Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Holy Shit

I can't believe a powerful politician hired a hooker. I pray none of our trusted leaders have ever used cocaine or driven drunk.

And oh, the painful irony that he painted himself as a reformer. Gadzooks, he may be disingenuous, self-deceiving, self-deifying, or amorally in it for the power, or some combination of the above. Up to now, I thought politicians said what they meant and meant what they said. And what are the implications if his behavior is not limited to the political class? Is it possible that all people are capable of believing one thing and acting contrary to that belief in spite of it?

At the very least, we can count on NY's reputation for clean government and lawfulness being tarnished.

Rilke warned against sarcasm. I believe he said it was for the lazy. I agree, but I am tired.

On a different note, I wonder how many people's first reaction was: "at least he isn't a homo."

Monday, March 10, 2008

Dear MS Word: Fuck You, Die

How many years has Microsoft been working on Word? Yet, after all this time, they can't design a program that doesn't freeze and crash with regularity. And they feel the need for Word to constantly interfere with your work while you are writing. Self-applying styles? Why not? I mean, why not make your user want to smash his computer to bits in a frenzy over your shitty program? I've got a great idea. How about, when a user cuts and pastes text from other documents, why don't you sometimes impose formatting changes on that text that can be neither seen nor altered by the user. That is a wonderful idea. It is probably fun to imagine your users' tears of frustration and rage. With near 100% market dominance, why produce a functional, nonintrusive interface when you can deliver a bloated piece of shit?

Fuck you Microsoft. Power has made you stupid.

EDIT, 3/11
My more perceptive reader(s) may have inferred that a bad incident involving Word prompted the above tirade. Such an inference is correct. It turned out, I lost no more than 15 minutes of work to the crash. So, now that I am calm, and have had an opportunity for less agitated reflection, I wish to add an addendum.

Microsoft, Word, I am compelled to use you. I understand that you will do all in your power to maintain your market dominance. I understand that you pay a lot of engineers to do things like think up new toolbars to add to your overburdened program, so that you can sell a new release every so often and claim that you have made "upgrades." I also understand that you will never bother to make Word for Mac a quality product, as it is in your best interests to make Mac as unappealing as possible. And sadly, the alternatives to you create compatibility problems and interface issues. So I have to work with you. But I do not have to like you. And I will keep trying to get out of this relationship. Because you are a bad program, Microsoft Word, and I am a good person, who should not have to take your shit.