Press Cancel?

If someone could kindly show the new computer users where the cancel button is, I think it would be appreciated.

Hint: it is in the upper right-hand corner.

[caption id="attachment_54" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Press Cancel?"][/caption]

Long Time to add Groundhog Day?

Sometimes I get amazed at how long some simple tasks take.  Like this one, for example, which was adding holidays to my Outlook calendar.  It took a few seconds to add Groundhog Day.

Axe Garlic Scent

There's a long story here.  I'm not going to go into it.  New Axe Garlic Scent!  Click on the image for a larger view.

[caption id="attachment_49" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="New! Axe Garlic Scent!"][/caption]

DISCLAIMER: This is not a real product.  If you even thought for one remote second that Axe actually made a Garlic scent, you need to do the world a favor and kill yourself, considering that your intelligence level is that of a shovel.

REAL DISCLAIMER: I don't work for Axe, but I do use some of their products.  I did not ask Axe for permission to use their can likeness, so hopefully they won't decide to sue me.

Browser Wars

After seeing http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1120.html, I had to redo it in PhotoShop using the latest mess I found in the shit that is Internet Explorer 7.  Click for a larger (legible) image.

[caption id="attachment_45" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="The browsers talking about their support for CSS"][/caption]

After seeing that, you can check out http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2006/8/16/4999, which is a response to IE Group Program Manager's response to people bitching about IE and standards compliance.  I found this after building a Web Site in Visual Web Developer 2005 (a Micro$oft product) and having it look perfect in FireFox, only to bring it up in Internet Explorer and having some wierd shit happen.  An ASP:Panel changed border styles and text colors (white text was showing up as blue, even if I used '#FFFFFF' instead of 'White').

Travel Demand Modeling 101 Part 1: Terminology

It occurred to me that many people likely do not understand all of the terminology of travel demand models.  Because of this, I felt the need to list many of them here.

Office 2008 Database

I opened a PowerPoint presentation from my email and recieved the following notice:



I wouldn't have cared if I had opened PowerPoint a million times before this one, but this was the first time that I opened PowerPoint 2008 on my Mac.  However, considering that this is the same company that released Vista AFTER XP and ME AFTER 98, what should I expect?

Google Don't Know Cincinnati

Okay, I know I don't live in New York, NY or anything, but I don't live in Podunk, either.

Click on image to see what I am talking about.

IE Sucks

It should be illegal to have a site that is intentionally crippled from using another browser.  It should be even more illegal from having a site that is crippled from your own company's browser.

Scary Warning...

As a former IT Manager, I understand when sometimes stuff isn't as complex as it could be.  In fact, I am totally happy about the strides that Microsoft, Apple, and the Linux groups have made from DOS to Windows XP, OS X, and Ubuntu and other Linux Distros that have been trying to make computers easy while still maintaining security and the like.  It isn't easy at all, and there has been a lot of progress made.  If that progress wasn't made, then the would would be so different, and probably not for the better.

Then you find something like this.



That 3.8 GB USB 2.0 FD is my "Jump Drive".  Why would I EVER want to allow Windows Media Player to mess with that?  In fact, why does it need to touch the drive at all?  I just happened to plug it in when WMP was running.

Serious Disk Error?

I work on a travel demand model.  The model I use starts at 300 MB and throughout the run process, the size balloons to 2.5 GB from all the data that is created and calculated.

And I can make it go larger by producing some *REALLY* big reports.  There was one I produced that was 800 MB of plain text.  When opening it in Notepad, it would take forever as Notepad read the entire file.  I thought that maybe Word would read it progressively and allow me to look at the the file while it was loading.  I was wrong.  Word instead of telling me that the file was too big, it told me:

ArcEngine... 0 seconds left?

ESRI isn't the only one that is guilty of this, but if there is 0 seconds remaining, then why have this still on the screen?

Stream Data?

While moving an image (that is about to make it to this blog), I received one of these stupid warnings.  Roxio's shit software should have never touched this, since I have never used Roxio anything on the machine in question.

Roadrunner Can't Find Google

Despite Google having servers across the world, RoadRunner (which likely has fiber across the country) couldn't get to any one of them.  Now I did notice that the search bar (see this image, which is the entire screen capture), is powered by Yahoo, so maybe they have some strategy increase their paltry share value by forcibly swinging people away from Google.

Excel CLEAN() Function

I found this one when getting mad at Excel because I couldn't find a formula that I wanted:

Just a bunch of crap!

Are we sure that GIS is anything, or is it just a bunch of crap?



(Full Size)

This is why GIS people shouldn't piss off others.

Does GIS Matter?

Really, does it?

Click here for a larger view

Computer Stress Diagram

ESRI had a really cool looking graphic on their website. Try as I did, I couldn't directly use it against them, but I could use it as a diagram that explains life as a/an (pick any or all):

• Engineer


• Planner


• Architect


• Lawyer


• Doctor


• Real Estate Agent


• Computer Geek


• Photographer


• News Reporter


• Sales Representative


• Account Manager


• Accountant


• President, CEO, CIO, CFO, C-Whatever-O


• Administrative Assistant


• Call Center Rep


• Insurance Agent


• Human Lifeform that uses a computer

Click here for a larger view

UPDATE:

Another software company and business partner to ESRI has claimed (informally) that they "borrowed" the "flower" idea from them.  I don't have the impression that the other company (that will go unnamed) is bothered by it, but I just thought that I would add that.

ArcGIS Desktop Kerplunk Screen

Click here for a larger view

Uninstall Crap

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Custom Software Error

I worked for the company that programmed this software, and we had a known error with one of the components that was used in the software.  This error came up every time I closed the software.  The programmer tried and tried to fix the component, but after seemingly hundreds of tries, he never could.

Nonetheless, I always got this stupid thing that said "report this error to Microsoft", which is either a direct connection to a cyber trashcan or Microsoft's big-brother database of software errors that users are getting.  Just what I like to know - Microsoft is spying on us, and not sending these error messages to the programmer and company that produced the software.

Note that the inclusion of this is an example, and I tended to poke fun at the programmer of this software - the inclusion here is against Microsoft, not vTIMAS.

CD Recording Generic Error

Click here for a larger view