Pet Peeve rants.

WasabiPoptart

WasabiPoptart

figmentPez said:
DIY projects that pay no attention to safety.
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Along the same lines, the crap that spreads like wildfire on Pinterest! Like making a homemade glow stick from Mt. Dew, baking soda, and peroxide or setting a dandelion on fire for a rainbow effect. No, there is no blue watermelon or rainbow colored owl. It's called Photoshop you gullible tit.
Also the "Pinterest Fails" that involve people not following directions at all. Yes, your cake turned out looking like shit because you substituted half of the ingredients, then threw icing on it while it was still hot! How is that a Pinterest Fail? If you actually did what the recipe/directions said and taken your time you might have gotten a halfway decent result.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
WasabiPoptart said:
Also the "Pinterest Fails" that involve people not following directions at all. Yes, your cake turned out looking like shit because you substituted half of the ingredients, then threw icing on it while it was still hot! How is that a Pinterest Fail? If you actually did what the recipe/directions said and taken your time you might have gotten a halfway decent result.
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That's a very common pet peeve, too. People are sick of idiots who can't do things right and then blame the source of the information they didn't follow correctly. That's where the memetic "Instructions unclear, penis caught in eggbeater" type memes come from.
 
WasabiPoptart

WasabiPoptart

GasBandit said:
That's a very common pet peeve, too. People are sick of idiots who can't do things right and then blame the source of the information they didn't follow correctly. That's where the memetic "Instructions unclear, penis caught in eggbeater" type memes come from.
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RTFM, right? I had one time my mom called me to get some help with someone else's computer. It's been more than 10 years so I don't remember the problem exactly, but it ended up being something absolutely basic that if she had followed the directions it would have worked. I told my mom to tell her friend that if she had any other problems like this, to unplug everything, put the computer back in the box, then take it back to the store. My mom took me seriously and asked why she should do that. To which I replied, "Because she's too stupid to have a computer!"
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
WasabiPoptart said:
Also the "Pinterest Fails" that involve people not following directions at all. Yes, your cake turned out looking like shit because you substituted half of the ingredients, then threw icing on it while it was still hot! How is that a Pinterest Fail? If you actually did what the recipe/directions said and taken your time you might have gotten a halfway decent result.
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Along similar lines, I get so frustrated when I read reviews like this:

"Five star recipe! I just changed the butter to applesauce, replaced the chocolate chips with raisins, some of the flour with oatmeal, and added in some cinnamon! My kids loved them."

So, you made low-fat oatmeal raisin cookies instead of chocolate chip cookies... How on earth does your rating help me know if this is a good recipe?
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

On the other hand, I once had someone give me a kabob spice kit.
So I marinated some beef in the spices, stuck it on skewers with tomatoes and mushrooms, grilled it and posted it on FB.

The person who gave me the kit said "you didn't follow the directions! It called for onions, red bell peppers, and chicken!" They were all weirded out that I totally substituted everything.

"Kinda hard to fuck up a kabob" I reply. "Sure, it came in a pretty package that you probably overpaid for, but what you gave me was salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and MSG. It turned out fine." I coulda used that "kabob" kit to season probably just about any meat dish I chose to throw it on, and it woulda been fine ;)
 
WasabiPoptart

WasabiPoptart

To be clear, I'm all for adjusting recipes to your personal taste or using what you have on hand. But I've seen these "Pinterest fails" where people just throw in anything. "I decided to make Beef Wellington, but I didn't have beef. So I used a chocolate bunny! It came out terrible! Pinterest sucks!"
 
strawman

strawman

figmentPez said:
DIY projects that pay no attention to safety. Today's example: Use Ping Pong Balls to Create Diffused Party Lights

For those who don't know, ping pong balls (at least those that meet competitive standards) are made from nitrocellulose (AKA gun cotton), and are highly flammable.

Admittedly, the odds of this actually catching fire are relatively low, cheap dollar store balls that don't bounce and are likely to crack in half on impact are probably made from some cheap plastic that will melt at the temperature at which nitrocellulose ignites, but should someone use actual ping pong balls, and that ball should come in direct contact with a bulb... well, it still might not get hot enough to ignite, but if that bulb is improperly made and the filament is off-center and in direct contact with the glass, then it's easily enough to ignite nitrocellulose.

In any case, there should be a warning about how flammable ping pong balls can be. 170 C (the auto ignition point of nitrocellulose) is not that high a temperature, your average 40 watt incandescent bulb's glass gets much hotter. And once a ping pong ball starts burning, it goes up very fast, with a large flame.
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It only takes 400 seconds to light pine needles on fire at 350F (176C).

In other words, there's no more risk to using such a lighting set in ping pong balls than the risk of using one on a live tree. The UL standards for seasonal and holiday lights are pretty strict in order to prevent the lighting set from attaining this temperature in any failure mode. The lights themselves, the contacts in each bulb base, the wiring, etc simply do not attain this temperature.

It's not risk free, but people appear to accept that level of risk on a yearly basis without thought, so this project probably wouldn't rate high on their scale of risk aversity* anyway.

*shut up, I make up new words all the time!
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
stienman said:
It only takes 400 seconds to light pine needles on fire at 350F (176C).
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You read that wrong "For the grass the minimum ignition temperature was 400°C and for the pine needles the corresponding temperature was 350 °C. Both fuels required about 4 min for ignition at these minimum temperatures." That's 350C or 662F.

Let's put that in perspective. You could take a pile of dry pine needles and put them in your oven at 450F and they might smoke, but they won't catch fire (not even close, according to that article). Put a ping pong ball in your oven at 350F, and it'll burst into flames.

The lights themselves, the contacts in each bulb base, the wiring, etc simply do not attain this temperature.
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Possible Fire and Electric Shock Hazards from Hot Lamps in Miniature Christmas Tree Light Strings and Decorations
"Normally operating miniature Christmas tree lamps dissipate anywhere
from 1/^ to 1 1/3 watts. Hot spot surface temperatures range between 35°C
and 190 C depending upon dissipation and filament placement within the
glass bulb. If the filament is centered, normal surface temperatures
rarely exceed 90 C. Some lighted decorations use miniature lamps which
dissipate up to 2 watts and produce surface temperatures up to 270 C if the
filament is touching the glass envelope."
 
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Yoshimickster

Yoshimickster

When people commission me to "be creative." I know you payed me but...fuck you. Its hard enough trying to draw a wizard cat eating an elephant, but when you fucking give me NOTHING its fucking unbearable. So this is what being a commercial artist feels like. Its both great, and terrible all at the same time.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

Yoshimickster said:
When people commission me to "be creative." I know you payed me but...fuck you. Its hard enough trying to draw a wizard cat eating an elephant, but when you fucking give me NOTHING its fucking unbearable. So this is what being a commercial artist feels like. Its both great, and terrible all at the same time.
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I just call it my "I hate my clients" feeling.
 
Emrys

Emrys

People who don't fill out application forms completely (There's a checklist, people! Just follow it!) and complain at me when I send their application back for the missing information. Really, your lack of competence is somehow my fault? Do explain that to me.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Android apps that don't check to see if there's enough room to install before they go ahead and overfill my devices memory.
 
drawn_inward

drawn_inward

Small talk at work is so tedious. Just do your job. I don't care what you did this weekend. Your story about making cupcakes is SO interesting. I am not telling you about my weekend. I know it's what normal people do, but damn it's grating.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
drawn_inward said:
Small talk at work is so tedious. Just do your job. I don't care what you did this weekend. Your story about making cupcakes is SO interesting. I am not telling you about my weekend. I know it's what normal people do, but damn it's grating.
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So, how was your weekend? See any good sportsball? Look at these pictures of my kids. LOOK AT THEM.
 
Cajungal

Cajungal

Staff member
There's all that great major-life-event-based small talk too. When I was engaged a few years back, I got these questions at least a dozen times a week:

1) Do you have your dress?

2) Do you have pictures of your dress?

and everybody's favorite...

3) Have you got him trained yet? *cue canned laughter*
 
HCGLNS

HCGLNS

My favourite is the "when I worked at..."

Um, you've worked HERE for 26 years, how the fuck is "when you worked THERE" relevant?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
HCGLNS said:
My favourite is the "when I worked at..."

Um, you've worked HERE for 26 years, how the fuck is "when you worked THERE" relevant?
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Not that it is any less tiresome or irrelevant when the guy saying it has worked here for a couple months.
 
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