The Venting Thread

[mamselle]

I am officially sick and tired of MSOffice's new nannying affectations.

THOSE PICTURES ARE MY PHOTOS! I TOOK THEM! THEY DON'T HAVE ANY MACROS!

STOP DROPPING THEM FROM THE SLIDES THEY'VE BEEN ON FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS!!!!!!!

I've had to try three workarounds and do more searches online for options and it's taken the 4 hours I'd set aside to finish up a bunch of slides and move towards finishing this thing.

REMIND ME--DO COMPUTERS SAVE TIME OR JUST WASTE IT!!!?????

No--never mind.

I know the answer.

Thanks.

M.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I got stung by some mother f*cking wasps today.

[Charlotte]

REMIND ME--DO COMPUTERS SAVE TIME OR JUST WASTE IT!!!?????

I know the answer too!

I'm contemplating giving up my smart phone and computers and absolutely refusing to have anything to do with them. This will work very well in the current online education climate. My department chair will be delighted.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Class starts next week and I still do not know what I am teaching. :(

[mamselle]

Class starts next week and I still do not know what I am teaching. :(

Yikes!

Hope they decide to let you know soonish....

REMIND ME--DO COMPUTERS SAVE TIME OR JUST WASTE IT!!!?????

I know the answer too!

I%u2019m contemplating giving up my smart phone and computers and absolutely refusing to have anything to do with them. This will work very well in the current online education climate. My department chair will be delighted.

Don't we all wish, somedays?

I did finally get it to work, and after digging deeper into the security caverns than I've ever been before, was at least able to save all the slides from a previous, untrammeled version into a file that I will replace in the AM and then go on with the project.

At least it shouldn't happen again, now that I've told the computer who's boss for this round.

Of course, some other issue can always come up, but I'm the human.

Which (should, says I) count for something

M.

[Caracal]

Everyone is exhausting me.

[ergative]

Supervising a master's student analysing her data today. She does not now stats, so it is just a matter of making plots in Excel.

She is not very good at Excel, because she has a Mac, and usually lets the default programs operate, such as Numbers. I am not very good at Mac versions of programs, but it's similar enough to Windows Excel that I can figure out how to do things like sort by a column, or find all cells that contain a certain sequence of text.

She's Chinese. All of her Excel labels are in Chinese. Where the f is 'Data' tab? Where the f is 'find all'? where the f is 'sort'? She has no idea. She doesn't use Excel. I can't read the commands. AAAARRRGGHG

FYI: If you're trying to sort some data with a student whose version of Excel is labeled in Chinese, ask her to look for 'reorder' instead of 'sort'. Boy, that one took a while!

[AmLitHist]

Everyone is exhausting me.

^^ This. ^^

[Harlow2]

New grad class starts in 2 weeks. I've never seen or read the 2 texts  Despite several  reminders to person in charge books were never ordered. Should be fun that first week.

[apl68]

New grad class starts in 2 weeks. I've never seen or read the 2 texts  Despite several  reminders to person in charge books were never ordered. Should be fun that first week.

In the 1990s our campus bookstore did that so often with course textbooks that a survey of faculty eventually found that a solid majority of classes had late books.  The university finally outsourced the textbook procurement part of the university's business.  Somebody at the bookstore did themselves right out of a job there!

[mamselle]

Having worked in a large campus bookstore, it's often actually the reps, who are themselves at the mercy of the publishers....

They are changed in and out very quickly (they're often on commission, are hooked in by promises of high pay, then discouraged by the amount of work needed to procure it, and the number of late orders that delay their cuts--the publishing house gets the deposits, they get theirs at the end), so there's both high turnover, a steep learning curve, and an already-full desk of back orders to step into.

And many are young, don't really even know the fields they're selling for, and are given very little training, and less IT support for online order structures. So it's not surprising there's a revolving door on their offices (Plus, they often rep for more than one publisher at a time to make up their costs).

Not saying the bookstore doesn't bear some responsibility, too, of course, but the late submissions from profs didn't help. We would start requesting book assignments in January for the September semester, and most would not come in until August...after they came back from summer research trips--thereby compressing things further.

But I realize you probably deal with similar merry-go-rounds in the library field, so none of this is probably new news.....!

M.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

This upcoming semester is going to be a major Charlie Foxtrot. I just have no words. My schedule sucks and I'm really unhappy about it, but there isn't a damn thing I can do except deal with it or quit.

[Harlow2]

This upcoming semester is going to be a major Charlie Foxtrot. I just have no words. My schedule sucks and I'm really unhappy about it, but there isn't a damn thing I can do except deal with it or quit.

So sorry.  That sounds awful.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Why the f*ck are we meeting in person for a Department meeting? Our department is HUGE and I know there are unvaccinated faculty. Ugh.

[OneMoreYear]

This upcoming semester is going to be a major Charlie Foxtrot. I just have no words. My schedule sucks and I'm really unhappy about it, but there isn't a damn thing I can do except deal with it or quit.

So sorry, EPW, to hear about your schedule. For so many reasons, I agree that this semester is shaping up to a major Charlie Foxtrot.

Why the f*ck are we meeting in person for a Department meeting? Our department is HUGE and I know there are unvaccinated faculty. Ugh.

Our full professors pushed back on our most recently scheduled in-person departmental meeting, and got it changed to hybrid (could attend either in person or virtually).  Part of the reasoning was that we have a mask mandate, and it was going to be really hard to hear across the room without mics for everyone, so Zoom was more accessible.  We are not sure if this reasoning will hold in the future.  No vaccine mandate here.