at the time.

2) Operating systems which continually require you to reboot.

3) Running out of ammo. (Specifically, rockets, right when your opponent moves into your sights.)

4) Running out of Dr Pepper in the middle of a late night marathon coding session.

"You have moved the mouse, reboot to have changes take effect."

5) musical ring tones on phones

There is nothing musical about phone ring tones !

Support sites that take you around in circles, and publish information based on asinine model numbers/part numbers. So you are forced to search for your "other" part number, find your document, then download necessary drivers.

And you wonder why the 800 number is posted on every page!

7) Christmas Carolers and running out of the (darkened) house to avoid them.

It is great i have to guess what the girlfriend new ring tones are normally based on the charts which i don't listen to which makes it even more difficult, why can't people see the joy that is a vibrating mobile

8) People who drive in the left lane (right lane in the UK) keeping perfect formation with the car next to them, completely obf*ckingblivious to the traffic trapped behind them.

Do you think I can start a flame war by my obvious political incorrectness when I point out that at least 95% of these offenders are women?

tanstaafl.

6) Entering my account information on an automated call system only to be asked it again when a human finally picks up.

John

8) People who drive in the left lane

There is an old word to describe these people. "Magoo"

Any one here old enough to remember the Mister Magoo cartoons. The title animation is of the little guy beginning his day. Part of which is him driving to work. He's out in the center lane, traffic whizzing by on all sides, and he sits there, oblivious to his crime, shaking his fist in the air shouting "Road Hogs". Totally unable to comprehend that the problem is his.

Every time I here somebody talking about aggressive drivers, road hogs in the old vernacular, that picture pops into my visual cortex.

Glenn

6) Entering my account information on an automated call system only to be asked it again when a human finally picks up.

Being on the other side of this system, and hearing *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* due to one little macro screwup, and knowing those beeps represented the phone number needed to look up the info.

Speaking of which, here in the States (the Southern US, North Carolina to be specific), when this happens, I blink my lights, as a good driver should, to get the offending person to move. More often than not, this inspires outrage in said offending driver. Which brings me to my corollary pet peeve: people who do not know how to drive (and are driving), are inconsiderate drivers, or who are too busy doing other things (like gossiping on the phone to their girlfriends) to be bothered to drive.

Man, you guys hate a lot. :)

In my top-10 hated things: Manually "rolling" BEV. *

* BEV isn't a woman (that would have put it in my top-10 favourite things list).

Bruno

In reply to:

---

why can't people see the joy that is a vibrating mobile?

---

Because it's in your pocket, out of sight?

M$ Patches/S Packs/Whatever that require a reboot (PITA #1) and then assume you want to reboot immediately (PITA # 2) without giving you any further choice - as you say, usually when you have something else on the go (hey, we're multi-tasking, right?). So you leave the dialogue with the single button "Reboot" displayed on the desk and get a coffee while you wait for the other task to complete, and your helpful, well meaning colleague presses the button for you while you are at the machine (PITA #3)

The worst part about #3 is the fact that you are partly responsible, but it doesn't stop you feeling as if you want to flay your mate alive and nuke Redmond all the same

Oh yeah, I see your point. Fortunately, everyone around here knows better than to touch any of my systems, no matter what's on the screen. It could say "If you don't press OK in 30 seconds, the world will end", and they'd still take the time to come get me before pressing OK. I've got them trained well.

But the software I enconutered this weekend made me particularly angry because it didn't even have the OK button. It just rebooted the system after the percentage bar went to 100 percent.

The "helpful" colleagues around here tend to think twice - too many people running the "kernel panic" screensaver.

Hmm, have to warn the randoms about that when I install my home box...

get more memory and use better code

Leaf-blowers. Especially internal combustion powered leaf-blowers.

My wife's motherf*cking piece of sh*t cat.

The www.calvinandhobbes.com site doesn't have a search engine, so I can't dig up a link, but there was a great one where Calvin is listing things he hates.

"...Excessively negative people..." interposes Hobbes.

"Yeah! ... Hey, wait a minute..."

Peter

So you're saying you hate sites without search engines?

People who insist on driving with their foglights on when it's not foggy. It seems to be the latest craze here. I don't know whether they think it looks good or whether they've genuinely left them on since the last foggy spell. Whatever the real reason they just look like they're missing a bit in the intelligence dept. and have left them on. Aside from the fact that they blind oncoming traffic it's also illegal here in England to have them on when it's not foggy.

Wrongly adjusted headlights.
Road planners who decide that 3 lanes this side of the traffic lights should suddenly become 2 lanes on the other side or that a lane should suddenly change it's meaning half way round a roundabout.
Lanes marked on the road surface and no other signs so that you can't see what lane you need to be in because the vehicles queued up in front of you are covering the markings.
Badly designed roads with adverse cambers on bends & roundabouts just to make it easy for Motorcyclists to fall off in the ice.
Speed limits.
Other people using MY road .
People who don't consider others.
MS Windows scrolling Start Menu. (I know this is easy to fix but it shouldn't be like it in the first place. it was fine the way it was).
Menus in MS apps that hide the things you haven't used recently. (Again menus were fine the way they were).
Apps that don't stick to the standard controls & interface conventions (like Ulead VideoStudio).
Miniscule (or complete lack of) paper manuals for software.
Middlemen making extortionate profit when the poor manufacturer is being screwed into the ground.
Noisy children.
Noisy neighbours.

That's about it for now. You probably think I'm some kind of psycho anyway by now. Now where did I put my Valiummmmmm?...

People who insist on driving with their foglights on when it's not foggy.

I've been making fun of these people since before I could drive. I friend of mine and I used to have this sort-of inside joke that they must be ``experienced European drivers''. It was funny at the time. On a related note, I hate the folks that drive around in the city with their brights on, which is also illegal.

Thing I hate, which kept me up until 06:30 AM this monday morning:

13) Backing up the bootdrive on a server using Drive Image Professional (my ass) 4.0, reporting that everyting was A-OK. Then reconfiguring the RAID to make it failure proof, and not failure prone, as the previous sysadmin had thought it best to (can you spell stripe set, see other thread). Finally restoring the system drive, and getting the error message "Corrupt Image file, aborted". Going to software manufacturers web site, to figure out what went wrong, only to find "THIS IS A KNOWN (F******) ERROR, UPGRADE TO A NEWER VERSION".

If it weren't for computers, We'd have no job and probably less frustrations. So who are we kiddin', really?

14) Microsoft ``Critical Update Notifications'' that just won't shut the hell up! I'm not ready to reboot yet! I just logged on!

How about when the little tray icon for Critical Updates blinks at me, I go to WindowsUpdate, and it says there aren't any critical updates. WHY WAS IT BLINKING THEN?!?!?

I don't even just get a simple blink. I get a big-ass word balloon. And even better is when you click on that and tell it to ``Remind me later'', it thinks that a good offset for later would be, like, ten minutes. Aarrgh!

Oh -- and the ever popular ``Update failed for no apparent reason. Go back and try another dozen times.''

Have I mentioned how much I hate Windows? (And don't start on all the ``Run something else, then'' rants. I have a nearly computer-illiterate wife who refuses to use any other computer than the one I have in my office. Don't ask why. I don't know. Maybe that should be another thing I hate.)