u235

This is probably more in the "irk" class of woes than in the "rant" class. It has to do with a lack of consistency in how states are ordered in a drop-down list. So why is this a problem for anyone? It's a problem for me because I do most of my shopping online because I detest box stores (well ok, the people *in* the box stores, not the stores themselves... I find an almost-empty store to be a pleasant store).

Since, as I said, I like to shop online I have to enter my mailing address. Unfortunately I live in one of the many states that begins with an "M".

Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Montana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri... the M-states have it all the heck over any other letter (since "A" and "W" are the next runners up with a paltry four). What bothers me is the ordering of the states when they are displayed in a list.

If you're selecting from the 2-letter acronym it makes sense for MA to come first, and ME to come later. If you're looking at the full spelling it should be correct for Maine to be at the top of the list. What makes absolutely no damn sense is to have ME, then MD and then MA. None.

I'm sure there's billions of lines of hand coding to ensure that states are not automatically ordered alphabetically. It would be a damn brilliant idea for everyone to agree on a single implementation depending on the number of letters displayed - or better just *always* sort things alphabetically!