{"id":57,"date":"2007-03-07T10:47:13","date_gmt":"2007-03-07T15:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/?p=57"},"modified":"2007-03-07T10:47:13","modified_gmt":"2007-03-07T15:47:13","slug":"obligatory-whiny-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/?p=57","title":{"rendered":"Obligatory Whiny Post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know that I usually blog about things that excite me, but it just wouldn&#8217;t be a blog if there weren&#8217;t some sort of rant every now and then, right?<\/p>\n<p>Let me vent about some miscellaneous pet peeves.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Digital photo albums<\/b>:\n<p>I love getting invitations to view friends&#8217; online photo albums as much as the next guy, but it really annoys me when I go to the site and see 100 photos that are clearly nothing more than a thoughtless dump of someone&#8217;s digital camera.  I don&#8217;t want to see blurry photos.  I don&#8217;t want to see 12 pictures in row that are 99% identical.  It&#8217;s called a photo <i>album<\/i>, folks.  You know, an album?  Like, choose the good photos and put them in a book on your coffee table?  Don&#8217;t waste my time by making me comb through your ugly contact sheet while trying to spot an interesting photo.  Please, put some thought into what you display!<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li><b>Notice people around you<\/b>:\n<p>Pay attention to your surroundings when in public places;  it&#8217;s not the place to be self-absorbed &mdash; you can do that at home.   Don&#8217;t block the aisle with your cart in the grocery store while you browse a shelf.  If you&#8217;re going to stand on the escalator, move to the right so others can pass.  (I don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s you first time on the subway, notice that <i>everyone<\/i> around you is standing on the right, climbing on the left?  Pay attention to the convention!)  When boarding a train, let people <i>off<\/i> the train before trying to push your way in, you insensitive clod.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li><b>Learn how to ask for help<\/b>:\n<p>When asking for help with software in a public forum (like an email list, or chat room), provide <i>complete<\/i> information.  It&#8217;s useless to say, &#8220;I&#8217;m trying to do [general vague task], and I&#8217;m seeing an error message that says [some vague recounting of error text].  What is wrong?&#8221;  It then becomes a game of 20 questions.  Those of us trying to help have to repeatedly pull information from you:  what exactly did you type?  what exactly did you see as output?  how did you configure things?  Please don&#8217;t make us play this game.  We can&#8217;t read your mind, and it&#8217;s a waste of time to have us repeatedly interrogate.  Instead, gather up <i>all<\/i> of the information that describes your environment and what you&#8217;ve done, and present it all up front when you ask for help.  We need to see literal transcripts of what you&#8217;re doing, not vague descriptions of the task.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know that I usually blog about things that excite me, but it just wouldn&#8217;t be a blog if there weren&#8217;t some sort of rant every now and then, right? Let me vent about some miscellaneous pet peeves. Digital photo albums: I love getting invitations to view friends&#8217; online photo albums as much as the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-photography","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}