OK, this may sound like I’m unhappy working in the IT business. I’m not, really. Actually, in this economy I’m happy to be working at all. I love my job. But I do have some pet peeves that frustrate me sometimes. I’m sure every line of work has its share of annoyances. I just wanted to vent a little. Here they are in no particular order:
- “Inches” has no real meaning when describing the dimensions of digital images. “Inches” is a printing term. You can measure the size of an image in inches when it’s printed. But when it’s digital it’s measured in pixels. Here’s what I mean – The image below is 100 pixels by 75 pixels. On your screen it’s probably something like an inch wide and ¾ inch high. But it’s going to vary in size from monitor to monitor and screen resolution to screen resolution. Imagine this – let’s say you’re viewing this web page on your favorite stadium’s “JumboTron.” How large in inches do you think that image below would be?
- Use of the word “tweeter” – Ugh! Well, OK. A person who uses Twitter might be called a “tweeter.” But the messages they send are not tweeters! They’re tweets.
- An “email” is not a person’s email address. An email is a piece of electronic mail. OK, that’s a little bit petty. But when someone asks, “Do you have his email?” are they referring to having his email address or the email he sent?
- When you’re asking me for numbers such as traffic statistics, you always have to specify a time frame. If you ask me something like, “What are the numbers for company x?”, don’t be surprised if I answer something like, “five, seven, and three.” Yes, I know that makes no sense. Neither did the question.
- Expecting me to keep track of what your password is. I have plenty of my own to keep up with, believe me. I can probably reset your password if you want me to, and then I’ll know what it is. But in most cases your password is encrypted. I can’t see it. And I certainly don’t keep up with what it is.
- Closely related to that – replying to an email that contains your username and password, asking me what is your username and password. Believe me, that happens more often than you would think.
- When you’re asking me to solve a technical issue for you, telling me “it’s not working” doesn’t help me help you. I’ll probably just tell you something like, “You’re doing it wrong.”
- Asking me a question about something I explained in an email that you obviously didn’t bother reading. There’s a reason I wrote it. If you’re wanting a more in-depth explanation on what I wrote, or if there’s something you didn’t quite understand, or something I wasn’t completely clear about – OK, no problem. I understand that and I’ll be happy to explain. But if you simply didn’t bother to read the email I wrote, why should I bother explaining it again?
- Asking me the same question over and over again. We’re all guilty of this to a certain extent. I understand that. But if you’re simply having trouble remembering something continually – WRITE IT DOWN SOMEWHERE! The same thing applies for URLs you can’t remember. That’s what browser bookmarks are for.
- Not quoting emails when you’re referring to something in an email conversation. – by the way, what is up with Thunderbird’s default setting of quoting an email and then starting your reply BELOW the quote??? That’s one of the first things I change with any new profile I set up.
- Sending images to me in a Microsoft Word document. …actually, sending ANYTHING to me in a Word document.
- Referring to a web site as a ‘web page’. What year is this? 1995?
- Sending me an email with attachments with Outlook, which puts all your attachments into a ‘winmail.dat’ file, which can only be interpreted by using Outlook. The rest of the world does not necessarily use Outlook. Nor does it necessarily want to. Fortunately, some brave soul has written an extension for Thunderbird which can read and extract those attachments. Why can’t Microsoft follow generally accepted standards without trying to create their own standards? Actually, that was rhetorical. I know why. They do it because it creates dependence upon their products and services, most of which cost money.
There. I feel better now. Got some pet peeves of your own? Like maybe rude, arrogant IT people?
Asking me a question about something I explained in an email that you obviously didn’t bother reading. There’s a reason I wrote it. If you’re wanting a more in-depth explanation, or if there’s something you didn’t quite understand, or something I wasn’t completely clear about – OK, no problem. I understand that. But if you simply didn’t bother to read the email I wrote, why should I bother explaining it again?
We stayed in a very nice room at the Bellagio. Those fountains are amazing! I should have some really nice videos coming soon. At least I hope so. The first one I uploaded to YouTube gave me a warning that the audio track might contain copyrighted material. Can you believe that??? The music playing in the background is copyrighted, so the audio track might be disabled. Unbelievable. 
Hey, I don’t have a problem with artists being compensated for their work, but this is going WAY too far. This is audio coming from cheap speakers in a television behind the camera – a cheap digital camera that’s really not even a video camera. It’s just a still camera that can take short video clips. And they’re going to say that the audio that it recorded is copyrighted, so the audio track will be disabled from the video clip. I don’t blame YouTube. They’re just trying to protect themselves from lawsuits. But I do blame the RIAA. It’s no wonder the music industry is dying.
