Welcome to Ramblish.

So. My only prior experience with blogging dates back to a history course sophomore year, when we were asked to post reactions to that week's reading before coming in to lecture. I didn't bother to post very often; I wasn't particularly concerned with padding my participation grade, and I realize in retrospect that I often took those discussions for granted. I miss them now that the majority of my work day revolves around analyzing statistics.

Today I fought with MS Word to insert a table of contents into a document. They provide you with a template to make it easier, but secretly, they're trying to frustrate all your attempts to line up a few titles and numbers. Once the template is set, the processor suddenly forgets all the things it used to know how to do without the template. After some futile attempts to cut and paste, you let loose a string of profanity and expose your grief to a colleague. He, of course, solves the problem in roughly 3 seconds.

That doesn't change the fact that Microsoft Office is crap, and will continue to be crap until it's flooded by competitors and forced to raise its game. Monopoly sucks. Say what you want about capitalism; you can't deny the fact that it forces better quality products/services.

Is it already obvious that I really like semicolons?

Hmm, I feel a bit guilty about slagging off Microsoft, what with Bill and Melinda Gates being the philanthropists that they are. Props to them for that; it's not nearly as prevalent as it needs to be among those in that financial echelon. They should start up a microfinance scheme for people with techie aspirations that grows and develops a worthy competitor to abysmal MS Office. That would definitely qualify as combating pure evil in my book. Isn't that philanthropy at its best?