Minor things that bother you

[Molandfreak]

I've never set foot in a Golden Corral after this post on IWasPoisoned. https://iwaspoisoned.com/incident/golden-corral-cross-pointe-boulevard-evansville-in-usa?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=social

[Scott5114]

Yes, there is nothing more pretentious than the McDonalds menue.

It's so pretentious it apparently has the same silent e at the end that other pretentious things have.

[1995hoo]

Our security software is constantly nagging me that our network is not secure enough because I don't have parental controls enabled and I don't have the guest wifi turned on. Well, duh: We don't have kids, and we seldom have guests. So why would I turn on parental controls or guest wifi? There ought to be some way to tell the software both of those things so it would shut up. What's the point of turning on guest access when it isn't needed? I can turn it on if we have visitors who stay more than just a few hours, of course.

[vdeane]

Is there some trend to refer to organizations in non-specific ways?  One of the MPOs in my area decided that acronyms were uncool and had staff refer to themselves as the "Transportation Council" in all meetings and documents.  Shortly thereafter, other MPOs in the state started doing the same thing - they're all the "Transportation Council" (except for one, which is a Study).  Those of us at NYSDOT can only imagine what happens in meetings where there are multiple MPOs represented - who knows who is who when they're all the "Transportation Council"?  The one working group I'm a part of with multiple MPOs still uses acronyms for this, but it's literally the only time I hear them from non-DOT staff anymore, and I can imagine it's only a matter of time before somebody slips up, especially as we get newer staff that haven't known a time when acronyms were used all the time.

Meanwhile, the state just released new branding policies.  Our old email signatures said "New York State Department of Transportation".  Not anymore, though - the new ones just say "Department of Transportation".  We've joined the trend.  I can only imagine how FHWA must feel - now they'll get a ton of emails from the "Department of Transportation" and have to pick through email addresses to figure out which is which!

[Rothman]

Is there some trend to refer to organizations in non-specific ways?  One of the MPOs in my area decided that acronyms were uncool and had staff refer to themselves as the "Transportation Council" in all meetings and documents.  Shortly thereafter, other MPOs in the state started doing the same thing - they're all the "Transportation Council" (except for one, which is a Study).  Those of us at NYSDOT can only imagine what happens in meetings where there are multiple MPOs represented - who knows who is who when they're all the "Transportation Council"?  The one working group I'm a part of with multiple MPOs still uses acronyms for this, but it's literally the only time I hear them from non-DOT staff anymore, and I can imagine it's only a matter of time before somebody slips up, especially as we get newer staff that haven't known a time when acronyms were used all the time.

Meanwhile, the state just released new branding policies.  Our old email signatures said "New York State Department of Transportation".  Not anymore, though - the new ones just say "Department of Transportation".  We've joined the trend.  I can only imagine how FHWA must feel - now they'll get a ton of emails from the "Department of Transportation" and have to pick through email addresses to figure out which is which!

I think Region 11 will throw a big fit about the new signature or just keep "New York State" in it.  Figuring out NYSDOT vs. NYCDOT (or OCDOT or USDOT) just by address is illogical and absurd.

[Max Rockatansky]

I always thought it was interesting that the name "Federal Highway Administration" stayed intact through the 1970s.  Almost every "State Highway Department" and even AASHO were rebranded to include "Transportation" in the name somewhere. 

[kkt]

I always thought it was interesting that the name "Federal Highway Administration" stayed intact through the 1970s.  Almost every "State Highway Department" and even AASHO were rebranded to include "Transportation" in the name somewhere. 

Perhaps it required an Act of Congress to change?

[1995hoo]

Is there some trend to refer to organizations in non-specific ways?  One of the MPOs in my area decided that acronyms were uncool and had staff refer to themselves as the "Transportation Council" in all meetings and documents.  Shortly thereafter, other MPOs in the state started doing the same thing - they're all the "Transportation Council" (except for one, which is a Study).  Those of us at NYSDOT can only imagine what happens in meetings where there are multiple MPOs represented - who knows who is who when they're all the "Transportation Council"?  The one working group I'm a part of with multiple MPOs still uses acronyms for this, but it's literally the only time I hear them from non-DOT staff anymore, and I can imagine it's only a matter of time before somebody slips up, especially as we get newer staff that haven't known a time when acronyms were used all the time.

Meanwhile, the state just released new branding policies.  Our old email signatures said "New York State Department of Transportation".  Not anymore, though - the new ones just say "Department of Transportation".  We've joined the trend.  I can only imagine how FHWA must feel - now they'll get a ton of emails from the "Department of Transportation" and have to pick through email addresses to figure out which is which!

I think an oft-overlooked consideration on whether to use acronyms is who the intended audience is. Internal documents can quite rightly and understandably use far more acronyms and abbreviations than would be appropriate in a document intended for an external audience who likely neither know, nor care to take the time to learn, what the internal practice is. (As an example, I don't know what "MPO" means in your post.) You see this sort of unfortunate trend in the legal profession all the time. I once saw a brief that referred to a well-known automaker as "FMC" instead of the far more obvious, and sensible, "Ford" (and it was Ford's own counsel who had prepared it). Some attorneys say, "Oh, well, I 'defined' that abbreviation the first time I used it, so you should know what it means." That doesn't help the reader remember what arbitrary meaning counsel assigned to an acronym that mysteriously surfaces 20 pages in. In view of that practice, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit—which has a docket very heavy on appeals from acronym-obsessed federal administrative agencies—has an absolutely outstanding rule requiring counsel to include a glossary of any case-specific acronyms and abbreviations that are not a part of everyday usage (e.g., "IRS" or "NFL" need not be included, but "PLOKTA" would in the very unlikely event someone used that acronym in a brief). "Everyday usage" in that context does not mean "everyday within the particular practice area." The court also admonishes counsel that the mere fact of including a glossary is not license to lard up a brief with acronyms and abbreviations.

Bryan Garner, a well-known authority on style and how to improve one's writing, has the following insightful statement in one of his books:

One of the most irritating types of pedantry in modern writing is the overuse of abbreviations, especially abbreviated names. Originally, to be sure, abbreviations were intended to serve the convenience of the reader by shortening names so that cumbersome phrases would not have to be repeated in their entirety. The purported simplifications actually simplified. But many writers ... seem to have lost sight of this goal: they allow abbreviated terms to proliferate, and their prose quickly becomes a hybrid-English system of hieroglyphs requiring the reader to refer constantly to the original uses of terms to grasp the meaning.

Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage 2 (1998).

The worst, incidentally, is when counsel uses acronyms or abbreviations that are specific to a particular agency and doesn't say what they mean in a document intended for outside readers.

[hbelkins]

I always thought it was interesting that the name "Federal Highway Administration" stayed intact through the 1970s.  Almost every "State Highway Department" and even AASHO were rebranded to include "Transportation" in the name somewhere. 

FHWA is a subsidiary of the Department of Transportation.

Kentucky has the Transportation Cabinet, and two of the departments within its purview are the Department of Highways and Department of Aviation.

[vdeane]

Is there some trend to refer to organizations in non-specific ways?  One of the MPOs in my area decided that acronyms were uncool and had staff refer to themselves as the "Transportation Council" in all meetings and documents.  Shortly thereafter, other MPOs in the state started doing the same thing - they're all the "Transportation Council" (except for one, which is a Study).  Those of us at NYSDOT can only imagine what happens in meetings where there are multiple MPOs represented - who knows who is who when they're all the "Transportation Council"?  The one working group I'm a part of with multiple MPOs still uses acronyms for this, but it's literally the only time I hear them from non-DOT staff anymore, and I can imagine it's only a matter of time before somebody slips up, especially as we get newer staff that haven't known a time when acronyms were used all the time.

Meanwhile, the state just released new branding policies.  Our old email signatures said "New York State Department of Transportation".  Not anymore, though - the new ones just say "Department of Transportation".  We've joined the trend.  I can only imagine how FHWA must feel - now they'll get a ton of emails from the "Department of Transportation" and have to pick through email addresses to figure out which is which!

I think an oft-overlooked consideration on whether to use acronyms is who the intended audience is. Internal documents can quite rightly and understandably use far more acronyms and abbreviations than would be appropriate in a document intended for an external audience who likely neither know, nor care to take the time to learn, what the internal practice is. (As an example, I don't know what "MPO" means in your post.) You see this sort of unfortunate trend in the legal profession all the time. I once saw a brief that referred to a well-known automaker as "FMC" instead of the far more obvious, and sensible, "Ford" (and it was Ford's own counsel who had prepared it). Some attorneys say, "Oh, well, I 'defined' that abbreviation the first time I used it, so you should know what it means." That doesn't help the reader remember what arbitrary meaning counsel assigned to an acronym that mysteriously surfaces 20 pages in. In view of that practice, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit—which has a docket very heavy on appeals from acronym-obsessed federal administrative agencies—has an absolutely outstanding rule requiring counsel to include a glossary of any case-specific acronyms and abbreviations that are not a part of everyday usage (e.g., "IRS" or "NFL" need not be included, but "PLOKTA" would in the very unlikely event someone used that acronym in a brief). "Everyday usage" in that context does not mean "everyday within the particular practice area." The court also admonishes counsel that the mere fact of including a glossary is not license to lard up a brief with acronyms and abbreviations.

Bryan Garner, a well-known authority on style and how to improve one's writing, has the following insightful statement in one of his books:

One of the most irritating types of pedantry in modern writing is the overuse of abbreviations, especially abbreviated names. Originally, to be sure, abbreviations were intended to serve the convenience of the reader by shortening names so that cumbersome phrases would not have to be repeated in their entirety. The purported simplifications actually simplified. But many writers ... seem to have lost sight of this goal: they allow abbreviated terms to proliferate, and their prose quickly becomes a hybrid-English system of hieroglyphs requiring the reader to refer constantly to the original uses of terms to grasp the meaning.

Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage 2 (1998).

The worst, incidentally, is when counsel uses acronyms or abbreviations that are specific to a particular agency and doesn't say what they mean in a document intended for outside readers.

That doesn't explain the time the MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization; they control the federal funding for projects in their area and do planning studies to support the municipalities) published a document that had a table comparing some stuff with other MPOs and listed themselves as "Transportation Council" and the others by acronym.  Or why the NYSDOT email signature template changed from "New York State Department of Transportation" to just "Department of Transportation" (another area this could get confusing is for the Binghamton MPO; their area includes two towns in Pennsylvania, so an email from a "Department of Transportation" employee about US 11 would be ambiguous as to which DOT it's from!).

[roadman65]

Older men on young kids bicycles. I see that a lot lately with middle aged and barely seniors derelict men in my community.

I don't know if the bikes are stolen or if they bought em dirt cheap at a garage sale with their pandhandling proceeds. However they can't fit on the bike and look ridiculous sitting on one. Yet it's a common site now in Florida .

[Max Rockatansky]

So basically elderly people trying to stay healthy?

[webny99]

Yet it's a common site now in Florida .

kidsbikesforoldguys.com?

[DTComposer]

In neighborhoods with plentiful street parking available: people who park in front of houses that are NOT the house they live at/are visiting.

[roadman65]

So basically elderly people trying to stay healthy?

If you can't fit on a bike, that's not helping your body out.

Yet it's a common site now in Florida .

kidsbikesforoldguys.com?

The link don't work?

[Max Rockatansky]

Sure it does, anything that increases your caloric expenditure helps.  You can't expect completely untrained people to instantly develop instantly into professional cyclists. 

[webny99]

Yet it's a common site now in Florida .

kidsbikesforoldguys.com?

The link don't work?

The joke didn't either, apparently. 

[vdeane]

People who think that the end of the day is a great time to talk to you.  At the end of the day I'm trying to wrap up and do things like my timesheet and go to the bathroom before I leave, not drop everything and get waylaid into a moderate-length conversation.

In other news:

Is there some trend to refer to organizations in non-specific ways?  One of the MPOs in my area decided that acronyms were uncool and had staff refer to themselves as the "Transportation Council" in all meetings and documents.  Shortly thereafter, other MPOs in the state started doing the same thing - they're all the "Transportation Council" (except for one, which is a Study).  Those of us at NYSDOT can only imagine what happens in meetings where there are multiple MPOs represented - who knows who is who when they're all the "Transportation Council"?  The one working group I'm a part of with multiple MPOs still uses acronyms for this, but it's literally the only time I hear them from non-DOT staff anymore, and I can imagine it's only a matter of time before somebody slips up, especially as we get newer staff that haven't known a time when acronyms were used all the time.

Meanwhile, the state just released new branding policies.  Our old email signatures said "New York State Department of Transportation".  Not anymore, though - the new ones just say "Department of Transportation".  We've joined the trend.  I can only imagine how FHWA must feel - now they'll get a ton of emails from the "Department of Transportation" and have to pick through email addresses to figure out which is which!

I think an oft-overlooked consideration on whether to use acronyms is who the intended audience is. Internal documents can quite rightly and understandably use far more acronyms and abbreviations than would be appropriate in a document intended for an external audience who likely neither know, nor care to take the time to learn, what the internal practice is. (As an example, I don't know what "MPO" means in your post.) You see this sort of unfortunate trend in the legal profession all the time. I once saw a brief that referred to a well-known automaker as "FMC" instead of the far more obvious, and sensible, "Ford" (and it was Ford's own counsel who had prepared it). Some attorneys say, "Oh, well, I 'defined' that abbreviation the first time I used it, so you should know what it means." That doesn't help the reader remember what arbitrary meaning counsel assigned to an acronym that mysteriously surfaces 20 pages in. In view of that practice, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit—which has a docket very heavy on appeals from acronym-obsessed federal administrative agencies—has an absolutely outstanding rule requiring counsel to include a glossary of any case-specific acronyms and abbreviations that are not a part of everyday usage (e.g., "IRS" or "NFL" need not be included, but "PLOKTA" would in the very unlikely event someone used that acronym in a brief). "Everyday usage" in that context does not mean "everyday within the particular practice area." The court also admonishes counsel that the mere fact of including a glossary is not license to lard up a brief with acronyms and abbreviations.

Bryan Garner, a well-known authority on style and how to improve one's writing, has the following insightful statement in one of his books:

One of the most irritating types of pedantry in modern writing is the overuse of abbreviations, especially abbreviated names. Originally, to be sure, abbreviations were intended to serve the convenience of the reader by shortening names so that cumbersome phrases would not have to be repeated in their entirety. The purported simplifications actually simplified. But many writers ... seem to have lost sight of this goal: they allow abbreviated terms to proliferate, and their prose quickly becomes a hybrid-English system of hieroglyphs requiring the reader to refer constantly to the original uses of terms to grasp the meaning.

Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage 2 (1998).

The worst, incidentally, is when counsel uses acronyms or abbreviations that are specific to a particular agency and doesn't say what they mean in a document intended for outside readers.

That doesn't explain the time the MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization; they control the federal funding for projects in their area and do planning studies to support the municipalities) published a document that had a table comparing some stuff with other MPOs and listed themselves as "Transportation Council" and the others by acronym.  Or why the NYSDOT email signature template changed from "New York State Department of Transportation" to just "Department of Transportation" (another area this could get confusing is for the Binghamton MPO; their area includes two towns in Pennsylvania, so an email from a "Department of Transportation" employee about US 11 would be ambiguous as to which DOT it's from!).

It looks like someone figured out the problem with this.  Though there was no announcement, they quietly changed the email template again, and it now says "New York State Department of Transportation".  I only found out when our Regional Director sent out an email reminding everyone of the change, and I decided to check since a couple things seemed to be different (although whether "name must be all caps" is actually a requirement or his interpretation, I can't say).

[Rothman]

People who think that the end of the day is a great time to talk to you.  At the end of the day I'm trying to wrap up and do things like my timesheet and go to the bathroom before I leave, not drop everything and get waylaid into a moderate-length conversation.

In other news:

Is there some trend to refer to organizations in non-specific ways?  One of the MPOs in my area decided that acronyms were uncool and had staff refer to themselves as the "Transportation Council" in all meetings and documents.  Shortly thereafter, other MPOs in the state started doing the same thing - they're all the "Transportation Council" (except for one, which is a Study).  Those of us at NYSDOT can only imagine what happens in meetings where there are multiple MPOs represented - who knows who is who when they're all the "Transportation Council"?  The one working group I'm a part of with multiple MPOs still uses acronyms for this, but it's literally the only time I hear them from non-DOT staff anymore, and I can imagine it's only a matter of time before somebody slips up, especially as we get newer staff that haven't known a time when acronyms were used all the time.

Meanwhile, the state just released new branding policies.  Our old email signatures said "New York State Department of Transportation".  Not anymore, though - the new ones just say "Department of Transportation".  We've joined the trend.  I can only imagine how FHWA must feel - now they'll get a ton of emails from the "Department of Transportation" and have to pick through email addresses to figure out which is which!

I think an oft-overlooked consideration on whether to use acronyms is who the intended audience is. Internal documents can quite rightly and understandably use far more acronyms and abbreviations than would be appropriate in a document intended for an external audience who likely neither know, nor care to take the time to learn, what the internal practice is. (As an example, I don't know what "MPO" means in your post.) You see this sort of unfortunate trend in the legal profession all the time. I once saw a brief that referred to a well-known automaker as "FMC" instead of the far more obvious, and sensible, "Ford" (and it was Ford's own counsel who had prepared it). Some attorneys say, "Oh, well, I 'defined' that abbreviation the first time I used it, so you should know what it means." That doesn't help the reader remember what arbitrary meaning counsel assigned to an acronym that mysteriously surfaces 20 pages in. In view of that practice, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit—which has a docket very heavy on appeals from acronym-obsessed federal administrative agencies—has an absolutely outstanding rule requiring counsel to include a glossary of any case-specific acronyms and abbreviations that are not a part of everyday usage (e.g., "IRS" or "NFL" need not be included, but "PLOKTA" would in the very unlikely event someone used that acronym in a brief). "Everyday usage" in that context does not mean "everyday within the particular practice area." The court also admonishes counsel that the mere fact of including a glossary is not license to lard up a brief with acronyms and abbreviations.

Bryan Garner, a well-known authority on style and how to improve one's writing, has the following insightful statement in one of his books:

One of the most irritating types of pedantry in modern writing is the overuse of abbreviations, especially abbreviated names. Originally, to be sure, abbreviations were intended to serve the convenience of the reader by shortening names so that cumbersome phrases would not have to be repeated in their entirety. The purported simplifications actually simplified. But many writers ... seem to have lost sight of this goal: they allow abbreviated terms to proliferate, and their prose quickly becomes a hybrid-English system of hieroglyphs requiring the reader to refer constantly to the original uses of terms to grasp the meaning.

Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage 2 (1998).

The worst, incidentally, is when counsel uses acronyms or abbreviations that are specific to a particular agency and doesn't say what they mean in a document intended for outside readers.

That doesn't explain the time the MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization; they control the federal funding for projects in their area and do planning studies to support the municipalities) published a document that had a table comparing some stuff with other MPOs and listed themselves as "Transportation Council" and the others by acronym.  Or why the NYSDOT email signature template changed from "New York State Department of Transportation" to just "Department of Transportation" (another area this could get confusing is for the Binghamton MPO; their area includes two towns in Pennsylvania, so an email from a "Department of Transportation" employee about US 11 would be ambiguous as to which DOT it's from!).

It looks like someone figured out the problem with this.  Though there was no announcement, they quietly changed the email template again, and it now says "New York State Department of Transportation".  I only found out when our Regional Director sent out an email reminding everyone of the change, and I decided to check since a couple things seemed to be different (although whether "name must be all caps" is actually a requirement or his interpretation, I can't say).

Heh.  A PIO started using "New York State" out here so I let my office know.

[1995hoo]

I'm watching Monday Night Football and our cat jumped up to sit on the couch next to me. That would be very nice except that for some reason she decided it would be a good time to fart. Hideous, foul, nauseatingly stinky farts.

But if I go downstairs to watch on the other TV, she's likely to want to sit on my lap, in which case it would be worse.

[D-Dey65]

Last week, I wanted to join the online portion of the "Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Election 2024," but I was forced to pay more attention to preparing for Hurricane Helene, even though it had no chance of hitting the northern suburbs of the Tampa Bay Metro Area.

[wxfree]

On CNBC's web site when you open a chart (as a business news television channel, their site has a lot of charts) the latest activity is cut off the right side of the chart.  This isn't because they don't know how to design a chart correctly.  When you push the button with the double right arrow, it lines up perfectly.  They seem to think that when you open a chart, you want to see everything except for the latest activity, but if you're one of those weirdos who wants to see the whole day, and not the whole day minus the last 10 minutes, then you can push a button and see it that way.

This is too stupid a thing to bring up, but it reminds me of something else that matters even less because it's fictional.  On Star Trek: The Next Generation, when the captain says "on screen," whoever's in control of the screen seems to think that means "put the image on the screen, but so small that we can't actually see anything."  Everyone squints for a second, and then the captain gives the order to embiggen the image.  The ship has a giant screen designed to display big, beautiful images, but its default setting is some kind of power saving mode that displays a small and dim image, with the option to switch to big and beautiful if that's what you want.  And for some reason, that default setting can't be changed.

[wanderer2575]

This is too stupid a thing to bring up, but it reminds me of something else that matters even less because it's fictional.  On Star Trek: The Next Generation, when the captain says "on screen," whoever's in control of the screen seems to think that means "put the image on the screen, but so small that we can't actually see anything."  Everyone squints for a second, and then the captain gives the order to embiggen the image.  The ship has a giant screen designed to display big, beautiful images, but its default setting is some kind of power saving mode that displays a small and dim image, with the option to switch to big and beautiful if that's what you want.  And for some reason, that default setting can't be changed.

Not directly related, but the umpteen instances of dialogue like this:
    "Engineering to Bridge."
    "What's going on down there?"
    "I wish I could tell you."
Then why the hell did you call the bridge?

Variation:
     "(Department) to Bridge.  Captain, there's something here I think you should see."
You can't even give him a hint?

[roadman65]

The latest cup lids.  I hate when you have to fight to seal it and a minute later the thing pops off the cup again. 

Older cup lids sealed real easily, and remained stuck to it. Sometimes you had a job removing it to the point you broke the lid in the process, but at least it did its job and it followed the laws of physics when dealing.

[Rothman]

I haven't found cup lids to be uniform.

Just got my wife a bunch of Indian take-out.  The lids they used were impressive.  Whole order tipped over in the car and nothing spilled.