OCR Software

This isn't really interesting, but it's one of those things that piss me off, so I figured I'd air it here on the Blog! Everybody knows that anger-inducing things make for really good reading. You see it everywhere. Comedians. News. Billboards. The little labels in your underwear.

"Warning! It really angers these boxer shorts to be washed in anything but warm, soft, fluffy water! If these instructions are not carried out word for word, the shorts will shrivel and wilt, leaving you exposed to the elements. Also, you must hum softly to them while they're in the dryer."

Okay, so I made that up. Neither I, nor anybody I know, owns such a temperamental pair of boxy shorts. I'm sure some of you out there have a friend who deserves whiny underwear, but let us not dwell on this. The point here is not underwear. It is Things that Piss You Off.

For me, during the last half hour, it's been OCR software. That stands for Optical Character Recognition, and it's supposed to allow you to scan a printed page with your...scanner...and instead of ending up with a picture of your page, the software squints at the image and tries to make out text that you can then save as a Mikerzovt Wurd document. All of this would be dandy indeed---if it actually worked. Which it doesn't, so you end up with a bunch of grabble that looks like this:

fr8 mee, duri#g the l@st ha/f h0Wr. -- Itz b33n OGR softwuRs. Ha ha! Let'se se3 you figre% this mes5 out!

So yeah. It's useless. I'm almost positive that I've got it figured out, and the program's just jacking me around. Hey, that's computers for ya, though.

Since I'm lazy, how about I post some more stuff I wrote a long time ago? I'm going to consider the preceding paragraphs "enough" original material for now and stick you loyal time-wasters with a list of things that annoy me. This isn't a serious list, of course. If anything serious happens to accidentally show up here, please let me know! I'll have it shot.

1.) Bad-tasting mustard

2.) Getting a cold and having only one nostril get stuffed up

3.) Little kids who smell bad.

4.) Little kids who smell bad and want credit for it.

5.) Those colorful little sprinkles on cupcakes or doughnuts; they look like they'd all have an individual fruity flavor, but they all taste the same. Chalky.

6.) People who know nothing about any given person, place or thing, but still want to tell you how stupid it is.

7.) Getting cat hair in my mouth that always shows up later after I thought I got it out.

8.) Lotion. I don’t know if I've just been using the crappy stuff, but it never moistens the parts of my hands that need it, and makes the rest too slippery to use. It’s like trying to pick up a carp smeared with engine oil.

9.) Falling down, getting up, and falling back down again.

10.) Heating up a TV dinner and ending up with two frozen sections and a burnt one.

11.) Getting snow in my pants.

12.) Little kids who think they know everything.

13.) Sitting down in a recently used chair, and having it be really warm. Makes me nervous.

14.) Flat pop.

15.) People who want to talk to you in a public bathroom. Unless they want to tell you stories. I can dig that.

16.) Deodorant that makes you smell like an old man.