#363: Margin Interest when Shorting Stock

I don't see why one has to pay interest when shorting stock if you have enough money in your account to cover the short sale? I could see maybe if the price increases to more than your cash balance why you'd be charged, but if I short $2k worth of stock and have $2k in cash in my brokerage account, I don't feel like I am borrowing to do the transaction. Sure, they are borrowing the stock from somewhere, but in return, they can have that person / entity borrow my $2k in cash to offset this. If the price fluctuation makes the stock borrowing exceed $2k, then margin interest can kick in. Severity: 2

#362: Flash-back TV Show Openings

Once it was a novel dramatic method, but now it's become painfully cliche to me. It's the technique of tv shows to start off with some crazy thing happening and then afterwards, put "24 hours earlier" up on the screen (or similar) and then give you the whole show leading up to that. I'm just tired of it and it fails to intrigue me. Severity: 3

#361: Little Bubble Guy Dryer Incident

I really do like the Little Bubbles guy but my last wash, he did something that really bothered me. There was this guy that took out his comforter with 2o minutes left and there were 2 dryers available. I figured I'd save $1 by using his unused time (and offsetting my wasted quarter per previous annoyance). But the LB guy blocked me and says "no use this one" and then throws in a towel to the dryer. He just didn't want me to get free drying, yet he doesn't even own the place. As a longtime customer, I felt that was chintzy of him and he's now off my list of people that I will pay a bonus to for being good people should I ever win the lottery. Severity: 4

#360: Scam Washer

I don't like how the washing machines at my laundromat will take extra quarters beyond what you need to put in and will not return the excess ones. Occasionally, as I'm jamming in my $2.50 I go over by one if my mind is wandering and it pisses me off. Severity: 3

#359: Inconstant Acceleration

When riding in a car as a passenger, it's annoying when the person drives on the highway in a manner where they accelerate, then release the gas totally and repeat this process to maintain speed. It give a jolting ride to the passengers and it's just not that hard to keep a light foot on the pedal and maintain a constant speed. Severity: 2

#358: Airplane Drink Waste

I don't know why, but on airplanes, they don't seem to want to refill your cup when you want seconds on drinks. I actually told the guy to just refill it, and he essentially refused. I'm not sure if it's some way they account for number of beverages served (by tracking cups used), but it's stupid to create more trash. Severity: 2

#357: Subway Robots

I don't like how so many people are suckered into the $5 Footlong deal at Subway. There are nearly as many Subways now in downtown SF as Starbucks and at lunch, you see a ton of fools walking around with their lame plastic bags from this place. Don't people realize that the amount of meat on the sandwich is shamefully small, regardless of the large length of the sandwich, and low quality meat to boot? I pay $5.75 for a roast beef sandwich at my favorite shop. It's not a giant sub I can carry around in a plastic bag like all the other office drones, but it does have probably 4x the meat on 1/4 the bread and is Boar's Head which is top notch, on toasted sour dough with excellent condiments and the profits are local and not plowed into funding Jared's retirement. People need to realize they are being played by the marketing and instead support and enjoy a better quality product from a local sandwich shop. Severity: 4

#356: Stock Market Closed Days

In addition to my being annoyed when I have to work and the stock market is closed (which I think I already may have an entry for) I get annoyed by the fact that the online stock prices have the same change information from the previous day's activity and it misleads you into thinking that this is the change for today, until you realize the market is not open. It's not hard for them to just put "Stock Market Closed" somewhere prominently to indicate the changes are from the previous day. Even the WSJ fails at this. Severity: 3

#355: Needless Umbrella Carrying

When I see people carrying umbrellas around on a day that I know for sure it won't rain, it annoys me. People simply need to spend 10 seconds to surf net for the weather and then know that even though it's cloudy, it's not going to rain. Severity: 2

#354: Long Pants During Workouts

I don't understand why women wear long pants or sweats when working out indoors. It's obviously not cold and most of the time, they have nothing to be ashamed about their legs. It doesn't make sense to me why they do not wear shorts. As someone that sweats a lot, it bothers me that people are not fully ventilating themselves. Severity: 1

#353: Not Fully Utilizing the Elliptical Machine

I occasionally go to my alternate gym instead of swimming and do the elliptical machine and I always notice that everyone always just goes on and doesn't program in any setting like Hills. They just do some boring flat easy thing. Lame workout and it would be much better for them to very the resistance, but people are too lazy to figure out the machine settings. Severity: 2

#352: Slow Outlook Email Searching

I'm unbelievable how slow searching for old emails using key words in your offline Outlook is. Microsoft should be ashamed of how it can be that searching online in your humongous history of Gmail is WAY faster. Terrible. Severity: 4

#351: Unusable Abbreviation

In my job, there is a lot of times I need to write the word "Japanese" and would like to abbreviate it. It's always annoying that you can't use the obvious and easiest abbreviation because of the racist connotations. Thanks a lot you damn WW II era epithet users. Severity: 2

#350: White "Chocolate"

My great love of chocolate is what really upsets me about the existence of white "chocolate" because it is not chocolate (the only remote connection is that it must contain at least 20% cocoa butter), yet it appears in collections of chocolate candies as a way to lessen the cost of the collection. I don't understand how it came to be called what it is. Even the FDA has ruled it is not real chocolate after chocolate manufacturers complained. It's not terrible, but it takes away from real chocolate that I'd rather have in my collections. Furthermore, I once bought a whole box of white chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups from Costco because they were on a steep discount (with good reason) and before I knew about the scam. I suffered through finishing that box at work, only when I was desperate for some sugar. Severity: 3

#349: Real Scam Time Life Music Collection Informercial

I couldn't sleep one night and went to finish up a hockey game on the DVR at 3:00 AM and I see Billy Dee Williams on live TV before I switch to the game (he's not looking too good) and so had to stop to see what he was up to. He was promoting a pretty cool Motown collection and the infomercial was great. But the pricing was a total scam. They never even gave it, they just said "Pay a $9.95 trial fee" and if you don't like it, send it back and owe nothing more." So I didn't like that they never once in the ad stated how much the actual cost would be to own the item, which I'm sure was probably over $100. And also, I am sure some of the songs are abbreviated version, as Time Life is known to do, though with a Motown collection, this wouldn't be too big of an issue since most of the songs were short already so they wouldn't have to cut them, but there still are some long version of 70's temptations songs that I bet they cut. Severity: 3

#348: Siren Ear Pluggers

Often when a fire engine goes through downtown, I notice a lot of people putting their fingers in their ears. Wimps. This annoys me in that I feel it shows people are so scared of their ear drums that they can't take a little noise every now and then. It's not like it's constant blaring that will harm them so don't be a wuss and get your damn fingers out of your ears! Severity: 2

#347: IM status at work

People that always have "busy" on their IM status at work. Like they are the only ones that do any work? I can understand occasionally putting this status on when you really can't be bothered except for emergencies, but when it's overused, that annoys me that people think they are more important than others. Severity: 2

#346: Nicknames at work

I'm annoyed at people that go by some different name than their "official" name at work, but don't update their email. So in the corporate directory, it says one name, but they tell you another so you can't look them up. Stupid. Why can't they update the directory with their name they prefer, instead of confusing everyone? Severity: 3

#345: Online Customer Service

A lot of time, I have issues with accounts that aren't that urgent, so I figure I'll use the online "contact us" secure email to ask my question. But 80% of the time, I get a response to the effect that "Sorry, we can't help you, we'll forward this to someone else who will research it and get back to you" and this happens even with simple things. It really makes it pointless to offer this option if you can't really solve your problems via this communication method. Severity: 2

#344: No Juice in Lemonade

I've notice that on fountain drink dispensers, Minute Maid Lemonade now says "contains 0% juice" which I find appalling. I mean, at least make an attempt to make us feel that we are enjoying real lemon. I refuse to ever drink this beverage, even if I'm really craving lemonade. Severity: 1

#343: Multiple Account Bank Mailings

There is this one small bank I have some money in. I have 2 CDs, a Savings Account, and a checking account. The fools send me 4 separate envelopes with statements for each one. Not only can they not figure out how to link them all into one statement and one envelope, but I even said I don't want to get paper statements and they can't NOT send them out because they don't do electronic statements and the bank law states you must provide one somehow. Fools. Severity: 2

#342: Early Magazine Renewal Letters

Hopefully I don't have this one already (I am up there in numbers by now), but I just got a renewal for my BusinessWeek on January 5. My subscription expires on JULY 27! And I expect at least 5 more letters before they give up. Severity: 2

#341: Early Happy New Year Wishes

Please don't wish me happy new year before the new year. It is bad luck. Only after sundown on December 31 through 11:59:59pm on January 31 is this wish appropriate. Severity: 1

#340: Swerving 4-wheel drivers

I've noticed a lot of people driving in the snow in Tahoe skidding around turns and purposely swerving while driving straight in order for them to enjoy their 4wd vehicle not skidding out. This also allows them to justify the thousands of dollars extra they paid for the vehicle and in gas due to bad economy for going skiing 3 times a year. I find it arrogant, stupid, and dangerous. Severity: 4