Dear Mom from the Olive Garden Commercial

I wouldn’t get my hopes up about Donna.

Love,
Ron

Dear US Postal Service

Hi There! Thanks for making sure my bills arrive every day. I noticed you’ve taken to including a bright pink “Important Notice” with my mail most days now. You know that one… the “Customer’s Responsibilities Regarding Snow Removal” sheer, that includes the following helpful picture about what we need to do:

I think that’s great, and in an ideal world, we could all be happy. Unfortunately, that’s just not going to happen. Here’s an important notice for you about the realities of snow removal. I’ve included some helpful pictures so you can understand what exactly is going on:

As you can see, it really doesn’t matter what I do at 10 in the morning, if you are going to show up at 4pm, after the snow plow has run through. My mailbox is going to be buried. Now, you can act annoyed and keep my mail, you can deal with the snow issue and deliver my mail anyway, or (my favorite idea) you can attach a little plow to the front of your truck, and kill two birds with one stone. But what you don’t need to do is give me any more of these stupid pink sheets.

Thanks!
Ron

Dear Preview App on OSX

When I rotate an image and then save it, you need to actually rotate the image! Otherwise my image gets posted upside-down and I end up looking like a complete idiot.

With Love,
uoɹ

Dear Web Browser Manufacturers

Why do you insist on making the ‘backspace’ navigate my browser back in history. Why in the world would someone think “Hey, I’m going to navigate to the previous page in my browser’s history. Time to press ‘backspace’!”?

I’m guessing long ago, someone did, and added that behavior to Mosaic, or Netscape 1.0, or whatever, and since then it’s been a feature of every single browser ever, because hey, everyone else did it, so therefore it must mean people want it, right?

No. No they don’t. Backspace means “erase the character to the left of my cursor”. (Don’t tell me that it’s supposed to be a forward delete, btw.) If I think I’ve focused a text field, and hit backspace, but in reality I have lost focus on that text field, I don’t want the whole freaking page I’m browsing to change to whatever it was before. I want the system to beep, to alert me that I can’t remove a character to the left of my cursor, because my cursor is nowhere near a character.

Make this happen please. Thanks.

Dear 2 College Freshman Guys Hitting on the Clearly Uninterested Barista,

Hey. Here’s the deal.. it’s not working.

First off, your ability to form an association between the drink “French Kiss” with the physical act “french kiss” is neither clever nor funny. Your repeated assurances that your recent endeavors had your friends “laughing their asses off” does not, in fact, make her (or any of us in the audience… I assume we are intended to be the audience, as you’re talking loud enough to overpower any other conversation in the shop) believe you to be funny. She’s more likely to assume your friends are at least as lame, if not even more lame, that you two are, and that time spent with you and/or them would make working here in the coffee shop at 1:45 in the morning seem like the heights of adventure and entertainment in comparison.

I’m going to give you some advise (because clearly I am the voice of experience and success):

1. Say what you would like to drink
2. Hand her the money required
3. Say thank you
4. Tip if you feel so inclined (I would recommend doing so)
5. Leave

Now… that probably won’t lead to you hooking up with this barista in any way, but it will likely quell my intense desire to bludgeon you to death with my chair… and I think that’s something.

I’m just trying to help,
Ron

Dear Loud Guy hitting on that Soccer Mom in the Coffee Shop

Hey, how’s it going? Pretty good, eh? You seem like you’re in a good mood. Um.. here’s the deal, and I hate to be a bother, but you’re really, really loud. There’s no reason to be that loud. You’re right next to the person you are talking to, and I have earphones in, and I’m sitting at the other end of the shop, and I can hear you loud and clear. That’s not good.

Another thing, and again, I hate to trouble you with this, but I’m afraid you’re a complete idiot. When you say there are “two shows you’re really hooked on right now: Terminator, House, and 2 and a Half Men” it bothers me… because it means you either don’t know what “2″ means, or you think there’s actually a show about a cantankerous cyborg from the future able to solve mysterious medical oddities while protecting humanity’s only hope for the future. Also… 2 and a Half Men? Really?

I’m not going to take you to task for your butchering of the English language, but I would urge you to study up on subject-verb agreement when you get a chance. Also, you’ve changed tenses frequently enough in this short conversation that any reasonable person would at this point believe you capable of time travel.

One final thing, and I’ll let you get back to trying to woo this clearly starved for attention lady… I say this in love, and hope it’s taken in the spirit that it is meant: That mustache makes you look like a child-predator.

Good luck on your date!
Ron

Dear Big Black Super-Fast Jumping Spider Capable of Withstanding Repeated Smashes Against My Office Wall and Who Twice Climbed Onto My Hand While I Was Typing at My Desk

You scare the hell out of me. Please never come back.

Cowering in fear,
Ron

Dear NBC,

You seem confused, so I’m going to help you out. You’ve got your Olympic logo up in the corner, and that’s cool. Above it you have “LIVE“. Now, here’s where we run into some trouble. I think a lot of people will see that, and think “Oh, what they are showing on the screen is happening right now“. You see, in this context, that is the common definition of the word “Live”. But that’s clearly not what you mean… I’ll tell you how I know:

I was up kinda late last night, and was checking some of the news headlines, and it talked about Michael Phelps’ first race. I read through the article, which included a description of the race, the results, and some events following the race. A couple hours later I turned on the TV, and there was the Olympic Logo, and above it: “LIVE“… Turns out it was a swimming race featuring Michael Phelps. As the race went on, I figured out [rather quickly] that things were going just as they had been described online hours ago. So barring some temporal anomaly or strange time altering technology I am not yet aware of, your “LIVE” logo does not mean what we would commonly assume it means. There are perhaps two other definitions I could think of that would apply in this situation:

1. An imperative statement to continue to exist, kinda like when someone gives a person CPR on TV: “Live!”
2. An assurance that the events being shown were at one time happening in real time (i.e. This sporting event was filmed before a live studio audience). This seems somewhat unnecessary.

Hope this helps!
Ron

P.S. I don’t think “Must see TV” means what you think it does either.

Dear Paychex Website,

I want to be as clear as humanly possible: You are awful.

Here’s the deal, I went to your site because you fubar’d my account, and are now taking my money. I need my money, so I need to get this fixed. I registered for an account, and you said that my Social Security number was already registered. Fine… I guess I’ll just log in then.

I attempted to log in, and it said my user was not found. So I clicked on your “Forgot your username” item, and filled in my Social Security number, and you said “No user found for this SSN”. At this point, a robot’s head would explode. I still need my money, so I continued.

I gave creating a new user a go again. I filled out my Social Security number again, which you kindly block from showing on screen, replacing it with “*“’s. I appreciate that. Then, after filling out all the information again, I clicked submit, and you popped up a window showing my full Social Security Number saying it was already taken. Nice job, idiots. At this point, any sane person’s head would explode.

I still need my money,
Ron

P.S. I really, really want to punch you in the face.

Dear Joe Buck and Tim McCarver

Okay, this has just gone on to long. You guys just need to shut up. You are just terrible. There are so many ways in which you are terrible, that it would be easier to just list the ways in which you aren’t terrible, and then just subtract that from everything you do, and you’ll have your list.

Ready for the list? Here we go:

1. You occasionally get the score right.

I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got. In closing, you are terrible.

I mute you,
Ron