ouij

Via digg, I bring you a helpful guide on How NOT to use PowerPoint by stand-up comic Don McMillan.

PowerPoint was supposed to make your presentations more effective. Unfortunately, most PowerPoint presentations are dense, obscure, and not particularly helpful. Once you realize that you're being subjected to death by PowerPoint, the best you can hope for is that you have merely wasted your time.

Unfortunately, the consequences of some PowerPoint presentations are more serious. In Thomas Ricks' latest book, Fiasco, we discover that the entire Iraq War was conceived, planned, and refined in a series of PowerPoint presentations:



This slide shows how the Pentagon viewed the transition to "Strategic Success" in Iraq. Notice: this slide contains ZERO factual content. Scan taken from Arms and Influence

Let's be blunt: PowerPoint is a tool of the illiterate. The written word, skillfully deployed, can express complex realities. PowerPoint takes those complex realities and makes them into meaningless visual window-dressing.

I quit my job on Friday

My last day was unexpectedly busy. I was busy handing over all the usual things--keys, documents, supplies. I cleared my desk.

I found the time to write a valedictory note to my co-workers, which read, in part:

In former times, a young man might be bound to the service of a master for some fixed term. During that time, he would be expected to learn from his master not only the skills of some useful profession, but also the rudiments of common courtesy and courtly comportment. Having completed his term of service, the young man might then be permitted to make his way into the world, perhaps some day to achieve the skill and renown of his master.

This particular young man has been greatly honored and singularly privileged with the opportunity to have served each and every one of you. During my time here, each of you in your own way has been a kind master to me, as well as a wise teacher and a good friend.

There were no dirges. I got handshakes, words of encouragement, a few hugs.

This chapter has ended. The next chapter begins when I turn the page. But now, I am resting my eyes on the empty white paper.

I was tasked to draw a particularly nasty, complicated diagram at work this week--an 11" x 17" flowchart-type-thing. In a move that would probably have given the firm IT managers fits, I used a non-approved application to do it: Inkscape.

Inkscape is a Free and Open-Source vector graphics program. The chart had to be scaled easily and quickly manipulated. Inkscape allowed me to draw the chart, draw all the connecting arrows, and keep everything tidy with a minimum of fuss. My superiors were tremendously pleased by the results. Inkscape made a poor cube-serf like me look like a pretty competent draftsman.

Of course, I couldn't resist playing around with it. I think I might start dabbling in this "photoillustration" style:




The best part about all this--it's free. I, personally, can't afford a commercial vector-graphics package, so the free-beer aspect works well for me. But the "free as in freedom" or "free as in speech" part of Free Software really matters here at work: since Inkscape and its components are GPL, I have the freedom to download and run the software. The time spent downloading and learning the package is nothing compared to the bureaucratic hassle of having to bug our somnolent IT department for a vector drawing program that nobody else in the firm will use. Nor will the management have to fear the jackbooted thugs of the Business Software Alliance.

This is what Free Software is all about. I did my job, saved my boss a bundle, and got a valuable tool.

I am at the office, transcribing something for the boss. The boss dictates a citation. I understand it's a citation, and format it in correct Bluebook style. The boss invariable INSISTS on his (outdated? non-standard?) citation format. But he's the boss, so I have to roll with it.

It's amazing how a stupid semicolon can ruin my morning.

xposted, bitches.

If we spent our time writing instead of fiddling with half-spaces, we might actually get somewhere.

"Hey, ouij, I need you to make some copies for me."

"Sure thing, boss. What's up?"

"Copy each of these six filings once. Make sure they're clean. Then, prepare this filing." hands me ransom-note cut-and-paste draft of filing.

"Uh, boss, we already filed these papers electronically. . . "

"They shrink when we scan them or whatever it is. I don't want them shrunk. I want them full-size. I don't want to hear about the electronic copies. Don't even think about going that direction. Copy the papers, make the filing, OK?"

Never mind, of course, that the clerk will likely refuse our filing. The rules in this particular forum specifically say that all electronic filings should also be machine readable (that is, text-readable/searchable). That means OCR (which is a pain in the ass) or print-to-PDF (much MUCH better!). But apparently, print-to-PDF is not good enough for the boss, and he wants PDFs of our paper copies. Fine.

Except that the paper copies are PRINTOUTS OF THE PDFS THAT I FILED IN THE FIRST PLACE, which were, by the way, text-searchable, and thus in compliance.

I'm wondering whether or not to remind the boss that we are about to make a non-compliant filing, or to let the clerk do it.

I don't want to be here.

I don't care how much of a fucking idiot you think I am because I don't give a flying fuck about your fucking redundant and useless duplication of paper.

Don't fucking slam the phone on me every time.

"I have to put it on there so it hangs." Bullshit. You're slamming the receiver on me, and if you're too fucking malcoordinated to hang up the phone in a civilized manner, there's even a fucking button for that, too.

From the New Business Intake drones at the office:
Please note that the party position (relationship to client) labeled "UNDEFINED" has been changed to "OTHER/AFFECTED."

Don't you wish you could file your own personal relationships like that? Except for me, I'd have "UNDEFINED" and "OTHER/AFFECTED" as separate categories. I think I must be an expert at shifting from one to another. . .

Took babybro to the Wizards game after work. Snagged some good
seats--it's a birthday celebration, after all. The look on his face was
totally worth it. I love being kuya.

Watching Gil and the Wiz thump the Timberwolves mostly erased my office
aggro, but just so there's some sort of record, I'm going to describe
it.

The Superior Court for the District of Columbia has decreed that
henceforth (actually, since last week), all filings in civil matters
were to be electronic. To prepare us lowly support staff peons for this
change, our management prepared a series of training sessions for the
new ECF system that we were to attend or else. The first two
sessions were supposed to be quite good--a teleconference with someone
in charge of ECF, a PowerPoint presentation, and all the rest of it.
But those of us who had better things to do last week--you know, like
our jobs--passed on the first two sessions, leaving them for
people whose attorneys regularly filed papers in D.C. Superior Court.

No problem, management assured us. We'll prepare video training
sessions for you. Today was one such video training session.

I'll leave aside, for the moment, the usual rant about how
technologically-allergic many of my colleagues seem to be.

Anyway, management is not technologically allergic. They
couldn't be, since they arranged such a nice video training session for
us, right? Except that instead of actually talking to someone who knew
anything about audiovisual presentation, they went with the easy way
out: they simply pointed a camcorder at the screen during the
first (live) training session, and hit RECORD. So
where the original training session had high-quality images--which,
incidentally, were provided to us all via e-mail last week, the
video training session showed a mostly unreadable screen with heavily
distorted sound.

Since the screen was illegible, we were forced to go with the sound.
Other people were taking diligent notes, but since we had already been
provided with the PowerPoint slides, there wasn't much point--the slides
spoke for themselves. Most of us realized this, and began to drift off.
When I awoke with a start, the tape was still droning interminably on,
and most of the people in the training session were asleep.

Then, abruptly, it stopped.

The genius whose idea it was to point the camcorder at the
original screen in the first place had forgotten to plug the camcorder
into the wall at the start of this session. We had been running on
batteries which were now exhausted. It took two people to figure this
out. By this point, my soul had left my body to find something exciting
or at least productive to do, leaving me in inert anomie as someone else
called the guy who set up the training session back in. The genius
returned with the AC adaptor, but spent another ten minutes figuring out
where and how to plug the same adaptor in, and subsequently how to turn
on the camera. He managed to turn on the camera, finally, but in
"Camera" rather than "Playback" mode.

The camera, which had been hooked up to the conference room a/v stack,
briefly showed us sitting there passively before the air was rent by a
piercing shriek. Yes, the volume on the speakers was turned all the way
up, and genius pointed the camera--and thus its
microphone--right into the speakers, unleashing that beatiful
fingers-on-a-dusty-chalkboard sound of feedback.

Finally, the show was back on the road. More dozing. "Are there any
questions?" the tape asked.

I didn't stick around to find out.

. . . sucks ass. I mean, it really sucks ass. Why should I be compelled to sit through an hour of useless powerpoint presentations with a total information content of five minutes?

Because my co-workers are computer illiterates. Electronic case filing in the D.C. Superior Court is not complicated. We received TFM(tm) in our e-mail boxes last week. A simple notice of how that jurisdictions rules differ from the Federal courts would have been enough. We're all grown-ups. We know how to read, right?

Wrong. Management wants you to sit through a mandatory ECF training session, wasting half your afternoon.

From where I sit, I hear the rattle and hum of an IBM Selectric 2 typewriter--one drone that never really came to terms with the computer.

Why do we waste money on giving these people full-powered desktops when thin clients would do the same job for less power and greater security?

The sun might still be shining over the District of Calamity, but we've got snow (well "wintry mix") on the mind.

I've just received THREE--count 'em, THREE-- e-mails from various office potentates on the procedures for inclement weather. It's not as if they'll cancel. Bastards.

Baa, baa black sheep, have you any wool?
"Yes, sir; yes, sir, three bags full:
"One for the Master and one for the Dame
"And One for the little boy who lives down the lane."

This is my life at work. I move piles of paper to and fro. Occasionally, I move them hither and yon. The cruel twist is that I am supposed to be living in the age of the paperless office. We are being buried by mounds of needless paper.

I am supposed to report the receipt of PTO Office Actions and to our clients, forwarding those same Office Actions, along with any references cited therein.

Along the way, I am supposed to make copies: two copies each of the reporting letter (one for the case file, one for the chron); and two copies each of all the references (one to the client, one to the case file, and one to destinations unknown and unknowable). Here's the rub: all of these references are available electronically, whether from the USPTO themselves or any number of online databases. The firm has just spent a small fortune on extra structural steel to bear the accumulated weight of our paper patent files--weight that might have been saved if I didn't have to make redundant copies of easily-available documents.

Even though I work with IP attorneys, who are, theoretically at least, in the "Technology" practice group of this firm, I have yet to deal with a group of people who are so adamantly averse to the actual use of information technology in practice. There is always at least one IBM Selectric rattling away typing labels--because the secretary in question refuses to learn how to use the label-printing function in her word processor. We are constantly making redundant paper copies of everything. And, worse, our clients refuse to deal in anything but paper or facsimile. Correspondence that could have been sent at zero cost via e-mail is sent at considerable cost via international direct dial fax. Some agents or clients have no e-mail access at all.

I don't know how representative my experience is, but I'm constantly amazed at the lack of openness to computers & IT.

Apparently my firm is full of people who like the Rolling Stones (and maybe Jim Croce) at least as much as the bottom line:



From: SENIOR PARNTER
To: All-Firm
Re: TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE

Message:

All
It is that time again. Now that everyone has digested their turkey, we need to redouble our efforts. month end closing is set for this Monday, December 4th. Please make every effort to get all of your time into the system by COB on Monday. Thank you for your continued cooperation.

TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE (M. Jagger/K. Richards)
Yes, star crossed in pleasure the stream flows on by
Yes, as we're sated in leisure, we watch it fly
And time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me
And time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me


From: Partner
To: All-Firm, Senior Partner
Re: TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE

Message:

relative to Messrs. Jagger's and Richard's comments, please note:

Ti-i-i-ime is on my side (yes it is.)


From: Of-Counsel
To: All-Firm, Senior Partner
Re: TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE

Message:
I'm putting mine in a bottle.

I have discovered that mentally inserting the word BITCHES into legal documents at appropriate intervals greatly enhances my job satisfaction:

Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 is a question of fact,BITCHES! In re Hyatt, 211 F.3d 1367, 1371, 54 USPQ2d 1664, 1667 (Fed. Cir. 2000).

"Almost Evil", as ripped from The Toike Oike, the University of Toronto's Humour Newspaper. You can hit up the cartoonist on his own website

must fight urge to use w00t in office emails.

I've often remarked on how much easier it is to be a man than a woman--at least in matters sartorial--but I have noted at least one disadvantage:

It would appear that it's still not on for a man to wear sandals in polite company, whereas women can get away with open shoes without much comment (and if they're very lucky indeed, quite a bit of comment).

Just a thought while we're thinking of all things summery.