new and interesting abuses of software

Trawling jobsites this morning, I stumble across this gem in someone's list of job responsibilities:

use Microsoft Project as part of Project Management and in documentation of developed code

Urk. Microsoft Project as documentation of developed code?

(no subject)

From the trivia notes for Shark Tale:

The shark gangster voiced by Peter Falk was originally called Don Brizzi. Bowing to pressure from the Italic Institute of America, an organization protesting Hollywood's stereotyping of Italians as mobsters and gangsters, Dreamworks agreed to change the name of the character to Don Feinberg just before release.

So, wait, (a) there's an Italic Institute of America? (not Italian? Do they all lean to one side?) and (b) Dreamworks' response to accusations of stereotyping Italians is to turn them into Jews? (not that "Brizzi" is a million miles away from "Bris", either)

Oy vey.

wireless mouse

Last September, I went to Barcelona to hang out with the newly Linuxised Novell and their posse, many of whom hadn’t actually got the message and looked sort of blank when asked Linuxy questions (hello InstallShield/Macrovision!) and one of whom keeps sending me spam despite my repeated attempts - per instructions - to unsubscribe to their spam (hello AGAIN InstallShield/Macrovision). But I digress. Novell were giving out freebies during the workshops to people who answered questions or generally appeared to have functioning braincells, and dear god but there were a whole lot of people in there who either weren’t trying or shouldn’t have been there because really, I was freewheeling through these sessions and still scored bags of swag.

Anyway. One of my scores was a nice little wireless optical mouse with Novell branding; it’s really an A4Tech wireless optical mouse, but let’s not quibble. I plugged it into my Linuxy laptop and lo, it Just Worked. Having utterly failed to read the manual, I eventually divined that when it blinks the LED on the left side, it’s run sufficiently low on juice that I should change it. It’s not terribly obvious, though, since I tend not to look at the mouse when I’m working. So every so often, the batteries give out, and I’m staring at my screen and shaking the mouse around thinking, "oh no. it’s LOCKED SOLID. OH NO." before I think to glance at the doodad and realise, phew, it just needs new batteries again.