Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[E-Design]

The standard of up for on might have originated from the days of Frankenstein and his monster and similar, where he used a knife switch in the lab. Gravity would keep the switch harmlessly in the off position with no chance of falling to the on position like it would if down was on.

Yes the knife switch.. a sensible answer to the possible origin of the convention!

[Ed.Kloonk]

There seems to be an assumption that the default should be off. Fine for the techy handling the bare wires, but for the other 99.999% of the time a user would be really badly put out if the lights go out accidentally. For that and similar reasons, down = on makes more sense.

Also, with down = on, the tops the switches can be coloured red to show they are on. With up = on, you'd never see that

When I was a boy, they told us that the earth pin should be on the bottom because of plug and gravity and stuff and that you want the earth to stay connected until the very last.

(The whole outlet is up side down)

[Ed.Kloonk]

The standard of up for on might have originated from the days of Frankenstein and his monster and similar, where he used a knife switch in the lab. Gravity would keep the switch harmlessly in the off position with no chance of falling to the on position like it would if down was on.

Who would trust Marty Feldman with any high power switch?

[Labrat101]

This is also UP on ..
The Top Flash Bar breakers Are Up Off .. (Trips)

[Sal Ammoniac]

Personally I find it's easiest to just look at the light and see if it's on.

Same here. And since most of the wall switches in my house are 3-way, it doesn't matter anyway.

The only time the on position of a wall switch mattered to me was the time I installed a ceiling light for my sister-in-law. She moved into a new house and the builder installed the wall switch and wired it to a receptacle in the ceiling, but the lighting fixture itself was left to the homeowner to install. When installing the lighting fixture, I flipped the wall switch to the down position and proceeded to wire the light fixture to the bare wires coming out of the ceiling. I didn't get very far when I touched the bare wires and got a nasty shock. Upon investigation I found that the switch was installed upside down and "on" was "down" and "off" was "up". Yes, I know I should have turned the circuit off at the breaker before doing the install--lesson learned. All of the other wall switches in the house were installed the conventional way (for the U.S.) with "on" being "up" and "down" being "off".

[Labrat101]

Personally I find it's easiest to just look at the light and see if it's on.

Same here. And since most of the wall switches in my house are 3-way, it doesn't matter anyway.

The only time the on position of a wall switch mattered to me was the time I installed a ceiling light for my sister-in-law. She moved into a new house and the builder installed the wall switch and wired it to a receptacle in the ceiling, but the lighting fixture itself was left to the homeowner to install. When installing the lighting fixture, I flipped the wall switch to the down position and proceeded to wire the light fixture to the bare wires coming out of the ceiling. I didn't get very far when I touched the bare wires and got a nasty shock. Upon investigation I found that the switch was installed upside down and "on" was "down" and "off" was "up". Yes, I know I should have turned the circuit off at the breaker before doing the install--lesson learned. All of the other wall switches in the house were installed the conventional way (for the U.S.) with "on" being "up" and "down" being "off".

@ James .. And if the BULB is Dead . .. Its a 50 / 50 chance its the other way .. Murphy's Law

Here we are 250v so if you get it wrong the the 2 neons Balls  Glow ..

[CatalinaWOW]

Personally I find it's easiest to just look at the light and see if it's on.

Same here. And since most of the wall switches in my house are 3-way, it doesn't matter anyway.

The only time the on position of a wall switch mattered to me was the time I installed a ceiling light for my sister-in-law. She moved into a new house and the builder installed the wall switch and wired it to a receptacle in the ceiling, but the lighting fixture itself was left to the homeowner to install. When installing the lighting fixture, I flipped the wall switch to the down position and proceeded to wire the light fixture to the bare wires coming out of the ceiling. I didn't get very far when I touched the bare wires and got a nasty shock. Upon investigation I found that the switch was installed upside down and "on" was "down" and "off" was "up". Yes, I know I should have turned the circuit off at the breaker before doing the install--lesson learned. All of the other wall switches in the house were installed the conventional way (for the U.S.) with "on" being "up" and "down" being "off".

@ James .. And if the BULB is Dead . .. Its a 50 / 50 chance its the other way .. Murphy's Law

Here we are 250v so if you get it wrong the the 2 neons Balls  Glow ..

Even though we use low voltage (120V) bulbs here in the US, I still use old high voltage habits when changing light bulbs.  Don't touch metal parts, only use one hand.  I don't usually open the breaker, though my wife nags me about it from time to time.  But even with that bit of carelessness the chance of testicular illumination is quite low regardless of the switch position.  Particularly for homeowner changers of bulbs who should know which direction their switches work.  Even the three way ones.

[james_s]

The only time the on position of a wall switch mattered to me was the time I installed a ceiling light for my sister-in-law. She moved into a new house and the builder installed the wall switch and wired it to a receptacle in the ceiling, but the lighting fixture itself was left to the homeowner to install. When installing the lighting fixture, I flipped the wall switch to the down position and proceeded to wire the light fixture to the bare wires coming out of the ceiling. I didn't get very far when I touched the bare wires and got a nasty shock. Upon investigation I found that the switch was installed upside down and "on" was "down" and "off" was "up". Yes, I know I should have turned the circuit off at the breaker before doing the install--lesson learned. All of the other wall switches in the house were installed the conventional way (for the U.S.) with "on" being "up" and "down" being "off".

The former owner of my house knew just enough about electricity to do stuff without knowing enough to do it right. There was an interior light fixture installed on the back wall outside next to the hot tub which I decided to replace with a proper outdoor fixture. When I removed the old one from the wall I was surprised to find there was no junction box, just a 1/4" hole in the wall which the wires ran through. Fortunately the laundry room is on the other side and has one of those suspended ceilings so I was able to access the wall cavity from the top. I reached down in and found there was a box extension installed on the inside which had no cover on it, and the wire nuts were not properly installed and the one on the live wire fell off and I got a shock while standing on a ladder with my arm stuck down the wall, not fun. The switch was off so I opened the switch box and discovered both switches were on the neutral. At that point I opened up every other box downstairs and found that ALL of the switches were on the neutral, with exception of the two lights in the rec room which had been wired when the house was built.

Now I always confirm everything is dead with a non-contact voltage probe before I mess around. And if I ever buy a different house one of the first things I'll do is open up and inspect every electrical box in the place to see what surprises are lurking.

[Labrat101]

Just one of my  pet peeve is the Duvet . How I hate this invention .
Yes its nice and toasty on a cold night .
But changing the Cover on this is like trying to push water back into a running tap 
Yes I know all the correct ways to do it . But doing this single handed . is a Nightmare .
I put changing a Duvet cover worse than listening to Shakespeare .. 

Have Fun Stay safe 

[DrG]

Corrected 1099s that reach me 24h after I file....R_t B_s___d S__s of B_____s

[Cubdriver]

The only time the on position of a wall switch mattered to me was the time I installed a ceiling light for my sister-in-law. She moved into a new house and the builder installed the wall switch and wired it to a receptacle in the ceiling, but the lighting fixture itself was left to the homeowner to install. When installing the lighting fixture, I flipped the wall switch to the down position and proceeded to wire the light fixture to the bare wires coming out of the ceiling. I didn't get very far when I touched the bare wires and got a nasty shock. Upon investigation I found that the switch was installed upside down and "on" was "down" and "off" was "up". Yes, I know I should have turned the circuit off at the breaker before doing the install--lesson learned. All of the other wall switches in the house were installed the conventional way (for the U.S.) with "on" being "up" and "down" being "off".

The former owner of my house knew just enough about electricity to do stuff without knowing enough to do it right. There was an interior light fixture installed on the back wall outside next to the hot tub which I decided to replace with a proper outdoor fixture. When I removed the old one from the wall I was surprised to find there was no junction box, just a 1/4" hole in the wall which the wires ran through. Fortunately the laundry room is on the other side and has one of those suspended ceilings so I was able to access the wall cavity from the top. I reached down in and found there was a box extension installed on the inside which had no cover on it, and the wire nuts were not properly installed and the one on the live wire fell off and I got a shock while standing on a ladder with my arm stuck down the wall, not fun. The switch was off so I opened the switch box and discovered both switches were on the neutral. At that point I opened up every other box downstairs and found that ALL of the switches were on the neutral, with exception of the two lights in the rec room which had been wired when the house was built.

Now I always confirm everything is dead with a non-contact voltage probe before I mess around. And if I ever buy a different house one of the first things I'll do is open up and inspect every electrical box in the place to see what surprises are lurking.

Home wiring is far from rocket surgery, yet so many people find creative ways to half ass and otherwise fuck it up - it's mind blowing.

When I did my rewire, I followed the suggestions in a book I'd been reading and tried to group the breakers in the panels by function, always fed the supply wire in from the bottom left of the box, labeled the cables where they emerged from the panel and finally used a paint pen to write the panel and breaker number inside of each box and also on the yoke of the devices in the box so that by simply removing the cover plate you can immediately tell what circuit(s) are feeding a given box and go shut down the appropriate breaker(s) with no fuss.  Also kept lighting and power receptacle circuits separate so that if one or the other must be turned off for work on it you can still either have the overhead lighting or a hot receptacle to plug in a lamp, and every room has receptacles on two separate circuits to always have a hot circuit to feed tools and whatnot.  Previously, whole rooms were on a single circuit and killing it killed ALL power and lighting.  Very frustrating to work on back then.

-Pat

[MrMobodies]

Animated placeholders/skeletons that appear after every page/element load and visually annoy me in the process whether the page load is slow and is repetitive or fast where it flashes.



In this case on Stuff.nz it is with lazyload but can't hide the .lazyimg class element as it seems to also hide the pictures and some others .animated-background don't seem to stop it.

There's some of them that appear to set a delay as in element name like these that I found a couple of weeks ago on the Mozilla website:



It seems much quicker when I hid all that crap to stop seeing it but it seems to show the table before the contents and I am not sure if that delay if there is a delay has anything to do with it or not.

https://pastebin.com/sCrFH1Rc

Code: [Select]

addons.mozilla.org##.pswp__bg
addons.mozilla.org##.AutoSearchInput-suggestions-list
addons.mozilla.org###Loading
addons.mozilla.org##Loading
addons.mozilla.org##.Loading
addons.mozilla.org##.SearchSuggestion-icon
##.SearchSuggestion-icon
##.li.SearchResult
##.SearchResult-icon--loading
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-1.LoadingText--width-100
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-2.LoadingText--width-100
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-3.LoadingText--width-100
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-1.LoadingText--width-40
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-2.LoadingText--width-40
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-3.LoadingText--width-40
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-1.LoadingText--width-20
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-2.LoadingText--width-20
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-3.LoadingText--width-20
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-1.LoadingText--width-10
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-2.LoadingText--width-10
addons.mozilla.org##.LoadingText.LoadingText--delay-3.LoadingText--width-10
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[IDEngineer]

Happened again today: "Drivers" who do not understand a blinking yellow arrow, and just sit there until the light turns red forcing you to wait for another entire cycle. Aaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!!!!

[PlainName]

but it seems to show the table before the contents

Sounds like the classic amateur fix for a race condition.

[SilverSolder]

Happened again today: "Drivers" who do not understand a blinking yellow arrow, and just sit there until the light turns red forcing you to wait for another entire cycle. Aaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!!!!

The blinking yellow arrows are pretty new, in fairness!

[Circlotron]

People who think 666 is the number of the devil.

[TimFox]

Of course not.  666 is the number of the Beast.  Revelation 13, v 16-18.  A precursor of the injected microchip conspiracy.

[TimFox]

By the way, US Highway 666 (originally numbered as being parallel to US 66 of musical fame) was renumbered to US 491 in 2003, partly because of superstition and partly because of highway-sign theft.  It runs near the "Four Corners" area, where the State boundaries of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet.

[IDEngineer]

Happened again today: "Drivers" who do not understand a blinking yellow arrow, and just sit there until the light turns red forcing you to wait for another entire cycle. Aaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!!!!

The blinking yellow arrows are pretty new, in fairness!

Really? Where? I've had a driver's license for over 40 years and can't remember a time they weren't around. I've lived in the western USA most of my life, maybe they're new to the east?

Either way, "right turn on red" is another pet peeve - I just didn't want to type too long of a post. But I can't count the number of people who just sit there at a red light, already halfway around the corner, their intention to turn right totally obvious and 100% committed, yet they wait for the light to change despite zero cross traffic. And right turn on red has been available nationwide since I was a small child.

EDIT: Looks like flashing yellow arrows may have been a west coast thing until 2009: "In December 2009, after extensive testing, the Federal Highway Administration authorized use of flashing yellow arrows nationwide. A study conducted by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program determined that drivers had fewer crashes with flashing yellow left-turn arrows than with traditional yield-on-green signal configurations." Based on this, maybe western states were using them and the fedgov decided to sanction them nationwide based on what the western states had experienced. In any case, they've been nationwide for at least 10+ years.

[IDEngineer]

By the way, US Highway 666 (originally numbered as being parallel to US 66 of musical fame) was renumbered to US 491 in 2003, partly because of superstition and partly because of highway-sign theft.  It runs near the "Four Corners" area, where the State boundaries of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet.

That's an interesting renumbering. Odd highway numbers are supposed to run north-south, while even highway numbers are supposed to run east-west. Yet here they changed from an even number to an odd number. I presume they didn't also physically move the highway.... 

[Bud]

. And right turn on red has been available nationwide since I was a small child.

Fellow New Yorkers visiting the area perhaps?

Wikipedia:

All turns on red are forbidden in New York City unless a sign is posted permitting it.

[IDEngineer]

Yes, when right turn on red was enacted, the two jurisdictions specifically excluded were NYC and DC.

[james_s]

Happened again today: "Drivers" who do not understand a blinking yellow arrow, and just sit there until the light turns red forcing you to wait for another entire cycle. Aaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!!!!

The blinking yellow arrows are pretty new, in fairness!

Really? Where? I've had a driver's license for over 40 years and can't remember a time they weren't around. I've lived in the western USA most of my life, maybe they're new to the east?

Either way, "right turn on red" is another pet peeve - I just didn't want to type too long of a post. But I can't count the number of people who just sit there at a red light, already halfway around the corner, their intention to turn right totally obvious and 100% committed, yet they wait for the light to change despite zero cross traffic. And right turn on red has been available nationwide since I was a small child.

EDIT: Looks like flashing yellow arrows may have been a west coast thing until 2009: "In December 2009, after extensive testing, the Federal Highway Administration authorized use of flashing yellow arrows nationwide. A study conducted by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program determined that drivers had fewer crashes with flashing yellow left-turn arrows than with traditional yield-on-green signal configurations." Based on this, maybe western states were using them and the fedgov decided to sanction them nationwide based on what the western states had experienced. In any case, they've been nationwide for at least 10+ years.

I live in the Seattle area and I don't recall ever seeing a flashing arrow. Are they specific to certain locales? It seems like a reasonable idea and I'm pretty sure I'd have figured out what it means by the fact that yellow light means proceed with caution, but it isn't something I think I've ever encountered.

[IDEngineer]

Interesting. I've lived in CA, AZ, Eastern WA, and ID and they're a standard. I've driven in most Western states - I'm thinking of OR, CO, NV, UT, etc. - and haven't noticed their absence.

In any case, where they ARE used they've been around a while yet people just stare stupidly at them. What, do they think they're just decorations? Traffic signals that are facing your lane of traffic *mean something*. This is not a huge intuitive leap, as you mentioned.

[CatalinaWOW]

Interesting. I've lived in CA, AZ, Eastern WA, and ID and they're a standard. I've driven in most Western states - I'm thinking of OR, CO, NV, UT, etc. - and haven't noticed their absence.

In any case, where they ARE used they've been around a while yet people just stare stupidly at them. What, do they think they're just decorations? Traffic signals that are facing your lane of traffic *mean something*. This is not a huge intuitive leap, as you mentioned.

I think part of what is going on is people whose risk tolerance is lower than yours.  While I have seen people sit through these lights when there is absolutely no opposing traffic, I have also seen many people pass up opportunities that I would happily take.  And when riding with my wife watch her take opportunities that make my hair stand on end.  She embodies the old phrase "A miss is as good as a mile."

By the way I'll confirm that these lights exist in Oregon.