On morning tea woes

Craving tea today -
Want nice soothing peppermint,
Instead of coffee.

Tazo, rescue me!
No caffeine indicator?
Plz die in a fire.

Seriously – what tea thinks it’s funny not to make it incredibly obvious which flavors are caffeinated and which aren’t? What a pain. At least in the time it took me to compose this, it’s probably done steeping…

On flame bait

Counting is easy!
Quality, not quantity
is key in haiku.

Alas, there are those
in our midst who flaunt the rules,
with five-eight-five verse.

Ridicule! Mock them!
And if that fails, deploy the
velociraptors.

He never should have pointed out to me his final-verse foible…

On proper abbreviation

Oh, Minnesota -
a great state somewhere up north,
or so I hear tell.

Abbreviated,
the letters would be MN -
not confusing "Min"

Kentucky, my home!
Excessive punctuation
is not in your name.

Abbreviated,
no period is required:
simply K then Y.

The Captive Network on the elevators here has the most infuriating propensity for incorrect state abbreviations. There's a whole list that I've seen, but the most irksome was "reported in Min yesterday" and "worst in Ky.'s history." We have nice straight forward abbreviations for each of our states that don't require creativity, punctuation, or confusing synonyms, thank you very much!

Helping people help themselves

My new strategy
for people who never learn:
block them on IM.

Forces them to try
thinking for themselves for once,
and gives me some peace.

A follow-up to yesterday's post about people who can't be bothered to read the documentation before pestering me. I've decided to start blocking them on IM in hopes of forcing them to go learn for themselves. Teach a man to fish, and all that. ;)

RTFM!

Am I the only
person who knows how to read
documentation?!?

Seriously guys,
at least make an effort to
learn the damn platform.

I'm all for helping my coworkers, but it's seriously starting to feel like I'm their personal Cliff's Notes. I shouldn't have to waste my time answering questions that you should know as part of your @#!%*$ job!

OF ALL THE UNHOLY DISCOURTESIES WHILE I WAS TRYING TO PEE AND THEN WASH MY HANDS

BITCH, IF YOU EVER
HAIR-SPRAY ME IN THE BATHROOM
AGAIN, I'LL KILL YOU

On ineptitude

*headdesk* Really, is
It THAT hard to comprehend
“add logging statements”?

I swear to god, it should not require a 30 minute conversation in response to the statement “Take this list of methods and add logging statements to them.” Have some freaking autonomy, dude ><

On DC Rudeness

Wish I were a bitch –
I would have kicked that hussy
Who shoved on the train.

Or perhaps snidely
remark, “thanks, buddy!” when jerks
fail to hold the door.

My two biggest metro annoyances: stupid little bints who nearly knock you over as they push to get on the train in front of you, and people who can’t be bothered to hold the door for people behind them when leaving the station. Probably a little common courtesy would kill them.

On bathroom stalls

If I'm in stall 1,
Why'd you choose 2, and not 3?
Urinal rules, bitch!

Seriously. If you have the option of leaving a gap instead of not leaving a gap, leave a fucking gap. I don't want you to poop 36 inches from me unless it's absolutely necessary. It's not rocket science and guys figured it out a long time ago.

I feel like all of my haikus are related to public restroom etiquette. But c'mon: ladies, please.

On web sites

Your web site was great!
Find any song from a set
In two seconds flat.

Now, a redesign:
shitty format, no searching.
I cry for the lack.

Stupid Armin Van Buuren. He redid his site in the last couple of weeks, and now instead of being able to search for any keyword, track name, or artist and be immediately presented with all of the sets that match (out of his 350-odd A State of Trance episodes) you can only view the track list for the last 4 sets. WTF?

On coding screw-ups

Hear Ye, Dumbass Dev:
Regular Expressions should
not be abused! Bad!!

Way to go, buddy, you totally screwed over the mobile application’s ability to scan Item Barcodes. That was clever. In the future please do not use completely broken regular expressions; I don’t care if Java can sort them out and make sense of them - .Net can’t. Pedantry is your friend in this particular situation.

On Purveyances Between Floors

Variable speed
escalators: not funny.
Surprise! Fall over!

On written ineptitude

How can you write so
badly? I don’t understand.
Worst. Grammar. Evar.

I don't understand how some people can be so inept when it comes to written language. I've been revising these guides for this guy for months, hand holding constantly... and he still doesn't get the concept of "don't use technical terms. Use informal second person constructs. These are guides for low level users - you need to tell them 'and next you do this. Now you do this' if they're going to get it." I give up. I'm just going to write the final draft myself, it'll be so much less painful.

Edit - oh the irony! That I can't manage syllables, when I'm bitching about grammar!

Automatic flush,
please stop stealing the cover.
Needs calibration.

I'm not sure that haiku made much sense, but in my defense I'm awfully tired. Anyway - the toilets at the client site were the worst calibrated auto flushers ever... A trip to the bathroom usually involved having to dodge 4 or more flushes, while still trying to get a toilet seat cover down (boy did they need it) and not have it flushed away before you could sit on it. Acrobatics ensue.

On Pronunciation

The words 'angst' and 'aunt'
Don't share vowel sounds with 'ought'
You pretentious twat.

On Punctuation:
I assure you a single
mark does the job fine.

But three question marks
is a bit overzealous.
Not Necessary!?!

I don't think that a defect whose status has been erroneously set to "fixed" instead of "retest" does not necessitate multiple question marks (and the baffled implications that go hand in hand with them) when you IM me about it -_-

On Delusions

Not to be rude, but
Saying this report has changed?
You are a LIAR.

But thanks for wasting hours of JD's and his boss's time with your delusional fantasies. Won't you have egg on your face later this afternoon when you remember the extent to which you slowly. and. condescendingly. babytalked. to. the. product. developer. of. the. company. about the way your report used to work in a dream you had last year.

On the (further) decline of the gaming industry

What? Harvest Moon Cute?
How is it possible to
Make it MORE girly??

I get an email this morning with the weekly Nintendo DS news, and one of the featured games is the game above. Seriously. Harvest Moon CUTE – “because girls want farming, too!” WTF does that even MEAN? This is already a game predominantly played by girls – did you feel the need to make it particularly degrading or what?? Christ. Screw the gaming industry right in the face.

On throwing balls at pins

Dear Muscles; bowling
should make my arm tired, right?
Why's my leg hurt, then??

Seriously - I bowled 6 games last night, so I was expecting to be kind of achy... but while my arm feels fine, my left hamstring is killing me o_O

On bathroom noise

Ladies' room. Maybe
It's different for men, but here,
CUT OUT THAT GRUNTING.

Seriously, I try to play nice in the womens' room. I'm a very considerate person when it comes to public restroom etiquette, from cleanliness/auditory/olfactory angles, and I expect others to extend similar courtesy. I don't want to LISTEN to the sound of you trying to poop, particularly if you're punctuating it with AUXILIARY noises coming from your THROAT. Really.