Curmudgeon

Internally, company's rolling out Windows 7. Big article on voting for your favorite Win 7 Aero theme. The most popular of a bunch of company themes will become the company default. There are some very pretty pictures of logos and chip microphotographs and those cute commercials with the robot. A couple people had a nice fun job making that shit. Tempted to join in to all the commentary at the end of the article. But it's all "Great job!" and "Very cool!" and shit like that. I want to type, "Who the frak cares? Get a real job and leave my functional XP desktop the frak alone," but that falls into the category of potentially career-limiting. So I'm venting here instead.

Look, I get that people want to customize their computer screens. We all personalize our desks and cars and, I dunno, put pins on our hats 'n' shit. And we all spend way too much time in front of these fucking things. So sure, a picture of the kids or the dogs or an 1860s clipper ship (my current desktop) is fine and dandy. But when I'm actually on the damn thing, typically I have from six to twenty-four windows open and only see the desktop when returning out of the screensaver. I don't need any fancy fucking themes and I don't know why anyone else who actually works for a living does either. Kryst.

It's like the company being friendly to Second Life (remember that?), or Facebook. Someone's quarterly management objectives actually included creating a presence on Second Life a few years ago. Probably there's all sorts of shit on Facebook (I haven't looked, I "liked" a few mobile linux things but otherwise, meh). Someone got to spend a happy few weeks making pretty pictures out of logos. Wonderful! What the F does it contribute? At least our customers actually want the Electrical, Mechanical, and Thermal Specifications that I have to fucking produce. Somehow that contributes to revenue. Gods-damn pretty pictures do not. Better not. I'm in the wrong gods-damn job if they do. I always liked to draw.