h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

to be fair though, even if they do help people - having your Gin bottles shake, rattled and rolled is still yukky

my PH today is... on my drive to work there is a stretch of road (Brit - A-road, German - B-road) which has 3 lanes. But - since one of the lanes morphs into a right-turning lane, to a place nobody ever goes, and rush-hour traffic is unforgiving - nobody EVER drives in it (because of the danger that tie eejits in the other lane won't let you in when it changes)

So during rush hour there is a whole free lane.

(it's the B57 in Mönchengladbach-Holt if any city planners are reading this )

TMBaby can you get Flahavans porridge oats - they come in a cylinder with a plastic lid

Driving standards are a whole sub-category of petty hates, no? We have roadworks on our M1 at the minute while they replace the central barrier. So the 2 lanes are switched onto the hard shoulder plus the inner lane, and the speed limit dropped to 50 mph. There was an accident the other morning, where cars had obviously been driving too fast and too close together. Of course, with no hard shoulder, the traffic was backed up for ages. And once we did get free and passed the accident....everybody speeds up to 70, despite the fact that we're still in the 50-limited roadworks zone

Vodafone

I echo what people have said about charity collection bags.

I've just had a sort out, found loads, but only one of them had the date specifically stated on the bag. All the rest just had a day of the week circled. Surely they must realise people are busy?

mullet haircuts

Game developers who store the player/score info in the registry, but don't provide you with a way of clearing the scores. Sometimes even deleting the user name doesn't work to clear the player's score.

Almost as bad are the developers who don't offer the option to start the game over or replay a level (if appropriate). Sometimes I get so far through a game and want to start fresh. The only option in such cases is to create a new player ID.

A bit of digging has shown me that, in some cases (if not all) the user/score data is squirreled away somewhere like 'Application Data/game'. This is the info stored in the registry. The absence of a score-reset facility is still annoying, though, as is the lack of a 'New Game' option.

Yeah! What Cheerful Dragon said!

(Actually, I have no idea what that's about at all.)

(And I won't understand even it it is explained.)

(But Jeez do I hate that!)

(And I think the words were mostly English.)

PP

I am sure somebody has posted this before .....****dy CD cases , they are crap . Made out of plastic that shaters as soon as you open it . This is especialy true of those double CD cases that are the size of a single one . you are lucky if you get CD 2 out of the case without breaking the tabs off once . The chances of it lasting the lifetime of the CD is zero .

Pedantry mixed with stupidity!

We have a system at work whereby certain information for each recruitment exercise needs to be entered on the system, including whether or not a member of staff from Personnel attended the interviews. Now there's a particular category of staff that I recruit quite often and the interviews for these posts are *never* attended by Personnel but today I was asked why I had filled out this bit of information already since the interviews had not yet taken place.... oh, I dunno, maybe because I learn from what's gone before!
I was also told that a post should be marked as appointed and the date of appointment letter should be filled in.... except no-one has been appointed, which could easily be checked by clicking into another screen.

The main problem is that, while the Ignorant Pedant is off you get used to being able to just get on with your job and then she comes back and it's one stupid, pointless email/report after another

My petty hate of the day: my toenails. I have to cut them constantly, because they grow straight down into my toes rather than out.

My boyfriend's toenails, which grow straight away from his toes rather than along them, like most people's.

Unnecessarily long and detailed explanations to otherwise simple questions.

Pastry brushes that loose their bristles as soon as you start using them, so not even after a period of poor care, and then continue to do so until I finally throw it out.

They never seem to find a point of stability like our paint brushes did, when they loose a few that weren't securely placed and then settle down.

So use a (new) paintbrush for a pastry brush.

There's lateral thinking for you, thanks Mal.

I don't see the point of these new silicon brushes. Sometimes they work (e.g. for roughly brushing oil or marinade onto chops, steaks or fish to go under the grill) but what else is the point of them? The "bristles" are all over the place and wobble and spatter - are they so messy or am I just cack-handed?

So the alternative is a bit of pig's hair on your pie or in your icing. Hm.

My uni. The outstanding work from my uni. The lack of correspondence from a tutor when she knows I need to talk to her (yes, I appreciate it is summer and people are on holiday etc but this is ridiculous).

Everything bar my work, and even that!

Leaflets that come through the door on the 2nd of July advertising "50% of until the end of June!"