mini-moan: la-la-la i'm not listnin'

It's time for another mini-moan.


Do you know what I really hate. No, of course you don't you are a random internet person that I have never met and there is absolutely no way you could have any knowledge of my likes and dislikes. But one thing I really can't stand are songs that randomly in the middle or near the end (or sometimes through their entirety) devolve into a series of lalala, oooooh oooooooh, badadada badadadas, you get the general idea. It's just laziness, somebody couldn't think of any lyrics but felt obligated to make the song a minimum length and so had to pad it out.

I'm not saying having some lalalalas in a song is always bad, but they need to be more than just filler, they need to actually add to the song rather than making up for a lack of lyrical meaning.

mini-moan; interface definition

I've decided to start a new series to cover topics that just aren't complex enough to warrant a full post. A lot of effort goes into producing a post and that sometimes means I forget topics before I commit them to the internetz electric gripz.

So to christen this new series I am going to discuss the terrible interface on my microwave, which like any lonely single man's microwave gets plenty of use.

My microwave has one of those flashy little electronic knobs on the front that you use to set the cooking time, only you can't just turn it, first you have to press a button to put the microwave into cooking mode (what other modes can a microwave have? I haven't worked out what the default mode is because the manual couldn't make less sense if it were written in Lithuanian). So assuming you've done that each half turn of the knob adds 10seconds of cooking, so it takes 3 full turns to do a single minute of cooking. You can imagine how annoying it is to do 5 minutes. But to be slightly less annoying their is a button that when pressed increments the cooking time in 30 seconds steps, but once you get to 2:30 it goes up in 1 minute increments, so you can't do 3 minutes, you have to do 3:30. So if you want 6 minutes you need to use the knob and turn it 18 times. But once you get to 5minutes the knob also goes up in 30 second increments for some reason, perhaps someone realised having to turn the knob so much was too time consuming for a device that's meant to make cooking faster. Plus you can't press the button to get to 2:30 and turn the knob 1.5 times to add another 30 seconds, no that would be too simple. It's one of the other with my microwave, never back down, no compromises.

Who came up with this arbitrary system? My mums microwave has a button for 10 seconds, another for 1minute and a 3rd for 10minutes, so you can do 33:40 seconds with 10 button presses, with my microwave you can't even do 33:40, and if you could you'd be their until Judgement Day turning the little knob that gets a lot more action than mine :(.

Wow, that mini-moan turned into more of a full blown moan. But I'm committed to the series now, I've added a new tag and everything, new tags don't just add themselves.

daily life: contractual obligation.

I bet you've signed many contracts in your life, you have to sign a contract for everything and pretty soon you'll need to sign one just to use the toilet. I'm also willing to be that you think any contract you sign is legally enforceable no matter how ludicrous the terms are. But you'd be wrong.

I'm in the process of moving from my flat to a new rented house and in my tenancy agreement is states I am responsible for cleaning the gutters. This isn't the first time I've seen this ridiculous condition in a tenancy agreement, if you rent you may even find it in yours. Now obviously there is no way I am going to pay somebody to clean my landlords gutters, but the letting agent claim that it is my duty to prevent dilapidation of the landlords property whilst somehow forgetting that the landlord is still responsible for all maintenance of the property even while I live their. The greedy bastards want me to pay them for the privilege of living in their house while also paying to maintain it.

Good luck trying to enforce that contractual condition, for British citizens at least their is the Unfair Contract Terms Act on 1977. In essence it means I can sign a contract which dictates I have to walk about with a turd on my head every 5th Sunday, but no court in the land would force me to actually do it if I refused to participate in the 'Great Turd Hat March of 2012' (actually that would make for the best Olympics opening ceremony ever, excuse me while I phone Seb Coe).

Of course the term 'fair' is highly subjective so don't assume a court will deem a contract unfair just because you think it is insane. But the stupid and arbitrary nature of the British legal system is a completely different debate.

work: meet in the middle.

It's time for a new label as it is the first time I have tackled a topic to do with work.

In my line of work as a professional software developer, although there is nothing professional about the crappy code I develop, it is sometimes necessary to have meetings with other teams. In general this is a good thing as when working across teams, especially across continents, it is necessary to ensure everybody is on the 'same page' (sorry but there is likely to be a lot of management speak in this post). You need to 'run ideas up the flag pole and see if anybody salutes'.

But lately there have been more meetings than normal, lots of meetings, some very important meetings and some very boring, long boring tedious mind numbing meetings that make you just want to stand up and shout 'I don't give a flying <insert rude word here> about anything that is going on and I am now going to jump into the pond'. Indeed there sure have been a fair number of the not important type of meetings. The worst are when a secret cabal have had an important meeting that you weren't invited to and then invite you to a meeting that makes you want to explore the bottom of the nearest pond and keep mentioning things that happened in the important meeting but you have no idea about because you weren't in that important meeting and it just makes the boring meeting even more boring. And breath.

Let's say by some chance there is an interesting topic under discussion and due to it's complex nature it takes some time to 'fully explore every avenue'. An individual will say 'Let's take this offline' (talk about it outside of the meeting). What? Let's not discuss this topic during the meeting and instead discuss it outside of the meeting, why on earth would you do that, it makes no sense, you have specifically arranged a meeting to talk about things and then relegate talking about things to outside of the meeting. It boggles the mind!

Today I just lost it when during a discussion we were told that due to new rules the old way of doing things can't be used any more, but when asked what the new way is we were told 'That hasn't been decided yet'. Better go arrange a meeting to decide it then, because the last meeting where you decided that the old system couldn't be used but not what the new system will be clearly wasn't long enough. Maybe we can 'touch base' and 'work out the details' while I'm in the bog during the 20 seconds between the 10th and 11th meeting of the morning.

The only thing that gets me through the day is passing stupid notes about how bored I am like a 5 year old, I don't know what I would do if that pleasure was taken away from me :(.

technology: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

For the last few weeks when trying to post to Facebook I regularly have to fill in some Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. I don't know if this is because I am posting links to my blog or because I am using my phone to post on a regular basis but it is really starting to bug me.

In the past this wouldn't have been a problem because CAPTCHAs where easy to read if you were human (and even for computers, old CAPTCHAs were pretty pathetic) but now they are impossible to complete. The other day after failing 5 and rejecting 6 others because I had absolutely no clue what most of the characters were I resulted to using the audio CAPTCHA which still took me two attempts. Honestly, I was there for 5 minutes just trying to post an update to my Facebook. How is this progress? If we have to make CAPTCHAs this difficult just to foil the computers we might as well give up and let SKYNET win because we don't stand a chance.

Below are some examples of the ludicrous CAPTCHAs that are currently prevalent on the internet. 

I call this 'What's up with my monitor?'

This one is 'My Head Hurts'

And finally 'I don't think I'll bother'

And just for giggles

entertainment: make it stop, for the love of god please make it stop.

Some time ago, in the distant times known as the past I posted about all the television programmes that were unceremoniously cancelled during their prime. But there is another group of television programmes, I like to call them the 'How the feck is this show still going' programmes. Below are a few examples of such shows.

Strictly Come Dancing
X-Factor
Britains Got Talent
Doctor Who
Sanctuary
A Town Called Eurkea/Eureka (Yes I know it is now cancelled but it took 5 years)
Warehouse 13
Doctors (that daytime TV show about a doctors surgery on BBC1 during the daytime)
Hollyoaks
Any soap opera
60 minute makeover
The One Show

And these are just the ones I can remember at the moment.

I propose to any TV executive a new system to use when deciding whether to cancel or renew a TV show. I call this the 'Would tgwmcm bitch about this on his blog?' technique. Basically, if your decision results in me arbitrarily posting nonsense on a blog that nobody reads then your decision is wrong. Perhaps you could first email me a list of all shows you are planning to renew or cancel and I will then return to you a tgwmcm approved list of shows to be renewed and cancelled. My rates are very reasonable and I guarantee that your  output will be liked by 100% of viewers that work for http://www.theguywhomoanscalledmatthew.blogspot.com

anouncement: let it flow

Today a loyal reader of my blog, well let's face it the only reader of my blog, informed me that in order to post a comment you were required to have a Blogger account. Not wanting to hinder fellow citizens of the internet in complimenting me on my eloquence and congratulating me on my witty posts I have loosened the restrictions on posting comments to my blog. By loosen I mean completely remove, Joe Bloggs Anonymous can now comment anything on my posts. I of course maintain the power of veto and will unceremoniously remove any comments I disagree with. Areas of comment that will not be tolerated include;

1. Comments that do not start with the phrase 'Matthew, overlord of all that is great and forever my master I pose to you the following ...'
2. Comments that question my brilliance.
3. Comments that contain the phrases 'I disagree with you', 'I do not agree with your argument' 'You are incorrect/wrong/mistaken on this matter'. I will of course view the context in which the comment was made before deletion.
4. Comments that are wittier and/or more entertaining than the blog article that they relate to.

So baring this in mind, get commenting. I welcome any feedback so long as it is complimentary.