Another Trying Day

Why oh why are IT/IS Departments so fucking stupid? Gus has now had the quintessential "IT is fucked and now I can't do my job" experience that I've had countless times. I think the only reason he hasn't had it as many times as I have is because this is only his second programming job. Get used to it bud, and you can thank Bill Gates for this.

I can't believe he's not enraged that they blew up his whole hard drive with no warning what so ever. I'd lose all my mail and any number of spreadsheets if that happenned here. As it is, I have plenty of problems with the policies here. I'm sick to death of feeling like I'm doing some clandestine activity when all I want is to be able to do my job.

I'm a total ingrate for wanting DNS and mail to work on my server, I'm sure. I really don't think that's a lot to ask from a company in the business of networking for fuck's sake. And I found out yesterday that that was a policy decision (ie they ain't fixing it) and that a whole 'nother group of developers was fucked over by it also. Why didn't they (or us) get advance warning? Who the hell knows. As it is, we all have to wait (more than a week now) for a "workaround" to this dumb, poorly thought out decision.

Can you tell I'm having a trying day? And it ain't just work either. If I discuss my other problems here, however, I think that would just exacerbate them. Make no mistake, I desperately want to discuss them, but...well, I just explained that.

I can't even believe that the Olympic committee isn't at all contrite about that vault incident. Those women have done those vaults hundredes of time, and they have muscle memory telling them where the vault is. It's obvious that Elise Ray and Svetlana Khorkina were totally psyched out by the experience of totally blowing all their vaults, and there's really no way to make up for that.

It's horribly unfair and totally irresponsible of the committee. Everyone is also complaining about the floor mats not having the standard bounce. I've never seen so many gymnasts go out of bounds on the mat, so I'm guessing that there is something to that complaint.

And yes, NBCs coverage is absolutely horrid. Now there are more commercials because of the decreased viewership (I think they are lacking the logic to see the cause and effect relationship here) and instead of cutting down on what Blivet called "Profiles of Courage", they seem to be cutting down on the sports. I think we watch about half of the actual telecast on the Tivo. We skip through most of the profiles (frankly, we've seen all the gymnast and swimmer profiles already anyway -- they are running them over and over) and most of the commercials. I'm about ready to just give up on watching the damn things all together.

Besides the stupid decisions by the network, the commentating is even bad. I can't figure out why the commentators have *never* mentioned the yelling by the Chinese delegation that represents an attempt to psych out other teams. It's been mentioned at Salon, but not by them. It's totally unsportsmanlike, for one thing. They also never show individual judges scores anymore, and I don't know why. They aren't explaining the scoring well, and they choose to point out mistakes of various athletes in a very uneven way.

I'm about ready to quit watching altogether, frankly. It's not like I'm alone here. Everyone with a published opinion says the NBC coverage sucks rocks, and NBC is doing absolutely nothing about that. Why on earth not take advantage of the instant feedback available in today's amazing electronic culture?

Don't even get me started on how broken the ratings system is and how baffling the adherance to it of the networks and advertisers. Sigh.