I always, always, always specify the remote and branch name whenever I push. It's saved me many headaches; colleagues often seem annoyed that I do this, but for some reason making it a habit has been invaluable.
I do, however, support "getting the defaults right".
You're not. It seems to drive some people nuts that I obsessively type "vim" instead of "vi" even though most of the time the default differences won't be an issue.
It's to be expected, people are threatened by anything different, no reason command line habits should be any different.
I do the same thing... the time spent typing the extra characters is trivial, my annoyance when my editor doesn't behave exactly as I expect because I was on a differently configured server is huge by comparison.
+1. i do the same. Given i end up working on a different variety of unices. it's less of a surprise when i get command not found than dropping to vi and not finding the familiar commands.
I do, however, support "getting the defaults right".