Not using Windows for a while = pure bliss

Pure bliss = $8/hour = a good way to go broke

About a year and a half ago, I quit my job. It wasn't a bad job, but I was ready to not work in an office, not use a computer which was supremely outdated* (yeah, non-profits) and not deal with Windows on a daily basis. I took off to work in the mountains (for the Appalachian Mountain Club) where the use of a computer required putting a laptop on a frame pack, hoping to not break it (best idea: surround it in a down comforter and shove the whole thing in a brew bucket), carry it several miles (say, 4 miles and 3500 feet) uphill and still have very little (if any) internet on the mountaintop. So, not a lot of screen time, and not a lot of fails.

Oh, yeah, and I have a Mac. This summer I treated myself to a new MacBook Air (it's dreamy, and weighs less than 3 pounds) and I even bought a new version of Office—Microsoft's most functional product (it's a low bar). Still, Office '11 works pretty well, is slightly more intuitive than old versions (again, a low bar) and has better cross-compatibility with Windows versions than previous. (Of course, one would think MSFT would be able to actually make them completely compatible. But, no!)

In any case, I'm out of the mountains now and looking for a job. Like, maybe, a "real" job, one where you sit at a desk and use computers. Even computers with Windows. I'm willing to do so, if for no other reason than that I am running out of fodder for this blog. Oh, and a paycheck. Benefits would be nice too. I picked the perfect economy for this, right?

So, you can find my CV on my personal website, check out my other websites (tsastatus.net, birkieguide.com) and if you have any ideas, email me at ari dot ofsevit at gmail.
You can even follow me at twitter.com/ofsevit.

Thanks! I hope I can find some broken Windows crap to blog about soon.

* Apparently, my replacement made it about a week before demanding a new computer—which I was about to do when I quit and figured it wouldn't be worth it to waste my breath. It got to the point of taking minutes to open Word. Of course, it was a 2003 machine in 2010.

Part 40: when wireless goes wrong

After a blissful summer away from the wide world of Windows, I have been forced to return. Rather than fight for my right to have cross-platform compatibility, I succumbed and had someone buy me a PC. Windows 7. It's sort of okay, although changing the menus in Office is really unnecessary (since "add a row" is now under the "home" menu, which makes no sense of course) and since the UI is still several years and iterations behind OS X. (For instance; in Mac OS I can use "pretzel"-tab to change programs and "pretzel"-` to change windows within a program. Windows 7: I can only change amongst all open windows. Although the nested window view is somewhat useful.)

Anyway, all was going somewhat well until, with no prior warning, my wireless connection today went completely kaput. It just ran dry. When I click on the little wireless icon, it tells me that it is not connected, and that "no connections are available."

Okay, well, I have a trusty-if-elderly (nearly four years old) Mac, and can turn to the Googles. If I search for the no connections phrase and windows 7, I get a Microsoft Help page. Oh, that's lovely. There must be a nice, easy fix for this, right? Wrong.

There are six steps, the first of which is power-cycling your computer, wireless router and modem. I haven't read the others yet. All I know is I first have to deal with the email I wrote and now have to save elsewhere (and hope the formatting doesn't get messed up) and then go through several annoying steps so my computer will, you know, connect to the internet.

It's amazing that in 2010 Microsoft has a product which will lose its internet connection and not easily get it back. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I'm writing this on my Mac. Connected to the internet.

(Oh, and when you try to connect to the internet, you click the "open network and sharing center"—at least they don't call them wizards anymore—and then click "connect to a network, which takes you back to the same window where you clicked open network and sharing center. Which circle of hell is this, again?)

Update 1: Power cycled the machine. It did nothing. Except give me a few glorious seconds when Windows was off.

Update 2: The ever-so-helpful Microsoft website tells me "Update the drivers for your wireless network adapter via Windows Update, or by using the website for either the company you bought your PC/Laptop from or the manufacturer of your networking device." And how the fuck am I supposed to do that without an internet connection?


Update 3: I hit troubleshoot. It tells me that wireless capability is turned off. Why? Lord only knows. Why it went off in the middle of using the computer? Lord only knows. Can I click on the little wireless icon and turn it on? That would be intuitive. Of course not. It won't tell me how, only that there is a switch on the front or side of my computer, or a function key.

Hello? Is it 2002? Is anyone there?

Update 4: Apparently, if you hit F2—which, as it happens, is located conveniently above the 2 key—it toggles on and of the wireless. Now, why on earth would I want to be able to turn on and off my wireless with an errant keystroke? Wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense to, say, have a drop-down menu with the option to turn off my wireless, so that an errant slip of the finger wouldn't do it? Yes. It would. That's why the good lord created OS 10. I believe that was a feature on Apple products, oh, 9 or 10 years ago.


If anyone knows how to disable F2 as the toggle key for wireless, please let me know. I'd like to be able to turn off wireless, I guess, but I'd like it to be a bit more of a barrier than hitting one key. Maybe function keys should be left for things like screen brightness and volume; you know, things I use more than once in a blue moon.

Part 39: Really? I can't use commas to separate email addresses?

So we recently upgraded our server. In addition to a bizarre method to change default printer preferences (which may well be the printer driver's fault so I won't document it here—yet), there's been a subtle change in our how Outlook works. Or, of course, doesn't work.

Let's say I want to email two people. In Gmail, I'd type in their addresses separated by commas, say, "sbrin@gmail.com, lpage@gmail.com". I'd write my message, hit "send" and go on my merry way. And that's how it used to work in Outlook. But not anymore. If I go to send an email in outlook, I can't write it to "bgates@microsoft.com, pallen@microsoft.com". Oh, no-siree-bob. If I do something that intuitive, I get an error message:

Wait, what? I can't separate email addresses with a comma? And, smartypants, since you obviously know what I was doing (i.e. that I was separating emails with commas) why can't you just make the goddamn change for yourself!

Oh, yes, Windows = productivity.

Part 38: Word/Outlook integration

While we're knocking Outlook, what's the deal with the integration of Word and Outlook? Sometimes, I'm typing away in Outlook and get a message that Word needs to close, and since Outlook uses Word to edit applications, Word's crashing has rendered Outlook braindead, so carry on.

Also, it's so very well integrated that when I was editing my signature, I had a section which was 10 point Verdana italic, which refused to show in 10 point font in the actual email. Oh, yes, Word works so well I want to use it all the time!

Part 37: Can Outlook signatures be any harder to find?

So work decided that we should all have standardized signatures and can we all change them. Fine, whatever, I should be able to find out where to change signatures, right? They're a pretty generic part of email, so it's not like Outlook will hide the signature in an incoherent menu which is impossible to find. In a just and loving world, it would be on a main menu. Now, of course, Windows won't show me the whole menu if I haven't used it recently (thanks), but even if I have to expand the menus, I bet I can find it, right?

Wrong.

Now, in Gmail, where I don't even use a signature, I can find the signature setting easily. I click on settings, then, oh, hey, look! It's right there! Right on the main front screen! One click! Easy.

In Outlook? Oh, boy. I had to look it up on the Interwebs. First, I go to the tools menu. There, I select options. Now, leaving beside the fact that options shouldn't be under a tools menu (since an option isn't a tool) or should be called something out, I am presented with a mess of tabs and interfaces. I got to this without the web. But I didn't see "signature" on any of the tabs, so I kept going.

Had I clicked through all the tabs, I would have found that the mail format tab contains the signature dialogue. I have no idea what all the other functions Outlook has which are so very important, but the signature dialogue is in an not-at-all-obvious place, and is much further down the information tree than it should be. Then again, other than save and print, is there anything you can do without three menus and a dialogue box in Windows?

Part 36: Restart, restart, restart

I was out of the office for a couple of weeks and, apparently, Windows took it upon itself to download some update. And now that it has done so, it prompts me, every 15 minutes to restart. But it gives me 15 minutes to say no. What I really want to do is go about my business today, and restart at the end of the day when I shut down my computer. But "restart later" simply resets the clock.

Please, Windows, why can't you give me a "restart at my own goddamn convenience" button?!

Part 35: hidden formatting

I had a bit of an email I wanted to post in to Facebook. I figured the steps would be copy-paste-post, right? Not so fast.

It turns out Outlook had embedded some really hidden line breaks in to the text. So I wasn't just copying the text, but I was copying the line breaks too. So when
I posted it on Facebook, it didn't look right. In fact, it had random line breaks. It looked sort of something like
this. This was a problem for me because a) Facebook only displays a certain number of lines before saying "read more" and having a link and b) more importantly this was for my work's Facebook page (it's getting
annoying, isn't it?) and it looked ugly. Even more disturbing is that if I copied the text from the email, it would sometimes paste in with a bunch of xml before it. Seriously, come on.

The workaround was to copy everything in to Notepad (one of the less braindead windows applications, since it has so few useless features) to get it in to text and then paste it from there. It worked. But it was annoying.

Part 34: Word can't open it, but Google Docs can

I went to open up an attachment in which someone had filled out with text boxes (why text boxes? someone else designed the original) and found that most of the information was squeezed out of the text boxes which we next-to-impossible to drag to expand. But, rather than much around with the document in Word, I sent it to my gmail account and opened it first as html (fail) and then as a Google Doc. All of the sudden, the text boxes are gone, and all the information I need to access is easily visible.

What is perplexing is that the native software (Word) was unable to accomplish this task, while Google Docs did with ease. Google may be a huge corporation out to make a dime, but at least their products, you know, work.

Part 33: One problem, many programs

For some reason, Word decided not to cooperate with me today. It just won't open. And since I was in the middle of writing something, this makes me angry. Oh look at what has happened!



Now, I've had programs freeze before. It happens. On all operating systems. Here's the thing: when something freezes on the Mac, it generally doesn't also freeze other programs. Like Outlook. First I got a message that Outlook used Word for writing emails, and since Word was dead, it was using something else. Then I got an active X error. Now it is frozen. So much for the typing I was doing in Word &c. Time for the three fingered salute.

Part 32: Where is Firefox

Here's a screen capture of my toolbar (why I can only capture elements of the screen on a screen capture and not the whole goddamn screen, well, that's a post of a different color) from this morning:


That would all be well and good if it weren't for what was in the window above it.


This happens, uh, a lot. I am happily browsing through Firefox and then I go in to my mail and then I go to click back to Firefox and--where has it gone? If I am in a program, how can it just up and disappear from my toolbar? Sometimes I flip out--has it close itself? Is the text box I was filling in gone forever? No, it just went in to Windows purgatory, and a few minutes later it will slide out and reappear as if nothing was wrong.

Seriously, though, what's the point of a toolbar if it's not actually going to show your open programs. Why not just have the computer poke me in the eye. It would get the same amount of information across to me.

Part 30: Copying files and answering the same question

I am copying files to a CD. Now, there are two things going on here that piss me off. First of all, when I copy files to a CD in OS X, it tells me when it is full. On a Peecee, I have to guess, and make a new folder that will add it up for me. So there's that. Luckily, I know about how much data a 700 MB CD holds (about 650 MB).

But then, there's this:

This is annoying for two levels. First of all, this is completely cryptic. Files I didn't know existed will not be written, but it won't matter. THEN WHY TELL ME?!

Second, even though I continually checked the "use this answer every time" box, every time I did a new copy, it asked me the goddamn question again. You mean, there couldn't have been a "use this answer always for now and forever option"? That would have made my life a little easier.

Apparently, that's not the business Microsoft is in.

Part 29: What's in it for me?

Now, whenever I start up my machine, I see this:

Oh, hooray. First of all, I've never heard of that, so I am not about to download it. (It seems legit but still this could always be a shell.) Second, why should I download it. Let's do a quick pros and cons analysis.

Pros for me: I get to know if my copy of Windows is valid. This is not really a pro. If I have a valid copy of Windows (here, I do. In other cases, [redacted]) I'm fine. It will tell me "congratulations, you have a non-pirated copy of this software" which is basically a waste of my time. I know that already.

Cons: If I have a valid copy, this is at best a waste of time. And if I don't have a valid copy, it (perhaps) is able to check that and I lose my OS (not a huge loss, believe me) and/or have to go out and buy a new one. But, there is at least the chance that I would be unable to use my computer.

So, in other words, if I run the program, the best thing that happens is nothing, and the worst that happens is my computer is thrown in to turmoil. Sounds like pretty much a lose-lose.

Some of the comments on a story about this "product" (if you can call it that) are pretty good (although generally poorly spelled with horrid grammar):

there's never really been any advantage of having a genuine copy (except for the feel good inside feeling some people get)

Actually I get that feeling downloading pirated Microsoft software.

The "genuine advantage" was double-plus good speak, perfected to an art during the Bush years. I, for one, would appreciate this change back to common sense English descriptions that actually mean what they say.

Now, just drop the telephone activation stuff and make it an online method already.

"But it already has internet activation, idiot!"

No. What I mean is when you've used up your Internet activations due to troubleshooting hardware problems, you'll need to use the phone to tell them your PID and answer questions to get a new serial number of some sort in return to activate. But why the phone? This is a disadvantage to the deaf population. We embrace the internet because it's deaf-friendly. Why on earth can't Microsoft use a webform or application that we can answer questions to and punch in our generated PID code in? Such fail.

Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.

Okay, fail.

Part 3.1 Office 2007

I've learned the best way to learn how to apply for jobs: post one yourself and read the resumes.

Well, I'm not quite at that stage. I am compiling the resumes. Here are a few hints:

1. Send your resume and cover letter in PDF format. That's the easiest and most universal. Everyone can open PDFs, on any system, and they are pretty much always compatible with everything.

2. If you wish to send a second format, send a .doc or a .rtf.

3. Do not send weird formats from open-source software. Hell, I am a huge proponent of such programs, but they have their time and places. Sadly, cross-platform resumes are not one. Create them in a non-Word program and save them as PDFs.

4. Give people options. Send a PDF, a .doc and post your resume online.

5. If you have Office 2007, good on you. MAKE SURE TO SAVE YOUR RESUME AS AN OLD .DOC FILE! I can not stress this enough. If you send it to someone who does not have the latest version, they will not be able to read it.

Now, as to why Microsoft did not make this backwards compatible, I'll never know. Nor will I understand why they didn't, I don't know, send out a patch to everyone using Word. (Find me someone who would say, "no, I'd rather not be able to open files people send me thank you" and I'll find you a fish with a bicycle.) But, no, they have a "pack" (read: "patch") you have to download yourself, and for some ungodly reason a wee extension which should be a few hundred kbytes to convert xml to an older .doc format is 28 megabytes! And you have to restart for it to take effect.

It does, surprisingly, seem to, I don't know, work.

Part 24.2 ... Why?

Oh, Firefox. I don't think you are to blame. Why, oh, why does the operating system on which you run let you open but not initiate? Why does it allow you to be opened multiple times without a friendly message such as "you have already opened Firefox" or "Firefox is already running"? Why, praytell, do you initiate several different Firefox.exe tasks chewing through memory without the program starting? Why, indeed.



And why, after I go in to the Task Manager and manually end each of the running tasks, do you start up without fail? I'm not blaming you, Firefox, I am blaming Windows.

Part 28: Why is powerpoint picture-from-file so braindead?

You may remember in Part 27 when we were adding and subtracting pictures in Powerpoint to resize a document.

Here is the question. A Powerpoint slide is a set size, probably 1024x768. When you want to insert a picture in to a Powerpoint slide, can you think of any conceivable reason why you'd want the image to be any larger than the slide itself? I can't, other than to, say, show a blown up part of a significant piece of a large photo, but in that case I'd probably crop it first. In any case, one would surmise that when inserting a "picture from file" it would downsize it to the size of the Powerpoint slide for easy manipulation.

Ha. Of course not. If you put in a 2000x3000px picture, it opens way over your slide, and screen! You have to scroll to the corner and downsize, and then scroll, and downsize again, and then size it to where you want it, and then move it to where you want it in the slide. Kudos, Microsoft, on making something which should take two or three steps (insert, move, resize if necessary) take eight (insert, scroll, resize, scroll, resize, scroll, resize, move). That's productivity.

Part 27: Oversized powerpoints

A coworker says to me: "I am trying to send a Powerpoint document and it's too big. Any ideas on how to resize it?"

We take a look at it. It is just over 5 mb. So we remove one picture and put in a downsampled one. And it is just over 5 mb. So we check the size of the other picture. It's 2.75 mb. Somewhere, Powerpoint has found an extra 2.25 mb.

So we remove the other picture. And resave. Voila! It is now 108 kb. So we put in the offending picture, and somehow it is now 3 mb and won't bounce.

The question, of course, is where that phantom 2.25 mb came from?

Part 26, cont.: They did me again

I think this needs little further explanation (mainly because I can't make any sense of it):

dwwin.exe DLL initialization failed.
The application failed to initialize because the window station is shutting down.

Except, the window station (what? is this English?) is not shutting down, which is the entire problem.

The system cannot end this program because it is waiting for a response from you.

Oh, that's nice. It's my fault. Meanwhile this program has not been open for hours and only needing a response from me because it failed to close properly or completely and has been hiding in the background, ready to rear its ugly head now.

Adobe acrord32.exe application error
The instruction at "0x5ad71531" referenced memeory at "0x00000014" the memory could not be "read"

Cute, tell me about some random line of code and random bit of memory. This is entirely unhelpful. If you had a countdown timer (like, oh, I don't know, my Mac) that just shut down 120 seconds after being told to, come hell or high water, I wouldn't have to deal with this bullshit.

If my time is worth $20 per hour, and I spend 3 minutes a day dealing with this, and I work 250 days a year, that's $1 per day, or $250 per year, or $750 over the lifespan of a computer (assuming it is amortised over three years). Can someone please explain how it is more efficient to save a hundred dollars on a PC just to have staff waste hour upon hour of time trying to make the goddamn system work?

Part 25: Dude, you're getting a Dell. And it sucks.

I may have blogged this before but sometimes when I shut down my computer, it doesn't. I say shut down, it asks me if I am sure, I say yes I am sure, and go on my merry way. And then, it doesn't. It has something to do with not properly shutting down Acrobat (I'd grab a screenshot but once I say okay to that dialogue it, presto, shuts down) but I wind up leaving it on all night (or, in this case, weekend) and then having to restart in the morning.

And today ... it didn't even shut down properly. I said yes to the stupid dialogues. And waited. And took a phone call. And waited. And went to fill my water bottle, and waited. All that was splashed across the screen was a big image that said "DELL" as if to remind me of a computer brand that, given the choice, I will never buy. But, seriously, do you want your brand name to be displayed for minutes (and if I hadn't manually shut down, hours) while people ponder why their machine to work? Shouldn't they put up a big apple instead?

Part 24: Wither user?

When I start up Firefox for the first time after restarting, Windows gives me this nonsense. I've logged in, but it asks me if I want to run this program as what I've logged in as. I think it's a ploy to get me to use IE. (NEVER!)

File this under "faint praise"

I've done my best to stay far, far away from Vista. My work machines still use XP, and I'm fine with that (as opposed to Vista). I've loved the Mojave ads with people saying "hey this doesn't really suck" and then being told that it's Vista. (Oh dear, the Mojave experiment site linked above is bloated and takes forever to load. What's new?) If your ad campaign is "hey look this great product we have actually isn't as bad as you think" something has gone wrong.

Well, today Pogue reviews Windows 7. It's not a new Windows OS, it's basically Vista with some of the inexorably horrid parts stripped. Pretty much the whole article is made up of grafs saying things like "You know that really awful feature of Vista? Well for $150—or a free beta if you download today or tomorrow—you can get rid of it!"

Such as:

Trouble is […] the much-despised, Orwellian-named User Account Control […] was way too suspicious, demanding your name and password even when it was just little old you making innocent changes (like setting your computer’s clock). In Windows 7, you can tone U.A.C. down — eliminating the warnings, for example, when you, the human, are the one making changes.

Oh, yay, a security feature that is probably mostly theater (it works great until someone hacks your password, too) is dumbed down.

Even in the test version, you can feel that a lot of things are faster: starting up (40 seconds on my three test machines), shutting down, reconnecting to wireless networks, copying files and inserting flash drives, for example. It’s no Windows XP

Tremendous. Three years on and it's still slower than its predecessor.

As Microsoft puts it: “If it works in Windows Vista, it will work with Windows 7.” That’s not great, but what else can Microsoft do?

Still not backwards compatible.

And these are the best things he can say about them. The article's title, "Hate Vista? You might like Microsoft's sequel" seems a bit too laudatory.