Garry Garrett's Homepage Garry Garrett's Homepage Here are things that truly annoy me. Some of these annoy me more than others. Not that most people care, but I typed up this page so that when someone does one of these things, I can just point them to this page rather than retyping the whole thing every time. If I havn't directed you to this page, consider this to be food for thought.
Ever get an e-mail from someone that says something useless, like "read this", and has a word processing document attached to it. Then you go through the trouble of firing up a word processor and all that the document contains is text (all in one font, no bold, no italics, no nothing that you would need a word processor for - or perhaps it has some title like "MEMO" in a large font, but the body of the memo is all pretty much flat text). This annoys me.
Upon rare occasion, someone will send me something that does "need" to be in an attached file (perhaps it's a document that makes extensive use of fonts and images, or perhaps it's a spreadsheet, etc. - though I know people who use spreadsheets as word processors). The text of their message, if they put in any text at all, is something as useless as "see attached document". How much trouble would it be for them to type a meaningful message in their e-mail, enough to give me some kind of clue as to what is in the attached document? Nine times out of ten, the information in the attached document is not something useful or interesting to me. I could avoid the trouble of firing up a spreadsheet program if the author would bother to tell me what it is that they are sending me.
Why would someone go to all the trouble of firing up their word processor (a time consuming process, and on PCs in particular, one that has a tendancy to leak memory each time you do it, making your PC lock up that much sooner), and then they fire up their e-mail client (perhaps their word processor has a link to make this easier) to send it? Then I am sitting there reading my e-mail, and I come across their message. I now have to fire up my word processor (which takes time) to read their mail message (perhaps my e-mail client even has a way to make it easy for me, by double clicking on the attchement, but it makes it not much less time consuming). They could have just as easily (actually more easily) just fired up their e-mail client and typed their message into that (instead of the meaningless "read this") and then when I get their e-mail, I could just read it.
Computer security experts will tell you, with today's rich set of macro languages, computer virii can exist in word processing documents, spreadsheets, etc. Mindlessly clicking on attached files, without knowing what they are, is how these virii spread! The word of warning that you hear again and again from security experts is "if you don't know what it is, don't open it". How am I supposed to know what it is if all the e-mail says is "see attachment"? This is so common that authors of computer virii now commonly have their virus spread itself by sending infected files (to all the e-mail addresses it can havest) with text like "see attached". They know that most people have been trained to mindlessly click on the attachment. By sending e-mails with only "see attached" in the body, you are teaching everyone that you send the e-mail to bad security habits (teaching them to blindly click on attachments from you). You are, abeit unwhittingly, helping to spread computer virii.
In a business environment, "see attached" makes even less sense in that you usually have a sales force who is on the road and is dialing in via a modem (a phone bill that the company pays one way or the other), to check their e-mail. Attached word processing documents are significantly (hundreds to thousands of times) larger than if you typed the same message into the e-mail itself. This means that the phone bill of the sales force is proportionally larger too. When you blast out a message to "everyone in the company" with the needless attachment, you cost the company significant sums of money. If your really do need to use a word processing document or spreadsheet, etc. why not save the file on a LAN drive or better yet put it on a web server (an intranet [internal] one) so that the people you are sending this to can (if they so choose) go get the file. I say that a web server is preferable as you can put in your e-mail (along with a meaningful description of what it is) the URL that they would use to download it. Most e-mail client programs understand how to fire up a web browser to download it, so all the person has to do is click, if and when they want to. If someone on the sales force really is interested, they can get the file when they are back in the office.
When you attach a file using some proprietary format, such as MS-Word, you are helping Microsoft retain their monopoly. Don't take my word for it, see Richard Stallman's treatse We Can Put an End to Word Attachments. He makes very compelling arguments about how using MS-Word attachments hurts the development and adoption of open standards and squelches creativity. Did you know that MicroSoft is trying to make it so that they can sue you for patent infringement if you make software that can read an MS-Word file? You leave the visually impared with no way to read your attachments. What makes this so bad is the snowball effect - you send your e-mail as word attachments, it forces people who might have chosen otherwise to go out and get MS-Word and do the same.
I probably sent you an e-mail with the vauge "see attached" message and this URL. Before you nag me about doing exactly what I'm telling you not to do, realize that I did this on purpose so that you will stop and ask yourself why you clicked on it without knowing what it was.
So you have some joke you want to send to the world, or maybe something legitimate, like "This is my new e-mail address", that you want to send to a large number of people. Many people sent it "To" a large number of people, or they "CC" a large number of people. Everyone you sent the e-mail to now has the e-mail address of everyone else on the list.
In most cases, I'm not particularly worried about you "publishing" my e-mail address to strangers. I've actually gotten back in touch with long lost friends because a mutual friend who knew their new e-mail address CC'ed us both and that way I got their new address.
What annoys me is when you CC the world, and your not too bight friend who clicks on everything sent to them has a computer that is chock full of virii, etc. gets this e-mail, the virus on their computer starts bombarding my inbox with this junk. Or maybe this brainchild posts your e-mail, including my e-mail address, on a web page for any spammer on the planet to get their hands on.
If you are going to send a message to a bunch of people who don't know each other, it is a good idea to "BCC" (Blind Copy) all of the people. That way, they don't see each other's addresses. Think about it - statistically, at least one person on your list doesn't have (up-to-date) anti-virus software on their computer.
PS: Perhaps you know a couple that has split up. Maybe she changed her e-mail address because he keeps harassing her via e-mail. Don't CC both of them. BCC them, or at least BCC her.
I have to admit, I have become guilty of this more and more often these days. I've built some HTML "mailto" tags that send out an e-mail to a list of people. I would BCC, if I knew the syntax (presuming that it does exist).
Most e-mail programs have more than one way to reply to a message. You can reply only to the sender that sent the message, or you can reply to the sender plus everyone else that they sent the message to. Many people don't seem to understand the difference.
For example, in Netscape, there is a button labeled "Reply" that will reply to just the sender. There is also a button labeled "Reply All" that will send to everyone. Similar buttons or pull down menu options exist on other GUI e-mail packages, like MS-Outlook. In Unix command-line e-mails, most programs distinguish between "r" for reply and "R" for reply all, etc. Commonly, you can also do things like hit the "reply all" button, and then pick through the e-mail addresses listed, select some of them and hit "delete". This allows you to reply to a subset of "all" that really might be interested.
So here's the senario. Someone e-mails a huge number of people, say "the whole company" with some bit of drivel that only applies to a small portion of the company. Then a handful of people who don't understand the difference between "reply" and "reply all" start answering. As mundane as the orginal drivel was (and maybe the original was even worth sending to the whole company), these replies are even more useless to the poor individuals who have to sit through them. So John Doe, whom I've never even met, got a promotion - I don't care, but I can see broadcasting such info throughout the company. However, do I really have to sit through the 5 people who actually know John replying "Way to go Johnny"? I think not. Besides, in this case, the message may have come from John Doe's boss, or more likely John Doe's boss's secretary, and so perhaps the thing to do is not to "reply" either, but to forward the message to John adding your comments, or send an entirely new e-mail to John. Or suppose someone sends a joke to you and I. I don't know you from Adam, you are my friend's friend. Do you really think I care that you thought that the joke was funny?
It boils down to an age old maxim of writing, "know your audiance". Does "everyone" really care what you have to say? Okay, odds are you really want to change your audiance and not your message, but if you really are going to write an e-mail to "everybody", make sure that you say something that's relevant to "everybody".
Ever get an e-mail that is one long line of text? What happens is that the person writing the e-mail has "word wrap" turned on in their e-mail client program, only their crappy e-mail client program doesn't actually wrap the text that it sends. It may wrap it on the sender's screen, but it does not send it this way.
I could turn word wrap on, in my e-mail client, but I commonly get e-mailed output of programs where it is important that all of the information line up properly (in columns, etc.). This output is sometimes longer than the width of my window. If I turned word wrap on, the output that I get would not be readable.
Here's the really annoying part. People who have these crappy e-mail programs usually are replying to my messages, and their e-mail program will "quote" my message, and rather than begin their one line message on a blank line, they invariably pick a line that has a quote mark ("> ") on it, so when I look through the e-mail looking for lines that don't have a "> " (which should be what they wrote), I don't find any. I have to wade through all of what I wrote just to find what they have said to me.
Is it really that hard to hit the return key at the end of a line? If you find it to be that much of a bother, get an e-mail client that really will line wrap for you and not just pretend to.
Ever send someone an e-mail, and they reply to you about some small portion of your e-mail. Their software automatically "quotes" the message I sent them, yet they don't bother to remove those portions that don't pertain to their response.
Or, they send you the joke dejure, an inspirational message, a (bogus) virus warning, a chain e-mail, or some such bit of drivel that has circulated around the globe a gabillion times. I don't mind so much that they don't bother to remove the superflous "> " quote marks, it's that they include page after page of e-mail header info. Like I care who the last 20 people who got this drivel were.
Is it really that hard to highlight the unimportant parts and hit the delete key?
It bothers me when somone forwards me some piece of drivel and doesn't bother to check it out first. For example, if it is a virus warning, you can easily check it out before passing it on. Or say it's a story that sounds too good to be true. Could it be an Urban Legend? I guess it must be really difficult to take 20 seconds to check it out before mindessly forwarding it on.
What is with all this forwarding of e-mails? Some people forward just about any bit of drivel to hit their inbox. Why is that?
Don't get me wrong, some of what's floating around the internet is pretty good and insightful stuff. Most of that, however, is copyrighted and is being used without the copyright owner's permission. But I'm talking about the forwarding phenomenon.
When you read a good book, you probably recommend it to a friend. You don't recommend every book you've ever read. You don't recommend all the books you've read, minus the handful of truely awful ones you slogged through or even gave up on. You filter out books and only recommend the best. Said friend, over time, gets to know your tastes and filters out (ignores recommendations to read) stuff the they know that you like, but that they would not be interested in. Why, when it comes to e-mails, are these filters disengaged?
Why do we forward stuff we find only mildly interesting or amusing? I think it's because it is effortless. When you get together with a friend and talk, you've got a finite amount of time to spend together and so you only bother to bring up good books to read if the book is really good, and you really think they too will enjoy it.
There are boatloads of peope out there crafting original e-mails. Very few of them are good writers. Very few of them have all that refined of a sense of humor. There is more drivel being written than I have time to read.
Frankly, particularly when it comes to poltical based e-mails, I'd be far more interested in my friend's opinion on the subject than I am in what some other bozo wrote and my friend forwarded to me in true monkey-see/monkey-forward fashion. Rarely does some bit of drivel exactly match our own sediments on the subject. What my friend forwards only partly tells me what my friend thinks. I would value the personal communication from my friend - a thoughtfully composed personal letter would be welcomed. Some bit of drivel some twit sent you that you forwarded to me, I am not interested in.
E-mail Jokes is probably just a special case of Monkey-See/Monkey-Forard.
It happens to everyone. When you first get e-mail, you give your e-mail address to friends and family, and someone starts sending you jokes, inspirational messages, bogus warnings (see Note Checking the Facts above), politically modivated tripe, etc. You naturally assume that because you've never seen these before, that no one you know (save the person who sent it to you) has seen them, and furthermore, you assume that they want to see them. So in true monkey-see/monkey-forward fashion, you forward every joke that comes your way to everyone you know.
You're shocked when people respond asking you not to send them jokes. You naturally think them "cranky". If you are smart, you write them off as being cranky and quit forwarding them, but many people, people new to e-mail, don't seem to know how to forward anything to anyone but "everyone".
It surprises me how many repeats I get. Someone gets a joke and forwards it to me. Later on, they get the same joke, and because they have forgotten the joke by now, they foward it again. I've gotten the same joke from the same guy at least 7 times now. I probably get way more repeats than I know, because frankly I don't have that good of a memory.
I actually like jokes. I wouldn't mind getting some jokes, sometimes. Unfortunately, however, its a little bit like trying to take a drink from a firehose. Every friend you have sends you every joke they get, 99% of them repeats. If you have a number of friends, your in-box quickly becomes buried. Anybody who's been on the internet for any time at all quickly tires of the onslaught and develops a "send me no jokes" policy. You may consider people who ask you to send no jokes cranky now, but in 5-10 years, you will join them.
The problem here is it just doesn't scale up. If you knew 5 people, and they only bothered to type up and send the very best of the jokes they have heard (with their ears), that would be a manageable number of jokes. But now imagine everyone you know (friends, even mere aquaintences), sending you every joke the've ever heard, no matter how bad the joke is. Half these people know each other, and when Bob sends a joke to you and Tom, Tom is going to turn around and send it to you. Take that times everyone you know. Take that times everyone they know (times everyone they know... on out to "six degress of separation"). Take that times, every joke ever told. What do you get? A firehose.
If only people would filter out just the best of what they get. Forward only the top 10% funniest jokes you get, etc. Maybe even the top 1% of jokes? Maybe that could make it managable?
I have some people I've had to "cut off". I've got a filter that takes any e-mail from them, and just throws it away. I've had to do this because all they ever send me is jokes, even when I have asked them repeatedly to stop doing so. One day a freak event will happen and they will actually send me a real e-mail - actual correspondance - and it will go straight into the trash with the junk. I'd rather not throw the baby out with the bathwater, but when you fill my bathtub with a firehose, you leave me no choice.
Voice mail, answering machines, etc. all have a useful purpose. But the limitations inherent to the design sometimes give us a false sense of usefulness.
At work, I have a voice mailbox. I have e-mail. I have programs that produce reports that get e-mailed to me; I have to keep up with my e-mail. We have a system to track problems, I have to keep up with those. We have a system to track requests, I have to stay on top those. There are just way too many ways for someone to try to pass some work off onto me. I get way too much to be able to keep up with it all, and voice mail, by far, always gets checked last. Having a voice mailbox only gives people a false sense that they had left me a message that I will receive in a timely fashion.
Why does it get checked last? 99% off all voice mails I ever got went something like this, "This is Bob; call me". Gee thanks Bob. Could you have at least told me what I am calling you about so that I can be prepared (logged into the right computer, have the right documents infront of me, etc.) when I call you back? When people can't leave you a voice mail, and they resort to sending you an e-mail, they typically include useful details in their e-mail. We are trained, however, to keep our voice messages short. Who hasn't left a 2nd voice mail message because the system cut us off before we finished? A limit on how long of a message that you can leave has trained us to keep our voice mails brief, too brief to be of much value. You're expecting to talk to a person. Rarely do you plan ahead and know what you are going to say should the person not be there and you get their voice mailbox. Consequently, you blurt out some useless "call me" message. That's just human nature.
If you are checking your voicemail, and you don't respond soon enough, the voice mail times out. It assumes that you hung up, but for whatever reason the line wasn't hung up properly, so it hangs up. I can have 2 windows open on my computer and be reading my e-mail while I'm doing something in the other window. If the other window requires my immediate attention, my e-mail isn't going to "time out" and "hang up" on me like voice mail does. I can come back to it and pick up right where I left off. With e-mail, you can see who sent it and what the subject is ahead of time. You can prioritize your message reading.
At one point in time, the phone guys, at my request, diabled my voice mail mailbox. This worked incredibly well. People stopped leaving useless messages and either sent me meaningful e-mails, or they reached me on my pager and/or cell phone if they need to get ahold of me immediately. Unfortunately, however, managers seem to think that voicemail is useful and insisted that my useless voice mail be reinstated.
I had a text pager. You could dial my pager's phone number and send me numeric pages. You could send pages to my pager's e-mail address or go to my pager company's web page and send a text message.
Often, people send me text pages that just have a phone number. Or, a phone number with the phrase "call me" (as if I would not know what to do with the phone number). If you are going to send a text page, you might as well include some (meaningful) text. Even "Call Bob" lets me know that when I call the number provided that I should ask for "Bob".
Usually I'd get paged by co-workers. If I was on my way home, it would be nice to know the nature of the issue that I am being paged about. I need to make a decision about wether I should continue on home, or if I should turn around and come back to work. I may drive past an exit as I am getting out my cell phone to call you back. The sooner I can make this decision, the better, and if you can provide a brief description of the problem, that would really help.
I work with computers - if you can provide the name of the computer(s) that is having problems, that is essential. Like most companies, my company has a database for tracking problems with - the "ticket number" from the database is essential. I may not be in a position to write it down when I call back (or I may not remember to ask for it), but if you include it in your page, I have the number. Later on, when I need to update the ticket, I have the number. The name of the person who's paging me is also an essential bit of information. If you can provide me with a brief description, I can usually judge if I can login from home to take care of it, or if I have to come on-site. If you boil it down to a one sentance description, that's probably enough for me to go on.
I'm not asking for a small novel (text pagers only support 200-240 characters), but it really doesn't take much of any time to throw in a couple of sentances with the information I've outlined above. Seconds of your time can save minutes of mine.
I now have a SMS text message enabled cell phone. Same deal, only now I'm limited to 160 character messages.
A "Standard" that isn't published and diseminated, isn't a standard.
If you are making a "standard", and you expect that standard to apply to me, then you need to solicit my input. You don't have to agree with my input. Maybe someone else's input made more sense to you, like say your own. That's fine. I may not be as happy with the standard, but I can accept it, as long as you have listened to and considered my input. You can't expect me to "buy-in" to your standard if you have left me entirely out of the process.
I get tired of people who make "standards" in a vaccum. They don't tell anyone about their "standard". They don't consider wether their "standard" works in any environment but their own. Then they whine if you don't follow their standard that you weren't even aware of. When you point out to them that their standard doesn't work for you, they claim that it has already been set in stone at "the meeting".
If I don't follow your "standard" because I'm not aware of it, this is your fault (for not informing me), not mine. If your standard does not work in my environment, it is because you didn't bother to gather enough information before you made your "standard", again your fault. Don't complain to me that I am not following your "standard", convince me that your "standard" is worth following.
Not so much a pet pieve as a rant. Car makers in particular seem to ignore supply and demand and make whatever cars they want, hoping that a slick advertising campaign will manufacture the demand for whatever car they feel like producing. I go into some detail on my page on Electric Cars
