Microsoft Word SUCKS!!!!!

It has ruined my entire day, and is making me want to slam my head repeatedly into a wall out of frustration. Why, oh WHY will it NOT DO what I want it to do?!? It is a simple thing, and it JUST. WON'T. WORK. I hate that I have spent my ENTIRE DAY wrangling with these piddly-assed format problems that have nothing to do with physics!!!!

Ctrl-Alt-Del-ARGH!!!!!

Some days I really, really, REALLY hate computers.

Today's Really Stupid Problem started innocently enough when I made a completely mundane request of my computer: print a form from a web page. Normally this occurs almost immediately and I move on to other things. This time, nothing happened. I checked all my connections and didn't find anything suspect. So I opened up Print Manager (PM) to see what it had to report on the status of the print job. Nothing out of the ordinary, except PM was under the impression that the file was printing, yet the printer was most definitely NOT doing any sort of printing. It didn't even look like it was thinking about printing. It was just sitting there like a bump on a log, except with pretty LED buttons all lit up like things should be working. So I sent the file to the printer again. And now there were two jobs stuck in the queue not printing. So I told PM to delete all print jobs. PM continued to display the canceled job with status (deleting-printing). And continued. And continued. So I told it to delete again. And it continued to say it was deleting, but never did it. Liar!

After much cursing and bitching, and attempting to stop the delete process using Task Manager, and restarting the computer, and reinstalling the driver, and a whole bunch of other crap, the frikkin' file was still in there, NOT being deleted!!!! So I uninstalled every damn bit of the HP software. Then I deleted the printer completely (which got rid of the print job that wouldn't delete, my only success out of the whole afternoon). Then I reinstalled the HP software. Then I plugged in my "plug and play" printer. And...

Nothing happened. Nothing at all. My computer SHOULD HAVE recognized the new device and automatically installed it, but FOR WHATEVER STUPID REASON chose to completely ignore it, as if HP and MS are having some ridiculous feud and refuse to acknowledge each other's existence. I went from having an installed and formerly functional printer, to having an installed printer that wouldn't print anything, to not having a printer installed even though it was CLEARLY connected to my computer. I give up.

I need a drink. Or a Mac. Or both.

Non-Standard

It was another "fun filled" weekend of home repairs not going as planned in the Cosmic Cat household. But you knew that already... because if things had gone smoothly I wouldn't be writing a blog post bitching about it.

It was a simple enough repair - fix a leaky tub faucet. It doesn't get much more mundane than that. Except when you get your vintage 1965 plumbing halfway taken apart and find out that it is a not a standard size. After going to the big hardware store that has every tool known to man, PDM found out that they no longer make the tool he needs in the size he needs. That scuttled the repair.

We (mostly PDM) are still fixing the damaged wallboard in the half bath. This was the project that I started in October, and was going to take two weekends to complete. Yeah, right. We're coming up on four months and those walls are still not ready to paint.

Old houses tend to be more solidly built than newer ones. But the tradeoff is that more stuff will fail due to age, and fixing it can be terribly frustrating. The non-standard size thing crops up all over the house - not just the plumbing. The new front door was also a special order due to a non-standard opening.

Some days we like our home better than others...

I'm fried, and the week's not over.

It's been a long week, and I'm too tired to come up with the witty blog post that I'd like to create. You'll have to settle for this:

You Are 66% Burned Out

You are very burned out. You need a huge break from your responsibilities, starting as soon as possible. And you need this time to reevaluate what you really want out of your life. Because you're working hard and going no where... and that would burn anyone out!

Are You Burned Out?

I have to work late again tomorrow teaching a lab with the physics students. I hope it goes more smoothly than it did on Tuesday. It took a hell of a lot longer to do these tasks with the students than it takes me to do it alone, and I am not sure that I explained things all that well. I worked on Saturday to get the monthly QA done on time, and still have to test another machine by the end of the week. We're short staffed, and we have short tempers. With the annual testing on one of the linear accelerators I'm responsible for coming up, July isn't looking any better. Last year the annual test added 100 hours of work on top of the usual duties for the month. Except this year, the month is July and there is a holiday, I have some more teaching duties, and I will be in Minneapolis for a week to attend a conference. I'm starting to freak out a little.

At least I have a vacation to look forward to in August. The reservations are all made (southern California, not Canada), and it was not hard for me to convince PDM that we should rent a convertible instead of a boring car. It will be a nice reward for getting through July.