Tag Archive: ass


An Open Letter To Lotus Notes

Dear Lotus Notes,

Stop telling me I have new mail in my xplanner folder. In fact, I don’t have ANYTHING in that folder. It’s empty. I deleted everything. And yet, you insist that that there’s new mail there. You are wrong. It’s okay to be wrong sometimes.

Stop telling me I have mail then not show me the new mail. I get little popups all day saying I have mail. But sometimes it’s just not there. Stop doing this. It’s annoying.

Stop delivering mail 18 hours later. I watched someone send me mail yesterday afternoon at 3:30pm. I watched him do it. He typed, he entered my name, he hit send. I didn’t get it until 10am this morning. What the fucking fuck? This happens on a regular basis. When my email is suddenly quiet, I know that the next morning my inbox will be chock full of messages from the day before, sent when I was still in the office, with a delivery date and time of the day before.

LET ME SHIFT CLICK ALL MY MESSAGES, RIGHT CLICK, AND SELECT “READ ALL”. WHY CAN I NOT DO THIS? WHY? THIS IS BASIC UI SHIT!

You sent me a message to turn off my Out Of Office message. How nice of you. Silly me, I thought that since there was a goddamn end date on the out of office reply thingy that you would, you know, stop sending replies and turn yourself off after that date. How wrong I was. Yes, you didn’t send replies, but you didn’t manage to turn yourself off either. You sent me a message telling me how to turn it off. Which leads me to…

Stop giving me wrong instructions. You sent me a message on how to turn off my out of office replies and they were wrong. Hilariously wrong. You sent me to a menu that didn’t even exist. What the fuck is that about? How do you even do that?

Lotus Notes 8.51, you are a festering pile of shit. A festering pile of failed shit in a misery and woe bowl. Christ, if I could not use you, I would. I never thought that I would say this, but you make me miss Outlook.

Die in a fire.

Greed Knows No Bounds

Man oh man have a got a doozy for y’all.

With every passing semester, I have become increasingly disillusioned with my grad school experience. From the shitty selection of classes for the remote campus folk to the difficulty in actually getting the classes I need to the absolutely shit-ass parking situation that NO ONE seemed to think about before opening up another goddamn school. Wednesday, however, was IT. I mean, the ultimate in “wow, this department really does not give two shits about us.”

To remain in the CS grad program, you must take two tests during your first semester. One is a communications test (write an essay, prove you can communicate in English very much good) and a programming skills test. This test is on paper and the language is C++. Woe unto you if you are steeped in Java or any other language not C++. Me? I suck at it. I was never formally taught it, so my brain defaults to C. I failed the test. I felt like a goddamned moron. If you fail this test, you have to burn 3 credit hours (and about $1k) to take a programming remedial course. The course itself is fine. I guess. It’s a crash course in C++, perfect for someone who needs to brush up on skills, horrible for anyone who has no idea how programming works. So here I sat in that class with about 15 other people. 15. When I took the test there were about 30 people. Wow, I thought, we’re all morons! OH NO NO NO. I found out Wednesday that the fail rate is 50%. 50% of students who take this test fail it (or if you’re a glass-is-half-full kinda person, 50% pass it). You know who’s in that 50%? Not just “never touched code in my life” people, but people like my classmate who CODES IN C++ FOR A GODDAMN LIVING. Wouldn’t that mean that there’s a problem with the test? According to my Wednesday professor? Hell yes. According to the rest of the department? Oh no! It’s actually good that students fail that test! Yeah, so they have to spend more money to take the required remedial class that counts toward your GPA but not towards your credit hours for graduation. I almost cannot think of a more blatant money grab than this heap of horseshit. Okay fine, so you fail this test and take the class. Is it ever taught in Round Rock? Nope. The guy who teaches it will NEVER come to Round Rock. Ever. This is what my prof is saying, point blank. She recommended that people email the department and say “hey we want the class taught in Round Rock” and if they get 10 (maybe 5) or more, they will honor that request. I laughed. Out loud. She claimed that the department really does care about the remote students. I laughed again and said quite plainly “It sure doesn’t feel like it.” And then I told her how I had in fact emailed the department about the weak class selection, the fact that required classes are being offered with ridiculous timing (once every 2 years in Round Rock? Really?), and the lack of talks/symposiums/etc for us remote folks. What have I gotten back? Absolutely nothing. No “we’re looking into it”, no “thank you for your concern”, not even a “hey, we got your email”. Disillusioned and pretty pissed? Yeah. You might say that.

I like my Wednesday night professor. She;s nice, she gives a shit, she’s one of two that seem to. The other? Also female and getting shit on by the department as far as I can tell. Well, you tell me, what do you call it when you take a damn fine professor and instead of having her teach something she knows cold and is considered the best in that subject, you have her teach something like Ethics (sophomore level class, no less), leaving her subject to be taught by someone who doesn’t have a clue. Never taught it, barely knows the subject and subsequently fucks it up for everyone? Exactly.

So, no, this is not about begging for professor’s time or being their slaves (not for me, anyway. I’m not doing a research track). It’s about them seriously not giving a shit and trying to grab whatever cash they can.

Sue Over Lack Of Parking

You may have seen my tweet about wondering if one can sue a university for shitty ass parking. You might think “ha ha ha, everyone’s campus is shitty! What can you do?” I don;t think you quite understand just how bad it is. During the winter break, it would have been an amusing idea. After going back for two days, I am almost dead fucking serious. The place where I take my classes is a satellite campus that shares a building with 2 other higher education institutions. Okay, fuck being all sly and anonymous. It’s Texas State University at the Round Rock Higher Education Center. In one building is Texas State, Austin Community College, and Temple College at Taylor. Neat, right? Get your learn on 3 different ways when it’s (somewhat) convenient for you? A few brush up classes, associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s degrees? One somewhat central location? Fucking sweet, right?

Fucking sucks hairy pig balls.

1,737 (highest enrollment ever, up 14.1% since fall ’08) students, waaaaayyy less than that amount of parking spaces. Now, I don’t expect one spot per student, Christ no. What I do expect is to not be late for class every day because you’re having to stalk pedestrians for their spots.

Q: Why don’t you just quit being a baby and park far out and just ride a bus in?
A: There is no bus. There is no remote parking. Here’s a map. You see all that purple? That’s where students can park. Looks like a lot, doesn’t it. You would be wrong. The wrongiest wrong person who has ever been wrong. If you look closely, there are lines in that purple to show parking spots. I believe that they are true to form. As in, you see a section of 4 spots, there’s really four spots there. So those 3 lonely green spots? There really are two car sized parking spots for motorcycles. That’s it. Those poor bastards.

Q: So just park in those far out spots at the top of the map or way to the right. You need to be right up close to the building! What a lazy skag.
A: Every single purple spot was full. Every single spot. Every one. The only thing to do is circle until someone leaves. The problem is that THERE ARE NO MORE SPOTS. There is no other lot and there are no side streets. The next closest place is a hospital who will tow your ass so goddamn fast it’s amazing.

Q: It’s the start of the semester, it’ll get better with time.
A: Parking was almost this bad at the beginning of last semester. It barely got better. Barely. It’s much worse now. It will not be better. I promise you. Look at the map. You see that huge arc of street? See how it divides the parking lot? Over on the left, people are parking on that stretch of lot. To give them credit, the campus police only gave tickets to people without permits. As I was parking last night (I got so fucking lucky that I may have permanently lost any chance of getting any kind of parking spot ever) There were officers directing traffic. Directing. Traffic. This was some Black Friday/Tax Free Weekend At The Outlet Mall shit. This is wrong.

In the distance, you can see two more buildings going up. These I have now learned are the new ACC Round Rock buildings. And all I can say is THANK FUCK. These buildings are far enough out that they will have their own lots. But my GOD. It’s like they never planned for people to actually come to this campus. The nursing school will also be on this campus. It doesn’t look like it’s started yet, but you can only imagine how many more students that will bring.

In short, this is an epic clusterfuck.

Why Tuesdays and Thursdays Suck

I’m in graduate school. I don’t know why. But I started and will finish.

This school does not offer a whole hell of a lot of classes at the remote campus. I can barely get my required classes. So when it came time to register, I chose a class I needed and a filler, to avoid having to drive 70+ miles once a week (and getting home at 10:45pm) and be angry for one reason. Instead, I drive…considerably less than 70 miles 3 times a week…and I’m still angry for another reason. Fuck.

This “filler” class was not chosen because I was particularly interested in the subject or because it was easy. Oh my no. It is not easy by any means. I chose this class because it was going to be taught by one of the best professors in the department. This is one of *her* subjects. She worked with the person who wrote the book (a U.T. professor). She knows her shit. I check my schedule a day before class starts (we won’t get into that) and I see her name gone and someone else’s in it’s place. Ah fuck. I prayed for it to be a mistake.

It wasn’t. Shit. This new guy starts off saying that he didn’t know he was teaching this class until two days prior. He also talks up how the original teacher is 15 kinds of awesome and we should really take the class from her. Well…WE TRIED. The school fucked us. So. Here I am. Perturbed.

Next, there is a math major in the class. He’s almost “that guy”. You know, the one who thinks he knows more than the teacher. Only in this case HE DOES. Fuck. So. Here I am. Upset.

First assignment is given. I see that it’s the same assignment the undergrad class is being given. Oh, didn’t I mention that it is a merged class? Yeah. It didn’t click when I registered. I’ve taken the undergrad class. 13 years ago. Fuck. So. Here I am. Discombobulated.

His notes are online. You can download them. Oh wait, they’re worthless until the actual day of class because he’s either modifed or replaced the file completely. Fuck. So. Here I am. Having an ulcer.

And, just now, he went off topic. Again. For the third time. In a class that only lasts 1 hour, 20 minutes. I vaguely know what he was prattling on about because I’ve long ago stopped listening (It’s only mid september. goddammit.). Although I did hear a reference to entertaining lectures and how MICHAEL JACKSON should be paying him to do lectures. Yes, really. I don’t know.

So. Here I am. Angry.

Oh, and in the time it took to write this, he’s gone off topic TWO MORE TIMES.