Thursday, April 5, 2007
Morning run: 15 minutes. Usual oatmeal breakfast. At work, Scott's computer was in a restart loop. I ran powermax on it—c: drive checked out okay. Security software reinstall for student DU. Helped Susie with questions about web statistics. PharmAdMIT folder security reset for Steaven's computer. Back to Scott's computer: ran seatools—hard drive again checked out okay. Restart in Safe Mode with Command Prompt was successful. Ran fixboot (yes), fixmbr (yes), then chkdsk /r. Chatted in the office with Susie. Chatted on the phone with student GR. Opened a card and present GR had left me before I arrived—it's a beautiful, embossed, leather journal. It uses removeable, replaceable, hardcover journal books; I'm delighted! More security updates for DU's computer. IE7 install, Firefox 2.0.0.3 install, and full hard drive anti-virus scan for DU. Listserv update for students MM and CH. Lunch: pizza to go from Segafredo. Went to a Vista technical presentation set up by OAAIS. I left after 15 minutes or so because the speaker was showing stuff I didn't want to see (demo of Start Menu "instant search" and other features) and was also taking a really long time doing it. I had a user down in the office, so my time was better spent there babysitting the tedious troubleshooting procedures that sometimes take a long time. Began installing Office 2007 Professional for student GR. It took me about half an hour to open the Office 2007 Professional product box. As an information technology professional, I open hardware and software products all the time, and no computer product packaging I have encountered has made me feel more frustrated. I am a non-fan of blister packaging, but this new product box from Microsoft is worse, I tell you. The box is made of plastic. I found a sticker seal on the right edge of the box and removed it—it peels away easily once you get a fingernail under one of the tabs. This seal was sort of like the seal you sometimes see along the top edge of a new music CD. I spent a few minutes pinching tabs which looked like they did something, gently pulling pieces apart, holding the box from different sides, pulling again, looking for opening instructions (found none), pulling on a red tab which resembled a Post It flag. I tried sliding parts apart, and I turned the box over and over in my hands like a Rubik's cube—it was certainly a puzzle of logic. After many minutes I could not open it at all, and I became extremely frustrated. I called the computer store on campus and asked how to open the box, and (Jason?) said it was hard to explain over the phone. He put my call on hold to get a copy in his hands, and when he returned he walked me through a few suggestions. But I finally got it open all on my own after realizing there's a clear sticker seal along the top edges which I hadn't noticed—duh, it's a clear sticker. I get some scissors and slice twice and then finally a tug on the red tab Post It flag lets me open the package. This is a horrible package design, and I am certain that Microsoft will regret this decision for at least the next several months. How could they not if every user has to call for support before even installing the software? Hopefully they will change the box back to a normal paper box. Could someone please call Microsoft to remind them that their hundreds of thousands of plastic product boxes are doing nothing to decrease the world's reliance on petroleum, which is required to make plastics? And I expect most of these plastic boxes to end up in our landfills, too. This experience reminded me of watching my mom's first attempt at opening a CD jewel case. She struggled for several minutes before giving up, unsuccessful in her goal simply because she couldn't figure out the correct positioning of her hands and fingers. This experience also reminded me of Jakob Nielsen who promotes Jakob's law: "users spend most of their time on other sites" which you could restate for this situation as "users spend most of their time opening other product boxes." I believe that Windows Vista is being sold in the same hard-to-open product box as well. After figuring out how to open the Office 2007 Professional box, I documented it with the office camera but I haven't had time to post it to Flickr yet. It would be better as a YouTube video, but I just don't have time to make a movie. If there were a service that let me accept micropayments (e.g., 5 cents per viewing) for such a video I bet I could make a ton of money, though. Chatted with student GR on the phone again. Finished work on DU's computer. Back to Scott's computer: Nothing worked, and once I even got a BSOD similar to that on Alyssa's computer. I did an in-place reinstallation of Windows XP followed by scandisk—no restart loop this time. Began installing XP SP2. More setup for GR's computer. Worked on an employee requisition form (ERF). Sent office staff an introduction to Office 2007 in e-mail. Responded to an inquiry from student VT about Lexi-Comp, about which I don't know much—I don't handle this for our students. More setup for the spare computer. Snack during the day: a cookie. Reinstalled Pivot for Alyssa. Dinner at home with Patrick: boneless chicken boobs grilled with apricot-mustard sauce, corn on the cob, rice pilaf. I filed my taxes using TaxAct online. I won some, I lost some. Travis assisted over IM; I must find a way to pay him back.