You know what really grinds my gears? II

[Spikey]

notepad

[Hurricane]

Thought the Ribbon was a decent addition, honestly. Word has dealt horrendously with images and tables since it switched to unsupported XML, though. Images especially, ****ing woeful.

The alternative for total control of your documents is a LaTeX-style editor because the alternatives to Word are worse.

I just hate the way that it overrules what you're trying to do at times and randomly decides to reformat your text when you press enter for no apparent reason. But yeah, tables are atrocious.

Quite. Microsoft Word has got less and less user friendly since Word '95 IMO. It's quite a shame that Phlegm doesn't run his posts through Microsoft Word rather than his PCW before posting as chances are he'd give up.

If google wasn't trading at $580 a share I would buy some immediately because of google docs. Which if they can get the clunkiness out - it will eclipse MS word. Fairfax is switching from office to google docs.

I can't stand the new office.

[Top_Cat]

Google Docs is flawed right from the get-go, for me, because its biggest problem isn't a technical one. The idea that people can actually work collaboratively in an efficient way on a document with even vague analysis in it makes me laugh. Every project I've ever been involved in requires an experienced hand to put together the whole thing and ignore the damnfoolidiot suggestions some people make.

Gear-grinding; The Skimm. Find it disturbing that the same people who have a good old lol at The Good Wife Guide are likely in the target demographic for this ****. That it even exists is, well....

[Top_Cat]

Virgin Australia | Man Asked To Move Due to Paedophile Fears

[wellAlbidarned]

People who's response to everything is "Who cares". I do, ****, now zip it.

[sledger]

The fact that on whatever version of MS Word i'm using, "quick print" and "print preview" are immediately next to one another. Bastard thing.

[sledger]

Also, people who Cevno irl.

After I made a critical remark about cultural Marxism the other day, some dickhead basically said I was Anders Brevik.

Hate people so much.

[Prince EWS]

Also, people who Cevno irl.

Should actually tell them they're cenvoing. They'll have no idea how to respond.

It'd be an interesting social experiment; I bet lots of people would be too worried about looking stupid to actually admit they had nfi what you meant.

[sledger]

Should actually tell them they're cenvoing. They'll have no idea how to respond.

It'd be an interesting social experiment actually; I bet lots of people would be too worried about looking stupid to actually admit they had nfi what you actually meant.

Haha, I actually said under my breath "cevnod the conversation" and chuckled to myself, and was asked what I meant. Just mumbled something about a private joke.

[LongHopCassidy]

Vindictive exam markers

Before I launch into an un-Valiumable rage, a little background.

I was a very sick little boy for most of semester, so after the usual wrangling with the ****-addled uni admin, I got an extension for a final exam. I study with Dravidesque diligence. Went through 3-4 sets of sticky notes carefully annotating and surgically summarising the 400-page textbook over a few days. I think I'm ready. I do the exam, and walk out without too much worry.

Get results back a month later. So I failed an economics paper. Fair enough.

Then I notice I got 13/60 on a particular section.

No, that's not ****ing fair enough. I have absolute conviction to this day that I gunned that section.

Surely there must have a bureaucratic error or they've gotten the stoner intern to write up the results spreadsheet. So I ring up the lecturer and arrange an appointment to go through my exam. The day of the appointment comes. I walk in with my economist face on. He looks up with disdain. Clearly I'm wasting the poor bastard's time after scheduling an appointment two weeks in advance.

So we go over my paper. It turns out he has a galvanized policy against partial credit. For anything.

All well and good if you're not asking 10-mark questions that involve at least seven or eight elaborate graphical curves. If you don't mark every single one correctly, regardless of their perfect graphical depiction, no marks for you. If you use correct notation for your curves that were in your prescribed textbook but not the ones you mentioned in your lectures, then no marks.

It turns out, right out of the ****'s mouth, that he deliberately set an unreasonably hard make-up exam 'because we had extra time to study' - those devious comatose students - and told his tutors to go out of their way to deny people marks. He then showed me a sheet with his own prescribed answers that he told the tutors to mark to, and if they weren't entirely inclusive of everything on there, you can kiss ten more marks goodbye.

Seriously, do you know how precious economic literacy is in a country where people vote based on the interest rate on election day? Do you not want people to further study the beautiful (not sarcastic, I love it) science of society's foundations? Did your wife refuse you a blowjob the night you wrote the exam? I could crap on about Cobb-Douglas production functions and Solow-Swan convergence theory until I have a stroke, but whoever looks at my academic transcript will never take my word on that. Because you're a frothing douchecanoe.

Oh yes, and everyone who sat the make-up exam didn't have their marks scaled up like their healthier comrades.

I took the (somewhat interesting) course again this semester, and the only thing apparently worth emphasising in bold print on the course outline was 'there will be no practice exams or past papers made available'. Heaven forbid that students try to do well with as many learning resources they can, especially when you have copies of them every year back to the mid eighties. How on earth do you sleep at night spending two hour lectures on why unemployment rates are bad when this never-ending torrent of **** you pull is driving hordes of students to Arts degrees majoring in post-structuralist 16th century intergender barista studies? Who, in turn, will comprise two thirds of the Centrelink queue in three years' time?

It is worth noting that our vice-chancellor has gone on a downsizing binge this year. This **** should have been first against the wall.

Right after he got sterilized.

[Top_Cat]

Sucks. Seems to be common in eco faculties too. Amazing how much eco-types can be hard ****s yet so many I've met are still confused by and/or misuse logit/probit/tobit models (the concept of censoring a little above some, it would seem).

[LongHopCassidy]

It is quite demoralizing. The annoying thing is that a lot of people pass it as a mandatory course in a commerce degree (which I don't do, just straight economics) and then go clog up the marketing or management departments, both hysterically easy by comparison.

I have enormous respect for stats and accounting majors, though. The **** they go through be cray.

[Son Of Coco]

Is there an option to go higher than the clown you have teaching the course? There's no way you should be failed for being sick. I have an extension for part of my course too, but I'd be very surprised if they approach it the same way your lecturer has as our lecturers seem like very decent people.

[fredfertang]

In the UK we have what is effectively an Ombudsman service called The Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, whose decisions on such matters can then if appropriate be the subject of Judicial Review proceedings in the High Court - I would have thought you guys must have something similar?

[LongHopCassidy]

It's not really worth going to a tribunal over. It just irritates me that someone can be so pissy over marking in a first-year course. I was allowed to sit the makeup exam, technically nothing was done wrong on their part unless Australia starts a public WAC registry.