25 September 2006

This week in WTF-land

Okay cats and kittens, here’s the latest list of things that are irking my jive.

Location, location—what was the third thing again?
My place of employment is engaged in a half-hearted (and half-witted) attempt to relocate from the place it’s been for the entire 33 years of its existence. The current prospects are: 1) a lovely, spacious, modern building in the heart of the Square that’s close to all kinds of stuff and actually has room for everyone on staff; or 2) a cockeyed, ramshackle dog of a building that is about 40% of our current size and perhaps 20% as charming—if you keep one eye closed and a bottle of vodka handy. But the hard fact here is that option 1 isn’t even a true prospect, because there’s no money to pay the lease that would come with it. I wish I’d never seen it in the first place, just to have my hopes raised and then summarily squashed flatter than hammered shit. And to the university whose name we bear, I ask: Where is the love, comrades? How about offering us a space that’s larger than Khrushchev’s shoe?

PeopleSoft and Safari: Can’t we all just get along?
So I’ve never been able to access PeopleSoft with Safari, for no damn good reason. Now I get a memo stating that as of next week, PeopleSoft will no longer work with Internet Explorer. They claim it’ll work with Safari, but then they reveal that it’ll work only with Safari 2.0. Which I don’t have. Which I’d have to buy Tiger to get. Can someone remind these chuckleheads that the whole point of web-based interfaces is a little concept called interoperability? Platform-freaking-independence? Land of the free and home of Steve Jobs? Ah, never mind, I didn’t want to view my paycheck anyway.

Expletives available upon request
It’s been almost a year since I left my last post and moved “up” to manager, and my former position is still vacant. One year doing the work of two people. At this point I’m tempted to tie the Chicago Manual of Style around my ankles and jump into the Charles. And why, why are there no scholars/authors who know how to properly construct a bibliography? I know, it’s esoteric knowledge, but at least pretend you care. Maybe spell “USSR,” or Stalin’s first name, correctly once in a while.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So if Peoplesoft won't take IE or Safari, you mean they're only compatible with -gasp-, Firefox??? :)

Snorklewacker said...

Oh they'll take IE, but only on Windoze machines--I should have clarified that. And I haven't tried Firefox, but I can only imagine I'll get the same schmacky error that Safari gives me now. Bastards!

Anonymous said...

I guess you refuse to use IE with Windows. Once a rebel, always a rebel ;-)
Good luck with the real estate thing. Rents in MA are brutal. I hear that real estate prices are coming down. Maybe that will be good news for you.

Snorklewacker said...

Hey man, my job all but requires I use a Mac. So there! :) As for the real estate issue, the Three Musketeers meet this afternoon to decide our locationary fate. I am completely pessimistic about the outcome. Maybe I can spike the cookies beforehand, or something.