Itâs my last day on my current project at my day job, and I was asked to update the product documentation, which is a Microsoft Word document roughly 170,000 words long. If I had had any sense I would have refused. What are they going to do, not extend my engagement? (Donât threaten me with a good time.)
It took ten minutes just to open this abomination in Word, because this version of Word is part of Office 365 and the document lives in âthe cloudâ. I donât think my connection was the issue; it took that long to render this demon-ridden document. It bogs down for 30 seconds at a time if I type a single word. It has crashed three times on me. Now I know why so many professional writers seem to have problems with substance abuse—and why David Foster Wallace retired with extreme prejudice. Theyâre self-medicating to cope with having to deal with Microsoft Word because nobody in the New York publishing cartel seems to understand that plain text is a universal interface.
I think Iâll quit early today; I already have two weeks of paid time off approved starting Monday, but with all the unpaid overtime Iâve worked on this project, I think quitting early today is my rightful due—and a gentler revenge than what I might take if I could bring myself to shed what little in the way of ethics I possess. đź
If my bosses had even the one brain cell that all orange tabby cats reputedly share on a rotating basis, they might listen when somebody like me tells them that documentation should be composed in Markdown, reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, or Org mode and run through pandoc to generate Word documents and PDFs. We could then version-control our documentation with git, and maybe even automate document processing from plain text to Word/PDF with a makefile. More improbable things have happened to me, like Madam Catastrophy sauntering into my life and claiming me as if she were a cat.
Frankly, the reason Microsoft products suck harder than an industrial vacuum cleaner is that nobody ever gets fired for buying their shit—and they damned well should. I might use Microsoft tech on the job, but thatâs because Iâm getting paid to do so. You wonât see me using that shit at home; my house is a Debian GNU/Linux shop.
Oh, putain de merde! The damnable app just crashed again. Fucking Microsoft Word has me cussing in French (which I barely speak) because English profanity is simply inadequate to express my frustration with Wordâs sheer inability to cope with long, complex documents. I donât get paid enough for this bullshit.
Again, itâs my last day on this particular project. I only showed up to make sure people could handle the work I had been doing without me. I had not showed up so that I could do white collar scutwork. Therefore, au diable ces inepties.
Besides, if I quit early I can hit the public library before it closes at 5pm and drop off that copy of The Will of the Many that I had abandoned on page 97. I can also focus on ripping the absolutely massive 13 disc Deutsche Grammophon box set of Daniel Barenboim performing Ludwig van Beethovenâs piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations. I got my copy in the mail last night. Itâs a nicely made set, because these guys donât fuck around, but I bet it would have been supermassive on vinyl.
Yeah, Iâm not joking. I grew up on this music, as well as prog rock, jazz fusion, and heavy metal. And heavy metal is just Romanticism in rock; like much of Beethovenâs work, itâs all about the Sturm und Drang. If you think Iâm joking, check out the The Year 1812, Solemn Overture, Op. 49. Tchaikovsky was writing for artillery long before AC/DC wrote âFor Those About to Rockâ.
Iâve played the 1812 Overture in school orchestras, but the instructors never would let me trade my viola for a howitzer. Regardless of the composerâs original intent, they were more concerned with safety. It probably did not help that I was a cross between Damien Thorne from The Omen and Junior from Problem Child as a kid, and I thought little of solving personal problems through the judicious application of high explosives. Also, the viola section was grossly short-handed; every orchestra kidâs parents wanted them to play a more prestigious instrument.
But I got my revenge on all of them when tapped to play a cadenza in Georg Philipp Telemannâs Viola Concerto in G Major. During rehearsal Iâd play Yngwie Malmsteen guitar solos instead. There was nothing the instructors could do because the program was set and none of the other violists had the chops. Come the night of the actual performance, however? Occasional Reader, I nailed it so goddamn hard that Jesus wept in sympathy.
Digressions aside, I should have tried charging this box set to the company; itâs music I can leave on in the background even if Iâm on a conference call. It would let them brag about having cultured techies on the payroll.
I canât say that about the likes of Alicia Cordisco, Gold Spire, Fires in the Distance, Ghost, Transgressive, Fourth Dominion, Firmament, Spell, Thank You Scientist, or Mortiis... But my bosses are lucky I donât listen to Body Count on the job, let alone Stormtroopers of Death (S.O.D.), Otep, Cattle Decapitation, or Anal Cunt.