Rant VIII: The Reckoning

Mom is done fighting, no more treatments, hospice care has been called in.

I continue to be helpless and feel like an 8 year old unable to process anything.
 
Mom is done fighting, no more treatments, hospice care has been called in.

I continue to be helpless and feel like an 8 year old unable to process anything.
I'm so sorry to hear that your family is going through this.

At least hospice is all about making your mom as comfortable as possible.
 
Mom is done fighting, no more treatments, hospice care has been called in.

I continue to be helpless and feel like an 8 year old unable to process anything.
I can't even begin to comprehend what you are going through right now, and I'm sorry that you are having to deal with it.

Hospice is just like EM said, it's about making her comfortable, allowing her to deal with what she needs to without going through the hell that some treatments can cause.
 
Mom is gone now. I feel about a million things and nothing at the same time. Hundreds of thoughts in my head and none of them translating to words.

Relief, I think, is the most prominent. No suffering, no pain.
 

Cajungal

Staff member
Mom is gone now. I feel about a million things and nothing at the same time. Hundreds of thoughts in my head and none of them translating to words.

Relief, I think, is the most prominent. No suffering, no pain.
I'm sorry for your loss. :( As hard as that must be, I'm glad for your sake and hers that she didn't linger. My mom had to watch my grandma go on for weeks under hospice care, an it was really difficult. I hope you have many fond memories to look back on.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
So, not to change the subject, but...

The new MS Office is ugly as shit.
Well of course it is, it's supposed to look like Windows 8.

Of course, the version that changed to look like windows 7 was ugly as shit, too.

If you ask me, Office peaked at the 2003 edition.
 
Well that's just logic. I mean some sin is really nice to look at. There are whole websites dedicated to it. Whereas when was the last time that you came across a really aesthetically pleasing shit?
 
Well of course it is, it's supposed to look like Windows 8.

Of course, the version that changed to look like windows 7 was ugly as shit, too.

If you ask me, Office peaked at the 2003 edition.
Tangent time:
My girlfriend just bought a new laptop with windows 8. Why is it that the only way to make it user friendly at all is to set it up to be as similar to windows 7 as possible?
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Frankly, I'm of the opinion nobody would have ever bothered going past Office 97 if they didn't keep changing the file format. The move to .docx was a huge pain in my ass.
 
I always had issues with Open Office with files not transferring formatting to word docs and such. Seeing as most offices and schools use MS office, this was a huge issue.
 
Ah. I'd just heard that openoffice.org was discontinued. I actually prefer installed programs to cloud solutions, so good on them.
It's not the same software, rather software descended from it because of the open source nature of the whole thing. But it's still top notch stuff and covers the whole suite of applications that MSOffice does. It's great. Never going back to MSOffice.
 
As long as I keep getting free licenses for MS Office, then I will keep using it. I do have one pc with openoffice on it. I like it. It does the job. I do prefer Prism when it comes to graphing and stats.
 
Tangent time:
My girlfriend just bought a new laptop with windows 8. Why is it that the only way to make it user friendly at all is to set it up to be as similar to windows 7 as possible?
I just got one with windows 8 on it too. I've found that if you don't have a touch screen, which I do, 8 is almost unbearable. I've really come to like it with the touch screen though. Once you get all your tiles set up how you like it, and get used to the navigation, it's really a lot smoother.Trying to do the gestures or get to the action spots with a mouse can be a pain though.
Ever since 7 I haven't used the start menu much except to bring up the search box to type the name of the program I wanted to use, so losing it wasn't a big deal to me.
8 takes some getting used to, and a touch screen, but I like it so far.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Really, even in XP I almost never use the start menu. I've got everything I need either in a shortcut (or in a folder of shortcuts) on the desktop or a microicon on the quicklaunch bar.
 
Mac Office isn't ported. It's a totally different code base.
Yes, I know that. Otherwise there wouldn't be that comical 4-yr difference bug that sometimes (still!) catches people unawares.
I was just calling out the questionable marketing practice of forcing all the Mac people to wait up to a year or more for their version...for no good reason that I can see other than to "encourage" end users to invest in a Windows box (to avoid the delay). And they would do this again and again every 2-4 years.

--Patrick
 
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Is there even a point to being on the latest office version other than to say you are? The only reason I've ever come up with to upgrade is because of a new install and you have to.
 
Is there even a point to being on the latest office version other than to say you are? The only reason I've ever come up with to upgrade is because of a new install and you have to.
Yes. Interoperability. If you need to correspond with others, and those others have the newer version, then you might need to upgrade to match, or else productivity will suffer.

Now, I'm in a position where people ask me all the time whether they need to upgrade their software/hardware/phone/ISP/carrier/OS/peripherals/whatever, and my answer is always the same; "If what you have now no longer does what you need, then yes, it is finally time to upgrade." And really, that's the only question you ever need to ask yourself about technology. Any technology. If you are still using Office97 on a 500MHz Compaq running WinME and printing to an HP Laserjet 2100 over parallel, and you are perfectly happy with the results, then there is absolutely no reason why you should feel guilty about not upgrading any of it. Sure, you should probably have a contingency plan ready to go if your ancient equipment finally decides to die on you, but upgrade? Why??? Why mess with success?

Note that I did not say to bury your head in the sand and deny new developments exist. I do not endorse nor advocate ignorance of new technology. Refusing to acknowledge new technologies can be very unhealthy. Instead, poke your head out there once in a while to see what's going on. You may find that someone has developed a solution to an efficiency roadblock which, though it is not necessary, may still be a benefit, and potentially a very significant one. Then there is the possibility that your current solution may be demoted to the backup/reserve solution, and eventually retired (with much nostalgia) and pass peacefully into obsolescence.

--Patrick
 
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Yes. Interoperability. If you need to correspond with others, and those others have the newer version, then you might need to upgrade to match, or else productivity will suffer.


--Patrick
The only time an Office upgrade would have interoperability issues was when docx first came out. Otherwise there is no reason you need the latest and greatest office. Even then the only people using docx were small businesses that upgraded just because. Most large businesses that had any sort of professional IT department realized that you couldn't expect everyone to upgrade at your pace.
 
The only time an Office upgrade would have interoperability issues was when docx first came out.
I would disagree with that. Aside from cosmetic feature enhancements, the releases between 97-2008 added features such as extensive customization, security enhancements, voice control, error recovery, and better junk mail filtering. If you were looking for any of these, then the new versions were a godsend (see my "needs" comment, above). If not, then they were meh.

--Patrick
 
I would disagree with that. Aside from cosmetic feature enhancements, the releases between 97-2008 added features such as extensive customization, security enhancements, voice control, error recovery, and better junk mail filtering. If you were looking for any of these, then the new versions were a godsend (see my "needs" comment, above). If not, then they were meh.

--Patrick
That doesn't have much to do with interoperability though. Just new features you want. Office can offer a lot, don't get me wrong. I just don't see a problem with being a year or two or three or even four off of the latest and greatest of it.
 
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