Little Things That BUG Me #7

Websites that hijack well-known keyboard shortcuts to do things they aren't supposed to.

Notable examples: On a website, pressing delete takes you back a page. That's what the key does and it's often more convenient than clicking the "back" button. However, in Yahoo Mail, pressing delete deletes the message you're currently reading— and just to add insult to injury, it doesn't even return you to the message list as a result, choosing instead to open the next message automatically. Meanwhile, in any page of Google search results, pressing delete will automatically select the search query box and delete the last letter of your search query, automatically updating the results accordingly.

This wasn't always the case, but apparently Google's corporate charter requires them to replace every user interface every few months with one that's just a little more shit.

Meanwhile, anyone who has ever had to use a Mac knows that command-C is "copy" when using FruitOS. Except Microsoft (which is fitting enough), because in Hotmail, pressing command-C opens some obscure menu that no one ever needs and the only way to copy text is to select "copy" from the edit menu which no one ever does because it's stupid.

I'd give Microsoft a pass except they're a massive developer of Mac software so they should know better.

Apparently, the Hotmail command-C problem has now been rectified but only because Microsoft decided to rip off Google (in ways other than Bing) and has replaced Hotmail outright with "Outlook" which is exactly the same except that the user interface is pants.

Lactose-Free Milk Is Not Horrible

So I may have mentioned previously that I was particularly miffed at the dearth of decent lactose-free dairy products despite all the effort the food industry has put into "gluten-free" cake, pasta, etc.

I must now update that position slightly: Lactose-free milk is not horrible. According to the lactose-tolerant milk-chugging people I know, it's much sweeter than regular milk, but I can't taste any appreciable difference between the hot chocolate or egg creams I can drink and the ones that will make me miserable, and if my experience is anything, the lactose-free milk has a much longer shelf life than the unmodified equivalent.

Also, while I know hard cheese (gruyere) is lactose-free, it turns out even softer cheeses (mozzarella) are also pretty much fine. (And I never liked brie anyway.)

That just leaves ice cream. I need my lactose-free ice cream! No one makes lactose-free ice cream. And that the food industry is ignoring the majority of us who are lactose intolerant but require ice cream while making sure to accommodate the <1% of the population with gluten allergies/coeliac disease/etc just bugs me, so that entry can stay up.

Vital stats:

Retraction: Partial
Date: Today
Current Mood: Tasty
Sleep Status: Too much!
Word of the Day: Suzerainty
Egg Cream: Milk, chocolate syrup, soda water. (Not disgusting.)
Sugars: Glucose and galactose. Probably sucrose too from the syrup.
Trans Fat: Yes; preferred gender pronoun = "she"
Gluten: Plant protein
Nation: Obsolete as a social construct.
Rapture: Obsolete as a constructed society.
Bioshock: Apparently it's decent. Doesn't run on my computer. I prefer older games.
Marathon: I play that.
ShadowWraith: That too.
Halo: Revoked due to banishment from Celestial Realm.
WOW: I know! Totally unfair! I didn't even do it.

Features That Need To Happen

So I hit command-A, command-O (select all, open) only to discover a millisecond too late that I wasn't in the window I thought I was and had accidentally opened over 500 diverse documents in a dozen-odd apps between them all at once.

Obviously not the end of the world, but definitely annoying.

Way back when Macs were actually Macs instead of PC clones running a Unix-based OS, typing command-period immediately after making such a dumb mistake would nullify said mistake and make everything right again by canceling the app openings before they started fighting over RAM and clock cycles. It was a very useful feature that fixed a lot of boneheaded mistakes in the past.

Unfortunately, that feature is no longer in place. And it needs to come back.