Microsoft Word is legendary for its awfulness. This is not news. But I just ran across a quirk so funny that I had to stop working on my tight-deadline job and blog it.

I’ve got auto-correct turned on. I’m zipping along and type “arcana.” Word corrects it to “arcane.” That’s odd–I couldn’t imagine that there would be an arcana/arcane pair in the auto-correct dictionary. And there isn’t. But there’s another feature (that can be disabled, fortunately) that will auto-correct based on the regular spellcheck dictionary. Apparently that dictionary doesn’t include “arcana” but does include “arcane,” and the spellcheck algorithm decided the latter was the only viable candidate to replace the former. So it did.

Here’s where it gets funny. Word also includes a regular dictionary with definitions–the whole works. Arcana is in that dictionary. Go ahead, make jokes about one hand not knowing what the other is doing, the insane redundnancy of two different word lists, etc. I’m with you.

Macintouch today had an item on Apple’s infernal model nomenclature

Continuing a tradition of absurdly awkward computer names, Apple has posted technical specifications for the new iBook (Opaque 16 VRAM), iBook (32 VRAM), and iBook (14.1 LCD 32 VRAM). [This naming silliness has gone so far, Apple’s Knowledge Base actually has to use footnotes to help define its iBook names! “Note 1. The parenthetical product description (Summer 2000) refers to the summer of the Northern Hemisphere.”]

While I like the initial attempt at simplicity–just calling models “iBook” or “Powermac” without four-digit numbers added on to the end to impress you–they need to come up with a better way of distinguishing variants of a model. I propose putting a few simple shapes in a discreet (but not inaccessible) spot on the machines, so they can refer to them instead as the “iBook (○△△ circle-triangle-triangle model).

While there’s no shortage of calendar apps for every taste, it seems that this is the only one that caters to mine. Calendar is very simple. I have it sitting in the background, all but invisible on top of my desktop picture. It has minimal functionality for adding events. And it displays five days worth of weather information, although it’s questionable when compared to other forecasts.

Just downloaded a specialized OS-X tool for posting to Movable Type blogs: Kung-log. This is a test post using the program. Seems to work OK, although BBEdit is still a better writing environment.

In the beginning were the Switch ads from Apple. Quirky music in the background and a regular person just describing why they switched from Windows to Macs, with a lot of jump cuts to stress certain points.

Then came the parodies. Will Farrell made an especially funny one that was played at a Macworld conference.

Then came the ripoff. Microsoft concocted an obviously faked Mac-to-Windows switch story (nobody talks like a marketing weasel except a marketing weasel). When they were called on it, they took the page down. It lived on for a while in Google’s cache, but seems to have been lost to the shifting sands of time.

Anyhow, one of the original ads in particular, featuring a teenage girl, Ellen Feiss, seemed to capture the imagination of a lot of people. So now there’s a fan site for her. And a tribute song.

And now, Apple has brought the switch ad concept to Japan. Momoko Kikuchi seems to be the one most like Ellen (her story is kind of like Ellen’s, too…). I wonder how long it takes before she gets her own fan base.

In a related story, that annoying “Dude, your gettin’ a Dell” guy is out of work. Maybe he’ll be able to get a part in Dude, Where’s My Car, Part II.

Well, thanks to the intervention of a kind soul who will remain nameless, I have scored a pirate copy of Office 2001, allowing me to run Office X after all. Now I just need to get my hard drive fixed and deal with that address-book problem.

What a disaster.

I upgraded to MacOS X version 10.2 yesterday. This may turn out to be more aggravating than the upgrade from 9.0 to 10.1. Why? Some specifics:

1. Address book: Although it was fairly primitive in 10.1, I started using the address book and depended on it. Much to my amazement, not only does the address book in 10.2 use a completely different file format, it doesn’t have any import function for the old address book. The only way to get old address-book data into the new program is by exporting the data to an interchange format before upgrading. At this point, I can’t even get my 10.1 install CD to run, so I can’t install the old address book for that purpose.
2. Microsoft Office: Some people brag about being Microsoft-free. Many others aspire to that noble condition. Apparently Microsoft itself is trying to give me a shove in that direction. After installing my upgrade edition of Office X, the installer requested that I locate the old installation or the old CD. I can’t seem to locate the CD of the previous version (I probably threw it out in a housecleaning). A frustrating call to Microsoft tech support leaves me thinking that they aren’t going to help me. Either I can buy the full new version, or I can track down someone else’s copy of the earlier version, or I could perhaps buy a copy on eBay.
3. My hard drive: When I came home this morning, I discovered my external hard drive, a firewire model from QPS, was making an ominous clicking noise every few seconds. Double-clicking the drive icon resulted in the spinning beachball of doom. Now, for the most part, this drive is reserved for my MP3 collection, but I copied my personal files to it for this upgrade, since I wanted to reformat the hard drive and start fresh. I was able to open the terminal and use the Unix “cp” command to copy the most critical data off the drive, but now it doesn’t even mount on the desktop. I left voicemail with QPS, which still hasn’t been returned.

I’ve been using OS X on my Mac for a little while now. I generally like it well enough, and there are some things I really like. But I have a peeve. Too many blue icons. Shown above is my dock, containing some of the programs I use most frequently. It’s hard to tell them apart at a glance because of the uniform color. Can’t the designers inject some yellow, or purple, or whatever?

Cool!

Since upgrading my Mac to OS X, I’ve been trying to find just the right FTP client. RBrowser isn’t absolutely perfect, but it’s pretty darned good.