Open letter to Microsoft

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Dear Morons,

Office 2007 sucks to three decimal places.

Now, I will concede that (apparently) the new version can do all kinds of clever things. That’s what your marketing people tell us, anyway, and I can’t think of any instance in the past when they’ve made overblown claims with no factual basis. No, really.

But you’ve gone the extra mile and made it look different. The official view is that everything is now arranged much more logically and is easier to find, spread out in full view over various ribbons. But WHY??

I even concede that one interface is pretty well like another, and if this is what it had looked like 15 years ago when I started using Windows then I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. In fact I would be as irritated as I am now if you had suddenly started to use a strange system of drop-down menus for the latest release. But here’s the rub. In those 15 years I’ve picked up the basics of Office pretty well. I know its strengths and I know its weaknesses. I know exactly how much I can achieve with it and I know – I knew – how to achieve it without even thinking about it.

And no, I’m not going to quietly unlearn 15 years of experience just because you lot think I should. It’s your job to keep up with me, not vice versa. At my level of usership you haven’t made a single improvement with your mindless tinkering.

Even this wouldn’t be an issue if you could have an option to display the old menus. You even do this with Windows, kindly giving us the option of New SuperDuper Windows Look or Classic Windows look. Why not do the same for Office?

This is actually possible, a quick Google tells me: there is an add-on that I can purchase that will bring back the old menus. But I don’t want to pay for what should come for free, and if I did I very much doubt IT Support would install it for me. (You may guess from mention of IT Support that this is a work-based problem. Home runs Office 97 just fine, thanks very much, and has no intention of changing.)

Fiddling with software is a bit like the age of consent at 16. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Fogeyishly,
Ben

PS anyone leaving a comment that even hints at the existence of OpenOffice will receive a cold, hard stare.

Without our stories or our songs / How will we know where we come from?

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I’m not a natural folk music fan but a year or so ago, late one night on Radio 2 as I drove from somewhere to somewhere, I caught some lyrics that spoke to me.

… And a minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wells [*]
Well, I’ve got a vision of urban sprawl
There’s pubs where no-one ever sings at all
And everyone stares at a great big screen
Overpaid soccer stars, prancing teens [**]
Australian soap, American rap
Estuary English, baseball caps
And we learn to be ashamed before we walk
Of the way we look, and the way we talk
Without our stories or our songs
How will we know where we come from?
I’ve lost St. George in the Union Jack
It’s my flag too and I want it back

(* Have to admit I may be with the minister on this one, but I accept the spirit of the song.)
(** Why do you blush and shuffle your feet, Ladygrove in Didcot? Boundary House in Abingdon? I may be looking at you but I’m thinking of plenty others.)

And I thought no more about it, until today’s dose of the Life and Opinions of Andrew Rilstone actually included the video from whence it came. I can now reveal – because I’ve found out myself – that the lyrics, and the title of this post, are from “Roots” by Show of Hands. Here are the lyrics; here’s the video.

Occasional recipes: chicken fricassee

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This one really was a pleasant surprise. Though it’s reasonably lengthy, everything is quite sequential with no sudden surprises like “now add in the mushrooms that you marinaded for 24 hours earlier”. Also, because a fricassee is a white stew, the instructions were heavy on not letting anything burn or even get brown. I was mostly successful.

So, from The Cook’s Recipe Collection:

  • 60g butter
  • 3 chicken legs, skinned [to serve 4, they say 1.4 kg chicken quartered & skinned]
  • 570ml / 1 pint chicken stock
  • grated rind and juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 1 bouquet garni [had no idea what this was so just added chopped lemon thyme at the required moment]
  • 12-16 button onions
  • 340g mushrooms, whole or chopped if large
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 90ml double cream
  • 3 tbsps milk (optional) [which is as well because I forgot]
  • 2 tbsps chopped fresh parsley
  • lemon slices to garnish [also optional/forgotten]

Melt 45g of the butter and cook the chicken (one piece at a time if necessary) until no longer pink. Don’t let it get brown. When sufficiently cooked, remove from pan and set aside.

Stir the flour into the butter bit by bit over a low heat, stirring continuously, until it’s all a pale straw colour. Remove pan from heat and gradually stir in the stock. When all blended smoothly, add lemon rind and juice. Return to heat and bring to boil, whisking constantly. Simmer for 1 minute.

Return the chicken to the pan and add the bouquet garni [if you’ve worked out what one of those is; just add the thyme if not]. The sauce should almost cover the chicken [so I added a further 1/3 pint of stock]. Bring to the poil, cover pan and simmer for 40 minutes.

Melt remaining button in a pan, add the onions, cover and cook gently for 10 minutes. Don’t let them brown! Remove onions with a slotted spoon [i.e. leaving the juice behind] and add to the chicken. Cook the mushrooms in the remaining butter and add to the chicken 10 minutes before the end.

Transfer chicken to a serving plate and remove the bouquet garni. Recipe then says to skim the sauce of any fat and boil to reduce by half; Ben says there’s not much fat and it’s already quite thick enough.

Blend the egg yolks and cream together and whisk in several spoonfuls of the hot sauce. Return the mixture to the remaining sauce and cook gently for 2-3 minutes. Stir constantly and don’t let it boil. If it is very thick, add the milk [ah, that’s what I didn’t do]. Stir in the parsley.

At this point Ben’s serving style takes over: plonk a bed of couscous on each plate, put a piece of chicken on top of it, and spoon the sauce over. Or you can do what the book says: put the chicken pieces in a serving dish and spoon the sauce over it.

Serves four if you do it their way, three quite comfortably if you do it mine.