wwut: moan collation expert

I found this gem on the Subway website while registering my new SubCard. And to the individuals that wrote that - What were you thinking? I certainly hope they were deliberately trying to be funny and that nobody is mad enough to make such a remark while actually being serious.

I'm not trying to insult people that work in Subway, without them my Italian B.M.T wouldn't exist, but where do we draw the line? Is the person replacing the toilet tissue in the lavatory a 'Consumable Replacement Specialist'? Maybe the person that places the reduced labels on items in the supermarket is a 'Reduction Application Co-ordinator' (this has just given me the inspiration for another moan).
I'd personally describe the people in  Subway as 'Sandwich Construction Engineers', and the one that served me today as 'Unbelievably Spotty'.

mini-moan: put a pony in your pocket

I've just seen a SEAT advert that proudly boasted 'Enjoyneering' that I can only conclude is meant to be a portmanteau (for my less educated and or more Lithuanian readers) of Enjoy[ment] and Engineering. This is meant to conjure up the image that every part of a SEAT has been engineered to give you maximum enjoyment, and you thought that was a cigarette lighter.
But all these stuawk (stupid and awkward) marketing phrases just make me think of Dell Boy polishing his aunties pen. Would you purchase a car because of the fine enjoyneering that ablifies you? I guesstimate that you would not irregardless of how much of a prosumer you are.

Well I can't spend all evening moambling (moaning and rambling), I've got sexercising to do while thinking about celesbians. This is of course a lie, I have nothing better to do than moambling and there will certainly be no sexercising.

mini-moan: stay out of the kitchen.

Holy balls it is hot outside, really hot, so hot that it is incredibly uncomfortable, my underpants from yesterday actually threw themselves out of the window as they couldn't take it any more.
The problem is the sunshine is nice but the heat is bad, what we need to do is find a way of making the sun cold, all the joys of a sunny day coupled with the refreshing feel of a snow.

Unfortunately work on the 'tgwmcm Weather Control Device' has ground to a halt since the Laboratoire was abandoned last week and many key individuals in the division did not make it out alive. Hopefully by next summer I will be able to bring the world to it's knees as I mould the climate to my every whim, entire nations will collapse and world leaders will do my bidding. A man can dream.

mini-moan: enough already.

Don't you just hate those people that won't stop posting on Facebook? Every time you open Facebook to check your News Feed it's just filled to bursting with posts from a single person, worst of all really boring crap you don't care about. What makes it particularly irksome is you miss out on interesting stuff from people you care about while trying to filter the countless links and Youtube videos you have absolutely no interest in.
It's these inconsiderate individuals that ruin the internet for the rest of us. I wish they'd just bugger off.
It wouldn't be acceptable if someone just sat down next to you while you were busy and started talking nonsense. Who would do something like that? You'd have to be pretty dim if you didn't understand that isn't normal behaviour, but for some reason it's fine to do the same on the internet.

Announcement: and then you went and spoiled it all

I've got terrible news reader of my blog but I've had to call off my talent search and that means there will not be a special guest blog.

You may recall that there was an incident at the Laboratoire in which an individual tried to deliver a fluid sample in an unsanctioned manner. Despite a team of expert cleaners working round the clock to decontaminate the area apparently they were not completely successful and some specimens remained on the carpet.

Last week a team of scientists working at the tgwmcm Laboratoire were experimenting with turning the power of moaning into a renewable power source that would never be exhausted, there was a mishap during an early test and a minor radiation leak occurred. Normally this wouldn't have mattered but this radiation reacted badly with the 'fluid' that had not been thoroughly cleaned and resulted in the creation of an abomination that soon rampaged through the Laboratoire destroying all in it's path.

At the tgwmcm Laboratoire we take safety seriously and there are numerous safety features built into the fabric of the Laboratoire, many of them unique and far beyond the technological abilities of mere human, to bring such scenarios to a safe conclusion,  yet even these were not enough to contain the beast that was unleashed. A crack team were sent in to deal with the 'incident', non of whom made it back, so the decision was made to activate the Laboratoire self-destruct and encase the area in an impenetrable fast setting gel that would ensure that the destruction would finally be contained.

As you can imagine this has had a terrible impact on the operations of tgwmcm and it will take some time to construct a new Laboratoire.

daily life: if you can't say anything nice

When I was just a young deity growing up on my home planet of Moanania I had a pretty difficult childhood. To say I was bullied at school is an understatement, certain individuals devoted their every moment to tormenting and to breaking me. Somehow I managed to get through that time without my nose being broken, though they certainly tried their hardest.
People say that such an experience makes you stronger, that if you manage to get through such a difficult childhood you become a better individual for it. To them I say bollocks, such an experience changes you completely, no child goes through that without being severely damaged.
Because you've been subjected to such awful and hurting remarks it's often difficult to know when you say something that is merely an innocent jibe or a deeply hurtful remark.
Because you expect everybody you meet to dislike and hurt you instead you attempt to protect yourself by projecting an impenetrable exterior that actually forces people to dislike you.
Because you've been an outcast you have no idea how to socialise with others.

I often wonder what my life would be like if I hadn't been destroyed by my childhood. What would I be doing? Who would I be with? Where would I be? I can only hope that somewhere in an alternate universe there exists a me that didn't have a childhood like mine and instead became a successful, sociable individual surrounded by people that love him and that I eventually invent a machine that let's me switch places with him.

mini-moan: you are all doing it wrong

For many, many, many years I've had numerous comments along the lines of 'Are you left handed?' or 'I didn't know you were left handed!', and the reason for this is despite being a righty I use my fork in my right hand and and knife in my left hand. And my response is always 'You do far more work with the fork so why would you hold it in your left (weaker) hand?'.

People of the world, you are all doing it wrong, all you righties should hold the fork in your right hand, and all the lefties in the left hand, but no, you are all doing it backwards and making my life more difficult because  when I sit down in a restaurant .etc. all the forks are placed on the wrong side of the table and I have to switch them about, this would also be annoying for left handed people but I don't care about them because being left handed is just weird. 

Why can't they just wrap the knives and forks in a napkin and place them in the middle so everybody can organise their place setting how they want?

It doesn't need to be this difficult.

mini-moan: define 'definition'

Today while travelling down the A299, oh how I miss driving down the A299, I noticed a sign moving past me at exactly 70 miles per hour, or more precisely a sign while my motorised vehicle was moving at exactly 70mph for that is the speed limit of the A299. Anyway the sign read 'Prohibited Traffic [this way]'. What? If you want the traffic to go down the road then it can't be 'Prohibited' for the word means;

Formally forbid (something) by law, rule, or other authority.

Or perhaps it's a new way for the government to raise money and just down the road, out of sight, are a crack team of police ready to capture any individuals who has chosen to ignore the rule prohibiting them and slap them with a MASSIVE FINE, certainly an imaginative way to solve the budget deficit.

mini-moan: brave new worlds.

I prefer the finer things in life and that means I don't eat that air filled, batch baked, tasteless, mass produced sponge they call bread, instead it's often a freshly baked Tiger Loaf upon which I spread my butter.
 But what really annoys me about a Tiger loaf is it goes mouldy so damned fast, a standard farm house loaf can keep for a week with no problem, but after a few days a Tiger loaf soon becomes home to new civilisations. After a week they've evolved to the point of constructing rudimentary tools, 10 days and they have democracy, poetry and fine art. By the two week mark, out of the corner of your eye, you may notice the occasional satellite orbiting the loaf sitting on your worktop. Fortunately at the 21day mark they've attempted to, but failed to crack nuclear fusion and irradiated themselves into extinction and you can now safely feast upon your Tiger loaf.

daily life: the incident returns.

This afternoon at work I took a much needed break from 'cutting code' and decided to relieve some stress (as you can imagine I am boiling over with stress) by feasting on a variety of blue cheeses and crackers. I wandered over to the fridge located at the refreshment station to retrieve my blue cheeses and butter but to my horror my butter was nowhere to be found. I searched high and low, surely it must be hidden behind something, but no instead I had been the victim of a 'Butter-Thief'.
It isn't the cost of the almost complete butter (£1.40 at your local Tesco) that annoyed me, but instead that somebody had actually stolen it, made even worse by them not stealing my selection of cheeses which in my opinion would have been a greater haul.

So I have contacted my Chinese suppliers, met with a team of industrial designers, engineers and scientists and I can now announce the 'The Guy Who Moans Called Matthew Branded Butter Protection Kit' which is guaranteed to keep your butter safe from potential butter thieves. The kit comes complete with tgwmcm approved barbed wire, a complete set of tgwmcm Model FUC3RZ bear traps and a gaggle of cobras trained by the experts at the tgwmcm Laboratoire. Can you afford not to purchase my 'Butter Protection Kit'?

The kit is due to enter production next week and you can secure yourself one of the first kits to leave the tgwmcm manufacturing facility by sending a Bankers Draft for 'All My Money' made payable to 'The Guy Who Moans Called Matthew' to my Laboratoire and Hilda (Dorris' replacement because she still hasn't recovered from 'The Incident') will ensure you are placed on the waiting list.

technology: (English)Foreign

Yes, it is StyleCop compliant.

I may be English through and through, but I have nothing against those foreign people that come over here and steal our Software Engineer 3 jobs. But what does annoy me is Facebook's relatively new 'See translation' feature that aims to convert all those silly foreign words (and their 4 letter Y's) into good, honest, strong English words. This should be perfect, instead of having to open an external translation engine I can see the words magically transformed before my eyes. Sadly the translations are provided by 'Bing', and we all know how useless they are. As much as I hate to admit it Google just works so much better when it comes to translations.

So I conducted an incredibly scientific test overseen by a team of fully qualified linguists fluent in many types of 'Foreign' which involved translating the following English phrase into a randomly chosen 'Foreign' language and back into English.

I absolutely love blue cheeses, the perfect blend of creaminess and tart.

Google

English -> I absolutely love blue cheeses, the perfect blend of creaminess and tart

Randomly chosen Foreign -> Man labai patinka mėlynųjų sūrių, idealus derinys creaminess ir tortų.

English -> I love blue cheese, a perfect blend of creaminess and tart.

Bing

English -> I absolutely love blue cheeses, the perfect blend of creaminess and tart.

Randomly chosen Foreign -> Durke Durke Durk Durkah Durke

English -> Where am I? How did I get here? Please, no, don't do that!

As you can see Google only lost some of the subtlety, if it was a blue cheese it would be an under-ripe Stilton. Bing failed utterly, there is no way I'm going to spread that on my crackers.

daily life: sequence shortened.

For ma birthday a good friend gave me an Origami book which took me by great surprise, I don't think I showed the correct level of gratitude but I actually really like it because the idea is that I'll be able to wile away the boredom and produce something beautiful out of mere paper.

You may have noticed on adverts for iPhones .etc. while proclaiming how easy everything is the words 'Sequence Shortened. Steps Removed' are emblazoned on the bottom of the screen because in order to make the task seem simple they've had to remove 75% of the required steps.
Well this Origami book seems to suffer the same 'Steps Removed' problem. On two separate models I've spent a good 30 minutes reaching the last couple of folds but suddenly I get to a point where it says 'Hold the front wing and fold at a slight angle against the upper fold', and I'm going 'WHAT?', which one is the front wing? Until this point you've never mentioned any wings. After 20 minutes of trying every possibility I've just got a crumpled piece of paper and no model.
So I try another model, it's going well, fold this point onto that point, then fold the model in half. But the picture of you folding the model in half seems to be without performing the previous step, so do I unfold the previous step? Then it says holding the lower right body fold the neck up, again no previous mention of the neck, but the fold shown in the picture isn't possible with what I have in front of me so have I done something wrong or is there a step missing? Again after 20 minutes of rotating, folding, unfolding and twisting I've made no more progress and instead of a swan I've just got a triangle.

If the whole purpose of the book is to teach me Origami then bloody well make sure a complete amateur can follow the steps and if you want me to unfold the fold you've just made me fold tell me explicitly to do that, don't just assume I'll work it out from the picture which because you've used black paper is almost impossible to comprehend anyway.

So in closing, I really like the present, but I want to murder the individual that wrote the book.

mini-moan: dance monkey

Today I ventured into town and paid a visit to my friendly bank, you may remember one of my very first moans was regarding the needless bureaucracy and numerous hoops required merely to pay money into my bank account, thankfully The Halifax have abandoned this archaic system that harks back to the 1940s and I commend the sane individual at The Halifax (I doubt it was Howard) that put an end to the madness.

Now I turn my wrath on the NATIONWIDE!!! (that was meant to be a Wrath of Kahn reference).
As I have moved I wished to update my address, so unimportant documents such as my credit card statement, bank statements, the little things, would actually reach me. I'm silly like that. But I was told I would need to provide proof of my new address, perhaps a bank statement would be sufficient before they could change it.
In order to update my address I need to provide a letter sent to my new address, but I don't have such a letter because I can't get somebody to send a letter to my new address without somebody sending a letter to my new address. If you were able to follow that sentence then you must be autistic. I do not possess utility bills for my new address because I've only just moved in, so what else can I use?
Well I went next door to the Halifax and they updated the address without even asking for my signature, so in a few weeks when my Halifax statement arrives I can show that to the Nationwide and they will gladly update my address.

It's all rather silly isn't it.

And now you have to forget the names of the institutions I bank with as that could be a potential security vulnerability. Somebody will visit you shortly with a mind-melting ray to ensure you no longer remember... anything.

mini-moan: buffer-underflow

There is a new trend lately when it comes to watching videos on the internet. I've already moaned about the various annoyances associated with consuming media via the internet. But the one that has really annoyed me the last few days are video players that only buffer while playing.
For some reason my super fast fibre optic broadband suffers slowdowns on occasion so watching videos online is like trying to watch your neighbour changing through a slat in the blind eating soup with chopsticks.
But that shouldn't matter, I'll just pause the video and wait for it to buffer then I'll be able to watch the whole video without interruption. Hmm, it doesn't seem to be buffering, my connection must be really slow now, I wonder what happens when I hit play. WHAT? Now it starts buffering. WTF!!!!!! (this time three just doesn't cut it).

Has anybody realised that this defeats the only point of buffering? In my mind buffering means to store data before it is required so it would seem obvious that you buffer while the video is paused instead of making me suffer 30seconds of video, then some buffering, then 5 seconds, then buffer and on it goes. Why can't I just pause the video for a minute and let the buffer fill to bursting?

Perhaps I am just too wise for this world, if you need me I'll be lying on the train tracks.

mini-moan: i am the arbitrator

Somebody said something to me the other day when I asked about the bangs (exclamation marks) they had written on a post-it note affixed to their monitor. I asked why they had used only 3 and not 5 and they replied.

Them - 'You can only use 1 or 3!'
Me - 'So you can't use 4?'
Them - 'No!!!'
Me - 'Or 2?'
Them - 'Certainly not!'
Me - 'Only 1 or 3?'
Me - 'Odd!!' (I only used 2 when I made that remark, but she didn't notice at the time).

As much as I enjoyed the conversation, why do humans feel the need to make these arbitrary rules? If I want 4 bangs I'm bloody well going to have them, although lately I'm lucky if I get a single bang!

It's Them against Me.

mini-moan: just another day

Today is a Bank Holiday in England, the May Day Bank Holiday to be precise. And just like every Bank Holiday Monday the weather is terrible, it's cold, miserable and I am sat on the sofa watching TV (well at the moment I am obviously writing a blog entry). What purpose do these Bank Holidays actually serve? If they are worse than the Sunday that precedes them they we might as well just go to work.

Bank Holidays are for people with families, they are the only ones that ever enjoy them so instead I propose that those people get to have the day off but aren't paid and instead I'll go into work and receive double pay. Sounds like a plan to me.

awkward: rather apt

It's time for post number 101 and it seemed appropriate to me that I would use this as my own personal Room 101. For the uncultured readers out there Room 101 was the name given to "The Ministry of Love's" torture chamber where they would break the will of those that resisted 'The Party' by subjecting them to their 'Worst thing in the world'. This is of course from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This post probably won't be entertaining to read, but I don't care in this instance.

So what would be in my Room 101?

So many things annoy me, from my local Tesco Extra deciding to repaint all the disabled parking bays as mother toddler bays, well apart from the 5 furthest from the front entrance.  Letting agents trying to make me sign ludicrous contracts with conditions that can never be legal. BT constantly delaying the activation date of BT Infinity in my new house. But none of these would be enough to break me.

In the novel 1984 (Spoilers if you haven't read it). The Protagonist is threatened with being attacked by rats and begs that he be spared in exchange for the woman he supposedly loves instead being subjected to this torture.
My Room 101 would not be rats, physical pain, but instead the very act that Winston committed, betraying the one he loved. Winston was willing to sacrifice another to ensure his own safety, worst of all he sacrificed the person he loved most.
My worst nightmare is being unable to protect those that I love most, having them suffer while I could do nothing but watch or being too weak to endure and sacrificing them for my own safety. That is my Room 101.

multi-moan: ramblings of a poet.

To mark this special event, for those of you that aren't very smart and haven't worked it out yet it is the 100th post on theguywhomoanscalledmatthew. I thought long and hard about how to celebrate this and the plan was to have my special guest writer (recently discovered in my talent search) a very talented, clever and unintentionally funny individual to collaborate with me on the post but logistically things haven't worked out yet.

So instead you'll just have to put up with my ramblings. And there will be several 'mini-moans' collated into what I call a 'multi-moan', hence the new tag.

Always use your left hand
Why is it that when you have just parked the car, it's raining outside so your windscreen wipers are on, just as you turn off the ignition your windscreen wipers decide to do one last sweep and stop in the middle of the cycle so you have to put the car back into accessory mode. Maybe it is my OCD, but I can't stand seeing a car with the wipers upright on the windscreen in mid-wipe, plus they are just asking for some yobbo to snap them off.

Internet Code
Some time ago I coined a phrase, 'Internet Code'. For example, if like me you are a software developer, you come across a problem that doesn't have an obvious solution or often you feel there must already be some perfectly serviceable code on the internet and why bother re-inventing the wheel. So you do a search, probably ending up on Stack Overflow, and somebody has asked this exact question you require an answer to and some helpful individual has posted a code snippet that 'solves' your problem.
Excited, you copy this code and paste into into your Integrated Development Environment of choice. Hmm, I seem to have a few red squiggly lines going on here. You look a bit closer, and think "I've never heard of that library, I'll just give it a Google". It soon becomes obvious that this 'Internet Code' doesn't work, worse of all it doesn't compile, it uses libraries that don't exist and it has logic flaws even if the library did exist. It is code that only works on the Internet.
But how can this 'answer' have 100 positive votes, and a dozen comments stating 'Thanks man, that solved my problem' or 'Wow, you are a life saver, my project was running over schedule until I found your answer'.
My only explanation is that the :censored: that posted this bollocks code created hundreds of accounts on Stack Overflow just to up-rank their incorrect answers. What a twat!!!

Facebook Consumer
Last week I coined this term to describe my closest friend, well being a pathetic loner I mean the individual I spend the most time looking at through my telephoto lens.
A Facebook consumer is a person that never posts original content to Facebook, they only consume Facebook. Every entry on their wall (or timeline now) is a like or a share of somebody's original Facebook content. A Facebook consumer never contributes to the social network, they only take, they are selfish and are single handedly killing the Pandas, polluting the atmosphere and causing this drought we are in the middle of (although it's the wettest drought I've ever known).


So there you have it, the world's first ever multi-moan.