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For several weeks now a few local radio stations have been playing Christmas music non-stop, and I love hearing the songs celebrating the season -- especially the traditional carols. How can you help but feel better when you hear Nat King Cole's smooth voice singing "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." (The Christmas Song) or Bing Crosby wishing you a White Christmas with every Christmas card he writes. And when Mark Lowry asks Mary if she knew that her baby boy would one day walk on water, it gives me chills. My drive home from work from late November to...

The User Account Control in Windows Vista improves security by reducing application privileges from administrative to standard levels, but UAC has been widely criticized for the nagging alerts it generates. According to oneMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT) executive, the annoyance factor was actually part of the plan. In a Thursday presentation at RSA 2008 in San Francisco, David Cross, a product unit manager at Microsoft who was part of the team that developed UAC, admitted that Microsoft's strategy with UAC was to irritate users and ISVs in order to get them to change their behavior."The reason we put UAC into the platform...

Santa Ana has created a new category of public nuisance: dogs that bark incessantly for no apparent reason. And under the law, the owners of such dogs may have to pay. The city has received nearly 1,000 complaints of noisy animals since 2001, but only three rose to the level of a criminal proceeding. The new law, adopted late Monday, allows the city to issue citations to the owners of barking dogs without pursuing a criminal case.

NEW YORK -- The Gwinnett County mother kicked off an airplane with her 19-month old son tried to tell her side of the story Friday morning, but her son's crying drowned out part of the interview. Garren Penland, 19-months old, got so unruly during his mom's chat with 'Good Morning America' anchor Diane Sawyer, co-anchor Chris Cuomo had to take the toddler off the set. While Kate Penland explained her child was well-behaved on the Continental Express flight, little Garren kicked, wiggled and squirmed out of his mother's arms. At one point he climbed up on a coffee table and...

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. -- A Georgia mother said she wants answers and action after she and her baby were kicked off a plane. Kate Penland said she was glad to board the plane in Houston to visit her father in Oklahoma after an 11-hour delay. But she said a rude and aggressive flight attendant caused her to get to Oklahoma a day late. Penland thinks her 19-month-old son, Garren, has a bubbly personality. But Penland said when they were aboard a Continental Express plane, a flight attendant became annoyed by Garren's personality when he kept saying three words. "As we...

Coming soon to a theater near you: movie rage, the outright warfare threatening to erupt any day now between the talkers and the shushers. And between the cell-phoners - and candy-wrapper crinklers and seat-kickers and laptop users - and the rest of us, who used to go to the movies a lot more often, before our fellow audience members' rude behavior drove us away. Recent studies show that's one of the top reasons for the slump in movie theater attendance. Frankly, we already knew.

OK Freepers. What are some of your pet peeves? Political, or otherwise??

I find that in my day, its the mundane annoyances and not societal ills that get my goat. I'm going to start my curmudgeonly list, feel free to add: 1. People who leave long messages on cellphones and voicemail - I'm going to have to call you back, anyway, so why make me listen to it? 2. People who engage in chitchatty conversations on cellphones in bars, restaurants, bank lines and airplanes - why do I want to hear about how you're going to clean your basement, or the play by play on the game you're not watching? Just stop...

Every person on the net has one thing in common. They all hate spam. E-mails offering Viagra via the net Anyone who has an e-mail account will have received these unsolicited commercial messages that offer you things you do not want, at prices you will not pay, from companies you will never call. 2002 was a bumper year for these messages and now 30% of all mail flying around the net is thought to be spam. Filtering firm Surf Control has compiled a list of the top 10 most annoying spam messages sent across the net in the last 12...