It Sucks Being “The Night Guy”

July 9, 2008 - 10pm

I’m really sick of being “The Night Guy.” I hate to sound like Rodney Dangerfield, but I don’t get any respect. Until recently, I’d gotten used to the string of unintentional oversights by my coworkers–food brought in to the break room always gone by the time I get in, important meetings scheduled outside my work hours, little or no communication between shifts–mostly little things that imply that my coworkers never even consider the fact that anyone works different hours than they do. Lately, however, it’s just been getting insulting.

In March I asked to be switched to the day shift. This is a reasonable request, considering I’ve been here for more than two years. Despite my boss’s continuing reassurances that they’re working on hiring someone to take over my current hours, I’m still working the same shift. Since I requested the change, they hired a new tech. He works Monday through Friday, 9am until 6pm. If you were wondering, yes, that’s the shift I wanted. He does the exact same job I do, and they pay him more.

When I got into the office after my weekend, someone had swapped my desk chair for a creaking, screeching, back-torturing piece of junk. When I angrily asked my coworker what happened, he told me that the owner had taken my chair and given it to one of the tenants we rent office space to. Tenant had complained to Owner about the chair I’m now sitting in, so Owner gave him my chair without even leaving me a note.

Earlier that week, the woman in charge of scheduling company events came over to my desk to tell me that they’d scheduled a company outing, a minor-league baseball game, for a Thursday night. I work Thursdays. They’d knowingly scheduled a company outing for a night when I can’t go. This would be understandable if this were a large company–but we have a total of eleven employees. Literally everyone in the company, plus a guest, gets to go except me.

I really can’t think of a better way to say to an employee, “We don’t value you” than what they’ve done over the past month. Fuck this. I’m done.

Attention: Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island

March 5, 2008 - 12am

Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you.

What in the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you vote for Hillary? If that divisive, arrogant, sneaky bitch actually gets the Democratic party’s nomination, she will lose in the general election. Republicans will actually vote for Obama–and sell their mothers to vote against Hillary.

There are already plenty of polls out there proving this. Here’s one cited by the Huffington post. Here’s a different Zogby poll cited in a Nashville newspaper.

It took me four seconds to find that information, so I’d appreciate if you’d explain to me how it is that you voted for Hillary anyway. What’s the story, there? Do you only crawl out of your abandoned missile silos to vote, then crawl back in to await the next political contest you can fuck up for the rest of us?

This is a trite, horrible phrase, and I’m ashamed to use it, but… a vote for Hillary is a vote for the Republicans. As a matter of fact, Rush Limbaugh has actually been telling his legion of slack-jawed idiots to vote for Hillary. Shouldn’t that tell you something?

You people sicken me. I consider you to be nearly as stupid as Bush voters.

Windows XP Service Pack 3–WTF, Microsoft?

March 1, 2008 - 1am

Microsoft is putting the final finishing touches on what is expected to be XP’s final service pack, and it’s about goddamn time. Service pack 2 was released in August 2004–which is centuries ago in computer terms. Last time I did a fresh installation of XP SP2, the system needed more than 80 critical updates before I considered my system to be even remotely secure.

I’ve been beta testing SP3, and I’ve been fairly impressed with it. My workstation at the office is running an old beta build, and I’ve had absolutely no problems with it. However, I upgraded the system from an existing SP2 install, so there were a few things that I missed.

Today, I installed XP on my home workstation using a slipstreamed SP3 RC2 CD–and found a few things that absolutely baffle me.

  • Internet Explorer is still version 6. (6.0.2900.3311.xpsp.080212-0005) That’s right–a year after IE7’s introduction and a service pack later, and XP is still installing the bug-ridden misery that is IE6.
  • Windows Media Player is still version 9. (9.00.00.4503, to be exact.) The current version? 11. (11.0.5721.5145)

As strange as these two items are by themselves, I was even more confused when I ran Microsoft Update–neither appears as an update. While this may well be intentional due to SP3’s release candidate status, it still seems bizarre to me.

At this point, there’s no chance that either IE7 or WMP11 will be included in the final release. Therefore, I’m forced to ask–what the fuck, Microsoft? You’re releasing the first serious update to XP in almost four years–so why wouldn’t you actually go to the effort of seriously updating it?

Update, for anyone who cares: I was about to post this to digg tonight and asked myself, “Why are people going to call me an idiot for writing this?” (They will, trust me. It’s just a matter of what half-baked, specious arguments they’ll come up with.) That’s when it occurred to me: IE7 and WMP11 aren’t included in SP3 because they require WGA validation. It would be far too easy to just download the redistributable SP3 install and get both programs that way.

That said, it’s still very strange that they don’t appear in Microsoft Update.

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© Marc Teale 2009.