But updates might get a little sparse for the next week or two while I adjust to the new job. For those of you who are local, I will be at the faire booth this weekend. (And may, in fact, be *running* the booth for a day or so… but that’s another story)
Category Archives: Grumbles
I could deal Netscape and IE getting the heave ho…
But this? M$ is dumping support for Outlook Express. Crap, man. I actually use that. Not ’cause it rocks so much more than anything else, but cause it’s such a honking pain to import my outlook tainted mail into anything else that I’ve given up trying. And the big, bloated piece of crap that is Outlook 2002? Bleah. Just kill me now.
I still think it's bullshit
Scott Andrew has some thoughts on privacy and blogging:
When most of us think of privacy and weblogs, we think of obvious things like pseudonyms and slapping password protection on a directory. I have to admit that when Joyce approached me with the idea, the first thing I though was, “oh, that’s like LiveJournal” and “what’s wrong with .htaccess?” So much of the talk about weblogging concerns unfettered sharing (via posting, comments, syndication, Trackback, etc.) ? little, if any, voice is given to the opposite.
The knee-jerk response to this is the well-worn “don’t put it on the Web, then!” which admittedly is the best solution. But this becomes unworkable as weblogging continues to weave itself into the fabric of business and everyday life.
Unworkable how? Just because *everyone* (or so it sometimes seems) has a camera phone or a moble blogging device of some sort, how does this translate into the idea that it will soon become *impossible* to keep our thoughts and visual adventures off the web?
Does Scott truly believe that technology is about to become that intrusive or that bloggers have that little self control over the blog/not blog reflex?
My new T-shirt will read…
I don’t mind that one of my duties at work is to answer the phone. It’s not exactly tough, brain intensive, or physically demanding. However – I suck at voices. As in, matching a phone voice to a name for someone I have never actually met is not a workable deal for me. So everyone gets a polite “may I ask who’s calling?” before I pass the call on. For most callers, this is not a problem.
But then there are the jokers. The ones who want to play a game of twenty questions. Because it is fairly unfathomable to them that I don’t know who I’m speaking with. Guys, I’ve had to bluff my way though phone conversations with friends I’ve known for ten years when the connection is spotty or the voice just isn’t popping out in my memory. Do you seriously think that your generically male middle aged voice is going to act as a serious identifier when I’ve been at this place for only two weeks? Sheesh.
But on the up side, they are charming (if grump inducing) and I think they all really do mean well. But I’m still tempted to ask them why they feel I’m getting paid to play guessing games. Maybe it’s some off kind of hazing. Or… maybe I’ll start memorizing the voices. Odder things have happened.
Once again, the mac proves itself user-unfriendly
Today I learned that although it is possible to add memory to an iMac without an Apple tech on site, Apple in no way wants you to muck about with the innards of it’s machines and makes the process as obscure as possibe without actually welding the case shut. Took me over an hour just to get the damm thing *open*.
On the plus side, I did manage to install the memory upgrade my boss wanted. On the minus side, it turns out that the chip MacWarehouse sent us was for 128MB, half the size of the chip we actually ordered. The packing slip and order confirmation all concurred that we had been sent the size chip that had been paid for, but as far as the machine was concerned, it was a 128MB chip.
So tomorrow, I get to crack the case and go through the whole process again. Yerg. But hey – learning new stuff.