Reasons Why I'm going Insane Today


1. Fruit Flies

They are driving me insane. There is NO FRUIT anywhere in the vicinity of my desk, yet swarms of these obnoxious hateful creatures are constantly flying around my face, landing on my lips, and fluttering about in front of my computer screens. I have moved the Fruit Fly Trap of Doom (a balloon glass w/ about an ounce of red wine, covered w/ plastic wrap that has holes punched in it) to my desk in hopes that it will help the situation. Currently there are about 10 dead or dying fruit flies in it, but most of them were already there from the time the Trap of Doom was in the kitchen.

I am soooo good at killing house flies with my bare hands, but fruit flies have these incredible evasive techniques. Today I think I have only managed to kill by hand about 3 of them. I think they're so tiny they literally slip through my fingers. Arrrrgggh! I hate them. They make me crazy.


2. Computers Suck.
(Warning: this one is kind of technical)

For about the last hour, I've been unsuccessfully trying to install Linux to an LPAR on a JS22 for a demonstration that I'm attempting to record. I really just want to get this out of the way; these recordings have been hanging over my head for months now. And I'm not going to have another opportunity to work on this for months, because my work schedule is so full.

Well, I have been doing exactly what I should do. I confirmed the MAC address of the LPAR. I modified the dhcpd.conf file on the install server. I checked everything twice. EVERYTIME I TRY TO BOOT FROM THE NETWORK IT TRIES TO INSTALL THE WRONG IMAGE USING THE WRONG CLIENT IP ADDRESS. This is making me crazy! I restarted dhcpd like a bajillion times. I thought "Is it using a different MAC address? Is it using the wrong dhcpd.conf file? ARE THERE TWO IMAGE SERVERS ON OUR NETWORK USING THE SAME IP ADDRESS?!?!?" What the heck is going on? Arggggh!

It's said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Well, about 20 tries later, I guess you can call me insane.


3. Windows' Window Manager

This one has driven me insane for a long time. In Linux, you can choose your window manager based on its qualities. The window manager is the program that controls how your desktop behaves. In Windoze, afaict, you can't choose it, it just IS. knowing microsoft, it's probably an intrinsic "feature" of the operating system, they probably didn't even code it up in such a way that it could be modularized. Or maybe they left it to the behavior of individual applications, and it just so happens that all the crappy apps i'm forced to use for work just happen to behave in this annoying-as-all-getout fashion.

Anyways, this is what drives me nuts. Anytime something happens in an application like a change in state, it steals my focus. ARRRRRGGGHHH. DO YOU KNOW HOW ANNOYING IT IS WHEN YOU'RE TRYING TO TYPE SOMETHING LIKE A PASSWORD CORRECTLY FOR LIKE THE FOURTH TIME AND YOUR FOCUS GETS STOLEN AGAIN?

There MUST be a way to configure this behavior. Not only does it steal my focus, but whenever I get a new message via Sametime (IBM's internal IM app), it also makes my Task bar, which is normally hidden, appear, and it WON'T go away until I click on it. This is EVEN MORE ANNOYING than usual when I'm using Application Sharing in Elluminate to do a demonstration, b/c the task bar is in the same location where Elluminate docks itself for the app share. So then I can't even end the App Share until I have clicked on the task bar.

This is what i have to deal with every day. I hate the combination of Windows' window manager and the annoying behavior of Sametime and Elluminate when it's in app-share mode. And it's making me crazy.


------------- Ok, I had to come back in and add one more thing
4. SLOW CONNECTIONS/SOFTWARE

Argggh! the IVM (Integrated Virtualization Manager) is soooooooo incredibly slow!! Is it just my connection to Beaverton? That seems unlikely, since the AMM is also there and it's GUI seems fairly responsive. This is making me crazy, crazy, crazy!