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The GE microwave that came with my house is worse than I thought was possible. It includes an appointment scheduler (!) and has some sort of message button I've never pressed for fear of being reminded of what my voice sounds like. Apparently the designers thought there was a large underserved market of families whose entire lives revolve around their microwaves. All the buttons to support these extra features mainly make it less convenient to use for heating up food.

The worst feature by far is its insistence on having its clock set. Every time I lose electricity, which happens every few weeks in my neighborhood, it refuses to cook anything until I:

  1. Press "clock" to set the time (even though all other functions are disabled).
  2. Enter the time in HHMM format.
  3. Press "start" (but don't get too excited about actually "starting" anything yet).
  4. Locate the single-purpose "AM/PM" button and press that either once or twice.
  5. Press "start" again.
  6. Enter the date in MMDDYY format.
  7. And again press "start".
What this means is that you can always calculate how long it has been since the first time I zapped my morning instant oatmeal after the last power outage by subtracting from the current time and date displayed by the microwave: 2011-11-11 11:11 a.m.

So, yeah, don't design a web site like that.




If it's a toaster, it probably can run NetBSD.

Since you don't report any crashes, it's a plausible idea.

I don't think it's possible to design a webite as cruel as this microwave.


You, sir, have clearly never dealt with web-based course management software :).


If it's a toaster, it probably can run NetBSD.

Since you don't report any crashes, it's a plausible idea.

I don't think it's possible to design a webite as cruel as this microwave.


My dad has a microwave that I simply cannot figure out how to operate, period. Last time I spent about 10 minutes trying.


If it's a toaster, it probably can run NetBSD.

Since you don't report any crashes, it's a plausible idea.

I don't think it's possible to design a webite as cruel as this microwave.


I believe I had that same microwave. Here's a hint: Hold down the 0 button for a few seconds and the time display will turn off :)


If that works after the next outage, I owe you my life, or at least 0.002% of it.




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