August 31st, 2005

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jimbojones
07:28 pm - Anger and Frustration: How I Nearly Strangled A Small Chinese Man Tonight
Large portions of the entire campus network are completely unusable right now, because - sadly - the school uses Microsoft Office.  And Microsoft Office wants to run the installer from the CD - or, in large networked environments, from a common server - for every single user on every single computer the first time that user logs onto that computer.  And, it being August, there are 10,000+ new users on campus.  Each of whom logs into a different lab computer in a different lab several times a week.

God I wish we just fucking used OpenOffice.

To make it worse, MS Office also wants to save everything that you do, by default, in your My Documents folder.  Which is in constant synchronization with - you guessed it - a network server.  Meaning that, if the campus LAN is DOS'ed to unusability by MS Office first-time-user install spam, when you try to save things in Office, that won't work either - you can't even save somewhere local that ISN'T synchronized to a network server, because the "Save As" dialog box wants to render the contents of that network server as a file listing when it opens up... and your whole workstation will lock up while it tries, and fails, to render it.

So, let's recap: the campus network is utterly unusable right now, and as a result, it is impossible to save anything to anywhere using MS Office.  Got it?  Okay.

If you think that sounds frustrating, try dealing with that while a five foot four ball of pudge with a mousey little voice, who speaks his ESL as though he's orally constipated, hops around from one foot to another like a demented cockatiel and yells increasingly loudly "SABE TO E-BAIL!  IF DOES NOT WORK, GET DIPPUREN E-BAIL ACCOUT!"

I am now piratpurchasing a copy of Maple so that, in the future, I can just show up to the lab, get the assignment, surf the fucking intertron until class is over, then go home and do the assignment.

Grrrrrrrr.
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Current Mood: pissy
Current Music: Tupac Shakur - When I Get Free II

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Comments:


 
[User Picture] From: enotnert
Date: September 1st, 2005 - 02:07 am		  (Link)
HAHAHAHAHA HAHA HAHA HAH AHAHA HAHAHA HAHA

There was a reason I hate USC and my first few weeks in the dorm I had my trusty old 56k plugged into the jack. .

Feel lucky you don't work with those idiots. I know of maybe 3 people in the entire USC network force who know what theyre doing.


 
[User Picture] From: mtu_squirrel
Date: September 1st, 2005 - 06:59 am		  (Link)
God, am I glad Michigan Tech isn't like that. We use OpenOffice EVERYWHERE.


The only issues we've got is that you need to remember which operating system you're using. The engineering labs are SunOS, the CS are Linux (mandrake), and there are a few PC stations scattered about. Or Unix.

At least they're heavily on the alternative OS's instead of just being PC machine after PC machine of "oh wait... the network has failed."


 
[User Picture] From: jimbojones
Date: September 1st, 2005 - 08:05 am		  (Link)

cynicism == realism

Oh, fucking come on now.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that OUTSIDE the CS and - maybe - MOST of - the engineering depts, Windows doesn't hold sway in your university?

I'd love to believe it. I really would.

But I'm not buying it.

Incidentally, for the record, our CS department has a very heavy unix presence, split between Solaris and - via the best efforts of cse.cs.edu's sysadmin - linux. Mandrake I think, though honestly I forget which flavor.

I sorta hope that once I have my degree, I'll be amongst the number of the researchers there, and I can add my weight to - heavily - increasing the amount of open source apps and operating systems being used for CS.

But really, like I said, I'd LIKE to believe that there's a uni out there, in this country, that isn't heavily MS dominated. But I'm finding it tough to believe.

Fess up, squirrel.


 
[User Picture] From: mtu_squirrel
Date: September 1st, 2005 - 09:50 pm		  (Link)

Re: cynicism == realism

I know, the realistic part and the cynic in you is telling you "man, that's bullshit."

But the engineering labs are all Sun stations. The labs I've dealt with in the physics department I think runs PC's. The CS labs are Linux.

and I think the Comp Engineering labs are split between having the option of PC's or Unix-based systems.

the Math department's labs are Sun's as well.

I don't give a shit about any of the other labs :P


 
[User Picture] From: mtu_squirrel
Date: September 1st, 2005 - 09:58 pm		  (Link)

Re: cynicism == realism

infact more info:


Sun seems to be the prevelant systems used in a lot of the labs. So yes, we're using Solaris. I forgot that it wasn't OpenOffice that was used everywhere... it's StarOffice.

We have ENG1101 as the Engineering Fundamentals Part I course that the first few days in there is learning the commands and how to use Star Office, how to telnet into the systems from our machines back in the dorms, etc.

I used to run ... god, what was it... some X-Win manager or something that allowed me to open up and run programs from the CS labs on my PC in the dorm room so I could do my CS homework in my room instead of running to the labs to do it. (think the programs we were running off those were the Java based ones... since the intro CS classes are all Java based)


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