Part 23: What the Firefox?

Firefox wouldn't respond, so I selected it on the bottom tab and closed it.

Then I clicked on a link to reopen it, and several things happened, none of them intuitive:

1. Firefox didn't open.

2. Windows opened an explorer dialogue, asking me where I wanted to save the link. (Excuse me? I want to view the bleedin' link!)

3. Windows popped up a cryptic error message, informing me that

Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system.

Okay, so I stopped the Firefox process. It disappeared off my task bar. But it was still going on, somewhere, in space. Had I probably wanted to, I could have Ctrl-Alt-Deleted my way to the task manager, and from there tried to end the process, which generally just creates "end task" "applications" which are "not responding." I've been down that road. So the other option is to, what, restart my computer? Sure, that might work. But more thank likely, I'd enter the Catch-22 of the Windows universe, and be told that I can not shut down my computer until I end Firefox.

That seems like backwards logic to me...

*****

Update: It still won't open. I opened the task manager. It shows no task for Firefox. Lovely.

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.

Part 22: HUNG

Follow this timeline, if you will:

Thursday, 5:20: Start-->shut down-->yes, I want to shut down. The computer begins to shut down. Sometimes, it will hang at this point and tell me that another program has not closer properly and two dialogues later it will begin the shutdown process.

Thursday, 5:21: Seeing no issues (although the computer, as usual, is taking forever to shut down) I turn off the screen and go home.

Thursday, 5:22ish: Apparently, it decides not to shut down.

Friday, 9:02: I go to turn on the computer to find that it hasn't shut down. I can't get it out of the cycle, so I say "OK" to the dialogue and let it begin the process.

Friday, 9:03: I go off to the mail room and lunch room.

Friday, 9:05: I return, and find the computer with a soothing, empty blue screen, which would be great, except that there's nothing productive I can do with a soothing, blue screen.

Friday, 9:06: I try moving the mouse (it moves). I try Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Nothing. I try it again. Nothing.

Friday 9:07: I crawl under my desk and unplug the machine.

Friday, 9:08: I plug it back in and push the power button. It starts.

Friday, 9:09: I log in and begin my day.

Now, you'd think that an energy efficiency organisation would employ an operating system which would shut down (and not draw power all night) and that it would be worth my time in increased productivity not to spend ten minutes making my computer work. Ha.

Part 21: Control-alt-delete to log in

When I start up my Mac, it boots to a login screen. I type in my password (in the past, I never even had to do this, it just booted to the desktop, and if I ever find the need to do so I may set it back to that) and it goes to my desktop.

On the PC? It boots to a screen that says to hold down Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Once I do this, it allows me to enter my password. Once my password is in, it goes to the desktop. Now, I sometimes wonder why it needs this extra step; why it makes me do the three-fingered salute instead of just letting me type in my password. So I clicked "help" today for more information. I found that:

To log on, hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys, then press the Delete key. This key combination is recognized only by Windows, so pressing it before logging on ensures that you are giving your password only to Windows.

This applies only to your Windows or domain password. Passwords associated with Web pages or specific programs will not require you to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

Oh, where to start.

This key combination is recognized only by Windows

No shit, Sherlock. This is a Windows machine. I am booting Windows. I am going to use Windows. I am being forced in to dealing with Windows. Do I have a choice, Mr. Gates? I of course chose Windows because it is such a secure platform.

pressing it before logging on ensures that you are giving your password only to Windows

Oh, goodie. I'm sure that it would be next to impossible for someone to write a script that could be contained in a virus that would, I don't know, spoof this page and be activated by Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

And what if you turned on your machine and it didn't ask you to salute, but rather just gave your a password screen. Would you flip out and think it had been sabotaged? Or would you enter your password and go on your merry way?

Passwords associated with Web pages or specific programs will not require you to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete

Because most of these programs are not written by Microsoft, and therefore employ normal logic in their processes.

Well it seems as though you can turn it off. Done. But OH NOES it might kill my computer:

"Disabling the CTRL+ALT+DELETE sequence creates a 'security hole.' The CTRL+ALT+DELETE sequence can be read only by Windows, ensuring that the information in the ensuing logon dialog box can be read only by Windows."

Riiight. Whatever.

Part 20: Tab-delimiting whether you want it or not

Sometimes, I have data I want to put in Excel that's not in terrific shape. For whatever reason (generally: I didn't create it) fields are separate by a variety of methods: commas, spaces and tabs. What I want to do is put it in to excel, search for multiple spaces, replace them with a symbol (perhaps an ampersand) and then use the "text to columns" feature to get the text to line up properly in columns.

Yes, that is what I want to do. Excel, however has other ideas. I paste the data and it says (Is it the paperclip? At least seems to have been mercifully killed off.) "oh, look, I see tabs, they must want it tab-delimited" and it tab-delimits it. Which would work great, if it were tab-delimited. But if that were the case, I could just as well put it in to rows and then to a text to columns and tab delimit it myself. But no, it takes one step forward and at least three steps back.

So my data is all mangled. Some rows had three tabs and were delimited in to three columns, some had five and were in five, some had none, and were in none. Oh lah-dee-dah. That didn't work, so I went back and tried a "paste special." Assuredly, if I chose to paste in "text" it would, you know, let me paste text, without the formats. Oh no, the columns remain.

That's one step back. The next step back is to open Word. Why Word? Well, even though it is part of the same product suite, it seems to have been written by an entirely different team of chimpanzees. I paste the data in to Word and it doesn't break in to columns, probably because Word doesn't have that capability. I then find all tabs and replace them with spaces, so that every column is now delimited by multiple spaces.

Now, I can paste this in to Excel, and it doesn't break in to columns (thankfully it doesn't recognise it as "space delimited" and throw in a bunch of blank columns). I search for two spaces and replace it with a semicolon. Now I have strings of semicolons (e.g. ";;;;;"). That's easy enough, I run a series of "find ';;' replace with ';'" until I have each field separated by a semicolon. Then, I do text-to-columns, semicolon-delimit and Voila! I have my data in the format I want.

That was simple, right?

Part 19: Menu madness

Why, oh, why, does Windows collapse menus? Sure, I don't use every setting on a menu every time. But the extra time I spend wondering where oh where the options have gone before I realise that half the options on a menu are hidden certainly makes up for it. Please, let me just see every menu in its entirety every time.

There's probably a setting to change this but it would probably take fifteen minutes to find.

Part 18: Closing documents

Every so often, and by every so often I mean on an almost-daily basis, I have several Excel files open. In Windows, several Excel windows sort of cascade in to one main window, that is to say that there is the program window and several documents opened inside of it. It makes life easier in that you can minimise them all at once, but I'm not sold on how it works. (In OS X the windows open separately, that is to say that you can close one of them at a time.) It is not necessarily bad, it's different. It would make a lot more sense if this protocol was used for all applications, but of course it is not.

But here's where it gets bad. If I want to close the file I am looking at, I hit the wee "x" in the corner below the main red "x" to close it. That's fine. That almost makes sense. But let us say I want to close the whole program. I hit the red "x" and it asks me if I want to save the top-most file. And then it asks me for the others.

Now perhaps I have seven files open, and I get to the fifth one and realise, "oh, I don't want to close them all." So I hit cancel. I assume that it will take the rest of the files I have closed and do with them what I told it to do (save, don't save) but no...once you hit cancel it reverts to its first state, with all the files open! Then you have to go through and re-save/not save them all again. Fun!