Minor things that bother you

[J N Winkler]

I generally use Thunderbird to send emails since I don't like Gmail having the only copy of any email I send, and it makes it easy to avoid inadvertent mass-mailing since I have to hit Ctrl+Shift+R to do "Reply All" instead of just Ctrl+R for a reply to the sender only.

Group anything bothers me.

I get uncomfortable when I see people on an email chain without understanding why they need to be looped into the conversation.  I default to copying in as few people as possible, but I do try to include everybody who might feel slighted if he or she is not included in the recipient list.  I can't recall a specific instance this has happened to me personally, but I've heard lots of stories of office politics gone bad where someone copies new people (typically higher-ups) into a round-robin email just at the point where he or she expects one of the ongoing correspondents to embarrass himself or herself.



Edit:  Following up on others' replies:

Even better than people who know the difference between 'Reply' and 'Reply All' are those who remove individual recipients who don't need to read the reply, but leave only those people who do.

I try to be careful when pruning recipients.  There is always the risk of being suspected of playing games with access to information when that is not my intention.  I far prefer to work with a recipient list that has been appropriately circumscribed to begin with.

The bcc line can be dangerous, too, because the bcc recipient can still hit reply-all. In the legal field, if you bcc your client, counsel risks having his client waive privilege if the client hits reply-all and sends what would otherwise have been a privileged communication that he should have sent solely to counsel.

"Reply All" (whether the courtesy-copying is blind or overt) is legally dangerous for public bodies because of open-meeting legislation.  In Kansas there is some provision for discussion of logistics (such as when and how to meet) not needing to be open, but as a general rule, members of a public body emailing each other back and forth expose themselves to accusations of conducting an illegal chain meeting.

[GaryV]

Reply All goes to those on the bcc list too? That kind of defeats the purpose of "blind" cc, if all you need to do to see the list is to create a reply.

[1995hoo]

Reply All goes to those on the bcc list too? That kind of defeats the purpose of "blind" cc, if all you need to do to see the list is to create a reply.

What I was referring to is that someone on the bcc list can hit reply-all and everyone in the To: and cc: fields will receive that reply. Insofar as I know, other bcc recipients will not receive the reply-all.

[kphoger]

Reply All goes to those on the bcc list too? That kind of defeats the purpose of "blind" cc, if all you need to do to see the list is to create a reply.

What I was referring to is that someone on the bcc list can hit reply-all and everyone in the To: and cc: fields will receive that reply. Insofar as I know, other bcc recipients will not receive the reply-all.

Original e-mail
From:  Scott Nazelrod
To:  Jonathan Winkler
CC:  Kyle Hoger
BCC:  Chris Willers, Jake Bear

Jake Bear hits 'Reply All'
To:  Scott Nazelrod
CC:  Jonathan Winkler, Kyle Hoger

[J N Winkler]

Original e-mail
From:  Scott Nazelrod
To:  Jonathan Winkler
CC:  Kyle Hoger
BCC:  Chris Willers, Jake Bear

Jake Bear hits 'Reply All'
To:  Scott Nazelrod
CC:  Jonathan Winkler, Kyle Hoger

This scenario gets even more embarrassing if Jake Bear uses an email program that leaves evidence he received an original copy, not a forward (indicates one of the overt participants is sending blind copies).

[kphoger]

The context I most often see BCC being used (which is ironic, considering I can't actually see it being used) is when an MSO sends a mass e-mail to every contracting firm that works for them.  130 e-mail addresses that probably nobody wants each other to have.  So the MSO puts everybody in the BCC line.

[jeffandnicole]

I use BCC for only one reason: I send a work email to about 400 participants on occasion for an announcement, usually regarding a change in the normal schedule of what we do.  No reason to let everyone know who everyone else is.  Because this process is more manual than I wish, I get a whole bunch of out of office messages.  While many are true out of office messages, some alert me to an email address that's no longer valid, so I delete those from future emails, or that they've retired/left, and I'll replace them with the people referenced in the email.  If they don't want future emails from me, I nicely include in my email that if they don't want more emails, let me know.  Unlike advertisers scammers that use that to know that they've hit upon a valid email address, mine is truly just work related.

There's one section in my Division at work that I believe BCC's their boss every time they have to email me (and others also, I would imagine).  This becomes known once in a while when their boss decides he needs to input his unwanted 2 cents, and replies to the email he wasn't supposedly on.

[1995hoo]

Here's a nuisance I haven't dealt with before. At least, not in this form.

Most of us have experienced the annoyance of being on a plane and sitting in front of someone who constantly fidgets, digs around on the floor, slams the tray table up and down, and shakes your seat when doing all of the above.

The guy in the seat behind me is doing all that as I type this. All the more annoying on a day when I have a stiff lower back.

Problem: I'm reluctant to say anything because the guy behind me happens to be my boss.

[webny99]

Here's a nuisance I haven't dealt with before. At least, not in this form.

Most of us have experienced the annoyance of being on a plane and sitting in front of someone who constantly fidgets, digs around on the floor, slams the tray table up and down, and shakes your seat when doing all of the above.

The guy in the seat behind me is doing all that as I type this. All the more annoying on a day when I have a stiff lower back.

Problem: I'm reluctant to say anything because the guy behind me happens to be my boss.

Hopefully he doesn't see what you're typing... or maybe he will and catch on that you're annoyed!

[1995hoo]

His eyes aren't good enough to read an iPhone screen from that far away. 

[texaskdog]

That Wendy's should've just handed out salt packets then to the people who complained. I'm in support of the proposal of a 28th Amendment for the right to bear salt (or not).

I've never, in my life, put salt on anything.  It's been on plenty of things of course.

[Big John]

That Wendy's should've just handed out salt packets then to the people who complained. I'm in support of the proposal of a 28th Amendment for the right to bear salt (or not).

I've never, in my life, put salt on anything.  It's been on plenty of things of course.

Me either. I get comments from busybodies who think that is sacrilegious.

[ZLoth]

The fact that "modern" computer cases do not come with either 5¼" or 3½" external drive days. I'm in process of building a new system to replace my old i7-4790K, but I still use the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives. If I want a case that has modern USB 3/USB-C connectors, then there are no external drive days. That's good for air circulation, but bad because some of us still need legacy technology.

[Dirt Roads]

The fact that "modern" computer cases do not come with either 5¼" or 3½" external drive days. I'm in process of building a new system to replace my old i7-4790K, but I still use the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives. If I want a case that has modern USB 3/USB-C connectors, then there are no external drive days. That's good for air circulation, but bad because some of us still need legacy technology.

I've got a 3-1/2" floppy external drive that works off of USB power/databus.  I've never tried it out, but I've also got a USB -to- IDE external connector port that was intended to "rescue" old hard drives, but would certainly interface with an IDE-based 5-1/4" floppy drive.  (I've still got an old 386 machine to transfer files from 5-1/4" and Zip Drive to 3-1/2").  Both of those guys are already getting pretty old, and might not work with anything newer than Windows 7.  You still might be able to find these devices somewhere, but you had better hurry to transport your files over an external hard drive.

[ZLoth]

The fact that "modern" computer cases do not come with either 5¼" or 3½" external drive days. I'm in process of building a new system to replace my old i7-4790K, but I still use the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives. If I want a case that has modern USB 3/USB-C connectors, then there are no external drive days. That's good for air circulation, but bad because some of us still need legacy technology.

I've got a 3½" floppy external drive that works off of USB power/databus.  I've never tried it out, but I've also got a USB -to- IDE external connector port that was intended to "rescue" old hard drives, but would certainly interface with an IDE-based 5¼" floppy drive.  (I've still got an old 386 machine to transfer files from 5¼" and Zip Drive to 3½").  Both of those guys are already getting pretty old, and might not work with anything newer than Windows 7.  You still might be able to find these devices somewhere, but you had better hurry to transport your files over an external hard drive.

The "external hard drive" is actually a TrueNAS file server which has eight 8TB drives in a RAID-Z2 configuration, thus two of the drives are redundant in case of failure, and the effective storage of the six remaining drives is about 41 TB once you deduct about 10% for ZFS overhead. Having said that, I'm still a physical media guy, and have set up a Plex media server for remote playback. (One of these days, a home theater system). So, I have to have a BluRay drive to read the discs. Oh well, I'm keeping my old machine, and will build a new Windows 11 machine just for ripping.

[US 89]

When you're working with weather stations or observations and the system will only let you use all-customary or all-metric units instead of picking and choosing for each quantity. It is apparently too much to ask to have temperatures in ºF and winds in mph, but also have pressures in millibars. Inches of mercury is a stupid unit that should be abolished.

[bulldog1979]

When you're working with weather stations or observations and the system will only let you use all-customary or all-metric units instead of picking and choosing for each quantity. It is apparently too much to ask to have temperatures in ºF and winds in mph, but also have pressures in millibars. Inches of mercury is a stupid unit that should be abolished.

When I was traveling in Canada three years ago, I switched my dashboard over to metric units so that I could see my speed in km/h on the digital speedometer. (The "analog" speedometer is only marked in mph on that car.) The temperature display on the touchscreen also went to °C, which makes sense, but it would have been nice if I could have overridden that to keep °F. I know this is something that can be done on an iPhone/Apple Watch so that directions are metric but weather is US.

[1995hoo]

^^^^

I can switch my sat-nav to km but not my odometer, which kinds of defeats the purpose of changing the sat-nav unless you're good at converting units in your head on the fly. The idea of having the directions the voice is giving you match the units on the sign is sensible, but it's a lot less useful if you don't have an easy way to confirm the distance.

[elsmere241]

When you're working with weather stations or observations and the system will only let you use all-customary or all-metric units instead of picking and choosing for each quantity. It is apparently too much to ask to have temperatures in ºF and winds in mph, but also have pressures in millibars. Inches of mercury is a stupid unit that should be abolished.

I had a chemistry teacher who preferred millimeters of mercury.  I didn't know at the time how millibars were calculated - I assumed from my chemistry and physics classes that they were based on something like 760 mm = 1 atmosphere = 1000 millibars.  I was surprised when I lived in Italy and found that it's more like 750 mm (it's actually close to 752).

[roadman65]

Multimillionmiler

[US 89]

When you're working with weather stations or observations and the system will only let you use all-customary or all-metric units instead of picking and choosing for each quantity. It is apparently too much to ask to have temperatures in ºF and winds in mph, but also have pressures in millibars. Inches of mercury is a stupid unit that should be abolished.

I had a chemistry teacher who preferred millimeters of mercury.  I didn't know at the time how millibars were calculated - I assumed from my chemistry and physics classes that they were based on something like 760 mm = 1 atmosphere = 1000 millibars.  I was surprised when I lived in Italy and found that it's more like 750 mm (it's actually close to 752).

A bar is more or less an atmosphere of pressure, but it's convenient because it is equal to exactly 100,000 Pascals (the SI unit of pressure, defined as a newton of force per square meter of area). In fact, "millibar"  and "hectopascal"  are used interchangeably and I've never seen the "hecto"  SI prefix used anywhere else. And beyond that, the millibar/hectopascal is pretty much the standard pressure unit in the meteorology field that everybody uses, even in the US in contexts outside pure science that often use customary measures for other quantities like temperature and wind speed.

The big conversion for standard atmospheric pressure at sea level: 760 mmHg ≈ 760 torr = 1 atm = 1.01325 bar = 101.325 kPa = 1013.25 mb (hPa) = 101325 Pa ≈ 29.92 inHg ≈ 14.7 psi. Perhaps unfortunately, all of these units see some use today in various contexts.

[formulanone]

Multimillionmiler

I know, they get all my airline upgrades.

(I'm actually at around 915,000 miles with Delta.)

[elsmere241]

In fact, "millibar"  and "hectopascal"  are used interchangeably and I've never seen the "hecto"  SI prefix used anywhere else.e units see some use today in various contexts.

In Italy at least, recipes are often in hundreds of grams (I know Germany's Pfund (pound) is now 500 grams) and food is often sold in "etti" ("etto" being Italian shorthand for hectogram).

[kkt]

Translating recipes between countries is a pain.  Many British and European cookbooks measure in grams.  Many US cookbooks measure volume instead and hope for the best.  If a US kitchen has a scale at all it's probably in ounces.  A lot of ingredients have different names from their US name, or they have the same name but differ somehow.  Is British "plain flour" like US all purpose flour or pastry flour or bread flour?  Are their eggs the same size as ours? 

[Scott5114]

My digital kitchen scale, a cheap, not-particularly-accurate thing I got from Walmart, lets me convert between pounds, ounces, and grams. It's not that unusual, is it?