As per the possibly most basic school requirements for my current class, I needed a computer program that I absolutely hate and have successfully managed to avoid for a few years thanks to the wonderful, caring, and loving OpenOffice (which is also priced to move at absolutely free). Although I didn't have to send those "sock munching clay brained trailer tire kissing bastards at Microsoft" (I'm not afraid they might hear me and I'll shout it again "nevermind" ) the $100+ for their brainwashing office software (which has wiped most people's sensibilities completely out since it is damn near a standard format) and polluted my computer with the 60 day trial instead.
Last night I had to write my first report for the end of week 1 using the Word program. I figured that it would not be too horrible, cause I mean seriously, how badly can you screw up a word processor, and they have been making it for years upon years, and therewithin lies root of the problem. When you take something that functions rather well, then try to repeatedly improve it with insane new and confusing features and add functionality aspects that might be used by a physics professor typing out a graduate level textbook, then organize everything by having a drunken monkey poop into a hat, you end up with a less than stellar program.
If you use it and like it and actually understand it and can manage to change the layout on the page without having the other layout tweaks reset and vanish, congratulations on getting your physics degree. By the time I had the blank document ready to start writing my paper, my voice was about shot from all the wild screaming I do at the computer screen and I most likely would have embarrassed the old lady who lives next door if she hadn't lost most of her hearing (but the people on the other side of her probably covered their children's ears). "Angry" is a good word for my experience with it last night but only because any other description tends to ring along the lines of "premeditated" if you want an idea of how upset I was.
I only had a couple pages that I wrote, 10 questions which I had to answer and explain with a couple of paragraphs each. By the time I had begun to type, I would have been half way finished were I using OpenOffice instead. And of course, by the time I started actually "working" on the paper, I was pissed off that I couldn't think as cleverly as I generally do, and my paper suffered for it. Luckily I have never had to use Excel or PowerPoint (or their equivalents) so I won't become quite as upset since I don't have a better standard to base my experience off of.
ELIZABETH SMASH!!!!!
(Afterthoughts)
The one "good" thing I will say about using that foul program is that it was interesting. Everytime I tried to use a feature the toolbar would rearrange itself into a different configuration the each time so that I never got bored looking at the same icons in the same place where they would be too easy to locate when I needed them.
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