Tag Archives: Annoyance

Waiting for the phone to ring and more

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There are few things I hate worse than waiting for a phone call. Lately I’ve been doing that a lot.

Some of it is because a couple of people emailed me that they needed help doing something computer related. A couple of weeks ago a woman didn’t know how to sign up for an email list and I offered to help her if she called me. She emailed back, “Thank you very much!” but never called. I could have called her back, but she’s the one who needs something, I shouldn’t be begging for the opportunity to help her. The same kind of thing happened nearly a year ago — someone wanted help, said they’d call but never did. It happened again last week. A friend is directing a play and asked for help getting publicity. I offered to help set up a blog and he wrote back he’d love that and that he’d get in touch. I gave him my cell number and have not heard back — although I saw him on Sunday and he thought we could talk Sunday but we didn’t get a chance. He said he’d call, but didn’t call today. The thing is — I’d be glad to help these people, but waiting for the phone to ring is a pain in the ass.

Another call I’m waiting for is from the plumber. Actually from two plumbers. I called my regular plumber on Thursday evening about a clogged up kitchen sink, but I think he’s broken-up with us because Dean thought he caused a problem with the bathroom sink and when he came back wanted us to pay for a second call. I thought Dean was being unreasonable. Dean thought Mr. Monk was. When our regular plumber didn’t call back by Friday afternoon, I called a plumber recommended by a neighbor. This plumber should have called this morning, but didn’t. I’ve had to take my cell phone into the bathroom with me when I shower, just in case it rings. Tomorrow I’m calling Roto-rooter. Forget these personable plumbers recommended by friends and neighbors. They obviously have enough to do and don’t need my money.

We’re also waiting to hear from a tutor. Andrew finally agreed to getting some help with parts of the SAT. Dean talked to a tutor (recommended by a friend) who suggested he start on Tuesday (that’s tomorrow) and we’ve not heard anything back.

On top of waiting for the phone to ring, we’ve had problems with the land-line phones. If you talk on them for more than a few minutes the line gets crackly. Verizon says we need to troubleshoot so we’ve unplugged all but one phone — to see if we hear crackly sounds on it. We don’t get enough calls to figure out if it is crackly or not. (And if you’re thinking we’ve not heard from people because of the phone problems — we’ve given out our cell number, not the land-line).

In addition to a clogged up kitchen sink, crackly phone lines, and people not getting back to us we’ve got ants. Not just one kind of ant, but at least two different kinds of ants crawling around our kitchen. We tried baiting them, but they seem to not be the kind of ant that likes the sweet bait.

Oh, and we also have grain eating moths that have an uncanny ability to get into bags of rice that have been put into a second bag of rice. I guess they have sharp teeth.

I wish we could just knock down the house and start fresh.

I have issues: Part 4 — Fear of Annoying People

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I hate to be a bother. I hate to annoy people. I get worked up about possibly saying the wrong thing to someone at a party and worry about it the next day, and beyond. I don’t know how normal this is. I don’t normally talk about it, but I know it is the root of a few of my character flaws, like why I usually wait for people to call me, rarely initiate things with friends and why I dislike asking for help of any kind. I don’t want to bother them if they are in the middle of something. I don’t want to annoy them with my request. I don’t run my air conditioner if I don’t absolutely have to because a neighbor complained that it was loud — I wouldn’t want to bother her in her quietly air conditioned house. I just want to live my life and not be a bother to anyone.

Until the past couple of years this issue only manifested itself in real life, but lately I’ve been more conscious of feeling this way about my online interactions. For instance, when I first became active in Facebook I had all sorts of things streaming on my “wall”. I had my twitter feed and my friendfeed sent to my Facebook wall. I also allowed whatever app I was using on Facebook to be sent to my wall. These notices were then sent to my Facebook friends’ newsfeeds and I annoyed at least one person enough that he deleted me from his friends. When I asked him about it he suggested I join twitter if I wanted to update my status as often as I seemed to be updating it. I explained that it was twitter that was doing it.

Anyway, after that I tried to limit what was posted to my wall. I made a few mistakes, but seemed to be doing fine. Lately, however, a number of people are posting status reports that they are annoyed by other people’s wall posts. Of course (another of my issues is thinking that I’m to blame for everything) I assumed they were talking about my wall posts. Was my app/external site usage being seen by my followers and I didn’t know it? I searched the settings and double checked that what I was doing on Facebook was not annoying anyone. Not bothering them.

And then there is this blog. The theme or the plugins or the widgets is causing problems with commenting and viewing. I’ve spent entire days troubleshooting and have not found an answer.

This is one issue that is not going to be fixed by writing a post about it. I expect that I’ll have this issue until the day I die. I imagine it is part of a larger issue.

So if I annoy you in real life or on Facebook or on Twitter or on my blog, please accept my apologies. I really don’t do it on purpose.

[Not] Fanning the Flames

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My inbox is nearly on fire this morning. Two email lists are very active with heated discussions. One centers on a proposed cell phone tower at the local high school and the other discussion is about accessible PDFs. While I have opinions about both issues I’m not going to participate in either discussion because I really don’t think that the folks with one view are really listening to the folks with an opposing view so participating in either discussion would be a waste of time, energy and emotions.

Passionate discussions on email lists and bulletin boards all seem to follow the same pattern. Someone posts a topic — sometimes it might be a little inflammatory, but many times it is simply an innocent question — which is true of both of the cases that are being discussed on the email lists today. Then someone answers the question or statement with one point of view and someone else responds to the person with another point of view. Then the really passionate folks start chiming in and often someone makes fun of someone on the other side and then someone from the other side defends their position using stronger words and before you know it, unless the moderator (or a seasoned list user) steps in and tells the folks to calm down or take it off-list or cease and desist, someone is being referred to as a Nazi. I’ve seen it so many times that it is actually sometimes fun to watch.