Le Sigh
One of the higher-ups around here left a six page, three hundred item list of names on my desk detailing who in the building has had their Lotus upgraded (<20 people) and who has not (the rest). This list chills me, sitting quietly at my left hand and yet exerting inordinate and terrible power over my life and its foreseeable future. I intend to approach my superior, foul artifact in hand, and ask him, with my teeth bared and shoulders high, “Really?”
I have some great ideas for the blog that just aren’t materializing due to a lack of time. I haven’t produced a comic for some weeks, because the prolonged set of uninterrupted time needed to put one together hasn’t been available. When I have got the chance, I’m going to be putting all my comics on a separate WordPress page so that they’re centralized and easy to read (the pages are the tabs beneath my banner up top). I mostly want to experiment with the format to see how it looks, but I also like the idea of keeping my potentially incriminating less serious pursuits separate from my writing. Not that I intend to make my written words any less damning more somber, but the two are significantly delineated in my mind, so I’d like to simplify their presentation instead of making one big mess of all my work.
I’m working with some folks to make the About page worthwhile, that should be worth a laugh within the week.
I’ve also got just a fantastic post drafted about books, so there’s that. It is in progress. Don’t look at me like that. Quit it!
245 Lotus upgrades to go. Sigh.
Dagobah System
Lotus notes has devoured nearly all of my day and sanity, making updates virtually impossible (hah! virtually!) for the time being. I am certain that before long I will be awoken from fitful sleep, gasping and chilled as I emerge from the hideous black tendrils of dreams which would resonate only with that silent electric monstrosity, the orange lotus and its creep of ravenous data folders. I will likely mumble to myself and roll over, pleading with the prickle on the back of my neck that it was only a dream. Or was it?
Come to think of it, this stress might have a beneficial effect on my ability to put up a comic later in the evening, but we shall have to wait on that.
Bennn… Yoda!
Hell 2.0
No Tuesday post, I am filled with shame. My job decided, in a terrific reversal of protocol, to be a job literally all day, and I was busy. Alas, today looks to be just as filled with Lotus Notes-related busywork, so the blog goes on neglected. I hate Lotus Notes, it is messy, confusing, inefficient and outdated. As I slam my head against its astonishing load times and scattered installation files, grasping at some database or another like a primate trying to coax fire into existence, I sometimes wonder why clunky email clients still find such purchase in users’ online life.
I know, the Lotus platform, like the infinitely superior Outlook and Thunderbird and so on, does more than just gather email: these programs act as hubs for scheduling, instant messaging, databasing, and, now that I look closely, an entire goddamn office suite. Someone is making presentations and blogging by way of this monstrosity? Really?
I’ll admit that Lotus makes sharing and accessing databases easy, provided every single human being desiring to make use of said databases is set up with the platform and they’ve got some rich reading material on hand to occupy them selves during load times, but I’ll just as quickly suggest that there must be lighter and simpler alternatives.
I’m a child of web-based email, so downloading a program in order to access email strikes me as one too many steps, something that complicates the process without any worthwhile benefits. You need an email address to make use of any of these desktop clients as it is, so making the effort to configure and access one is the equivalent of taking several extra, bloated, non-portable steps to arrive back at the same place. I understand that Outlook, which I do admire, boasts of added security and the ability to easily synchronize calendars and contact information with other devices and services. Gmail matches this handily, with the added benefit of being accessible wherever one can get a hold of some internet, no downloads or configuration required. This is analogous to the difference between a sturdy, well appointed dirigible and an SR-17 Blackhawk. Sure, the former might fly, but you and I both know it can and will burst into flames at the slightest provocation. Yes, I am making Hindenberg jokes, because I am topical.
The thing of it is, I’m a sucker for data portability, and desktop clients like Lotus (even when they work) seem sunk indignantly into obsolescence at this point. I’m a firm believer that data portability is the future of web-based applications and services, which are themselves the future of computing. Reading about the heady dreams of the Data Portability Project, OpenID, cloud computing, the Google OS, and browser based storage, even Skype is exhilarating, as these are the technologies that are even now liberating users from their limitations and constructing, atom by atom, the Sci-Fi Future Wonderland that we get to live in. Email clients were innovative in the days when internet connections were scarce and fragile things, some spindly wires that reached out into a deep unknown to reel back your electronic-mails from the abyss, only to snap and coil limply into the dark. This is not the case anymore, though maybe this is a state of affairs familiar only to the internet-native generation.
As a side note, did you know that you can type in https://mail.google.com instead of the usual http:// modifier and you get an encrypted connection to your mail? Change your bookmarks now.
And also – wait a second. Does Skype really let you make calls to any land line in the world for 1.4 pence a minute, no matter what, without a contract?
And I just bought a 3-year plan with Rogers at ~$50 a month?
Fuck me.
BIT PART 