April 20th, 2007 at 9:52 am
(Politics)
I really have to wonder exactly why Fox News keeps letting Jack Thompson talk about his unproven and thus far patently wrong “theories” about video games. This is especially humorous in light of the evidence that shows Cho Seung Hui didn’t play video games. So in other words Jack-ass Thompson starts shooting his mouth off before any evidence is in. Not that it shocks me or anything. I do find it disappointing that Fox News lets him on the air. He does nothing but discredit what little credibility they may have. How about getting back to actually discussing the facts? Wouldn’t that be nice?
I am very happy with Rush Limbaugh’s words on the subject. Not in direct discussion of Thompson, but from the sounds of it one of his devotees. He brings up a very nice point that I unfortunately don’t see enough of in the real news (if there is such a thing these days). I have said the same about pornography for a long time. Yes, rapists and serial killers do love their porn. No question about that. Does the porn make them into rapists and serial killers? Most certainly not! What it says is that said type of person is drawn to said media, not that said media creates said type of person. Anyone who has taken a formal or symbolic logic class would know this, but apparently Jack Thompson hasn’t.
All said I have a love-hate relationship with Rush Limbaugh. Sometimes he says or does things that really just piss me off. He’ll defend people just because they’re on his political side of things and are in power, not because they’re good people or didn’t do anything wrong. He’ll spout off about things that I simply find ludicrous from time to time. On the other hand he does have good things too, like the above. It is nice to get the occasional reminder of the things I liked about conservatism…especially before the neo-cons came around. It isn’t Microsoft’s fault a man went on a killing rampage. It isn’t much of anyone’s fault beyond his own. His decision. I like that a lot. Jack Thompson would have us believe we’re slaves to what we see and have no ability to decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. Of course we’ve heard his argument before about pornography. Shit…we heard the same things about Rock and Roll back in the 50’s.
Though I don’t hold political ideals that in any way adhere to what any of the parties would consider to be in their platform, I hold a certain liking to conservatism. I’m not sure why, all said, perhaps at its root it is a bit more down to earth than most. Kind of like Libertarianism, I can understand it because it isn’t talking out of its ass all the time about things that simply don’t exist. Hopefully the neo-cons will disappear some day, religion will get its wallet out of politics, and people will start talking sense again.
Yeah, right.
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April 18th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
(Computing)
Having recently gotten a new computer at work I installed Office 2007, and man am I ever regretting that decision. Outlook 2007 isn’t all that bad in my book. Granted some folks (*cough*Trax*cough*) had some serious issues with the system fonts getting all fucked up, but I didn’t encounter that. Instead I’m having problems with Excel.
Now what kind of problems you might ask? Well, managing a lot of users and permissions in our main academic system requires me to keep track of things closely. After all, we don’t want to accidentally grant the wrong access to someone. There are tons of laws we must abide by in terms of who gets access to what. Let’s face it…I’m FERPA and HIPPA’s bitch. But that’s ok…it’s my job after all. 
To make my life a little easier I keep an external record of who has what so I can compare it against what is in the system from time to time and have a more sane version of what’s in there. I call it our Security Matrix, and it is basically an Excel workbook. One sheet holds what classes have what permissions, another which users have which classes, and a last one for special permissions granted to individual users. Very easy, very simple. Lately I’ve been reconciling some changes into the matrix from another spreadsheet I used to communicate account creations and changes with a couple of my colleagues who help me out with creating and changing accounts.
When trying to work on both at the same time Excel 2007 started getting all sorts of flaky. For instance when I’d make a change the grid would disappear for a few seconds, or a set of cells would get blurry. Sometimes all but the cell I was looking at would disappear for a moment. I thought this odd since this hadn’t been a problem in Excel 2003. Shit, it’s a fucking spreadsheet, and my new computer is far more powerful than the last (being much newer), so why the fuck would it start screwing up?
This is, of course, going beyond my main complaint about how you can no longer have more than one instance of Excel running. Thus Alt-Tab is all sorts of fucky now, since you have one item for excel, and one for each workbook under it. Things were much better when each workbook opened a new version of excel. Tabbing between tasks made sense then. Along these lines, though, today when tabbing between the two the one disappeared. The item was on the task bar, but I couldn’t get to it. I couldn’t click on it, I couldn’t do shit. Navigating through the morass of menus we have these days finally got me to it, but it was not maximized like it was before and I couldn’t do much of anything but save and hope it worked.
I restarted Excel, but it happened again about 20 minutes later. Restart again. Finally Excel just crashed. It managed to restart back where I was based on its autosaves or whatnot, but still. Excel fucking crashed working on what are some pretty fucking small documents. I’m not talking thousands of rows. Maybe a couple hundred in each. Mind you, there are no calculations in any of these cells either…just fucking text.
So what the fuck did Microsoft do to Office 2007? I think Ballmer has done everything within his power to make sure that none of Microsoft’s products are worth the CDs they’re sent out on. I haven’t heard a single good thing about Vista from anyone I know who has braved installing it. Shit, NamantH blew out his bass speaker because of Vista’s retarded power management setup. Office 2007 is all but completely worthless and quickly on the way to being uninstalled on my machine. I may go back to 2003…I may just start using Open Office for my work stuff just like I do for home.
Why? Because there is one all important thing to me in computers. One thing that trumps any level of ease of use, extra functionality, ability to customize, or whatnot. What is it? Stability. Plain and simple. If it doesn’t keep running correctly, it may as not run at all, and given how Office 2007 is working at the moment I might as well keep all of my user data on index cards. At least I know I’m not going to lose any of it during a crash.
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April 17th, 2007 at 6:24 am
(Literature)
I find myself disliking a lot of things that people keep telling me are supposed to be great. Nothing unusual there. For instance I don’t really see what all of the hoopla is about with the Godfather trilogy. Yeah, I can see some good points to it, but overall it doesn’t do much of anything for me. Brian, from Family Guy, had a nice comment on the movie: “It insists on itself”. I find the issue more simple - I can’t stand the sound. I’m not quite sure what Coppola was trying to accomplish with it, but all said something about the aural assault I receive when watching it really turns me off to it. I can only take clinking china and people arguing for so long. I should read the novels at some point to see if I like it better in written form.
Another one that didn’t impress me in the slightest was The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I read it, put it down, and thought “Meh.”
What’s my beef? Two things. First off nothing really happens. The novel sums to zero in the end. His grandiose rebellion that I have heard so much about doesn’t yield anything outside of himself or with himself for that matter. Secondly, and far more importantly, I don’t find Holden to be the slightest bit interesting. I was hoping that after the first few chapters we’d get to see something about this character that would be mind bending, but we don’t. Yeah, he had a big tragedy in his life, but once again, nothing really comes of it. Instead of becoming a motivating factor in the development of his personality it becomes more of a footnote as to why he doesn’t get around to doing much of anything.
In short nothing happens to a generally unlikable and thoroughly uninteresting youth. I spent the whole time hoping we’d get a character that was like Estella in Great Expectation: unlikable but interesting, but it never delivers. Instead I kept expecting Holden to say, “I’m going back to my room to listen to Linkin Park!” I guess I don’t find teenage angst as interesting as most. Perhaps if it didn’t happen to absolutely everyone I may have found it more interesting. If a similar story was written about a woman experiencing depression after a miscarriage I’d be glued to the pages since I haven’t and never will experience it first hand.
Pkmoutl, my friendly neighborhood literary nut (well, one of them) has told me that Catcher was Salinger’s worst work. I’ll have to read his other novels and shorts just to clear the bad taste from Catcher left in my mouth.
But that’s just me.
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April 13th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
(Miscellaneous)
There seems to be one in every office, every store, every group of friends. That one guy who decides that in spite of illness he just has to go out and make sure you get nice and infected. It happens to me all of the time, and honestly it gets incredibly frustrating. I mean, come on, it’s the 21st century. We know how diseases spread. We know about bacteria and viruses. We know about communicable diseases and how to get over them as quickly as possible.
Every doctor I’ve had has had the same recommendation: drink lots of fluids, eat well, and get some fucking sleep. When I get sick I take a couple days off of work and do exactly that. Yeah, I’ve added taking some vitamin supplements, and like most I take some drugs to work on the symptoms, but the core of the treatment is the same. Nutrition, hydration, and sleep. For a smoker I tend to recover pretty quickly. Fancy that…listening to my doctor yields positive results.
What I don’t do is show up at work and cough on everybody in sight spreading germs on every surface I touch.
Granted, I can’t entirely blame these people. After all we get to see tons of commercials about how you can treat all of the symptoms and carry on as though nothing has happened at all. Smile on your face, briefcase in hand you head off to yet another productive workday spreading the still very active disease you carry within you. We also can’t forget that a lot of jobs don’t take kindly to taking a little time off to get over the flu much less a cold. Of course that’s a policy that simply has to bite them in the ass as it spreads through the personnel.
For me it comes down to one simple thing at the end of the day: consideration. As much as I may want to hang out with people, and believe me I’m a very social person, I know that basic etiquette tells me it is best to stay home, get better, and not put everyone else at risk.
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