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

Todays PH: People putting feet on seats in public transport. Specifically thoroughly wiping their soles on the edge of the seat. Quite brazenly too, with other people sitting in adjacent seats.

There's nothing really wrong with QWERTY keyboards and there's no proof that DVORAK's better.

i like QWERTZ (or QWERTY if I have to) keyboards, but then I can touch type and i'm very fast. I'd lose that speed with a different layout (although I have used an A-Z set-up and got used to it pretty quickly) and I'd miss it.

When people put their feet on seats and I'm within speaking distance (and I used to be able to shout across a parade ground so that is quite a distance) I tell them to stop it and that whatever they do with their furniture at home is their business but nobody needs to have to sit on a dirty seat.

And up to now nobody has punched me in the face for it. We get away with a lot

If you say all that at a volume where only the person who *should* be hearing it, *is* hearing it, then I applaud. But If anyone else can hear it, you're being as anti-social as the shoe person. Just in a different way.

Then it would be handy to be able to "throw your voice' so people don't know where it's coming from.

Or lower your voice.

what I mean is, if they're doing it and everyone is just tutting and not addressing the situation, I can attract their attention from the other side of the bus.
I'm not a monster...

Yes. I hate being on buses and trains with people who pride themselves on being able to attract attention from the other end of the carriage. And yes, many of them are military, and no, they are never as subtle as they think.

But yes, if everyone else is tutting, then *they* should try being bloody quiet or speaking to the person who they are tutting about.

Employment "Assessment Tests" that try (and fail) to gauge your personality and temperament. I guarantee you they're useless at best.

And frankly I think they're downright harmful for everyone, employers included.

And they're often used for jobs that just have no need for what they purport to do. The only one I ever took was for $5/hr job at a commercial photolab. My entire day was basically spent in a locked darkroom alone. No one would be bothered by my personallity anyway.

I was given one of these personality tests at a job interview maybe 25 years ago. When I was called for a second interview, the guy had processed the results and got a profile of me printed onto maybe ten sheets of A4. He'd then marked with a highlighter pen all the 'negative' behaviours.

'OK", he said, "Explain all these".

The test I took I didn't even understand but about half the questions. Many of them were some confused form of analogy. They were unintelligible.

This was typical of the questions as I remember them.

Synergy is to ratiocination as abnegation is to [BLANK]
a) palliation
b) probity
c) semiotics
d) punctuated equilibrium


Seriously, I've always considered myself to have a pretty good grasp of language and a larger than average vocabulary, but some of the questions on that "test" were absolutely incomprehensible.

Maybe they deliberately make the questions impossible to answer, in order to see how you react in tricky situations.

It's one thing knowing the meaning of those words, but it's pointless. You couldn't use them in everyday communication as nobody else understands them. You'd be a laughing stock at work.

Actually I've nothing much to moan about, after a month of berating the long-suffering modulators they've managed to provide me with a new ID, I've been bereft being parted from all my chums on h2g2, oh. I really hate people calling it hootoo, that's just common, like putting your feet up on seats and verbally abusing people on public transport.

I hate it when people who say they are going to telephone me back and don't. Especially when they say that they are going to telephone me either in the morning or the afternoon and they don't. When I do telephone them, I am always told by another person in the office that they are on the other line and that they will telephone me back when they are finished which they don't do. And when I do telephone, even though they have my details they act as they don't know what I am talking about.

Aye! and what's worse is when they say they will come to your house, to do a job, then don't turn up

Then, when do they turn up a couple of days later, they try to put the blame in you?

Or, even worse, carry in like nothing is wrong?

Smudger.

PH sausages which have a soft skin when they're cooked.

Doesn't that depend on the cooking method?

The only proper method is on a grill.