It's Never Simple

In The Land Of Updates, No One Is King

The other day I described the problem of getting Norton AntiVirus 2009 to play nice on my Fujitsu U810. First was the conflict with ZoneAlarm. Then it was a problem with an early release NAV engine, which had to be replaced. Tests on Thursday showed the LiveUpdate seemed to be working.

Saturday, though, LiveUpdate ran -- naturally I am running LU manually because I like computers that work for me and not go off on their own and annoy me when I am trying to do work -- but some of the updates failed to install. Some required a reboot and it did something, but I'll have to investigate further another time.

But I LIKE Microsoft Office 95 Professional

And it is running fine on the U810. But I do need to have a more recent version of Word, etc., in order to be compatible with other people. You know -- department meeting agendas, student papers and (drumroll) Track Changes from editors. On my other Windows XP Professional machines, I've also installed Microsoft Office 2003 Professional -- the EULA said I could install on two machines and given these machines are 77 miles apart, no problem with the bit about not using them at the same time.

So I went off to the university bookstore and got a copy of Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Enterprise Edition. Came with four disks -- Office 2003, Outlook 2003 and Service Pack 2 disks for both those. Install of Office 2003 went fine. Install of Outlook 2003... are you crazy? Install one of the biggest Kick Me signs in all of computerdom? Don't need Outlook.

So on to the Office 2003 SP2 disk. And instead of coming up with perfectly reasonable installation window, it fires up the default browser and loads one of the more poorly worded sets of instructions I've ever seen. Eventually one realizes that one is supposed to click this hyperlink which loads a directory with two program packages. One is Office 2003 SP2 and the other is Office 2003 Proofing Tools SP2. They can't put the two in one package?

The first ran fine and a check of Word 2003 clearly shows SP2 installed. The second wouldn't run, popping up a dialog box saying that it couldn't find the required installed product.

Oh give me a break. A Microsoft service pack for a Microsoft program has to find said Microsoft program on a machine running a Microsoft operating system. What could possibly go wrong?

My suspicion is that the Proofing Tools SP2 is confused by the two versions of Office. But why?

Oh. I know, I know! Because once again the boys and girls in Redmond WA have no clue about how people use their products in the real world. I knew there had to be a good reason.

Idiots.

Dr. Phil

Merry !&#*@ Christmas

Best Made Plans... Epic Fail

We were supposed to leave for the 'rents in Greensboro NC on Monday morning, but I just canceled the reservations. We are in the midst of a blizzard, winds gusting over 40mph, temp is around 10degF, snow is falling horizontally, and the police are closing the highways. I-94 is closed with a 100 car pileup with a dozen semis near Benton Harbor, and closer to us on I-196, white-out conditions have closed the highway and the accidents include the Michigan State Police.

We kept changing plans, including the thought of bugging out this afternoon and overnighting in a motel by the Grand Rapids airport, but not getting out of here without some serious snow removal. And that doesn't factor in the roads, which probably haven't been plowed on Warner since this morning.


There's a ridge nearly three-feet high extending from in front of the Blazer to the trees.

As annoying as it is to miss having Christmas with the 'rents and the sister unit, it'd be worse to wreck or get stuck in this crap. And then dealing with delays in tomorrow's flights? You can have it.


This is looking west into the wind -- our neighbor is having too much fun with his burning barrel, even during a storm.

The Other Shoe

The last straw was the forecast. Winter storms for Tuesday/Wednesday and Friday/Saturday. The latter has temps of 33degF and freezing rain and sleet -- and oh yeah, we'd be coming back on Saturday after dark. Uh... ri-ight.

Nope. Not going there.

A Festive Dinner

I know we have a package of hot dogs and some baked beans, so we can eat. Oh, and there's chicken pot pies in the freezer. And Mrs. Dr. Phil said we have two pork chops. Plus I know there are some frozen pizzas in the chest freezer that are no more than four or five years old. (gaack!)

On the other hand, we haven't had a year where we planned to go anywhere for Christmas get canceled in 24 years -- when we wrecked the Suburban because US-41 was blocked by a previous head on collision back in our first Christmas in the U.P. So I can't complain.

We got heat, we got power, we got food and water, we got kitties. There are even a couple of presents lying around.

Merry Christmas, I reckon.

Dr. Phil