Schreiber

Bad News: The little part that attaches the cable to my laptop self-destructed last week. While I was still in the last throes of grading.

Good News: My computer-part guy didn't have a replacement, but he WAS willing to let me use his spare HP power cord.
For the entire weekend, as it turned out.
So mad props to Pierre's of the Old Port!

More Good News: I talked the guys at H.R. Distributers, who'd sold me the part in the first place, into getting the company to send me/them a replacement cord. Free.
So big kudos to them. (And actually, also to Pierre again, since it was he who pointed out that Manhattan would supposedly do that.)

Bad news: I didn't get the archivist job at York.

Good news: Uh...I guess moving transatlantic would've made life inconvenient?* And...I guess it's good to know sooner rather than later, so I don't have to keep holding that weekend free...
No screw it, this is pretty much ALL bad news. (If not unexpected.) Espec. because
More Bad News: This means I have to go back to square one on job applicating. And you all KNOW how much I love that!

For today, though, I should get back to copy-editing.**

Additional Bad news: I have what I initially thought was a really bad allergy flareup, but is now looking increasingly like the 'flu. Needless to say, this does not improve my mood OR my productivity. (It is an event that violates the Chez Geek principle!)

* Though, in fact, only slightly more so than moving to DC, which is also looking faintly possible. Also, guess which place's weather/culture is going to get on my nerves faster?

** I believe I told you how the guy in Esslingen dumped several projects in my lap just before Finals week. I got those done.
He gave me more.

So listening to the Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie song last night got me thinking, once again, about how much MS Word Sucks.

Because let’s face it, the program is bloatware at its worst. OK, it could be slower, but like something produced by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, it performs functions that no one could possibly want, while failing to do various things that one would have thought would be basic.
And even if it actually worked properly, it would stupid. Because it seems, ever increasingly, to be designed for stupid people.

Would it really be too much to ask for something like “WordPerfect 2007 (Academic Edition)”? A word processor tailored to those users (I’m sure there are enough that it would be profitable) who aren’t lobotomized receptionists?

It would ideally have the ability to insert tables, and perhaps do spell check. Oh, and envelopes and mail merge. And it would have short-cut keystrokes (including one for footnotes, which Word lacks, for no discernible reason. Perhaps one could even--gasp—have the “fn” key do this? But I digress.)
But other than that, stripped down. No Thesaurus, or grammar check, or Autosummarize (?!?), or Autocorrect. These, IMHO, merely encourage bad writing and laziness. (That’s certainly their effect on me!) Just one font, but with clear instructions as to where to get more if you wanted them. I, for example, am never going to use the dozen Japanese character sets, or the fifty-seven nearly identical slightly fancier versions of Roman that came with this machine, but I could really use Semitica, or a reliable Greek alphabet, or a better Gothic font.

It would not need the ability to load webpages, though the ability to insert images might be handy. But we don’t need Wizards, of any kind.
And we certainly don’t need the @£$%^&* Office Assistants!

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Discussion Question: Is it possible that Microsoft is, in fact, OWNED by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?