Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with annoyance

Help me stop mentally rolling my eyes all the time.

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:34:52 -0800

How can I get over my continual annoyance with a family member? After a number of years apart, I have been living again with a family member who gets on my nerves at the drop of a hat. Even now that I've come to recognize my emotions as (quite often) irrational, I find that I often have trouble maintaining civility in everyday, mundane interactions. I do get irritated at other people I know from time to time, but usually that is in isolated occurrences when I am under lots of stress or they are really being boneheaded.

I'm aware that many of the things we tend to find irritating have more to do with ourselves than the person committing the irritating act. I'm also aware that people do actually do annoying things, or get into irritable moods. This situation seems to go beyond those things.

How can I make this relationship less frustrating for myself and start treating said family member like a normal human being who deserves politeness, cordiality, etc...? Bonus points if it doesn't involve further overly-sanitized, let's-think-of-ways-to-get-along mediation, and allows us both to relax around each other more in general.

[Click to add Headline/Title]

Jonathan Harford — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:48:48 -0800

How do I keep PowerPoint (2007) from inserting a "Click to add title" textbox when I delete a slide's title?

How can you get past your dislike of a soon-to-be family member?

Anonymous — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:01:17 -0800

Anyone have any advice for coming to terms with a person you dislike marrying into the family? (Disclaimer: Intellectually I know I can't control whom my family members date, fall in love with, and marry. I also know it shouldn't affect me as much as it does. I would be very grateful if people could offer some coping strategies that go beyond "get over it." Thanks!)

My brother-in-law (husband's brother) is getting ready to marry his girlfriend of 5 years. The wedding is in two weeks, and both my husband and son are in the wedding party. While I have every intention of attending, I just am feeling really uneasy about the marriage itself. I am finding myself focusing more and more on how much I dislike and resent this woman, and it's making me literally dread having her as part of the family.

I was going to go into detail about all the reasons she makes me miserable, but I don't want to bog down the question too much. Suffice it to say it's a combination of her constant attention-whoring (to the point of NEVER talking about anything but herself), being publicly disrespectful toward her family members, mooching off my in-laws (living with them and not contributing anything in terms of money or household help), glomming onto both my mother and my son, and generally being self-centered and awful.

I know a wedding can bring out the worst in attention-whorish people. I also know that I have some pent-up resentment that my in-laws are largely paying for this wedding and are way more emotionally invested in it -- for example, my father-in-law is openly insisting that he get to do a formal "father/daughter" type of dance with her (by contrast, due to some family conflict when my husband and I got married, my father-in-law told he he didn't care about our fucking wedding and threatened not to attend). I realize this is probably being projected onto my soon-to-be sister-in-law. But still, I know many of the reasons I dislike her have nothing to do with the wedding.

So, knowing I can't skip the wedding or stop it from happening, and knowing I will have to continue to deal with this person possibly forever, does anyone have any advice on how to cope? I'd really like some way to come to terms with the relationship and this person's role in our family before the wedding in 2 weeks, so I don't negatively affect her special day -- for all her shortcomings, she doesn't deserve to have anyone rain on her parade, and neither does my brother-in-law. I want to be able to develop some perspective and some ability to turn off my intensely growing dislike of her. Thanks.

How to deal with a hinter.

cranberrymonger — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:24:42 -0800

I would like to discourage an acquaintance from engaging in an annoying conversational habit. The disclaimer: I understand that being direct is the best course of action in most cases but in this situation, it is my expressed intent to amuse myself and rankle someone else. I am aware of the inherent pettiness and promise not to use any ideas given here during vulnerable moments; my only intent is to get ideas for humourusly navigating the ultra (ULTRA) banal.

I know someone who "baits" instead of simply relating anecdotes. This occurs in any and every conceivable situation, regardless of its importance. The set-up always frames the issue in an intriguing light (e.g. "I thought of a great idea for breakfast." or, more shamelessly: "So-and-so and I met under quite remarkable circumstances."). Then, the unbearable silence begins.

Note that I am obliged to have periodic encounters with this person and they ought to be civil; I am not concerned with how they regard me but I cannot be overtly rude. I no longer wish to follow-up with "Oh, what is it?" or its equivalent and my overall aim is to learn to anticipate these forced interactions with levity and amusement instead of bitterness.

Hive, please unleash your creativity! What are some fun and funny tactics to deal with and dodge dangling hints?

Which USB Mass Storage Device is which?

msbrauer — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:19:26 -0800

How can I change the generic name "USB Mass Storage Device" in my Vista system tray "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog? It's not uncommon for me to have a couple of external harddrives plugged in to my Vista laptop alongside a memory card and an mp3 player. While all of these devices have unique drive letters and unique names in windows explorer (one of the drives is always called 400gig, for instance, another is always called 500gig), they're all called "USB Mass Storage Device" in the system tray's "Safely Remove Hardware" menu. So when I need to unplug one but not all, I find myself taking a stab at which device is which and usually I pick the wrong one. I can solve the confusion easily enough by opening the "my computer" window and figuring out the drive letter from there, but that's an extra step that I'd love to get rid of. Ideally, the dialog would always say something like "Safely remove 400gig - Drive (x:)" and stay the same for each device each time it's plugged in.

So, is it possible to change the menu options from "Safely remove USB Mass Storage Device - Drive (x:)" to something unique for each device?

You ever have one of those days?

pseudostrabismus — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:18:18 -0800

I'm having an "off day" for no particular reason. Feeling grouchy & peevish. This is dumb. Please help me fix it. Specifics are unnecessary, but basically a few things went wrong. Nothing major, mostly on the scale of "annoying". And there were some unrelated problems that all happened in a row- a small stack of irritating coincidences, starting in the morning and compounding all day, probably slightly exacerbated by my worsening mood.

I'm fully aware that I should just let inconsequential stuff like this roll off my back, and how lucky I am to be alive & healthy in a nice country & etc. But nevertheless, I feel grumpy, petulant, discouraged, and annoyed at myself for reacting this way. It's just a bad day, fer Pete's sake, get over it, right?

I have a few things I usually do to try and fix bad days, but suddenly it occurred to me that you probably have even better ideas. So, hive mind, what are your best strategies? How do you turn a bad day around?
Thanks!

getting the big O out of the little O

randomination — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:17:49 -0800

1. What is Barack Obama doing in my copy of Opera 9.62?
2. How do I get him out? I'm running Ubuntu 8.04, modified for Eee PC (a build done by this guy).

Since November 4, my preferred web browser, Opera 9.62, has on launch started playing an audio loop of Obama's 'Yes We Can' speech, set to music, that's impossible to turn off. This was slightly charming at first but it's actually now doing my nut in.

I've searched reasonably hard to see if this is happening to anyone else, but with no luck. please reassure me that it's not happening in my own head and tell me how to remove it.

A couple of FireFox annoyances

querty — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 22:48:29 -0800

A couple of FireFox annoyances Using FireFox 2.0.0.17 on Windows XP SP2.

(1)
==
I've set view_source.editor.external to true and view_source.editor.path to Notepad2.exe and it's working fine.

What about View Selection Source? That feature is still opening FireFox's own view source window. Any hacks to set view selection source to use Notepad2?

(2)
==
I have a Search Prefix of "m" pointing to Google Maps. When I search for a location through the address bar, the plus and comma characters get converted into HEX values; example:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=Victoria%2C%20BC

In Internet Explorer (using TweakUI or IEPro) with the same search prefix, the characters show up as is:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=Victoria,+BC

How can I get FireFox to render those characters as is? The URL looks like a mess with all those percent signs especially when there are multiple addresses. It doesn't look very good when used in an email.

Killed Me Some Ants!

cjorgensen — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:16:52 -0800

I set fire to a colony of tiny red ants. Now they have gone away. Why/how did this work? So I had a dead spot in my yard, went to check it out, and there a colony of the smallest red ants you could imagine.

I threw some little wood chips and some yard waste in-and-amongst them, and set this on fire.

Now, this was no bonfire we're talking about. You couldn't have even roasted a hotdog over this fire (well, maybe one). Now I have a bare spot in my yard (was pretty much already there), two holes you could put a pencil down, and no ants.

I really wasn't expecting this to do anything. I remember as a kid a neighbor did this to a beehive, of ground living yellow jackets, using a gallon of gasoline. This caused a huge explosion! A deep hole in his yard, and the bees buzzed around the fire and died, but the next day they were rebuilding.

Mine wasn't nearly as intense.

I've had problems with ants before, tried using poison (to limited success), but this is like they packed up and moved on!

Any ideas why? I really doubt it did more than scorch the surface and kill the ones currently outside. So why did they pack up? Is this a solution for other kinds of ants?

Yeah, I know, I am evil. PETA is outside my door right now asking if my cat is ok. I can live with killing them. Just amazed this worked.

Point of sale shenanigans

zap rowsdower — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:52:32 -0800

Cash back? Why? Why is the burden of choosing "NO" to the cash back option placed on me every time I use my debit card to purchase something? Am I atypical? Does the rest of the world routinely get cash back?

Why aren't there a few more options on the initial screen- Debit, Credit, Debit w/ Cash Back? Surely there's enough screen real estate.

Is it just a really poor design choice or is there some other reason I'm just not aware of?

Twitter SMS Problem: Direct Messages Always Comes in Two's

abbyladybug — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:41:54 -0800

I use Twitter and have direct messages sent to my phone. Any time someone send me one message, I get two SMS messages on my phone. I hate that. How can I make it stop?

How do you get a techno-phobic to be techno-friendly?

seeminglee — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 16:12:51 -0800

How do you get a busy but techno-phobic guy to be open to the idea of calendar schedule sync'ing with another very busy super geek? Obviously, I'm the geek here, and I am stressed about people's needs to talk on the phone when calendar sync takes only one second. /SML

iTunes annoyance

Aloysius Bear — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 16:38:46 -0800

When I right-click the iTunes icon in the Windows system tray, often the taskbar context menu will pop up at the same time and interfere with the iTunes menu, like this. How can I fix this? The iTunes taskbar toolbar works, but it takes up much more space than the system tray icon. The problem seems to happen mostly when an application has focus, rather than the taskbar. TIA!

I'm just giving a little whistle, is all.

crinklebat — Wed, 30 May 2007 23:11:20 -0800

How do you feel about whistling? Specifically, how do you feel about people who whistle songs in public places? I love to whistle. I spend time honing my whistled versions of favorite songs, and when walking (especially at night), I enjoy really belting out my whistled tunes. If I heard someone else whistling in public and really putting themselves into it, I'd be delighted and possibly even approach them and talk to them about whistling. I love it!

However, I never hear anyone else whistling in public. Is this because the rest of the human race has reached a consensus that it's annoying? If you're someone who doesn't whistle while walking someplace in the dark, why not? How would you feel if you were walking near someone who was whistling really loud - say, for example, she was whistling "Summertime". What would you think? If she wasn't like whistling in your ear or anything, and if it wasn't indoors. Would you be like, "Damn, do I love that song"? Or more along the lines of, "Damn, do I hate that girl"?

I hate that I might be annoying people with what I feel to be a pretty awesome, fun habit. It never occurred to me that it might bug people (seriously, it really hasn't ever crossed my mind), but today I was whistling on my way to the bus a little after 9pm and a girl gave me some sort of Look. I couldn't tell what she was trying to convey, but it definitely has given me pause.

I'm going to buy a theremin in the next few months (and big headphones...both once I have a job) so I will have a musical outlet even if your comments convince me to stop whistling my little heart out. So be truthful! I get annoyed when people do things I think are inconsiderate in public spaces and I would prefer not to unknowingly be one of those people.

Should I be racist against the Siamese? (cats)

tula — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 17:19:59 -0800

Dog person needs cat advice. If I adopt a kitten that has any of the physical attributes of a Siamese (blue eyes, lighter body with dark tails, etc.) or has litter mates with any of these attributes, am I condemning myself to live with a cat with a noisy needy Siamese personality? I've been warned that as a cat-non-lover who can be bothered by extraneous noise, I shouldn't adopt a Siamese cat. But since I'm looking at shelter and rescue kittens, I'm not likely to find a purebred anything. So what about all these adorable lynx mixes and part snow-shoe, part tabbies I keep seeing? I'm attracted to the interesting markings of cat mutts. If they're quiet, sweet and social as little kittens does that mean they'll be anything like that as adults? Can you predict any of cat's eventual personality by its behavior as a kitten? Help me oh cat people of the internets.

thinking about sticking knife i my eye

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 08:36:09 -0800

I can't stand my brother-in-law. He and my sister just finished and extended holiday visit. It was excruciating.
1. He has some sort of mild respiratory problem. He frequently sniffles, and when not sniffling I can still hear his labored whuffly breathing from accross the room. He never reaches for a tissue, just whuffles and snorts. Which leads to:
2. He SNORES. Like a bandsaw. I thought a perfectly reasonable response to his snoring was for me to listen to some soft music at a low volume, on a half hour sleep timer in order to drown out the noise, but apparently the music kept him awake and he complained to my sister who immediately started a fight with me. Which leads to:
3. His unending passivity. So passive that he almost never makes any kind of declarative statement; every sentence he says ends in a question mark, and if he ever makes the mistake of ending a sentence with a period he immediately tacks on the question 'what do you think about that?'

Seriously, I am finding it harder and harder to be close to my sister. When she is here wherever she goes, he has to tag along, even on a trip to buy bras. When he's not around we talk just the same as ever, but he's becoming ever present, and ever more annoying the longer I know him. Does this kind of situation sound familiar to anyone? Any ideas on how to cope?

How to get a screen session to work the way I want to?

davar — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 09:17:07 -0800

How do I get my Linux shell to behave the same when I am using screen, as when I am not using it? I connect to my linux servers with Putty, from Windows. These are two different servers, but I have the same annoyance. When I work in the shell (bash) without using screen, and I use "less" or "man" or "vim" or something like that to read a file, and I close that file, the open file remains visible in the window. I just start typing new stuff below it. If I do not use screen, when I close the file, I get returned to the shell window I was using before, and I can see my previous commands.

Also, when I am not in a screen session, I can use the scrollbars in Putty to scroll up in history. When I am in a screen session, this does not work. I can imagine this is a limitation of screen sessions, but if there is a solution for this, I would like to know as well.

The latter annoyance is not as important, but the former has been irritating me for a long while now, and I hope there is an easy solution.

Adobe Cleanup freezes my apps!

limeonaire — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 14:43:03 -0800

Recent Windows versions of Adobe apps, specifically programs in the CS2 Suite and Acrobat Pro 7.0, all run some kind of auxiliary program called "Cleanup" not long after they start up. In my experience, "Cleanup" always freezes the Adobe app in question while it does whatever it's doing. So what is this program? Is it necessary? And if not, how can I stop it from running?

Visas - What Are They Good For?!

divabat — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:50:57 -0800

What's the point of a visa? My passport's nationality requires me to get a visa for almost everywhere in the world - and more often than not, it's quite a pain. Financial documents, health documents, character checks, who knows what. And it all seems so arbitary.

I understand that visas came about after WWII, but why do we still need them? What purpose do they serve? Do they really halt "undesirable" and/or "dangerous" people in - or do they just make things difficult for legitimate people to enter? And why do they need to know so much about us anyway?

Also: are there any efforts to abolish visas or make the visa process easier? I know of Get VISAble (a campaign to make visas easier for EU students) but I was wondering if there's anything else like it.

What makes me itch?

pdb — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 12:53:23 -0800

I have an itch. For about two years now, I've had a persistent itch on my back, on the spinal cord side of my left shoulder blade. it's not 24/7 persistent, but it itches at least a dozen times a day, every day, and scratching it only stops the itch for about 20 minutes. In the time I've had it, it hasn't gotten better, but it also hasn't gotten any worse - it's just always there.

There's no rash on my back that I can see; no bite, no indication of eczema and no dry/flaking skin of any sort - my back looks as normal as a back can look, by all accounts. I don't change detergents/fabric softeners often, and I've used the same soap forever, so I don't think that's the issue.

What on earth could be causing this itch? I've got a dermatologist appointment in a couple weeks, but I'd like to go in there with a little more than I've got, information-wise.

What's going on with my Gmail cursor?

TonyRobots — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:07:08 -0800

What's going on with my Gmail cursor? About a week ago, my gmail cursor seemed to have developed a vestigal limb:

It doesn't appear in any other textarea form elements. Has this happened to any/everyone else? What gives? It's a minor annoyance and it simply shall not stand!

How can I stand up through a concert without foot pain?

joshjs — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:37:29 -0800

I went to see Ben Folds here in Milwaukee last night, and by about halfway through the main act, I was in serious pain, just from standing there. My feet, especially my heels, were killing, and my lower back was stiff and uncomfortable as well. My question is: Is there any way to avoid this? I'm not really inclined to dance unless I've had WAY too much to drink, and most concerts I attend are stand-up sorts of things.

I'm going to another concert tonight (Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins), and I'd really be able like to enjoy it...

Suddenly the whole Internet is emphasized. Why?

Famous — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:48:08 -0800

Why is my entire Internet suddenly showing up in italics? I restarted my computer last night, and suddenly, many different words all over the Internet are printing in italics. Entire paragraphs. All of my Gmail. It's fairly distracting. I don't know how it started and I have no idea how to get rid of it.

This is effecting both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Killing Spam Dead in OSX?

filmgeek — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 09:14:03 -0800

Killing Spam dead (osx and other strategies.) What tools/strategies are you using? Ok. I've had it. I get 60 (sixty) piece of spam across a number of email accounts a day. Minimum. I'm on OSX.3.4 - Mail's Junk filter is worthless. I'm using Spam Sieve; but I'm willing to look at other products.

In my filtered mail, literally 91% is spam (10 out of 100). Spam Sieve is bayesian, I tried Junkfilter (open source) it didn't do as well.

By the way, I'm not looking to compare (Ok, you get more/less.)
How are you dealing with it so it is as close to invisible as possible?
Should I be bouncing everything after the fact? Should I get more/different tools? Filter everything via gmail?

What if it CAN buy happiness?

ChrisR — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 07:10:34 -0800

What do rich people have that we don't? To be more specific, what are the little inconveniences that the middle class/lower class/middle-rich/foo/bar have to deal with, but when you have enough money you can get around easily. I don't mean the obvious ones, I mean things like showers that you have to fiddle with to get the temperature, or razor burn. Also, how can you emulate this sort of thing on the beer budget that I must live with?