electricland: (Alice - huh?)
Have been growing increasingly frustrated all morning at new computer's unwillingness to save Word toolbar customizations. Microsoft tutorials all blithely gloss over the problem, implying that they save automatically. (They don't. At least, not on my computer.) They also bring an insane level of complexity to what used to be a very simple procedure (add or move or remove a button, changes stay put forevermore).

Fortunately, before I blew my stack completely or burst into tears, genius office-mate solved the problem (his Google-fu is better than mine today, evidently). But talk about your insane levels of complexity. Here's what you do:

1. Make your changes.
2. Hold down the Shift key and click the File menu.
3. Select the "Save All" option. (This is a sooper sekrit menu option that does not appear on the ordinary File menu.) It will ask if you want to save the changes to the Normal template.
4. Click Yes.

Next time you open Word the changes will still be there! My day has just improved by about 200%!

But seriously, OMGWTFBBQ? Note that the document linked above does not mention ANY of this ANYWHERE. To be fair, it's for Word 2003 not Word 2002. But why do Microsoft's "improvements" always make my life more difficult?

Now I'm going to tell off H&M for labelling a size 10 pair of shorts size 14. They fit, but only in the way that sausage casing fits a sausage.
electricland: (Alien)
Computer has suddenly decided to stop printing PDFs either from a browser
or from the stand-alone Adobe Reader. Cannot find a fix online. Have tried
to get the latest Reader updates, but no joy. Grrrrraaaagh.

Two guys from IS came by yesterday and said "We've called a couple of
times about replacing your computer." I said "No you haven't." Look, I
would have noticed, OK? But they have emailed about upgrading all
us Win2k peons to XP, and I guess they're finally getting around to it --
apparently I get a new box as well, which is good, as mine is ancient and
I'm at least the third user on it. I have done everything they asked me to
do in the way of backing up and letting them know what software I need, so
here's hoping it all goes smoothly. (Ha. Who am I kidding? I confidently
expect to be able to get nothing done for about a week.)

Which is to say, spending an hour and a half wrestling with software I'm
only going to be able to use for another hour and a half is probably not a
productive use of my time. Frustrating as all hell, though.
electricland: (Triplettes)
This evening I:

- Had dinner with my mum.
- Read today's house update. Here. )
- Triumphed over the new scanner.
- Failed to triumph over the bundled photo software, which refused to initialize.
- Yelled a lot.
- Watched the second half of the Foyle's War from last week.
- Figured out a way around the stupid software.
- Sent off a plaintive email to the manufacturer, which will probably be ignored.
- Helped my mum upload 6 photos. Might be better to create a separate account for 'em before we go much further. More to come.
- Discovered that Fafblog is back! Yay!
- Got very sleepy and went to bed. (OK, that's a prediction.)
electricland: (insane iconfly)
I hate Bell.

(In other news, the sky is blue.)

The fact that I just sat on hold for 20 minutes and needlessly bitched out a hapless call centre employee in Bangalore in order to discover that the satellite receiver's power was off does not in any way change this fact. Also, their website sucks.

However, I have now instructed my mother ON NO ACCOUNT to ever touch the buttons at the top of the remote, because weird things always happen and I can't be responsible.
electricland: (Alice - huh?)
1. Information Services is doing maintenance on "my" email server between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Their announcement says: "Lotus Notes DESKTOP users will automatically failover to their backup server. If you do not failover, there is a problem with the Lotus Notes setup on your workstation. Please call the Help Desk to report the problem."

2. The Help Desk is available between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

If I'm reading my error messages correctly, I can send mail -- I just can't save it to my Sent Items folder, or save drafts. Time to go home, then?
electricland: (Alien)
My dad continues to be anti-computer and, dare I say, proud of it. I fixed the can't-connect-to-the-Internet problem last night (turned the modem off and back on again) and sent his outgoing email, then attempted to field a series of questions that went roughly thus:

HIM: Well, why the hell does it do that?
ME: Um... I don't know... it... I just... look, it's fixed now, OK?
HIM: And why can you not see what you're sending before you send it?
ME: Huh?
(Some back and forth until I worked out he was talking about automatic line wrapping. Attempted to explain this feature.)
HIM: Well, why the hell does it do that? It's messing up my tables.
ME (thinking: um, WHY are you trying to create tables in an email?): Actually, if you want fancy formatting it's best to send it in an attachment.
HIM: Oh, sure, then whoever I send it to won't have the goddamn application to open it.
ME: Look, if they don't have Word by now there's no hope for them, OK?
HIM: All I want is to be able to send a letter. I know how to format letters. I learned 50 years ago on a manual typewriter, OK?
ME: O-kay. Whatever.

(Five minutes pass.)

HIM: And another thing. Why when you print the email does it not give you the date?
ME: Hmm... well, did you print the draft or the sent item?
HIM: I haven't DONE a draft until today.
ME: No, no, I mean did you print it before or after you sent it?
HIM: What goddamn difference does that make?
ME: See, until you send it, it counts as a draft, and it doesn't have a date stamp --
HIM (going downstairs with the recycling): That makes no sense. ALL I WANT is to see the DATE on my LETTER.
ME: But it doesn't HAVE a date until you --
HIM: I suppose Bill Gates knows better than I do what should be in a letter.
ME: YES, DADDY, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE PROBLEM IS.
HIM: Oh, don't be like that.
ME: It's an EMAIL. It is not a LETTER, which means --
FRONT DOOR: *slams*
ME: *sighs and goes to bed*
electricland: (me by ohi)
Side benefit of a late night and bed gravity keeping me out of the shower this morning: my hair was so filthy I decided to go get it cut at lunch just so I could have it washed. (Sorry, that's probably more than you wanted to know about my personal hygiene.) It looks great and I've had many compliments, except from my parents, who haven't noticed. So here's hoping it still looks great tomorrow.

Gave my dad an emergency Outlook tutorial last night. When I entered the room he had 3 instances of Outlook and about 20 message windows open and was complaining that things kept disappearing. Turned out he was minimizing the Outlook every time he wanted to close a message in the preview pane, and then wondering where it had gone. Suddenly these complaints make a lot more sense. I explained about the bold-with-blue-numbers indicating unread messages and he was indignant. Still, I feel we've made some progress with the parental Luddism.*

Choir good. New Mozart, not filthy this time. I have Thoughts on choir which I may share at a later date. It'll probably involve pontification, so don't look forward to it too much.

Last night's candidates meeting made the paper. There was a photo in the print edition. I don't think I was visible, but I'd only have been about 2 pixels high in any case.

*He claims it's not being a Luddite, as the Luddites smashed things because they worked. I say, if you can't bother to figure out how they work and then complain about it, isn't that just as bad? Although not, of course, to his face. Ah, parents.

Profile

electricland: (Default)
electricland

December 2012

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9 101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 26th, 2025 04:23 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios