I did not have an anal probe

But I'm feeling bored tonight anyway (well, kinda - it's all relative), so I have just enough free time on my hands to do what I often do best: nitpick

A short list of random minor peeves that have come up lately (and sometimes, not-so-lately)...

Posting bit.ly or tiny.url links on Facebook. Yeah, I know that this custom was born in a Twitter environment, where each post had a maximum limit of 140 characters and long URLs added up fast. However, Facebook and every other site other than Twitter does not adhere to any such limit; instead, links like this make it tough to distinguish between legit links or spammy ones (or even viruses or ads). If you're going to post a link outside of Twitter, use the real, full link already.

The fact that TV commercials over the past 10 years have adopted a more variable catalog of music than the radio. I mean, I can't remember the last time I heard Young MC's "Bust a Move", Elton John's "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues", or Devo's "Whip It" on the radio, but I'm reminded of all the above as part of certain TV commercials on a regular basis.

Speaking of commercials, national ad spots that feature snow and sleighbells in South Texas as early as October and definitely in November. What they don't realize is that South Texas still sees temperatures in the 70s and 80s fairly regularly during that time - regularly enough to make us simply scoff at advertisers; national spot or not, the advertisers only appear out-of-touch.

Facebook's constant compulsion to change things. They had eradicated game invites from your notifications. Our individual profiles were easy to follow and they contained more information, which was neatly laid out in simple lists. The most recent status appeared at the top. The layout was fine the way it was. Then they had to go change things. The most recent round of useless changes kicked off with the FB Powers That Be combing through your interests, TV shows, books, etc, and adding tags to them. This added a link to that item's indexed Facebook info (which was usually lifted from Wikipedia). If one of your listed interests didn't match FB's database, FB tried for the next closest thing. As a result, a shit-ton of musical artists I actually liked, got somehow translated into artists I've never heard of, like DJ Hawk and A Road Less Traveled. Even worse is, anything that FB couldn't link to, it removed! And then they decided to fuck with profiles, and yes, what they did to them deserves language that strong. And then to force everyone into conversion whether they wanted the new profile or not...assinine.

Everything PC. PC Politically Correct, or PC Microshaft? Yes. (Both.) But my crosshairs this time around are reserved for the wanna-be deity in Washington state who stole a good idea, bogged it down with bugs, and mass-marketed it to every Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and CEO schlepp who wanted to be both stupid AND boring. Because they got duped, so did the rest of us. Suddenly, this abomination-in-technology became our standard, for Christ's sake, and everyone had to try and figure out what a C-prompt (and later, an "illegal operation error" or worse, the BSOD or Blue Screen of Death) was. Wow, I can feel my vocabulary expanding. It now contains phrases that were cryptic and frustrating before, and totally irrelevant now.

Crappy cell phones. Are we still stuck back in 1998? Inconsistent signals and bad audio quality were semi-acceptable then, as the technology was just getting off the ground. Cell towers were just being built and cell phone manufacturers were trying to nail down the details. But in 2011, it just seems like some aspects have gotten worse. Oh sure, our phones can now take pictures, play MP3s, store data, and surf the web, but the big question remains, when we talk, can I hear you?

Yep, that sums it up for tonight.