Connected

In a stunning reversal of everything I know about Best Practices in Corporate I.T., I've been requested to set up an Instant Messenger account -- And to actually use the thing.

Part of this stems from the fact that when I was hired this company was completely out of phones. Or extensions. Or both. I don't know/care because I'm not the phone guy.

Also, apparently instant messages are the preferred communication tactic by those who share my office space.

This is weird for me. Our team at Reliant used MSN Messenger for pretty much everything, but I started to fear being connected when the trend developed of sending embarrassing pop-up messages to whoever had their laptop hooked up to a projector for a presentation.

I'm not going to say who started that tradition, but I will say that to this very day he gets a warm feeling from remembering the time he sent a message to a co-worker who read (along with a conference room full of suits) that his "intimate" rash was probably normal and that there was little to be concerned about as long as he stopped actually sleeping in leather underwear.

Such a warm feeling indeed.

As a side effect of this new policy, I'm forever more reachable by those who want to complain about my latest post here at Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng. Feel free to add me to a "Buddy List" and ship me complaints, threats, half-baked theories on the purpose of life or (most importantly) Coke Reward Points.

Over 4,000 of those things are slowly doing absolutely nothing in my Coke Rewards account. I have to go #1 almost all the time.

So. Yahoo IM contact information is currently crammed up in my profile on the right, though I never ever check the Yahoo email -- Like even less frequently than I check my MySpace messages, if you can believe that. You should add me to your Yahoo Messenger anyway.

Go ahead. You know you want to.

In other news, my work computer came with Office 2007. I've ranted a bit in the past about the state of the Microsoft Office suite and about useless features and terminal application bloat. However, I had not had the opportunity to try the latest version until yesterday.

I'm not too proud to admit when I'm wrong about something.

That won't be necessary this time.

Holy crap, Office 2007 is the worst ever. Whatever team put this thing together should all be gathered together again when the final release version is added to the International Computing Museum's "Full of Fail" wing and made to promise never to write another program under pain of removing either their thumbs or their space bars -- Depending on how militant the mob is feeling at the time.

But wait! To their credit, there is one useful feature in Office 2007. Incoming IM's are now blocked when someone is running a Power Point presentation. This feature alone uses over 400MB of system memory -- And it is worth every byte.

--G

Attention Whore of Hiltonian Proportions