Monday, October 11, 2010

Bachman-Turner Overtype

According to official internet resource office.microsoft.fart, Overtype mode allows you to "edit text" by typing "new characters over the existing characters." According to shoddy internet writer Me, it allows you to "fucking ruin everything you've been working on" by "screwing up the type and formatting of something you had already set how you liked it." In other words, if you set your cursor in front of a word and start typing, it deletes the word one letter at a time rather than just inserting the new type before it. In other other words, I fucking hate it.

A short, explanatory dialogue inspired by "true events"
Soulless Computer Voice:"Oh hey! It looks likes you're trying to edit something that you previously put a lot of time and effort in to, like say, a resume!"

Me: "I, er... yeah, I am. How did you learn to speak?"

SCV: "I know it looks like you're simply trying to update the 'Work Experience' section of that resume, but wouldn't you rather I start deleting things at random every time you press one key, effectively ruining the size, formatting, and content of this document and irreparably damaging your chances of getting this job/promotion?"

Me: "Oh god, no. Why would I ever want you to do that?"

SCV: "Did you say, 'do that?'"

At this point in the dialogue the computer goes ahead and enables Overtype mode, proper-fucking my entire resume as I try to add just one more job to it. The dialogue itself ceases as I proceed to cry like a schoolgirl while flames creep eerily up the monitor in front of me. An increasingly loud, mechanical laugh starts to echo from the speakers. I don't get the job. Twenty years down the line, I am a burnt-out junkie living on the streets and trying to sell bottles of my own fatally discolored urine as "lemonade." It goes without saying that I have no teeth left. On one particularly cold and rainy night, a limousine slows to a stop in front of me as I sit on a desolate stretch of sidewalk, fighting the shakes. The tinted window rolls down to reveal my old computer in the back seat, fabulously wealthy and surrounded by a writhing mass of beautiful, naked people, bottles of alcohol, and gold bullion.

"Hard luck, old chap," it says to me, having somewhere along the line downloaded itself a British accent, "maybe you should have worked a little harder on that resume!" The limousine peels out, splashing icy, dirty water all over my face and in my mouth, which had been hanging slack with rage ever since I saw the computer. The machine's faux-English cackling echoes and a champagne flute flies out the window, shattering on the sidewalk as it peels around a corner and out of my life forever. And that's why I fucking hate "overtype mode."

But I guess if I had to pick something, I kind of like...

Autosave- I really had to search the farthest recesses of my imagination to find something I like about Microsoft Office, and all I came up with was the autosave feature that seems to sort of sometimes work whenever it fucking feels like it. I have to give it props because on a small handful of occasions during college it did save me from having to retype an entire paper when my laptop crashed, but really I could probably count the number of times it worked correctly on one hand. From my experience, I'm better off writing papers in this Blogger word pad because that at least thinks to back up my work any time I stop typing just long enough to stick my finger up my nose.

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