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

This reminds me of one spring break when I was in college. I stayed I town that week. I was living in an apartment. The two story building had twelve apartments, six per side. Our apartment was in the middle on the ground floor. The unit next to my room had three guys living there and they all left for the week. The one with his room sharing a wall with my bedroom left his clock radio tuned to a country music station. It wasn't loud, but I could hear it through the wall. By Monday morning it was getting on my last nerve. So I fixed it. I walked around to the side of the building to access the breaker box. I flipped switches for their unit until the radio was silenced. (I switched all the others back on as I figured it unlikely that the refrigerator would be on the same circuit. I didn't want them to return to spoiled food.) I switched that one back on Saturday evening as I obviously didn't know what time they'd return.

I might have slept on the sofa in the living room that night as that country beat made sleep impossible.

My roommates' dog howls and moans whenever they're gone.

I had neighbors like that. And when they were home the dog shut up because it couldn't get a bark in edgewise with their fighting.

Oh, and the building was right next to two train tracks.

Why on earth did you move there then?

Actually I was here first.

Me? Because I had a job that paid shit wages and that was what I could afford. When my supervisor heard me complaining about the place (and there was much more to complain about than what I mentioned above,for example, I didn't mention it was sometimes downwind from a sewage plant), he made some crack about "cardboard living". I was furious. I wouldn't be living in that hole if they paid me a living wage and he had the gall to make fun of it!?

" I wouldn't be living in that hole if they paid me a living wage and he had the gall to make fun of it!"

Thats exactly what I would have told him.

I didn't mean you, Mr X - I was just wondering why BG moved somewhere where two railway tracks went past the door.

I actually asked the girl in the front office if the trains passed often at night and she said she hadn't heard them. She didn't bother to mention that she didn't live there.

Ah. A proper 'does your dog bite?' moment.

PP.

PH – When someone uses the last spare lightbulb and doesn't replace it or tell you.

<BB<

PH – The fact our local shop sells 26 different types of air freshener, but not a single lightbulb. Our kitchen just doesn't look the same without one.

<BB<

PH – Trying to cook and wash up by fridge light.
Doesn't work very well, especially as every 3 minutes you have to close and re-open the door to get the light back on...

<BB<

Use a pot-holer's lamp fixed on your forehead.

Always keep a few candles on hand for such emergencies.

If you've candles, a light, water, beer, pasta and lentils, you're all sorted for Armageddon or the Rapture.

Here's a very petty one. In Firefox "open in a new tab" is on top of the menu and "open in a new window" is second. In IE (which I have to use at work) it's the other way round.

Our work computers have just been 'upgraded' to IE 10.

It needed to work better, not look different. Having the address box and the search box as one and the same isn't an improvement. There is room for them to be separate.

Change isn't always better.

PP.

I hate that, redecoration fever becomes an annoying game of 'button, button, where tbe hell did they hide the button this time'.

User interface controls should always be out in the open where you can find them easily, perhaps in a dedicated UIC dropdown feature rather than cleverly concealed after the manner of Rocky the Flying Squirrel hiding away his winter stash of seeds and nuts then forgetting where he hid them.

During this vogon infestation, I've had to use Firefox to access h2g2. I'm accustomed to using Chrome which combines the search box and URL box. I prefer it that way and can see no reason now to keep them as separate entry fields.

But I understand the reluctance to change. Having two needlessly separate URL and search boxes wasn't quite as annoying to me as having the refresh icon moved to the other end of the URL box. Whether something is better isn't always as important as whether something is familiar.

A great example of that is right in front of you. The QWERTY keyboard is a horrible configuration but we're stuck with it as it's familiar and we're just too stubborn to relearn to type on a Dvorak keyboard. We even stick with QWERTY when our method of typing completely changes as we learn to "type" with our thumbs on mobile devices.

Anyone want a BETA video recorder?

With multiple tabs open I find separate boxes more convenient.

I HAD a Betamax video. It lasted for years.

PP.