Just Another Friday

   in which our antihero overshares about first world problems and
   Beethoven

   This text was dumped from starbreaker.org/personal/just-another-friday.html with lynx.

   It’s 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? (Don’t
   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 ‘the
   cloud’. I don’t 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. They’re 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 I’ll quit early today; I already have two weeks of paid time
   off approved starting Monday, but with all the unpaid overtime I’ve
   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. 😼

   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
   that’s because I’m getting paid to do so. You won’t 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
   Word’s sheer inability to cope with long, complex documents. I don’t
   get paid enough for this bullshit.

   Again, it’s 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 Beethoven’s piano sonatas and the Diabelli
   Variations. I got my copy in the mail last night. It’s a nicely made
   set, because these guys don’t fuck around, but I bet it would have been
   supermassive on vinyl.
   cover art for a classical music box set cover art for Daniel
   Barenboim’s 2020 recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas and
   the Diabelli Variations for Deutsche Grammophon

   Yeah, I’m 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 Beethoven’s work, it’s all about the Sturm und
   Drang. If you think I’m joking, check out the The Year 1812, Solemn
   Overture, Op. 49. Tchaikovsky was writing for artillery long before
   AC/DC wrote “For Those About to Rock”.
   preview image for YouTube video ID r92NiK08l6Q 4K Full performance w/
   pyrotechnics! | Tchaikovsky | 1812 Overture

   I’ve played the 1812 Overture in school orchestras, but the instructors
   never would let me trade my viola for a howitzer. Regardless of the
   composer’s 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 kid’s 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 Telemann’s Viola Concerto in G Major. During rehearsal
   I’d 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; it’s music I can leave on in the background even if I’m on a
   conference call. It would let them brag about having cultured techies
   on the payroll.

   I can’t 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
   don’t listen to Body Count on the job, let alone Stormtroopers of Death
   (S.O.D.), Otep, Cattle Decapitation, or Anal Cunt.

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   love metal 🤘—hate fascism 👊
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   trans rights are individual rights 🏳️‍⚧️
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