Reason to post more

"Man without writing cannot long retain his history in his head. His intelligence permits him to grasp some kind of succession of generations; but without writing, the tale of the past rapidly degenerates into fumbling myth and fable. Man’s greatest epic, his four long battles with the advancing ice of the great continental glaciers, has vanished from human memory without a trace."

Loren Eisley {The Long Loneliness}

Office 2007

I'm really liking using Office 2007. I've been using it since Beta2 became public. There's just a few things I've hoped they've fixed in the final release.

Perhaps there's some secret programs with no names.

Going from Beta2 to B2TR seemed to be confusing for Excel.

Outlook needs to learn to count.

These are just some casual observations. I think it's a great product and the ribbon is a brilliant thing.

Advance Warning of Emergency

I've been doing a lot of technical writing recently. In the process of this I've been thinking a lot about the careful choice of words, how they go together and what information they do or don't convey.

With this in mind I became quite upset when driving and saw a sign about a diversion due to a closed road. The sign was about the 'Advanced warning of road closure due to emergency sewer repairs'.

There's two things that jumped out at me. Advanced warning & Emergency.
How can you have an advanced warning of an emergency? Emergency implies a sense of urgency, that something must be done NOW!

Think emergency services. You're never going to call them and say "I'm going to have a heart attack. Can you send an ambulance in two days time."
or
"My house is going to be on fire next Thursday, can you send a fire engine then."

This just completely misuses the word and even concept of an emergency.

My guess is that the intention was to indicate that it was an important, essential or a priority repair that was being done. I'm sure that If I lived near the broken sewer I'd want right now! not in a few days time.

Of all the words that could end up be sanitised and have their meaning diluted, this is one that should be protected. If 'emergency' ended up meaning 'quite important' it would be a terrible thing.


Grrr!
Rant over.

This is not about my job

I probably need to get this in early and I imagine I'll refer to it again in the future.

Nothing I write here is about my job, the company I work at now, or companies I have worked at in the past, the people mentioned in any posts may or may not exist or have said what I claim they have.

Any opinions expressed may or may not be mine. I'll do my job and you do yours and together we'll make the world a better place. And if you are not interested in making the world a better place, why not?

I don't want to hurt or offend anyone by what I write here. Just treat it all as made up.

Was that a false start?

Okay, so the idea was to blog to encourage me to write more so it was more of a habit.

Err, it's just that I've spent the last couple of weeks writing documentation at work. This has not left me feeling like writing anything else.

So here I am, back trying to write anything and often. Well that's the plan at least. I just hopes I can follow through.

Do you feel LUVed? Everyone should be!

Everyone wants to be LUVed!

* Listened to,
* Understood, and
* Valued.

I'll have to attribute this to someone else (Brad Appleton) but it seems to me to be an excellent idea.

Pluto not a planet

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9596_22-6109092.html

That's funny. I thought that space was constantly expanding, but it seems the solar system just got smaller!

And so it begins...

Why?

Well, a number of reasons really.

• Because I really need to start writing down some of the things that are rattling around in my head.
• Because I've got out of the habit of writing and I'm hoping this will motivate me to write more. That way when I do have to write something it won't take me so long.
• So I can share all the wonderful ideas and wisdom(?) I've accumulated.

What?

Probably a combination of:

• General IT related observations
• Thoughts on customer service, or lack thereof
• What On Earth (WTF) experiences