My offices uses Microsoft Lync but turns off message logging for “security reasons”.  This frustrates me to no end as conversation logging is infinitely useful when one works with people who will write three or four paragraph IMs with important information in lieu of an email.  A coworker and I installed Pidgin to deal with this lack of logging and it was nice to have a unified messaging platform on my computer.  The coworker and I chatted and explored the fuller functionality of Pidgin like logging, psychic mode, and showing previous conversations but slowly our chatter became more informal as we both reminisced about using Pidgin in college.  This was fine, but the breaking point came after we picked apart the hair and clothing choices of our coworkers and I linked him to hahgay.com.  This site is profoundly useful but probably in violation of my firm’s diversity policy.

1) I removed Pidgin.
2) I deleted the Pidgin conversation log.
3) I now understand why logging is disabled.

 

My firm had fired and hired an entire department’s worth of people in one of the areas to which I don’t pay attention.  Any large turnover brings a change to the tenor of the building and the make-up of the fridge.  There’s more Eastern music emanating from cubes and there is much less yogurt in the fridge to the point where one can again make out the bottom shelf.  This last bit led to either a revelation or coincidence that one of my coworkers has a Batman lunch box.

Not actual box, but looks like it

This single accessory makes its owner more interesting than most people in my building combined.  I must find him or her and see which category this person falls into: new friend, or the greatest of let-downs, a hipster.

I’m watching my coworker nearly attack the large, Soviet-style printer to the left of me.  The thing jams like Dizzy Gillespie and no longer faxes.  A coworker commented that this was caused by increased complication of modern gadgets and that he wanted a phone that just made calls and printer that just printed.  Being a child of the 80s and growing up with surly printers like the HP LaserJet II that would only print under a waxing moon or certain tidal periods, I have no problem making the device function.   It is like a child that’s a picky eater and won’t take a ream of paper if the top sheet is off-kilter or toner cartridge isn’t seated just right.  The noise of a properly inserted toner cartridge is that of loading a Thompson submachine gun with a drum of 50 caliber dum-dums.  In the modern office environment is unmistakable.

So my older coworkers are a lost causee, my peers are versed in the ways of hardware-fu but what of our coworkers’ children?  Having grown up in the age of functional printing knowing neither mimeograph nor tempermental laser printers we need to give them the tools to succeed with the next generation of grumpy technologies.  I propose the Fisher-Price My First Printer.  It’ll be large and plastic with easy to identify trays and cartridges with a display that simply shows a happy face everything’s ok and a sad face if something’s jammed or otherwise out of order and will play happy music with bursts of bright light when a printer problem is properly fixed.  Best of all, there’ll be a “at least you tried” feature where the device will provide audible instructions if the operator isn’t able to solve something quickly to avoid early frustration.  Wouldn’t it be great, going up to a printer, having it jam and that experience bringing up memories of a joyful childhood.  That’s the world I want my kids to live in.

I’ve spent the day trying to find the trial version of Microsoft’s OneNote software after I installed Vista on my tablet.  Most people would identify three problems with that statement, but I shall continue.  I couldn’t find the official trial to convert to a registered version as everything on Microsoft is like “only homos use 2003, 2007 is as amazing as Vista over XP!”  I broke down and searched the tubes for a torrent of the files I needed but a version that wasn’t cracked as I had a valid registration code.  I finally found and installed one only to discover after the install that the program was in Icelandic.  I then tried to remove the program except that the removal options were in well, Icelandic so at each removal prompt I had to guess which option to pick only to discover I had hit the Icelandic word for “cancel” or “repair”.  After about 6 tries, I removed it only to find that in the installation process, the default Office language had been changed… to Icelandic.   Ugh.