Touche, Sir

In a brazen display of complete disregard for learning, the gentleman to my right is playing his Nintendo DS during class, elbows on the table, completely engrossed.

I must admit I admire his style.

Good Lord

This is required stat. Nevermind the fact that the batteries will last on average ten times longer than the lifespan of your laptop.

Hopefully they'll be able to retrofit older laptop models with these suckers.

Hola

I have been dead far too long.

I Felt A Great Disturbance In the Force

...as if millions of Mac users suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Wake Up, Wake Up, Wake Up

It's the first of the month.

Wooo College

Another year, another bout of freaking out wondering where I'm going to get the money from.

Vista Upgrade: Bad Decision or Worst Decision?

Yesterday, Case Western Reserve University overhauled its internal software-providing website with a new design and, among other things, upgrade editions of Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate.

Clearly, your God is a soulless pit of hatred for humanity.

Users, on the whole, are not smart. Microsoft's Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor certainly isn't infallible. And, luckily, there exists at least one program on the Case Software Center that, if you don't uninstall it before upgrading, will render your Vista upgrade hosed upon booting it the first time. This, friends, is what as known as a "recipe for disaster". We've already gotten our first ticket in about an issue in Vista, and it quite certainly won't be our last. I'm betting we're going to have to issue some sort of report on common issues in Vista and how to work around them, or we're going to be stuck reinstalling people's operating systems ten thousand times because they didn't uninstall Symantec Antivirus before they upgraded their system. This isn't even taking into account the number of people I've seen buying half-baked "budget" systems that come pre-installed with Vista Home Basic to go along with their Celeron M processors and 512 Mb RAM and onboard graphics (yes, someone brought that base system above in - I'm still trying to wash my hands of it) that will inevitably lead to a sour Vista taste in people's mouths.

If there's any upside to this, it may drive even more people over to the Mac side of the fence. One can only hope.

Here's to a long eternity of bailing users out of poor decision-making and worse operating systems.

Obese

I successfully gained over a pound this weekend just by attending a party on Saturday and attending KFC on Sunday.

In my defense, many were powerless to resist the Stancato's at the party.

Also, regarding this, I switched back to XP myself. It's like putting on a well-used baseball mitt: a little rough around the edges but oh-so-worn-in. Can't say I miss Vista much.

Windows Vista vs. Windows XP

Warning: very long.

Thinking of switching back to XP myself :/

This Is Stupid

Attempt to get more sleep = wake up with a headache.

Cool.

Whoops

This is why I drink regular pop.

Working Hard

Playing with our new Nerf guns.

Also, a user just called in who tried to install Office 2007 and somehow ended up reinstalling Windows.

What.

Diving In Slow Motion

Yeah, playing through Max Payne again.

I had three fillings done yesterday, which required my jaw to be fully extended for something like an hour and a half. As of lunchtime, I can just about open my mouth far enough to slide a sandwich in and take a bite. Hooray for lockjaw.

I scored a free LCD monitor today while performing a computer setup. It was cool with the IT people there, so I guess I lucked out (the power switch is broken so they probably would have tossed it anyways).

Besides that, work is going well. We're at record lows here, in the tens of tickets (fifteen, now). Of course, work is still diligently being done, as you can plainly see by this blog posting. At the very least, unlike Nick, my work does not consist of hours and hours of Wabble - just some Doom every now and then.

Back to reformattings.

Lord God,

Please make it stop.

Isolationism

No travel, no parties, no fireworks, no celebrations. A quiet observance of liberty by my lonesome.

Back to work tomorrow.

Conclusion: Yope

"Scooter" Libby walks free (minus $250000). Obviously, some people are up in arms about this.

This country is a joke.

Today, In The News

Man asks us to make his program install faster. Film at 11.

Hello, Friend

P.S. Can I borrow $500?

Baloney

Excuse me. I worked for that tax money to give to you, Mr. Government, so I'd like to have a say as to where it goes.

A Thought On Mondays

It's a well-known fact that Garfield hates Mondays.

I hate Mondays, too. I, however, work a desk job.

It occurred to me during the normal mid-morning job-ruing that, as a common house cat, Garfield has absolutely no reason to hate Mondays. A day is a day is a day - that is, an opportunity to nap, eat lasagna, and get into hijinx with his wacky owner Jon (mostly involving napping and eating). The hatred of Mondays, obviously, is Jim Davis strategically giving Garfield a character trait that lets him identify with the white-collar working force as much as the younger age bracket that would more typically be interested in the funny pages: more office personnel would then be able to buy Garfield merchandise to express their dislike of the first of the week.

I hate Garfield.

Lynx

Via Digg: If you only need to save one thing in a fire...

Windows shared drives in OS X 10.5. Look closely.

George W. Bush, tired of stepping all over the Constitution, decides to start stepping all over his own executive orders.

Also, Dungeons and Dragons is fun.

I Should Be Sleeping

Word: OLOEOXEPOP
Points: 124
Meaning: I've run out of actual Scrabble words

Sans Weekend

Not like there's anything to do, but it's disturbing when the weekend drops by suddenly and leaves with as much notice. Pretty much all I do is sit around and play bass, listen to music, and watch anime - I guess like a high school stoner, minus the drugs. There's probably something constructive I can do with my free time, but I suppose I have the rest of the (dauntingly long and boring) summer to take care of that.

On a wholly different note, words are cool.

Tomorrow begins the Dungeons and Dragons, so we'll see how that goes.

Do Want

Mac OS X 10.5: sweet, sweet nectar.

Let The Office Warfare Begin

For $7.99, how can you say no?

The Quintessential YouTube Poop

So this is what acid is like.

Multimedia

Case Of The Mondays

Well, that weekend blew by. In between seeing the Indians lose (great seats, boring game), Kevin's college grad party, cleaning, and Blood+, it feels like the weekend lasted about three hours.

So why am I so tired?

To illustrate, here's a simple diagram I whipped up.

Fig. 1: Qualitative sleepiness indicator

I'd get coffee but I'm currently holding down the office by my lonesome. The question is, how effective is a guard who is always asleep?

Great Success

I know that we take lots of things for granted in the computer world. I know that not everybody can be or should be a computer genius. I know that the reason that help desks exist is to take computers out of the equation to let people just work.

That really doesn't make it any easier to not shoot myself in the head.*

Today we got to experience several of the holy grails of tech support when a user called in for us to troubleshoot his copy of Eudora:

• An analyst of ours told the user to hit the "OK" button that just popped up on the screen; the user spent five minutes looking for the OK key on his keyboard.


• We decided it would be best to do a remote assistance session (like remote desktop through your browser). The user was unable to locate a web browser, yet was able to find the "Run..." command and enter the URL for the support page.


• The user spoke very slowly and read everything on his screen aloud.


• Remote assistance requires you to install an ActiveX control. A window pops to the forefront with a large arrow pointing to the Information Bar in Internet Explorer and instructing you to click on it to install the ActiveX control. The user lost this window and was unable to relocate it, causing the remote session to need to be started over.


• The user would randomly decide to right- or left-click on something and would not click the correct button when instructed to do so.

All told, what would normally be a 45-second setup took 45 minutes of coercing, prodding and swearing (to a muted handset) to accomplish. Now begins the actual task of, you know, figuring out what's wrong.

Technology: it makes the world go 'round.

* I actually like my job, I just sometimes wish people would let me do it.†

† Please don't fire me.

I Love Lifehack

Read and be merry (and hopefully contented and unstressed).

Oh What

Hell, it's about time.

All Work And No Play

I keep forgetting that Case is not like high school in that stuff actually happens during the summer.

That said, I think we're more busy now than we were during the school year (or maybe my perspective is skewed by working nine hours a day rather than zero to three).

Macbook

Basically a steal, now. I desire one.

Damage Control

I'm just going to be tired all of the time, and I accept that.

On Bawls

It tastes just like ginger ale. I'm probably the last person on Earth to discover this.

That being said, I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Tsugi

Next semester will be different.

Haiku

i was up all night
my program fails to output
shoot me in the head

Statistics In Action

Kittens have little to fear.

Party Like It's 1998

You've never played StarCraft until you've played it like it was back in the day - on a 14" monitor with 800x600 native resolution. Let's just say it's... "crisp".

Also, I picked up a pair of black Marshmallows and they blow the stock iPod buds out of the water. They're also probably the bassiest headphones I've heard (!).

Several more days of Spring Break, then back to Hell Week.

あめがふる

ざんえんだな。

Not Quite A Darwin

BREAKING NEWS: falling hurts.