I used to build computers for fun. There's nothing to it really. If you can snap together Legos as a kid would, you can assemble a computer these days. You just put the round peg in the round hole, and the square peg in the square hole. It is amazing what a challenging concept that is for some people. When I was a 6 year old kid, I was asked to perform a series of stupid tasks like this in an IQ test at Fresno State. I rang the bell at the top. The Ph.Ds were very excited. My grandmother was stunned.
I still have no idea what they were going on about. A fool could do what I did then.
But now I am going to withhold my lego snapping skills for cause. I am going to flat-cold refuse to build new computers for these relatives. I am going to do this for a very important reasons: The folks are using Microsoft Outlook.
Yep, that's right. Because they are using Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, they get no love from me. They are on the contraband list.
The last time I built machines for my mom and cousin-in-law, I had weeks of headaches with one phone call after another related to one fucked up piece of shit program: Microsoft Outlook. Toss Outlook in Express in there also. The difference between these two is the difference between colon cancer and anal cancer. About 6 inches of distance mayhaps.
There was nothing wrong with the hardware I built for them. The machines were humming along superbly. The build was flawless in both cases. No, these two users were experiencing software problems related to exactly one piece of software: Outlook. For this reason, they called me repeatedly with question after question about Outlook.
This pissed me off to no end. You have no idea how much I hate Outlook. I never use Outlook, except at work, where I am forced too by very poor management decisions. At work, I use the disease as little as possible. As far as I am concerned, Outlook is the worst application ever devised by mankind. There is no piece of software more poorly conceived, more poorly designed, or more poorly implemented.
Asking me questions about Outlook is like asking me questions about Gay sexual techniques. I don't know much about the subject, I don't want to know what I do know, and I am certainly not willing to learn more about it to help you get it right. Don't ask. Don't tell.
Being an Outlook user is a shameful thing. If I was an Outlook user, I certainly wouldn't tell anybody about it. I would hide that fact in the closet and never admit it. I certainly wouldn't ask for help in continuing with this problem. I would seek help in kicking this habit.
Take this to heart, Outlook users: Be ashamed of yourselves, be every ashamed. Shame on you. You are bad; very bad.
Outlook is the worst application Microsoft ever did, and that is saying an awful lot because they also wrote Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer and Outlook are the two greatest security holes Microsoft ever invented. Most of the alleged security flaws in Windows itself are really problems with Outlook and IE. If you never use either application, your probability space for infection by malware shrinks down to almost nothing.
With Outlook the problems run much deeper than mere security holes. Outlook is a pure waste of skin. It is an app without a purpose in life. It has no reason to live. There is literally no purpose in putting a local database of eMail and contact information on your computer. There is no logic in it at all, ever, under any circumstances. This is a completely outdated and outmoded approach to doing business. If you have a local database of such information, you are wrong, full-stop.
All of that stuff should be handled in web-based systems like Gmail, or Microsoft Live! There are no exceptions to this rule. In this way, you never experience problems in moving from computer to computer. There is no need to synchronize databases between a laptop and a desktop. There is no reason to worry about what will happen to your email or contact book if your hard disk crashes. All of these problems go out the window. Asking how you synchronize Gmail between two machines is like asking how you rewind a DVD before returning it to the rental store. The problem does not exist.
Amazing how entire categories of problems can be entirely avoided if you merely don't go there and don't do that. Just say no to Outlook. You will be grateful you did.
I'm putting the band-hammer down on Outlook. I'm going to leave these relatives hanging. They can stay in these current machines until those hard disks die. They can loose that entire database of mail and contact information. At that point, they will experience excruciating pain, and I will be there to tell them "I told you so."
I know they are not backing up on a regular basis. I know that asking a user to backup on a regular basis is a very unsound approach to doing business. I know they will loose mission critical information they can never recover when this eventuality happens. I know that is going to hurt like hell. I will be there to tell them "I told you so."
It's going to take a pain-event like that to make them kick the Heroin habit. I just saw fragments of "Requiem for a Dream" last night. Absolutely disgusting movie, and I hated it. However, it did demonstrate that Jared Leto had to lose his entire left arm to infection before he could begin the process of quitting Heroin.
Outlook = Heroin. Kick the habit.
